New Beginning 632

So this was the place at last. The forbidden road ended in a small stone-paved yard surrounded by brambles. Beyond the yard was a high wall overgrown with dead vines that covered everything but the door.

The night before I had dreamed of that door as a black gaping mouth through which my younger sister Arli passed laughing with her daughter Suli cradled—prisoned—in her arms. It opened into a windowless chamber hung with tapestries. A gold-mailed serpent with human eyes uncoiled itself from a carv