Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  But a split second later Snake reined the mare in. The serpent case was gone.

  Snake wheeled Swift around and galloped her after the fleeing man.

  “Stop!” Snake cried. She did not want to run Swift into him, but he was not going to obey. He could duck into an alley too narrow for a horse and rider, and before she could get down and follow he could disappear.

  Snake leaned down, grabbed his robe, and launched herself at him. They went down hard in a tangle. He turned as he fell, and Snake hit the cobbled street, slammed against it by his weight. Somehow she kept hold of him as he struggled to escape her and she fought for breath. She wanted to tell him to drop the case, but she could not yet speak. He struck out at her and she felt a sharp pain across her forehead at the hairline. Snake hit back and they rolled and scuffled on the street. Snake heard the case scrape on stone: she lunged and grabbed it and so did the hooded man. As Sand rattled furiously inside, they played tug of war like children.

  “Let it go!” Snake yelled. It seemed to be getting darker and she could hardly see. She knew she had not hit her head, she did not feel dizzy. She blinked her eyes and the world wavered around her. “There’s nothing you can use!”

  He pulled the case toward him, moaning in desperation. For an instant Snake yielded, then snatched the case back and freed it. She was so astonished when the obvious trick worked that she fell backward, landed on her hip and elbow, and yelped with the not-quite-pain of a bruised funny bone. Before she could get up again the attacker fled down the street.

  Snake climbed to her feet, holding her elbow against her side and tightly clutching the handle of the case in her other hand. As fights went, that one had not amounted to much. She wiped her face, blinking, and her vision cleared. She had blood in her eyes from a scalp cut. Taking a step, she flinched; she had bruised her right knee. She limped toward the mare, who snorted skittishly but did not shy away. Snake patted her. She did not feel like chasing horses, or anything else, again tonight. Wanting to let Mist and Sand out to be sure they were all right, but knowing that would strain the mare’s tolerance beyond its limit, Snake tied the case back on the saddle and remounted.

  Snake halted the mare in front of the barn when it loomed up abruptly before them in the darkness. She felt high and dizzy. Though she had not lost much blood, and the attacker never hit her hard enough to give her a concussion, the adrenalin from the fight had worn off, leaving her totally drained of energy.

  She drew in her breath. “Stablemaster!”

  No one answered for a moment, then, five meters above her, the loft door rumbled open on its tracks.

  “He’s not here, mistress,” Melissa said. “He sleeps up in the castle. Can I help?”

  Snake looked up. Melissa remained in the shadows, out of the moonlight.

  “I hoped I wouldn’t wake you…”

  “Mistress, what happened? You’re bleeding all over!”

  “No, it’s stopped. I was in a fight. Would you mind going up the hill with me? You can sit behind me on the way up and ride Swift back down.”

  Melissa grabbed both sides of a pulley rope and lowered herself hand-over-hand to the ground. “I’d do anything you asked me to, mistress,” she said softly.

  Snake reached down and Melissa took her hand and swung up behind her. All children worked, in the world Snake knew, but the hand that grasped hers, a ten year old’s hand, was as calloused and rough and hard as any adult manual laborer’s.

  Snake squeezed her legs against Swift’s sides and the mare started up the trail. Melissa held the cantle of the saddle, an uncomfortable and awkward way of balancing. Snake reached back and drew the child’s hands around her waist. Melissa was as stiff and withdrawn as Gabriel, and Snake wondered if Melissa had waited even longer than he for anyone to touch her with affection.

  “What happened?” Melissa asked.

  “Somebody tried to rob me.”

  “Mistress, that’s awful. Nobody ever robs anybody in Mountainside.”

  “Someone tried to rob me. They tried to steal my serpents.”

  “It must have been a crazy,” Melissa said.

  Recognition shivered up Snake’s spine. “Oh, gods,” she said. She remembered the desert robe her attacker had worn, a garment seldom seen in Mountainside. “It was.”

  “What?”

  “A crazy. No, not a crazy. A crazy wouldn’t follow me this far. He’s looking for something, but what is it? I haven’t got anything anybody would want. Nobody but a healer can do anything with the serpents.”

  “Maybe it was Swift, mistress. She’s a good horse and I’ve never seen such fancy tack.”

  “He tore up my camp, before Swift was given to me.”

  “A really crazy crazy, then,” Melissa said. “Nobody would rob a healer.”

  “I wish people wouldn’t keep telling me that,” Snake said. “If he doesn’t want to rob me, what does he want?”

  Melissa tightened her grip around Snake’s waist, and her arm brushed the handle of Snake’s knife.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” she asked. “Or stab him good, anyway.”

  Snake touched the smooth bone handle. “I never even thought of it,” she said. “I’ve never used my knife against anyone.” She wondered, in fact, if she could use it against anyone. Melissa did not reply.

  Swift climbed the trail. Pebbles spun from her hooves and clattered down the sheer side of the cliff.

  “Did Squirrel behave himself?” Snake finally asked.

  “Yes, mistress. And he isn’t lame at all now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s fun to ride. I never saw a horse striped like him before.”

  “I had to do something original before I was accepted as a healer, so I made Squirrel,” she said. “No one ever isolated that gene before.” She realized Melissa would have no idea what she was talking about; she wondered if the fight had affected her more than she thought.

  “You made him?”

  “I made…a medicine…that would make him be born the color he is. I had to change a living creature without hurting it to prove I was good enough to work on changing the serpents. So we can cure more diseases.”

  “I wish I could do something like that.”

  “Melissa, you can ride horses I wouldn’t go near.”

  Melissa said nothing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was going to be a jockey.”

  She was a small, thin child, and she could certainly ride anything. “Then why—” Snake cut herself off, for she realized why Melissa could not be a jockey in Mountainside.

  Finally the child said, “The mayor wants jockeys as pretty as his horses.”

  Snake took Melissa’s hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay here, mistress.”

  The lights of the courtyard reached toward them. Swift’s hooves clattered on the stone. Melissa slipped from the mare’s back.

  “Melissa?”

  “Don’t worry, mistress, I’ll put your horse away. Hey!” she called. “Open the door!”

  Snake got down slowly and unfastened the serpent case from the saddle. She was already stiff, and her bad knee ached fiercely.

  The residence door opened and a servant in night-clothes peered out. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Mistress Snake,” Melissa said from the darkness. “She’s hurt.”

  “I’m all right,” Snake said, but with a shocked exclamation the servant turned away, calling for help, and then came running into the courtyard.

  “Why didn’t you bring her inside?” He reached out to support Snake. She gently held him away. Other people came running out and milled around her.

  “Come get the horse, you foolish child!”

  “Leave her alone!” Snake said sharply. “Thank you, Melissa.”

  “You’re welcome, mistress.”

  As Snake entered the vaulted hallway, Gabriel came clattering down the huge curved staircase. “Snake, what’s
wrong?—Good lords, what happened?”

  “I’m all right,” she said again. “I just got in a fight with an incompetent thief.” It was more than that, though. She knew it now.

  She thanked the servants and went upstairs to the south tower with Gabriel. He stood uneasily and restlessly by while she checked Mist and Sand, for he had urged her to take care of herself first. The two serpents had not been hurt, so Snake left them in their compartments and went into the bathroom.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: her face was covered with blood and her hair was matted against her scalp. Her blue eyes stared out at her.

  “You look like you’ve almost been murdered.” He turned on the water and brought out washcloths and towels.

  “I do, don’t I?”

  Gabriel dabbed at the gash across her forehead and up above the hairline. Snake could see its edges in the mirror: it was a shallow, thin cut that must have been made with the edge of a ring, not a knuckle.

  “Maybe you should lie down.”

  “Scalp wounds always bleed like that,” Snake said. “It isn’t as bad as it looks.” She glanced down at herself and laughed sadly. “New shirts are never very comfortable but this is a hard way to age one.” The shoulder and elbow were ripped out, and the right knee of her pants, from her fall to the cobblestones; and dirt was ground into the fabric. Through the holes she could see bruises forming.

  “I’ll get you another,” Gabriel said. “I can’t believe this happened. There’s hardly any robbery in Mountainside. And everybody knows you’re a healer. Who would attack a healer?”

  Snake took the cloth from him and finished washing the cut. Gabriel had cleaned it too gently; Snake did not much want it to heal over dirt and bits of gravel.

  “I wasn’t attacked by anyone from Mountainside,” she said.

  Gabriel sponged the knee of her pants to loosen the material where dry blood glued it to her skin. Snake told him about the crazy.

  “At least it wasn’t one of our people,” Gabriel said. “And a stranger will be easier to find.”

  “Maybe so.” But the crazy had escaped the search of the desert people; a town had many more hiding places.

  She stood up. Her knee was getting sorer. She limped to the big tub and turned on the water, very hot. Gabriel helped her out of the rest of her clothes and sat nearby while she soaked the aches away. He fidgeted, angry at what had happened.

  “Where were you when the crazy attacked you? I’m going to send the town guards out to search.”

  “Oh, Gabriel, leave it for tonight. It’s been at least an hour—he’ll be long gone. All you’ll do is make people get up out of their warm beds to run around town and get other people up out of their warm beds.”

  “I want to do something.”

  “I know. But there’s nothing to be done for now.” She lay back and closed her eyes.

  “Gabriel,” she said suddenly after several minutes of silence, “what happened to Melissa?”

  She glanced over at him; he frowned.

  “Who?”

  “Melissa. The little stable-hand with burn scars. She’s ten or eleven and she has red hair.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t think I’ve seen her.”

  “She rides your horse for you.”

  “Rides my horse! A ten-year-old child? That’s ridiculous.”

  “She told me she rides him. She didn’t sound like she was lying.”

  “Maybe she sits on my horse’s back when Ras leads him out to pasture. I’m not even sure he’d stand for that, though. Ras can’t ride him—how could a child?”

  “Well, never mind,” Snake said. Perhaps Melissa had simply wanted to impress her; she would not be surprised if the child lived in fantasies. But Snake found she could not dismiss Melissa’s claim so lightly. “That doesn’t matter,” she said to Gabriel. “I just wondered how she got burned.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Exhausted, feeling that if she stayed in the bath any longer she would fall asleep, Snake pushed herself out of the tub. Gabriel wrapped a big towel around her and helped her dry her back and her legs, for she was still very sore.

  “There was a fire down at the stable,” he said abruptly. “Four or five years ago. But I thought no one was hurt. Ras even got most of the horses out.”

  “Melissa hid from me,” Snake said. “Could she have been hiding for four years?”

  Gabriel remained silent for a moment. “If she’s scarred…” He shrugged uneasily. “I don’t like to think of it this way, but I’ve been hiding from almost everyone for three years. I guess it’s possible.”

  He helped her back to the bedroom and stopped just inside the doorway, suddenly awkward. Snake realized all at once that she had been as good as teasing him again, without intending to. She wished she could offer him a place in her bed tonight; she would have liked the companionship. But she was not inexhaustible. Right now she had no energy for sex or even for sympathy, and she did not want to tease him even more by expecting him to lie chaste all night beside her.

  “Good night, Gabriel,” she said. “I wish we had last night to live over again.”

  He controlled disappointment well, disappointment and the embarrassment of realizing he was disappointed, though he knew she was hurt and tired. They merely kissed good night. Snake felt a sudden surge of desire. All that kept her from asking him to stay was the knowledge of how she would feel in the morning after tonight’s physical and emotional stress. More exertion of body and mind, even pleasurable passion, would only make things worse.

  “Damn,” Snake said as Gabriel stepped back. “That crazy keeps adding to what he owes.”

  A sound roused Snake from deep, exhausted sleep. She thought Larril had come about the mayor, but no one spoke. Light from the hallway illuminated the room for an instant, then the door closed, leaving darkness again. Snake lay very still. She could hear her heart pounding as she readied herself for defense, remembering what Melissa had said about her knife. In a camp it was always nearby, though she no more expected to be attacked while traveling than while sleeping in the mayor’s castle. But tonight her belt and knife lay somewhere on the floor where she had dropped them, or perhaps even in the bathroom. She did not remember. Her head ached and her knee hurt.

  What am I thinking of? she wondered. I don’t even know how to fight with a knife.

  “Mistress Snake?” The voice was so soft she could barely hear it.

  Turning, Snake sat bolt upright, fully awake, her fist relaxing even as reflex had clenched it.

  “What—Melissa?”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “Thank gods you spoke—I almost hit you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean to wake you up. I just… I wanted to be sure…”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No, but I didn’t know if you were all right. I always see lights up here and I thought nobody went to bed till way late. I thought maybe I could ask somebody. Only… I couldn’t. I better go.”

  “No, wait.” Snake’s eyes were better accustomed to the darkness and she could see Melissa’s form, the ghost of faint light on the sun-bleached streaks in her red hair; and she could smell the pleasant odor of hay and clean horses.

  “It was sweet of you to come all this way to ask about me.” She drew Melissa closer, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. The thick curly bangs could not completely hide the irregularity of scar tissue beneath them.

  Melissa stiffened and pulled away. “How can you stand to touch me?”

  “Melissa, dear—” Snake reached out and turned up the light before Melissa could stop her. The child turned away. Snake took her by the shoulder and gently brought her around until they were facing each other. Melissa would not look at her.

  “I like you. I always touch the people I like. Other people would like you, too, if you gave them a chance.”

  “That’s not what Ras says. He says nobody in Mountainside wants to look at uglies.”

&
nbsp; “Well, I say Ras is a hateful person, and I say he has other reasons for making you afraid of everyone. He takes credit for what you do, doesn’t he? He pretends he’s the one who gentles the horses and rides them.”

  Melissa shrugged, her head down so the scar was less visible.

  “And the fire,” Snake said. “What really happened? Gabriel said Ras saved the horses, but you’re the one who got hurt.”

  “Everybody knows a little eight-year-old kid couldn’t get horses out of a fire,” Melissa said.

  “Oh, Melissa…”

  “I don’t care!”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I get a place to live. I get to eat. I get to stay with the horses, they don’t mind…”

  “Melissa, gods! Why do you stay here? People need more than food and somewhere to sleep!”

  “I can’t leave. I’m not fourteen.”

  “Did he tell you you’re bound to him? Bonding isn’t allowed in Mountainside.”

  “I’m not a bondservant,” Melissa said irritably. “I’m twelve. How old did you think I was?”

  “I thought you were about twelve,” Snake said, not wanting to admit how much younger she had really thought Melissa was. “What difference does that make?”

  “Could you go where you wanted when you were twelve?”

  “Yes, of course I could. I was lucky enough to be in a place I didn’t want to leave, but I could have gone.”

  Melissa blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Well…here it’s different. If you leave, your guardian comes after you. I did it once and that’s what happened.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I can’t hide,” Melissa said angrily. “You think people wouldn’t mind, but they told Ras where I was so he’d take me back—”

  Snake reached out and touched her hand. Melissa fell silent.

  “I’m sorry,” Snake said. “That isn’t what I meant. I meant what gives anyone the right to make you stay where you don’t want to? Why did you have to hide? Couldn’t you just take your pay and go where you wanted?”