Morgana DeVille's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Morning came slow. The serpent still lay coiled by the ashes of the fire, its scales dim in the daylight but bright wherever a cloud passed. Morgana sat on a stump ten feet away and watched it breathe. She had four stakes in the ground and one neighbor she could not talk to. If she stood up wrong, if she stepped where it did not want her to step, she would learn the answer with her teeth. She needed a way to speak to it before she did anything else. She went through her pack on the stump, slow, so the serpent could see her hands. She had cornmeal, a hatchet, three shots left, and a small crimson vial her teacher had never known she took. The vial was blood, hers, drawn and sealed a year ago and worked with the only craft she knew. Lust magic was a poor word for it. What it really did was show a creature what it wanted and make the giver the source. She had used it on men. She had never tried it on a thing the size of a wagon. But she had nothing else to offer that a serpent might understand. She uncorked the vial and poured three drops onto a flat stone at the edge of the coil. Then she stepped back and sat down again. The serpent's tongue came out once. It slid its head over the stone and stayed there a long minute. When it lifted, the stone was dry, and the green and gold in its scales moved slower, like a full animal, not a hungry one. It looked at her. It did not look at her the way a snake looks at a mouse. It looked at her the way a dog looks at the person who feeds it. She tried a word. She said, stay. The serpent did not move. She said, hunt, and pointed at the reeds where the predator had run the night before. The serpent's head turned to the reeds, then back to her, and it did not go. She understood then that it was not a servant and would not be one. It had heard her. That was the whole of it. She corked the vial and put it back in her pack. One drop had bought her a conversation. She had maybe ten drops left. She stood up slow and walked past the coil to her fourth stake. The serpent watched her pass and did not strike. She picked up the hatchet and began to cut the first log for the first wall. Behind her the serpent shifted once, resettled, and closed its eyes. Morgana had a neighbor now, not a threat. She also had a swamp full of things that had not yet met her, and ten drops of blood to meet them with.