Mrs. Wren listened without interrupting, her pale eyes fixed on Nora’s face rather than the notebook in her lap. When Nora asked about the Serpent Line, the old woman said she had heard of it as a girl, whispered after certain mornings when the reef looked ominous.
But when Nora asked who first named it, Mrs. Wren only smiled sadly and said, “Names came later. First came fear. Fear makes people build stories around it. I honestly don’t know when we started referring to it as the Serpent Line.”