Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  “Let’s see,” she said.

  A hurried knock on the door woke Snake well before dawn. The room was gray and ghostly, highlighted in shades of pink and orange from the lamp’s low flame. Gabriel slept soundly, smiling faintly, his long blond eyelashes gently brushing his cheeks. He had pushed away the bedclothes and his long beautiful body lay uncovered to mid-thigh. Snake turned reluctantly toward the door.

  “Come in.”

  A stunningly lovely young servant entered hesitantly, and light from the corridor spilled over the bed.

  “Healer, the mayor—” She gasped and stood staring at Gabriel, the blood on her hands forgotten. “The mayor…”

  “I’ll be right there.” Snake got up, slipped into her new pants and the stiff new shirt, and followed the young woman to the mayor’s suite.

  Blood from the opened wound soaked the bedding, but Brian had done the proper emergency things: the bleeding had nearly stopped. The mayor was ghastly pale, and his hands trembled.

  “If you didn’t look so sick,” Snake said, “I’d give you the tongue-lashing you deserve.” She busied herself with the bandages. “You’re blessed with a superb nurse,” she said when Brian returned with fresh sheets and was easily within hearing. “I hope you pay him what he’s worth.”

  “I thought…”

  “Think all you like,” Snake said. “An admirable occupation. But don’t try to stand up again.”

  “All right,” he muttered, and Snake took it as a promise.

  She decided she did not need to help change the sheets. When it was necessary, or when it was for people she liked, she did not mind giving menial services. But sometimes she could be inordinately prideful. She knew she had been unforgivably short with the mayor, but she could not help it.

  The young servant was taller than Snake, easily stronger than Brian; Snake expected she could handle her share of lifting the mayor and most of Brian’s as well. But she watched with a distressed expression as Snake left the room to go back to bed.

  “Mistress—?”

  Snake turned. The young servant glanced around as if afraid someone might see them together.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Larril.”

  “Larril, my name is Snake, and I hate being called ‘mistress.’ All right?”

  Larril nodded but did not use Snake’s name.

  Snake sighed to herself. “What’s the matter?”

  “Healer…in your room I saw…a servant should not see some things. I don’t want to shame any member of this family.” Her voice was shrill and strained. “But…but Gabriel—he is—” Her words caught in confusion and shame. “If I asked Brian what to do he would have to tell his master. That would be…unpleasant. But you mustn’t be hurt. I never thought the mayor’s son would—”

  “Larril,” Snake said, “Larril, it’s all right. He told me everything. The responsibility is mine.”

  “You know the—the danger?”

  “He told me everything,” she said again. “There’s no danger to me.”

  “You’ve done a kind thing,” Larril said abruptly.

  “Nonsense. I wanted him. And I have a good deal more experience at control than a fifteen year old. Or an eighteen year old, for that matter.”

  Larril avoided her gaze. “So do I,” she said. “And I’ve felt so sorry for him. But I—I was afraid. He is so beautiful, one might think of…one might lapse, without meaning to. I couldn’t take the chance. I still have another six months before my life is mine again.”

  “You were bonded?”

  Larril nodded, “I was born in Mountainside. My parents sold me. Before the mayor’s new laws, they were allowed to do that.” The tension in her voice belied her matter-of-fact words. “It was a long time before I heard the rumors that bonding had been forbidden here, but when I did, I escaped and came back.” She looked up, almost crying. “I didn’t break my word—” She straightened and spoke more confidently. “I was a child, and I had no choice in the bonding. I owed no driver my loyalty. But the city bought my papers. I do owe loyalty to the mayor.”

  Snake realized how much courage it had taken Larril to speak as she had. “Thank you,” Snake said. “For telling me about Gabriel. None of this will go any farther. I’m in your debt.”

  “Oh, no, healer, I did not mean—”

  There was something in Larril’s voice, a sudden shame, that Snake found disturbing. She wondered if Larril thought her own motives in speaking to Snake were suspect.

  “I did mean it,” Snake said again. “Is there some way I can help you?”

  Larril shook her head, once, quickly, a gesture of denial that said no to her more than to Snake. “No one can help me, I think.”

  “Tell me.”

  Larril hesitated, then sat on the floor and angrily jerked up the cuff of her pants.

  Snake sat on her heels beside her.

  “Oh, my gods,” Snake said.

  Larril’s heel had been pierced, between the bone and the Achilles tendon. It looked to Snake as if someone had used a hot iron on her. The scar accommodated a small ring of a gray, crystalline material. Snake took Larril’s foot in one hand and touched the ring. It showed no visible joining.

  Snake frowned. “This was nothing but cruelty.”

  “If you disobey them they have the right to mark you,” Larril said. “I’d tried to escape before and they said they had to make me remember my place.” Anger overcame the quietness of her voice. Snake shivered.

  “Those will always bind me,” Larril said. “If it was just the scars I wouldn’t mind so much.” She withdrew her foot from Snake’s hands. “You’ve seen the domes in the mountains? That’s what the rings are made of.”

  Snake glanced at her other heel, also scarred, also ringed. Now she recognized the gray, translucent substance. But she had never before seen it made into anything except the domes, which lay mysterious and inviolable in unexpected places.

  “The smith tried to cut that one,” Larril said. “When he didn’t even mark it he was so embarrassed he broke an iron rod with one blow, just to prove he could.” She touched the fine tough strand of her tendon, trapped within the delicate ring. “Once the crystal hardens it’s there forever. Like the domes. Unless you cut the tendon, and then you’re lame. Sometimes I think I could almost stand that.” She jerked the cuff of her pants down to cover the ring. “As you see, no one can help. It’s vanity, I know it. Soon I will be free no matter what those things say.”

  “I can’t help you here,” Snake said. “And it would be dangerous.”

  “You mean you could do it?”

  “It could be done, it could be tried, at the healers’ station.”

  “Oh, healer—”

  “Larril, there would be a risk.” On her own ankle she showed what would have to be done. “We wouldn’t cut the tendon, we’d detach it. Then the ring could come off. But you’d be in a cast for quite a while. And there’s no certainty that the tendons would heal properly, your legs might never be as strong as they are now. The tendons might not even re-attach at all.”

  “I see…” Larril said, with hope and joy in her voice, perhaps not really hearing Snake at all.

  “Will you promise me one thing?”

  “Yes, healer, of course.”

  “Don’t decide what to do yet. Don’t decide right after your service to Mountainside is over. Wait a few months. Be certain. Once you’re free you might decide it doesn’t matter to you any more.”

  Larril glanced up quizzically and Snake knew she would have asked how the healer would feel in her position, but thought the question insolent.

  “Will you promise?”

  “Yes, healer. I promise.”

  They stood up.

  “Well, good night,” Snake said.

  “Good night, healer.”

  Snake started down the corridor.

  “Healer?”

  “Yes?”

  Larril flung her arms around Snake and hugged her. “Than
k you!” Embarrassed, she withdrew. They both turned to go their ways, but Snake glanced back.

  “Larril, where do the drivers get the rings? I never heard of anyone who could work the dome material.”

  “The city people give it to them,” Larril said. “Not enough to make anything useful. Just the rings.”

  “Thank you.”

  Snake went back to bed, musing about Center, which gave chains to slavers but refused to talk to healers.

  7

  Snake awoke before Gabriel, at the very end of night. As dawn broke, the faint gray light illuminated the bedroom. Snake lay on her side, propped on her elbow, and watched Gabriel sleep. He was, if that were possible, even more beautiful asleep than awake.

  Snake reached out, but stopped before she touched him. Usually she liked to make love in the morning. But she did not want Gabriel to wake up.

  Frowning, she lay back and tried to trace her reaction. Last night had not been the most memorable sexual encounter of her life, for Gabriel was, though not exactly clumsy, still awkward with inexperience. Yet, though she had not completely been satisfied, neither had she found sleeping with Gabriel at all unpleasant.

  Snake forced her thoughts deeper, and found that they disturbed her. They were all too much like fear. Certainly she did not fear Gabriel: the very idea was ridiculous. But she had never before been with a man who could not control his fertility. He made her uneasy, she could not deny it. Her own control was complete; she had confidence in herself on that matter. And even if by some freakish accident she did become pregnant, she could abort it without the overreaction that had nearly killed Gabriel’s friend Leah. No, her uneasiness had little basis in the reality of what could happen. It was merely the knowledge of Gabriel’s incapability that made her hold back from him, for she had grown up knowing her lovers would be controlled, knowing they had exactly the same confidence in her. She could not give that confidence to Gabriel, even though his difficulties were not his fault.

  For the first time she truly understood how lonely he had been for the last three years, how everyone must have reacted to him and how he must have felt about himself. She sighed in sadness for him and reached out to him, stroking his body with her fingertips, waking him gradually, leaving behind all her hesitation and uneasiness.

  Carrying her serpent-case, Snake hiked down the cliff to get Swift. Several of her town patients needed looking at again, and she would spend the afternoon giving vaccinations. Gabriel remained in his father’s house, packing and preparing for his trip.

  Squirrel and Swift gleamed with brushing. The stable-master, Ras, was nowhere in sight. Snake entered Squirrel’s stall to inspect his newly shod feet. She scratched his ears and told him aloud that he needed exercise or he would founder. Above her, the loose hay in the loft rustled softly, but though Snake waited, she heard nothing more.

  “I’ll have to ask the stablemaster to chase you around the field,” she said to her pony, and waited again.

  “I’ll ride him for you, mistress,” the child whispered.

  “How do I know you can ride?”

  “I can ride.”

  “Please come down.”

  Slowly the child climbed through the hole in the ceiling, hung by her hands, and dropped to Snake’s feet. She stood with her head down.

  “What’s your name?”

  The little girl muttered something in two syllables. Snake went down on one knee and grasped her shoulders gently. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

  She looked up, squinting through the terrible scar. The bruise was fading. “M-Melissa.” After the first hesitation she said the name defensively, as if daring Snake to deny it to her. Snake wondered what she had said the first time. “Melissa,” the child said again, lingering over the sounds.

  “My name is Snake, Melissa.” Snake held out her hand and the child shook it watchfully. “Will you ride Squirrel for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “He might buck a little.”

  Melissa grabbed the bars of the stall door’s top half and chinned herself up. “See him over there?”

  The horse across the way was a tremendous piebald, well over seventeen hands. Snake had noticed him before; he flattened his ears and bared his teeth whenever anyone passed.

  “I ride him,” Melissa said.

  “Good lords,” Snake said in honest admiration.

  “I’m the only one can,” Melissa said. “Except that other.”

  “Who, Ras?”

  “No,” Melissa said with contempt. “Not him. The one from the castle. With the yellow hair.”

  “Gabriel.”

  “I guess. But he doesn’t come down much, so I ride his horse.” Melissa jumped back to the floor. “He’s fun. But your pony is nice.”

  In the face of the child’s competence, Snake gave no more cautions. “Thank you, then. I’ll be glad to have someone ride him who knows what they’re doing.”

  Melissa climbed to the edge of the manger, about to hide herself in the hayloft again, before Snake could think of a way to interest her enough to talk some more. Then Melissa turned halfway toward her. “Mistress, you tell him I have permission?” All the confidence had crept from her voice.

  “Of course I will,” Snake said.

  Melissa vanished.

  Snake saddled Swift and led her outside, where she encountered the stablemaster.

  “Melissa’s going to exercise Squirrel for me,” Snake told him. “I said she could.”

  “Who?”

  “Melissa.”

  “Someone from town?”

  “Your stable-hand,” Snake said. “The redheaded child.”

  “You mean Ugly?” He laughed.

  Snake felt herself flushing scarlet with shock, then anger.

  “How dare you taunt a child that way?”

  “Taunt her? How? By telling her the truth? No one wants to look at her and it’s better she remembers it. Has she been bothering you?”

  Snake mounted her horse and looked down at him. “You use your fists on someone nearer your size from now on.” She pressed her heels to Swift’s sides and the mare sprang forward, leaving the barn and Ras and the castle and the mayor behind.

  The day slipped by more rapidly than Snake had expected. Hearing that a healer was in Mountainside, people from all the valley came to her, bringing young children for the protection she offered and older people with chronic ailments, some of whom, like Grum with her arthritis, she could not help. Her good fortune continued, for though she saw a few patients with bad infections, tumors, even a few contagious diseases, no one came who was dying. The people of Mountainside were nearly as healthy as they were beautiful.

  She spent all afternoon working in a room on the ground floor of the inn where she had intended to lodge. It was a central spot in town, and the innkeeper made her welcome. In the evening, the last parent led the last weepy child from the room. Wishing Pauli had been here to tell them jokes and stories, Snake leaned back in her chair, stretching and yawning, and let herself relax, arms still raised, her head thrown back, eyes closed. She heard the door open, footsteps, the swish of a long garment, and smelled the warm fragrance of herb tea.

  Snake sat up as Lainie, the innkeeper, placed a tray on the table nearby. Lainie was a handsome and pleasant woman of middle age, rather stout. She seated herself, poured two mugs of tea, and handed one to Snake.

  “Thanks.” Snake inhaled the steam.

  After they sipped their tea for a few minutes, Lainie broke the silence. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “We’ve not had a healer in Mountainside for too long.”

  “I know,” Snake said. “We can’t get this far south very often.” She wondered if Lainie knew as well as she did that it was not the distance between Mountainside and the healers’ station that was the problem.

  “If a healer were to settle here,” Lainie said, “I know the town would be liberal in its gratitude. I’m sure the mayor will speak to you about this when he’s better. But I’
m on the council and I can assure you his proposal would be supported.”

  “Thank you, Lainie. I’ll remember that.”

  “Then you might stay?”

  “Me?” She stared at her tea, surprised. It had not even occurred to her that Lainie meant the invitation to be direct. Mountainside, with its beautiful, healthy people, was a place for a healer to settle after a lifetime of hard work, a place to rest for someone who did not wish to teach. “No, I can’t. I’m leaving in the morning. But when I go home I’ll tell the other healers about your offer.”

  “Are you sure you don’t wish to stay?”

  “I can’t. I haven’t the seniority to accept such a position.”

  “And you must leave tomorrow?”

  “Yes. There’s really not much work in Mountainside. You’re all entirely too healthy.” Snake grinned.

  Lainie smiled quickly, but her voice remained serious. “If you feel you must go because the place you are staying…because you need a place more convenient to your work,” she said hesitantly, “my inn is always open to you.”

  “Thanks. If I were staying longer I’d move. I wouldn’t want to…abuse the mayor’s hospitality. But I really do have to go.”

  She glanced at Lainie, who smiled again. They understood each other.

  “Will you stay the night?” Lainie asked. “You must be tired, and it’s a long way.”

  “Oh, it’s a pleasant ride,” Snake said. “Relaxing.”

  Snake rode toward the mayor’s residence through darkened streets, the rhythmic sound of Swift’s hooves a background for her dreams. She dozed as the mare walked on. The clouds were high and thin tonight; the waning moon cast shadows on the stones.

  Suddenly Snake heard the rasp of boot heels on pavement. Swift shied violently to the left. Losing her balance, Snake grabbed desperately for the pommel of the saddle and the horse’s mane, trying to pull herself back up. Someone snatched at her shirt and hung on, dragging her down. She let go with one hand and struck at the attacker. Her fist glanced off rough cloth. She hit out again and connected. The man grunted and let her go. She dragged herself onto Swift’s back and kicked the mare’s sides. Swift leaped forward. The assailant was still holding on to the saddle. Snake could hear his boots scraping as he tried to keep up on foot. He was pulling the saddle toward him. Suddenly it righted with a lurch as the man lost his grip.