The Queen of the Serpents

By S. L. Hawton

Before twelve-year-old Megan Blayne moves to Hollow Mountain, she believes that nothing can ever come between herself and her twin sister, Cate. Even though they have different personalities, they are forever bonded by blood and wear matching green amber rings. But just as myths about peculiar happenings around the town begin to overwhelm their daily conversations, Cateand her ringsuddenly disappear.

After Megan embarks on a desperate search to find her twin, she is met by a mysterious serpent who opens his mouth and drops Cates ring at her feet. But as quickly as the snake appears, it disappears, along with the ring. Terrified and more worried about Cate than ever, Megan sets out on a daring adventure in a fantasy world more dangerous than she ever imagined. As she begins unraveling a complex puzzle that she hopes will lead her to Cate, Megan encounters a strange boy, an evil lord, and serpent people who will do anything to get the one thing they want most.

In this fantasy novel, a girl on a quest to find her missing sister must rely on help from an unlikely new friend as she attempts to save two worlds from a terrible fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491734971

S. L. Hawton

S. L. Hawton is a former English language teacher who earned most of her teaching experience and mythology knowledge in Lithuania. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband, son, and two black-and-white cats. This is her first book. Cover art and illustrations by C.A. McArthur

Book preview

The Queen

of the Serpents

S. L. HAWTON

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

THE QUEEN OF THE SERPENTS

Copyright © 2014 S. L. Hawton.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-3495-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3496-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3497-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909116

iUniverse rev. date: 05/28/2014

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introductory Note

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

For Julia and Maya

Acknowledgements

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY HUSBAND, PATRICK, WHO MARRIED INTO THIS project and provided feedback, offered suggestions, and even came up with names—including the title of this novel—during the course of the last eight years. He patiently put up with my various reactions to his suggestions, too. I couldn’t have done it without you, Patrick.

I’d also like to thank my editor, Elizabeth, who pushed me to improve this story. I learned a lot from you, and though my ego took a beating sometimes during the editing process, the end result is worth every bruise.

Thanks to my family—my parents, Anne and Doug, and my brother, Glendon—for always being supportive of my dream to be a writer and for reading my manuscript and liking it.

Thanks as well to my friends for your encouraging words while I was working on this project. In particular, I’d like to mention Becky, Lana, Jennica, Carmen, and Andrea T. The five of you were like a safe place to go to vent whenever I had any issues with my writing. I don’t know what I did to deserve such friends. I also have many Facebook friends who gave me encouragement along the way. You are too numerous to mention (you know who you are). Every positive word from you helped me complete this novel.

One last mention goes to my grade-eight English teacher at A. R. Kaufman Public School, Mr. Bentley, who was the first person to read the early beginnings of this story and like it enough to read it to the whole class. This novel took root there in that classroom, even if the story didn’t fully emerge until many years and life experiences had passed.

Introductory Note

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LANGUAGE USED BY THE SERPENT PEOPLE (LITHUANIAN) uses the case system. The endings of nouns, including names, change to show their function in the sentence. This text contains an example of the vocative case, which means that the ending of the name changes when that person is being addressed. An –as name ending (ex. Sidabras) becomes –ai (Sidabrai) to convey the meaning, Sidabras, I’m talking to you.

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Prologue

THE SERPENT SLITHERED UP OUT OF THE VALLEY, RIGHT UP TO THE LINE WHERE the trees ended and the backyards began, and paused there for a second. Hardly giving it a thought, he crossed over the unofficial border and entered the yard. Today, he was impatient. The girls weren’t in the woods. Where were the girls? He licked the air and discovered that they weren’t in their backyard either.

The same lick told him something else. Wind and fire—the peacock. The peacock was almost right on top of him.

The bird’s cry blared like a siren three times in a row. The peacock rose up, its dazzling belly blocking out everything above him, like an otherworldly sky. Quick as a flash of lightning, one of its claws descended toward his head. But the serpent didn’t hesitate. He wheeled around and retreated to the trees, slithering furiously along the tree line, because even though the peacock marched slowly, it would surely follow him. He wouldn’t be able to stay in one place long. And what if the girls came? So far, they hadn’t connected the peacock’s wailing with anything unusual, but he didn’t expect their ignorance to last. They were smart.

The serpent found a nook at the base of a pine, with the tree between himself and the yard, and he curled up in it. There, he began to calm himself down. That had been a close call—much closer than any he’d had to date. He licked the air again, thinking.

The air was cooler under the tree, but annoyance bubbled hotly through his veins. What a humiliating enemy he had in the peacock. It tried his patience every time. To have a beast with so dull a brain stand in his way so effectively was almost too embarrassing to bear. He couldn’t do much about it, though. The Wandering Slave, who lived next door to the girls, owned the peacock, and he kept his pet well protected indeed.

For the moment, the bird had stopped marching and sat down, guarding the tree next to the serpent’s. Once there, it satisfied itself with wailing out three more warning calls. Still fuming, the serpent prepared himself for what could turn into a long wait.

The sun was still high and hot when the girls finally came out of their house. First, the serpent heard the sound of their voices and the creaking of the stairs as they made the long descent into their backyard. Then, once they reached the bottom, he could feel their footfalls shaking the earth beneath him, the thudding, irregular vibrations growing stronger by the second.

Wait. Something is different today. The serpent licked the air to make sure. There were three of them this time. There had never been three before. He licked the air again. He definitely detected three distinct smells: the usual two, plus one more he didn’t recognize. He wondered what this could mean but lazily decided he’d find out soon enough, and he prepared to follow them into the trees. He slithered cautiously out of his hiding place, a little deeper into the trees and a little closer to the path they always followed into the woods, but he stopped suddenly when the footfalls came to an abrupt end. He waited for them to pick up again. They didn’t.

Ach, it looked as if they weren’t coming into the woods. Well, that was unlucky. He’d lose a few good, solid hours of spying, and his days as a spy were almost at an end. He’d already chosen the day when he was going to turn his spying into action, and it was coming quickly.

With this in mind, the serpent found another little nook at the base of an old maple a little closer to the tree line and settled in. He figured he might as well give them awhile to change their minds about coming into the woods. It had happened a couple of times before.

He’d barely been waiting a moment before he smelled the cat. At first, he didn’t think much of it. The yard was always crawling with cats. This one seemed to spring out of nowhere, bouncing almost right on top of him, its two front paws slamming into the ground with a soft thud. He recoiled, nearly burying himself in the bark of the tree, and hissed sharply.

The cat replied with an ear-shattering hiss of its own and darted away, tail bristling. But the damage had been done. The peacock wailed again. Its footfalls started up again with the same slow rhythm, like a drum. There was no doubt about it now—the serpent’s enemy knew exactly where he was again.

The serpent peeled himself out of the maple tree nook. Even though the bird’s footfalls had started up again, he didn’t bother changing positions. The peacock never entered the woods.

But its march kept going, and it got closer and closer. The serpent heard a swishing sound: schick. Slithering up onto a thick root, he saw that the space at the mouth of the pathway was full of large black eyes. The bird had put up its train, the fan not quite spanning the entrance to the woods. It wailed three times and stepped onto the path, entering the trees for the first time as far as the serpent knew.

More hot annoyance flared up in the serpent’s veins. Nothing had ever really been stopping the peacock from entering the woods—even with its train up, the trees weren’t close enough together there to make things terribly awkward and cumbersome for it. But dumb as the bird undoubtedly was, it had always known to stick to the rules. The serpent always had free access to the woods, even as the bird had free access to the yard. If the serpent couldn’t enter the yard without having a hard time, he felt the peacock shouldn’t be able to enter the woods without consequences.

The serpent had a moment to think, blood running hot and cold with his internal conflict. Fighting the bird as a serpent would certainly be foolish. All he really needed was a solid threat.

He slithered back down to the base of the maple and weighed the thickness of the maple against his size in human form. The bird wailed four times in a row, interrupting his thoughts and causing his anger to boil again. Almost before he consciously decided to transform, he had done so. The serpent boy found himself scrambling to press his back against the maple. Looking down in shock at his black-clad arms, he tucked them against his sides so as to remain fully hidden from the people in the yard. He swung his black eyes upward and fixed a hard stare on the peacock. He bared his teeth in a taunting grin.

The peacock stopped, having gone barely four or five paces along the path. The three tiny crown feathers dipped to one side as it tilted its head and gave a quieter, confused wail. But it stood its ground. It didn’t come any closer, but it shimmered its train feathers, leaving the black-eyed fan up.

The sound of girls’ voices in the yard came sharply into focus the moment the serpent boy transformed. Keeping an unblinking stare on the bird, the boy tuned his ear to their conversation.

I thought peacocks only put their trains up when they’re mating, the first girl’s voice said.

No, no, said the nearly identical voice he also recognized, I’m pretty sure they also do it if they’re about to attack.

But there’s nothing there.

Maybe it’s something too small to see.

The serpent boy stiffened his arms and held his breath in the short silence that followed. The peacock turned its head so that its other yellow eye was watching him.

Megan, the first voice said in a carrying murmur, can you believe this backyard?

I know, Megan murmured back.

Even if you don’t count the tire swing, there’s heaps of cats that we can play with but don’t have to look after—and Mr. Kitch’s peacock.

You’re forgetting the mountain, Cate.

No, I’m not! Cate cried. The mountain goes without saying.

The serpent boy had to stop himself from shaking his head. They thought of the area as their backyard: the grassy space attached to the back of their house, the woods, the stream at the bottom of the valley, the mountain rising up on the other side, making it a lopsided valley indeed—a lopsided backyard for their lopsided ideas about the world. It was amusing.

In the city, the coolest backyard on the block was the one with the tree house and the firepit, Cate said in an altogether different tone, as if talking to someone else.

"My backyard has a ski resort," the new voice said, echoing slightly. The serpent boy didn’t recognize the voice, but he recognized the echo. The girls’ voices sounded like that when they were sitting inside the giant tire swing. The third girl was undoubtedly inside it now. Behind the fat maple just inside the woods, the boy’s black eyes narrowed at the superior tone in that voice.

Lindsay, Cate said, what else do you do around here for fun? I mean, when there’s no snow for skiing?

I hate to be the one to say it, Lindsay said, but this is about as exciting as it gets. A rhythmic creaking sound followed. The boy knew from the sound that the swing was rocking. He could picture it in his mind’s eye: a knotty elm grew apart from the woods on the left-hand side of the backyard, and the tire swing hung on it. When the swing rocked, the tree always creaked in protest.

The sound of the creaking slowed. Something changed in the air, as if all three girls had suddenly tensed. Wondering what was wrong, the boy risked a peek into the yard. The sparse trees screened the girls from his view somewhat, but he could still make out two curly brown heads side by side in the bright green grass near the oak, and a pair of legs belonging to the third girl dangling out of the enormous tire swing. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

He casually glanced back at the bird and noticed that it had lowered its train and was now sitting calmly in the pathway. A second too late, he realized what the peacock’s change in demeanour meant. The Wandering Slave, the bird’s owner, was standing not far behind it, still in the girls’ backyard, looking directly at him, eyes bright blue in angry shock.

The serpent boy cursed under his breath in the ancient tongue.

The Wandering Slave was nothing more or less than an old man. The serpent boy hadn’t seen him in some weeks, but he looked the same, unless his wrinkles had deepened. His moustache was as white and wiry as ever and was three times the size it should have been in terms of bushiness. The serpent boy always expected the old man was going to fall on his face from the sheer weight of it. The mouth beneath the moustache opened slightly. The blue eyes continued to spark. The man carried his hunting rifle, as usual.

The girl named Cate was talking to him. The serpent boy clung to the back of the tree, too preoccupied with trying to look defiant to listen to what Cate said. The old man held up his hand in the girls’ direction, gave them a glance, and said, Now, now, you girls stay there a minute. I’m just going to check something.

The old man stalked into the woods, stepping around the peacock on the path and glancing at the boy behind the tree in such a way that meant he wanted the boy to follow. He still looked livid.

Let him look, the boy thought, sneering. He considered not following, just quietly transforming and going on with his day. But the peacock started up a constant stream of siren calls the second its master passed it by, and besides, the serpent boy wasn’t afraid of the old man, not even when the old man was angry. He supposed he’d have to talk with him sooner or later now that the man had seen him. What was the harm? He could tell the old man everything or nothing, and he’d never know the difference anyway.

With a faint, hissing sigh, the boy leaned forward and plunged headfirst into the undergrowth, transforming swiftly into serpent form. He wove in and around trees without the smallest fear of crashing. To slither was to flow. He sped toward the stream at the deepest part of the valley, to the place where he figured the old man was going.

They arrived there at almost the same moment. The water gurgled by. The ground felt damp and cool; the air was rich and earthy. The old man stood beside the stream. He did not cross it. He did not enter the mountain’s domain. He stood with his feet spread apart and said to the serpent, Come on now. I’d rather look at your face when I talk to you.

The serpent intended to transform, but now he paused and licked the air several times, wanting to make the old man wait. He wasn’t afraid of the rifle—he knew it wasn’t for him. He wasn’t even afraid of the old man’s clunky boots. The Wandering Slave would never dare to try to crush him. Finally, the serpent boy decided he’d waited long enough. He flung himself up into the air like a swimmer emerging from underwater and stood before the old man, once again in the form of a boy. The serpent boy brushed his scraggly black hair across his forehead. He was sweating. Well, what is it?

The old man folded his arms. I want to know what in the blazes you’re doing here.

The serpent boy pursed his bluish lips. Wind and fire—what do you think?

You know perfectly well I’m more than capable of covering my own ground. Don’t you give me that.

The serpent boy clamped his mouth shut, and as he couldn’t think of anything to say, he said nothing. The old man’s face flushed with annoyance, and the boy’s grin began to spread wider.

The silence didn’t stretch long before the old man said, Just get out of here, and don’t let me catch you here again.

The boy sneered and leaped over the shallow, rocky stream. What are you going to do—get another bird? He stood as tall as he could on the upward-slanting slope, as if daring the old man to join him. What if I called Kasyrah? the boy said. You should stay out of this, Wandering Slave.

The old man took the dare, almost without even thinking about it. He glanced down at the stream as he strode over the water after the boy. Now, you listen here. If I find out that you’re— His angry words stopped short, as if he’d swallowed a stopper.

The serpent boy kept his impressive stance, having no idea in the world what could have made the old man turn pale and shut up. The old man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down three times as he stared at something beyond the boy. Finally, the boy craned his neck over his shoulder.

He saw nothing, just trees and the muddy bank of the stream.

He turned back to the old man, wondering if the man had finally lost his mind. Something wrong, Slave?

What is all that? Where did it come from? The old man looked as if he might faint in another moment. The girls …

Wrinkling his brow, the serpent boy took another look.

The forest grew thicker on the far side of the stream, and most of the trees there were evergreens. But one tree stood out in particular: a tall, slender spruce that stood just a little closer to the water than the others. It was a beautiful, elegant blue-green tree with red-brown skin, swirling its limbs in the wind. The old man was gazing deeply upon it.

Down low, under the spruce tree, at the base, an old pillowcase had been spread over the dead needles. An angel ornament fluttered in whatever little breeze could reach it where it hung on one of the tree’s lowest boughs. Two charm bracelets also hung not far from it. The sight was not new to the serpent boy. He’d watched, carefully hidden, while the twin sets of small, girlish fingers had unclasped the bracelets and attached them to the boughs. He’d heard the debate about where to affix the angel. He’d seen the two brown-haired heads nestled side by side on the pillowcase. He even knew what secrets each had whispered there.

If you try to stop me, your servitude will be eternal, the serpent boy said. He had the satisfaction of watching the old man sink to his knees in submission. The hunting rifle fell with a clatter.

Chapter 1

WHEN THE OLD MAN, MR. KITCH, DISAPPEARED INTO THE TREES, MEGAN TOOK off her sweater, wrapped it into a ball, and put her head down on it in the grass. It would have made a softer pillow if The Book of Pocket Myths hadn’t been stuffed in her sweater pocket. She leaned her head up again for a second in order to fan her brown curls out on the grass. Finally, she squinted up at the mountain, trying to make it look like a fat, ivy-covered tower.

The mountain was cloaked in trees most of the way up, until they reached a point where the ground grew too rocky for them. Traces of snow were visible on the tip of the mountain. If she blurred her eyes enough and stretched her imagination a bit, Megan could turn the faint, snowy whiteness into a flag for the top of her ivy-covered tower. It was hard to make the imaginary flag flap in the wind, though. She craned her neck up again, frowning, trying to think what else the tip of the mountain could be besides a flag.

What is she doing? Lindsay Abbott said, no longer echoing inside the tractor-tire swing.

Why don’t you ask Megan? Cate said over the sound of a faint mew. She had wandered away from Megan in order to pick up a black cat and cuddle it.

Megan didn’t want to tell Lindsay what she was doing. Frowning, she rolled her head sideways and looked at Lindsay. Lindsay was now sitting in the tractor tire so that it formed a round frame around her. Her legs still dangled out the side. She gave Megan a tight-lipped look and turned the whole swing so that she was looking instead at Cate.

"I thought you were Megan," she said.

Cate laughed. You’ll get the hang of it pretty quick. Most people do.

Whatever.

Megan returned to looking at the mountain. To say that Megan loved the mountain already would have come near the truth. She might have rather said, The mountain has cast a spell on me. Better yet, she might have written those words in the Pocket Myths. She wished she could write that the mountain cast spells on everyone who came near enough to it. Megan sighed. She couldn’t write any such thing anymore. Even the sound of Lindsay snapping her gum in a routine sort of way was enough to remind her that the mountain had almost no effect on some people.

Want me to tell you a story that’ll make the skin creep right off your bones? Lindsay Abbott snapped her gum twice in row.

Okay, Cate said in a tone that suggested she was shrugging. Megan wouldn’t admit she was interested. She stayed as still as possible and held her breath.

There was a long pause in which Lindsay snapped her gum only once. Maybe I’ll wait till after dark.

No, thanks, Cate said. I’d rather hear it while it’s light out.

Megan felt a familiar surge of annoyance at Lindsay. She sat up. What’s the point of asking, if you wanted to save it till after dark?

Lindsay glared at her. If she hadn’t been glaring, Megan might have thought she looked