The Serpent Echo: Chapter One

I - The Constant Funeral

 

    In all those crappy stories, there is a girl stuffed in the back of a car, saying things like “Mom, no, you don’t understand me.” And the Mom character says things like, “oh Honey, you’ll love it here.” And the girl harrumphs and throws a fit in the back of the car until they arrive in the small town, where the mother promptly abandons her child to a bald and divorced father.
    I did none of those things in the back of my car, I’m proud to say – possibly because I was in the front, and possibly because I had no idea where we were going. So instead, I acted on the obvious alternative: asking too many questions.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I told you, we are going to live in Tourno town.”
“Yes, but where?”
“In… A house,” said my mother blankly, gripping the wheel with white knuckles. She was convinced that putting a box in the back of our car would be the death of us. ‘It’s a very heavy box,’ she had complained before we left, more than enough times to annoy me. ‘We could fishtail. We could lose control.’ Despite my patting her on the back too many times, she was still tense, and still clutching the steering wheel.
“Mom,” I said, “you can go faster. The dirt road isn’t slippery.”
“Oceane! Please stop asking so many questions,” was all I got. She wasn’t listening to me at all.
“We are not going to die,” I sighed. And then the view exploded over the edge of the hill we’d been climbing, and I realized that maybe we were going to die after all.

    Way down at the bottom of the hill, Tourno spread out like a little wooden diorama. Everything about Tourno seemed to be made of dark wood. To one side of Tourno was the source of all the log houses: a large forest that stretched around the town in a half-moon. On the other side of the half-moon was another semi-circle, the edge of a lake made of flat, dead water. Tourno was, I saw, a perfect circle. But the most eye-catching visual detail was not so much a detail as it was a focus point: a huge black mountain on the other edge of the lake, reflected in the still water as if in a large mirror. It lay in the water like a black veil.

“Mount Auros,” My mother said through gritted teeth, leaning forward on the wheel as we descended the hill. Our sturdy green pickup hummed a low note, as if bored by our cautious speed.
“Oh my God,” I said.

*~*~*

We parked by the water’s edge, next to a little dock. Parked carefully, might I add.  To my surprise, sitting on the end of the dock was a little man named-
    “Bill,” Mom cried happily, leaping from the car and yelling excitedly.
“Uncle Billy,” I nodded as I stepped out.
“Princess,” he replied, in an equally courteous tone. His green eyes sparkled.
    I felt my whole body bristle so suddenly, I was sure I would fire porcupine quills in all directions. To my relief, and surprise, I did not. But Bill seemed to notice my sudden stiff spine.
“What? Have I done something?” He looked genuinely worried.
“No,” I replied acidly. “Nothing.” I stared at him with all the venom I could muster. “But do not call me Princess.”
“Ah,” he said, understanding. The three of us frowned at each other quietly for a moment.
    Uncle Bill broke the silence by clapping his hands together and blurting out, “I guess you’d like to unpack your stuff.”
“Sure,” said Mom enthusiastically.
“Okay,” I sighed, less-than-enthusiastically. Mom grabbed my arm and dragged me roughly to the back of the pickup truck.
“Really,” she hissed in my ear, “what’s wrong with you? I thought you wanted to move away.”
“I did,” I hissed back. “I do! I just – I mean, Mount Auros? We have to live in the shadow of Mount Auros?”
“Oh, Oceane,” Mom whispered. “We’re staying near Bill for a little while. We won’t be here permanently, darly.”
“Darling. No, don’t call me darling,” I said, distracted.
“It is ‘darling?’ But nicknames are short words… ‘Darling’ doesn’t become ‘darly?’”
“No, Mom.”
“We won’t be here permanently, darl-ling.”
    Despite myself, I laughed. Mom’s English was so good, I forgot sometimes that her native language was French. My laughing lightened the mood considerably, and the pair of us attacked the boxes, giggling.
    All the boxes were pretty light, except for the box, which we carried in last. Uncle Bill had been packing up his fishing gear, so I was surprised when he materialized beside me and took the box from my grasp.
“I’ll carry this one with your mother,” he winked.
“I’m not delicate,” I snarled, surprised by my bitter anger towards him. It was unnecessary and embarrassing. “Sorry,” I added to my shoes.
“S’ok,” he grunted as he manoeuvred the box backwards into the side door of our new home.

Our new home was completely brown. A log cabin. But it looked comfortable enough- two floors, at least, and it had a new, flat red roof that was angled so that it sloped back, towards the water. The second floor of the house had a massive window facing the lake. The little dock counted as part of our ‘backyard’- the backyard that didn’t exist. Instead of a lawn, a garden, or a swing set, we had the steady lap of the black lake.
“Oceane,” Mom said lightly, “go explore your room upstairs. I’m going to fill out some paperwork, I’ll be down the… Street.” She looked distastefully at the dirt road that led away from our house to the center of the town.
“How will I know which one’s my room if there’s no bed yet?” I asked.
“Um… You’ll know,” she said cryptically. I raised an eyebrow but obediently walked into the house. She was leaving out some sort of huge surprise, I was sure.

Inside the house, it was dark but surprisingly warm and cozy. The empty house wasn’t dusty or haunted-looking. I liked the shadows, actually. The first floor had three rooms. There was the front room, a big and open space with a fireplace- a metal fireplace, to be safe, the only thing not made of wood. Behind the front room was the kitchen, not separated by a wall but by a counter- it seemed pretty open concept. To my left was a wall, but I could see that there was a door in it- it wasn’t the side of the house, but the first-floor bathroom. The wall ended, and I saw that just before the kitchen was a set of spiral stairs.
A spiral staircase. My heart gave a flutter of immediate love for the house. I wormed through the boxes scattered by the door and climbed the stairs. What I saw at the top made me gasp aloud.
There were no rooms at the top of the stairs. There was simply the entire floor. Mom had left me the entire attic to myself. At the back of my ‘room’ was the large window that took up nearly the whole wall. I could tell that by high noon the room would be flooded with light. I immediately flew to the window and stared out at the scene.

The black lake glittered ominously at me, and the reflection of Mount Auros lay across it like a veil. I saw my own reflection in the water, my face rippling in the window, the shadow of the mountain darkening the details of my face. I felt a sudden heaviness. My green eyes, like Uncle Billy’s, were dark under the mountain, deadened in the water. My reflection, under a black veil. My fluttering heart stopped and fell like a stone. I liked this house, I liked Tourno, but I hated the mountain, the lake, the forest, the shadows. It felt like living under a funeral veil that I couldn’t escape.

 

I hated the idea of a funeral veil.