For AffableKiwi, who continues to inspire me.
The second floor of the orphanage had, over the years, turned into a sort of shelter for things that weren't used often enough to end up on the first floor or uninteresting enough for the attic. Often, the matron referred to it as the library with a tone that might have held a sort of grandeur, had her faded skirts not been covered with burn marks from the stove. It wasn't really much like a library at all, since half the books were piled on the floor or on the armchairs that had been deemed unworthy of downstairs, but to Snake it was the most magical place he'd ever seen.
He could barely lift the books with both hands when he was finally allowed out of bed, his arms frail from months of pneumonia and every sort of airborne ailment the doctor could name, and his face nearly as pale as the whitewashed walls themselves. From what he could see of his reflection in the window next to his bed, the scales hadn't vanished. The doctor claimed it was scarred skin from what the adults referred to in a lower voice as the accident, but Snake had since formed other opinions – opinions he kept, of course, to himself.
At first, he wasn't sure how to comprehend the number of books stowed away in various corners. He had tried to count them, but it had taken too long, since he only knew half the numbers between ten and fifty and they never seemed to be in the right order. Despite the taunting allegations of the other children, he wasn't slow or illiterate; he simply found the translation of thought to speech more frightening than it was worth. Perhaps that was what made the books so magical. They were filled from cover to cover with elegant and perfect thoughts that had somehow evaded speech altogether and flowed silently onto the pages. Perhaps it was this that drew him back, day after day, sneaking down the creaking stairs after lights out to trace the letters in the dark.
He didn't much care about the meaning of the words, just the shape and the smell of the pages until he realized he could understand some of it. He found the word "snake" many times in a book of fairytales that he now kept under his pillow at night so he could brush his hand over the smooth, slightly scuffed leather binding until he fell asleep. At the front of the book was an illustration of a serpent, complete with tiny penciled scales and a fearsome sort of strength and grace. It was nearly the book he read the most.
Along with the rain and occasional grudging sunshine that spring came a slight color to Snake's cheeks and the lifting of the doctor's orders that he should remain indoors. It was on one of his slow and halting ventures into the somewhat overgrown and unkempt garden of the orphanage that he discovered a baby grass snake in a puddle, and on the return indoors that he stole a shoebox from the kitchen to keep it in. He now kept several secrets alongside the surprisingly obedient grass snake, secrets in the form of the nine words he loved the most.
Dan, Emily, Wordsworth, Keats, Bronte, Wilde, Goethe, Webster, and Oscar. These are the words he reads from the slips of paper he painstakingly copied them onto; words from the spines of the books he understands the least of and wants to read the most badly. He whispers them to his reflection late at night, when nobody is awake to catch him speaking aloud. Someday, he will give them to his own snakes, rescued from one circus and brought with him to a new kind of family. Someday, he will wear a costume similar to that of a prince in the fairytale book. Someday he will speak, but he knows none of this at the moment. Snake blows out the candle on the rickety table and carries it with him, back up the stairs, and to his bed on the third floor of the orphanage.
fin