Clouds rolled across the massive swamp in the night. Dawn came with weak, grey light that did little enough to illuminate the mangrove trunks. Below their spindly roots, interwoven with complexity unseen anywhere else in the world, light could not reach the ground. And in the tangled mess, a shadow moved through the darkness, slow and plodding, slithering between gaps in the wooden prison.
Malachi slipped down through the clouds not long after sunrise. A worn burlap sack swung in one hand as he slowly beat his magnificent white wings. For a few minutes, he arced over the mangroves, keen eyes scanning the web of roots. Eventually, he saw movement in the shadows. Tucking in his wings, he dropped through the canopy to alight on a tree.
The creature meandered toward him without hurry. More than once, the rustling sound of its movement paused. After a few seconds, or a few minutes, it resumed again, moving in a new direction. Being immortal, angels were not impatient by definition. Malachi tucked his wings and set down the sack. Pulling a little wooden carving from a pocket, he set to work shaping the edges of a beautiful, intricate cross. Now and then he looked up to check on the creature’s indirect progress.
It took some doing, but soon a serpent’s head emerged from the darkness beneath the roots. It hissed a greeting, then flicked its tongue, exploring the scent of the angel and his payload.
“Not another sheep, I hope,” the serpent said.
“One sheep, coming right up,” Malachi answered. He reached into the bag and extracted a sheep. It appeared peaceful, as if had welcomed its death as a happy sacrifice to the beings of heaven. Malachi set the sheep down on a nearby knot of roots that formed a surface near enough to flat.
“Access to all the ingredients in cookingdom, and the chefs of heaven can’t get any more creative that a plain sheep in a sack?” The serpent sighed in resignation.
“Prisoners can’t be choosers, I don’t think,” Malachi said. “Everything else alright?”
“I remain incarcerated. It has been… I don’t even know how long.”
“Two thousand years,” the angel offered. “Touch more, actually.”
“So how could everything else possibly be alright?”
Malachi shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something people say.”
“It’s not something prison guards say. Not sympathetic ones, anyway.”
“Angels are not required by dogma to be sympathetic.” Malachi turned back to his cross. He was working on a very intricate section of ivy curling around the left arm.
“How’s the project?” the serpent asked. He had learned not to hold on to frustration during his tenure as the sole inmate of the mangroves. And in truth, the regular visits from the angel, even if they were just to drop off his meal, were a welcome distraction from the usual tedium of prison life.
“Coming along,” Malachi said. “The ivy isn’t working out exactly how I want, but I think it’ll be good enough in the end.”
“That’s no way to think. You have to persist until you get just what you want.”
“At the risk of sounding unsympathetic,” Malachi quipped, “I think I’ll refrain from taking your advice. A young human girl did that once, and thus was born sin.”
“Suit yourself. But persistence is how we get things in life.”
Malachi paused his carving and looked out at the serpent. The top half of his green-and-black body coiled around the trunk of a neighboring mangrove. The bottom half, too thick to fit through the gap he had found, vanished in the darkness below. This was the genius of the mangrove prison. The serpent could seek escape forever and never find a path out, the thick middle of his body always catching in a too-narrow corridor of the mangrove’s stiff roots.
“That so? And how has your persistence in seeking escape worked out for you thus far?”
The serpent bobbed his head side to side. “So so. I’ve eliminated a great many potential paths to this point. The right one is out here somewhere.”
“Probably not.”
“That is the difference between your side and mine, Malachi,” the serpent said. “Your side tries always to do a Good Thing until you win His approval. There’s no specific goal other than a pat on the back from the bossman.”
Malachi rolled his eyes and returned his concentration to the tiny carved leaves.
“Our side thrives on persistence and adaptability. Once you’ve done a Good Thing, you have to find another one, and there is downtime. And it is into that gap we slip, unannounced, with the temptation that is our hallmark.” The snake spoke matter-of-factly. “No matter how seldom those gaps open up, we are always ready to shoot through. It is our great strength.”
“And what got your kind banished from heaven, and then from Eden, and eventually from Galilee,” Malachi pointed out. “In the end, it got you tossed into this jail. And there is no gap through which you can slip between the roots God has set down.”
The serpent smiled and flicked his tongue to taste the air. The idea of eating sheep yet again had been unappetizing earlier. But now that he smelled it, he was famished and his hunger overrode his epicurean tastes.
“Perhaps. But my strength is in persistence. I have been trapped here two thousand years from your point of view. From mine, I am two thousand years closer to finding the way out.”
He snapped his upper body forward in a flash of muscle and scales. His jaws clamped onto the sheep and he tugged it back toward his tree. Backing up slowly, his body undulated down into the depths of the mangrove roots. He would eat, then digest, then resume his search.
The prison was big, yes, but it was not infinite. There would be all sorts of paths he hadn’t yet explored. One would lead him out. He just had to keep looking, to be persistent until that little gap between the Good Things opened up and invited him through.
The Tall Tale Year 