such things. But now to your reward. Here is a story you do not know.” He lowered his head and, very delicately, laid it upon her lap. His crystalline eyes swiveled to look up at her as he spoke. “There was once a serpent woman who collected souls.”
THE STORY OF MISSANSHA
Her name was Missansha, which means “the lonely one” in the Ondiont speech. She was born blind, and this is very rare among my people. Perhaps because of this, she schooled her other senses. We have a strong sense of smell, but hers was superior. She could flick her tongue and tell you what lay beyond the horizon, picking up its scent long before anyone else could.
However, as she came of age, she developed one particular talent that no other of us has—she could sip life itself. When she came near anyone else, she drank from them. She surely didn’t know this was unusual. It was how she was. Nor could she control it, any more than the living can control the urge to breathe. Inadvertently, like a basilisk, she drained the life from two playmates.
We have elders among us in whom we place our governance, and she was taken before them for this crime; but even as she was escorted into the room, she was draining those guards who accompanied her. One collapsed at her side; the other slithered away for his life. No one, nor especially her family, could come near her. The more she cared, the more absolutely she absorbed.
Now, we do not slay our own, least of all for things they cannot control, and Missansha bore no responsibility for this. She wept for those she destroyed. We could not harm her for it.
The elders chose the only solution they could imagine. They would commission a tower for her, high enough that she would never again come near them. As you can imagine, for snakes such an undertaking was near impossible, and so we sent out messengers to the bridges, to ships, to other islands, asking for assistance. There were few who accepted our very generous offer to come and erect our tower. Serpents have an unsavory reputation among other species, most of which we’ve done nothing to earn. We’re simply distrusted for our appearance and stories concocted about us, our decency dismissed. But I digress.
There were humans who deigned to set foot on our island. They were paid handsomely for their masonry skills, their talent, and their labor—we have much gold in our caverns. And there were no unfortunate incidents of the sort that can spoil a relationship…that is, until the tower was complete and it was time to place Missansha in it.
Some of us there were who speculated that Missansha’s powers might only hold sway over her own kind. The long, ascending rampway that spiraled around the outside of the tower, though it was built for snakes, still posed a burden to us. We asked that these foreigners would escort her to her chambers. None of us wished to be close enough, and we could not have her slither off the edge of the narrow ramp.
We made another generous offer, and two of them volunteered. The rest waited alongside us.
Only one of the volunteers returned. The other died as he reached the top. His body became as glass, transparent and stiff. The survivor managed to lock her in before he stumbled back down the spiral to safety. We offered to nurse him back to health—we had much experience by now with the effect of her—but, no, the foreigners did not trust us after that, these alien creatures. They departed our shore and never returned. The tower they’d built was solid, well constructed for the ages, and we left her there, banished with us but never among us.
Once a week someone carried food to her, leaving it where she could reach it. At least for a long time this was so. Over time, the act of delivering food became a ritual. To be chosen was an honor. Because it was codified as ritual, no one asked if the food was taken, if there was a sign she still survived. She surely had long since died. The ritual continued nonetheless.
And so it was for centuries, the lonely one isolated safely above us. We congratulated ourselves that we had found a benign solution to her existence.
What happened then was that Death paid us a personal visit.
Death as you know looks like anyone. When he is among you humans,