Stella Verdant's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Stella Verdant knelt in the shallows and pressed both hands to the dying water. Green light flickered in her eyes, old and weak, the magic her mother had promised would one day wake and heal the whole bayou. The reeds straightened. The brown water cleared for a moment. Then the sickness crept back, like it always did, and by morning her work would rot away. She was the queen of these waters, and she could not keep a single pool clean through the night. Her pet alligator surfaced beside her, the line of purple scales along his back catching the dim light. He nudged her knee and groaned low. He hated watching her fail. "I don't know what's poisoning it," she told him. "I can't fix what I can't find." A heavy flap of wings cut the air. The old owl who guarded her banks dropped onto a stump. His sharp eyes fixed on her, then on the alligator. He had sat watch over the bayou longer than Stella had been alive, and he never came down for nothing. The owl pushed off again and flew low over the dark water. He wanted them to follow. Stella waded after him. The alligator pushed through the mud at her side. The owl landed on a half-sunk log near the far bank. Below him grew a water hyacinth, and Stella stopped cold. Its blooms were blue and purple, beautiful, but black veins ran through every petal. The flower was wilting from the inside. She had never seen veins like that on any plant in her bayou. The alligator crawled up to the flower and sniffed it. He jerked back fast and hissed. His whole body went stiff. He knew that smell. He had tasted it in the water for weeks and could not tell her where it came from. Now he could. Stella crouched and followed the hyacinth's roots with her eyes. They ran back from the bank, toward the deep part of the swamp she rarely entered. The black veins traced the same path through the mud, thin dark lines spreading from somewhere upstream. "The poison comes from up there," she said. "The flower drank it first. That's why it's dying so strange." The owl clicked his beak once, as if to say yes. The alligator turned his head toward the deep water and growled. Stella broke off the veined bloom and held it up. Now she knew what the poison looked like. She knew which way it flowed. Her healing would still fade by morning until she stopped it at the source, but for the first time she had a trail to follow. She stood and looked toward the dark heart of the swamp, where the veins led. Something up there was bleeding into her water. And now she meant to find it.