I own nothing.

i.

They tell her that when she was born, she had a snake clenched in her hand, writhing and spitting. The serpent slithered away when she was handed into her mother's care. There are the whispers that that was her twin, the tell of her true nature. She is a serpent, no matter the sort flesh and limbs she wears.

She is Tanith, daughter of Liora and nobody; her father will not claim her. Their village is precarious and cold; it sits on what seems the roof of the world. Her people gather about the campfire and whisper of Giants and Lions and shadows in the dark. Sometimes, they whisper of her out of lidded eyes, thinking that she, skinny girl-child, can not hear them.

But they are wrong. She is Tanith, with a voice like trilling music, hair as gold as wheat, eyes as green as poison. She hears all, in the roaring of water and the seeming sanctity of dark places. This skinny girl-child hears them, and knows them to be wrong. She has seen no scales on her skin, and neither is her tongue forked. Often has she heard the story of her birth, and she knows without knowing that if there is some connection between her and the serpents that slither on the ground, it is rooted in something else.

Tanith stares out past the village. She stares out on desolate rolling hills capped with heather and brambles, and dreams of more.

ii.

She is young still, not a full six years, when the little black snake winds tamely around her wrist and bids her good day.

Tanith's fear is momentary, but intense. Everything her mind tells her says that serpents do not possess the unnatural cunning to converse in the tongues of men. But it is not I who speaks your tongue, the serpent tells her. It is you who speak mine.

"But how have I come to speak the tongue of serpents?" she asks the beast, confused.

I can not say. You are the first to hear me.

Once she overcomes her fear, Tanith's first instinct on this discovery is to feel joy, as she always does at the discovery of new things and secret knowledge. The few children in the village are afraid to speak with her, but the serpents hunger for new knowledge as she does, and are willing to teach her.

Thus begins Tanith's education, in the lore of the snakes, the history of the world as the snakes know it. Infinity is two serpents devouring one another, unto the end of time, and this is how the world was made. This is their most sacred truth.

When she comes down out of the wilderness, no one understands the nature of Tanith's change. They just see that her eyes are brighter green than ever.

iii.

Finally, the storytellers of Tanith's village tell a story that captivates her, just as much as the snake-lore does.

In their version of the weaving of the world, a Lion sang it all into being. This great, golden beast wove the Sun and Moon from the gold and silver hairs of his mane. The winds arose from his breath, storms from his roars. With the light of his eyes, there sprung up plants and beasts and stars, and this new world was watered by his tears.

Rising in opposition to the Lion, there was a sorceress from a ruined world. Witch and Queen, she was great in beauty and terrible in might, and having ruined her world, she sought dominion over this one. She sought to rebuild her great empires, to recapture some of the lost splendor of her home, some of the lost glory.

It is as though someone has lit a fire beneath Tanith's skin.

She asks the snakes about this Witch. What do they know of her? Where and in what form does she feature in their lore and histories? What is the secret of her power?

She lives still, does the Witch.

"She does?! Where does she live?!"

You must travel north, sister. You must travel north until your feet crack and bleed, until the air is thin and cold, until you come to the place where the sun does not set for days, and the moon does not rise for just as long. Abandon fear of death. Abandon hope of life. There you shall find the Witch.

There, she shall find the Witch.

iv.

Tanith leaves the village when she is twelve years old. There are none particularly sad to see her go. Even her mother has come to fear her, fear her eyes and the way that, even when the rest of the village is starving, Tanith never seems as touched by hunger as the rest. A loaf of bread or a cup of stew leaves her sated for days on end now. It is not natural, they say.

She leaves the village with no possessions save the clothes on her back, and with no food to take with her on a journey she will likely never return from. The wind blowing in her hair, Tanith begins walking north.

There are rivers and great mountains and forests beyond the breadth of the world as Tanith has known it; the world is far wider and wilder than she imagined it, even in the stories she's been told. As she travels further north, she meets fewer snakes, and those she meets are shy and mistrustful, but they will tell her that she has not reached that place and that person which she seeks.

Tanith walks ever north, and the trees dwindle, and she meets no one who speaks any tongue that she speaks.

Finally, she comes to a place of rock and snow. The air is so thin that Tanith can barely breathe; her cut feet leave trails of blood on the ground behind her. Tanith can not remember the last time she saw a dark sky full of stars; she can not remember when last it was that she saw the sun set.

Aimlessly does Tanith wander this icy waste. She looks for any sign of a home, of a Witch. Her desire grows in her, ever-growing, the yearning for knowledge and power. Death flees her. Life will not take her.

Then, a shadow as long as the trees Tanith left behind falls over her.

She looks up, and spies a woman standing over her, framed in frigid arctic sun. She is tall, taller than anyone Tanith has ever seen, so tall that it would not surprise her if the woman revealed herself to have Giants' blood. The woman stands swathed in pristine white furs, a staff of ebony grasped in her right hand. She is more beautiful than anyone or anything Tanith has ever seen, tall and proud, skin white as snow, hair dark as night.

Surely this must be her, Witch and Queen, keeper of knowledge and power.

Tanith springs to her feet, holding her hands out in the air, part-supplication, part-demand. "Lady! Teach me!"

v.

Jadis looks upon the creature who stands before her. A skinny girl-child, clothed in rags, trailing crimson life-blood on the cruel ground behind her. The girl-child stares up into her face, eager and unafraid and hungry.

What is this?

Her voice trills like music, high and clear and cold. Her hair is gold as wheat, and her eyes as green as poison. She is human, of Eve's accursed brood, and thus weak and frail and fragile—normally, utterly beneath Jadis's notice. But power crackles in her skin, new and bright, just waiting to be tapped. She is ripe to be taught to conquer.

In the girl-child who stands before her, Jadis sees her sister Anat as she should have been, Anat as she will make her. Silently, she nods, and beckons for the girl-child to follow her.