The Serpent in the Garden
Jordan Castillo Price
ISBN:978-0-9818752-9-3
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Copyright ©2009 Jordan Castillo Price
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Most of your once-upon-a-time type stories begin with a wide-eyed young maiden who’s a blushing flower. Not this story. This story is about a girl named Shirina, and Shirina was as far from blushing flowerdom as a girl can get. No flowers here. Not even plants. Or turtledoves, or butterflies, or anything charming and nice. If anything, Shirina was a serpent.
Shirina was elegant and slim, but she was also cold-blooded and sneaky. She moved with a deadly grace that was breathtaking to behold, and the sting of her venom could paralyze, even kill.
At least, she hoped that someday it would, once she grew the proper flowers and herbs and combined them correctly. And once she found someone to test the poison on besides her mother and her brother, Dharmesh. She never dared to spike their drinks with anything much stronger than a sleeping draught; she figured the two of them came in handy from time to time.
Someday Shirina would be a master poisoner, a deadly enchantress who did nobody’s bidding. But, unfortunately, for now she was just a girl in a garden.
Shirina scowled down at the battered, faded surface of a much-read scroll. The only other living soul who knew about it was Dharmesh—he’d discovered it on one of his daily forays to the marketplace and bought it for her on a drunken whim. She scanned the ornate characters. She’d need senna before she could brew any poison that was truly fearsome. And it would take weeks, if not months, for the seeds to grow. If those seeds could be had at all.
“Dharmesh!”
Shirina’s brother poked his head into the courtyard garden from the window of his bedroom. His hair stuck out on one side, but it was balanced by his crooked smile. “Hey, sis.”
“I need something for my garden. Take me to the market.”
Dharmesh leaned both elbows on the windowsill and considered, which was not a good sign. It meant he was doing something other than getting ready to leave. “I don’t think it’s safe,” he said.
“What?”
“All kinds of rumors are flying around.”
Shirina grit her teeth. As big brothers went, Dharmesh was a good sport, and he knew how to keep a secret. But he could be such a dolt when it came to spitting out a story. “Could you give me a reason any less helpful?”