Morgana DeVille's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Morgana DeVille drove her last stake into the peat and looked at the map she had drawn on the back of a wanted poster. The poster was her own. The map was the swamp called New Hellz, and the small X at its center was where she meant to build a town for people the cities had thrown away. She had walked three days to reach that X. She had one hatchet, half a sack of cornmeal, and a pistol with four shots. The stakes marked the corners of the first house. She had just finished the fourth when she smelled the thing that had been following her since dusk — wet fur, old meat, something with a mouth big enough to matter. She heard it breathing behind the reeds. She knew she could not sleep. She also knew she had walked too far to turn back, and four shots would not last the night. Morgana banked the fire high and climbed a cypress with her pistol in her teeth. From the branch she watched a low shape circle the stakes, testing the ring of light. She counted its steps and waited for a clean shot. Then the water under the fire went bright. A serpent rose out of the shallows on the far side of the camp, long as a wagon, its scales lit from inside with shifting green and gold. It made no sound. The predator in the reeds froze, turned, and ran. The serpent followed only with its eyes, then swung its head toward Morgana in the tree. She kept the pistol pointed at it and did not fire. It watched her for a long moment. Then it lowered itself into a coil beside her fire, laid its head across the peat, and closed its eyes, as if the camp were already its own. Morgana climbed down slowly. She did not sleep that night either, but she lived to see the sun come up over her four stakes, and she understood that the swamp had just introduced her to her first neighbor.