Morgana DeVille's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By noon Morgana had one wall standing and a problem she could not cut with a hatchet. A wall was not a town. A town needed people, and the people she wanted lived scattered across every village that had run them out. None of them knew the swamp held a place for them. She set the hatchet down and looked at the serpent, dozing by the ashes. She had ten drops of blood left and no messenger she could send. She thought through what she had. The serpent would hear her but not carry word. The swamp itself was full of eyes, though. She had seen a small winged thing the night before, dark-furred with orange wings that lit up when it moved. It had watched her from a branch and flown off when the serpent shifted. A creature like that could cross miles. A creature like that, given a drop of her blood, might cross them for her. She baited a flat stone at the edge of the clearing with one drop and waited. The winged thing came at dusk. It landed on the stone, licked it clean, and then sat back on its haunches and looked at her the way the serpent had looked at her, full and calm. She said the names of three towns that had run her off. She said, tell the ones they hate. She said it plain, four times, until the small creature's ears twitched at the sound. Then it lifted off and was gone over the reeds. She did not know if it had understood. She had spent a tenth of what she owned to find out. She learned three days later. A man waded into her clearing at dawn with mud to his knees and a knife in his belt. He said a fairy had come to his window and spoken her words in his own voice. Behind him, an alligator the size of a boat pushed through the reeds, ridged and dark, its mouth bent in what looked like a grin. The man said the alligator had guided him through the deep water and had not eaten him, which he took as a sign. Morgana looked past them both. Two more shapes moved in the reeds. She had spent one drop and bought arrivals. She had also brought a stranger's teeth into her camp, and she did not yet know whose side the grinning one was on.