The Un-named Tale, Part One

"I don't believe you." The look of skepticism was plain as peaches on Lyna's face. Her younger brother was making up stories all the time, and there was no reason to start believing him now.

"I'm telling you, I saw it! By the brook! In the bushes!" Raimy had a tendency to shout when he was excited. "Come and look! The tracks will still be there. It's not like you're doing anything important with your time. You're a girl!"

"Girls have important things to do too, you know." His eyebrows rose, clearly unconvinced. Apparently, cooking food and learning (or pretending to learn) how to tend house was not as important as pretending to hunt and getting into trouble. "Fine, I'll look. But if you're lying..."

Raimy stuck his tongue out. "I don't lie! You just don't see what I see, is all." This was a common line of his. He never lied to anyone. They just didn't see things the way he did, and that was their fault, not his. Turning on his heel, he started away from the back of their house.

It was a middling house in the middle of  Cullough, a middle sized town in the middle of the country of Penchram. Lyna often thought that she was always going to be stuck in the middle of everything, with no way out, but there was nothing wrong with her family's life, really. The house had two floors with a room for her parents and each of the children, a kitchen and a sitting room, and even a bath house in the back of the garden. Cullough even had a wooden wall around the outside, although if anyone ever thought to attack it they could just burn it down. That's what Raimy said he would do, as if he knew so much about attacking towns.

Out the gate Lyna followed her younger brother, watching his sandy head bob up and down the way it did when he was excited. He was the only one in their family with hair like that. Everyone else was dark, and on days like today, with the sun shining off it, she noticed it especially. "Not so fast! You'll trip in the ruts!" With an annoyed look over his shoulder at her, he slowed to keep pace. They were only two years apart, but sometimes it felt like decades. Twelve was so much more mature than ten. "Which brook was it? The north or south?"

"You know they only like the south! Come on!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the main road, which was paved with round river stones, hurrying past all the shops and the South Gate Inn. They hurried left off the road and into the sparse forest. It seemed unusually quiet.

"Where are all the animals, Raimy? I don't like it. We should get father."

"No, we're here now and father is at the forge. Besides, you said you would come and look." He pulled her farther under the trees to where they could see the brook that ran just of the town and across the road. It's twin ran just outside the North Gate. "Look, just going into those bushes. See the slither marks?"

"That could be from anything. Someone dragging a big branch to the water."

"Then where are the footprints? And how come there are no broken branches?" He had a point, but she didn't like it. "Go look in the leaves. You'll see. It glints in the light, but be quiet."

Lyna froze. It glints in the light? They were supposed to be looking at tracks, not... "You mean it's still here? Are you mad? Everything we've ever been told about them says they're dangerous! I can't believe this! I'm going to..." That's when the bushes started to rustle and Lyna realized she had been shouting. Even Raimy's eyes had grown to the size of ripe apples. A huge, long shape was rising off of the ground, shafts of sunlight glinting on the jewels covering it's back.

Raimy had been right. There was a Ruby Snake by the South Brook, and it was staring right at them. What they didn't expect was for it to speak.