Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  With the last bit of strength in her arms, Snake heaved herself over the edge and lay panting on the horizontal surface, her feet and legs still dangling. She crawled the rest of the way out. The torn headcloth scraped over stone, the fabric stretching and fraying. Snake pulled it gently until the makeshift sack lay beside her. Only then, with one hand on the serpents and the other almost caressing the solid ground, could Snake look around and be sure that she had climbed out unobserved. For the moment, at least, she was free.

  She unbuttoned her pocket and looked at the eggling, hardly believing that it was unharmed. Rebuttoning her pocket, she took one of the baskets from the pile beside the crevasse and put the mature serpents in it. She slung it across her back, rose shakily to her feet, and started toward the tunnels circling the crater.

  But the tunnels surrounded her like infinite reflections, and she could not remember which one had let her in. It was opposite the single large refrigeration duct, but the crater was so large that any one of three exits might have been the one she wanted.

  Maybe it’s better, Snake thought. Maybe they always go in through the same one and I’ll get another that’s deserted.

  Or maybe no matter which one I take I’ll meet someone, or maybe all the others lead to dead ends.

  At random, Snake entered the left-hand tunnel. Inside it looked different, but that was because the frost had melted. This tunnel, too, held torches, so North’s people must use it for something. But most of them had burned to stubs, and Snake crept through darkness from one vague, flickering point to another, trailing her hand against the wall so she could return if this did not lead her outside. Each new light had to be the tunnel’s mouth, but each time she found another fading torch. The corridor stretched onward. However harried she had been before, however exhausted she was now, she knew the first tunnel had not been this long.

  One more light, she thought. And then—?

  The sooty smoke drifted around her, not even revealing an air current to show her the way. She stopped at the torch and turned around. Only blackness lay behind her. The other flames had gone out, or she had rounded a curve that blotted them from her view. She could not bring herself to backtrack.

  She walked through a great deal of darkness before she saw the next light. She wanted it to be daylight, made bargains and bets with herself that it would be daylight, but knew it was merely another torch before she reached it. It had nearly died; it flickered to an ember. She could smell the acrid smoke of an ebbing flame.

  Snake wondered if she were being herded to another crevasse, one lying in wait in the dark. From then on she walked more carefully, sliding one foot forward without shifting her weight until she was sure of solid ground.

  When the next torch appeared she hardly noticed it. It did not cast enough light to help her make her way. The basket grew heavier and a reaction to all that had happened set in. Her knee ached fiercely and her shoulder hurt so much that she had to slide her hand beneath her belt and hug her arm in close against her body. As she scuffed along the untrustworthy path, she did not think she could have lifted her feet higher even if caution had allowed it.

  Suddenly she was standing on a hillside in daylight beneath the strange twisted trees. She looked around blankly, then stretched out her left hand and stroked rough tree bark. She touched a fragile leaf with an abraded, broken-nailed fingertip.

  Snake wanted to sit down, laugh, rest, sleep. Instead, she turned right and followed the hillside around, hoping the long tunnel had not led her half the hill or half the dome away from North’s camp. She wished North or the crazy had said something about where they had put Melissa.

  The trees ended abruptly. Snake almost walked into the clearing before she stopped herself and pulled back into the shadows. Thick low round-leafed bushes carpeted the meadow with a solid layer of scarlet vegetation. On the natural mattress lay all the people she had seen with North, and more. They were all asleep, dreaming, Snake supposed. Most lay face up with their heads thrown back, their throats exposed, revealing puncture wounds and thin trickles of blood among many sets of scars. Snake looked from person to person, recognizing no one, until her search reached the other side of the clearing. There, touched by the shade of an alien tree, the crazy lay sleeping. His position differed from that of everyone else: he was face down, stripped to the waist, and he had stretched out his arms before him as if in supplication. His legs and feet were bare. As Snake skirted the clearing, moving closer to the crazy, she saw the many fang marks on his inner arms and behind his knees. So North had found an unexhausted serpent, and the crazy had finally got what he wanted.

  But North was not in the clearing, and Melissa was not there either.

  A well-used trail led back into the forest. Snake followed it cautiously, ready to slip between the trees at any warning. But nothing happened. She could even hear the rustling of small animals or birds or indescribably alien beasts.

  The trail ended just above the entrance to the first tunnel. There, next to a large basket, alone with a dreamsnake in his hands, sat North.

  Snake watched him curiously. He held the serpent in the safe way, behind the head so it could not strike. With the other hand he stroked its smooth green scales. Snake had noticed that North had no throat scars, and she had assumed that for himself he used the slower and more pleasurable method of taking the venom. But now the sleeves of his robe had fallen back and she could see quite clearly that his pale arms were unscarred too.

  Snake frowned. Melissa was nowhere in sight. If North had put her back in the caves Snake might search futilely for days and still not find her. She had no strength left for a long search. She stepped out into the clearing.

  “Why don’t you let it bite you?” she said.

  North started violently, but did not lose control of the serpent. He stared at Snake with an expression of pure confusion. He glanced quickly around the clearing as if noticing for the first time that his people were not near him.

  “They’re all asleep, North,” Snake said. “Dreaming. Even the one who brought me here.”

  “Come to me!” North shouted, but Snake did not obey his commanding voice, and no one at all answered.

  “How did you get out?” North whispered. “I’ve killed healers—they were never magic. They were as easy to kill as any creature.”

  “Where’s Melissa?”

  “How did you get out?” he screamed.

  Snake approached him without any idea what she would do. It was true that North was not strong, but sitting down he was still nearly as tall as she was standing, and right now she was not strong either. She stopped in front of him.

  North thrust the dreamsnake toward her, as if it would frighten her or bind her with desire to his will. Snake was so close that she reached out and stroked the serpent with the tip of her finger.

  “Where’s Melissa?”

  “She’s mine,” he said. “She doesn’t belong in the world outside. She belongs here.”

  But his pale eyes, flicking sideways, betrayed him. Snake followed his gaze: to the huge basket, nearly as long as she was tall and half that deep. Snake went to it and carefully lifted its lid. She took one involuntary backward step, drawing in a long angry breath. The basket was nearly filled with a solid mass of dreamsnakes. She swung toward North, furious.

  “How could you?”

  “It was what she needed.”

  Snake turned her back on him and slowly, carefully began lifting dreamsnakes from the basket. There were so many of them she could not see Melissa, even as a vague shape. She took dreamsnakes out of the basket by pairs, and, once they could no longer reach her daughter, dropped them on the ground. The first one slid over her foot and coiled itself around her ankle, but the second one glided rapidly away toward the trees.

  North scrambled up. “What are you doing? You can’t—” He started after the freed serpents, but one of them raised itself to strike and North flinched back. Snake dropped two more serpents on the ground. North tried
once again to capture a dreamsnake, but it struck at him and he nearly fell avoiding it. North abandoned the serpent and flung himself toward Snake, using his height to threaten her, but she held a dreamsnake out toward him and he stopped.

  “You’re afraid of them, aren’t you, North?” She took one step toward him. He tried to stand firm but when Snake took a second step he backed abruptly away.

  “Don’t you accept your own advice?” She was angrier than she had ever been before: the sane part of her mind, driven deep, watched with shock how glad she was to be able to frighten him.

  “Stay away—”

  As Snake approached him he fell backward. Scrabbling at the ground he pulled himself away, and stumbled again when he tried to rise. Snake was near enough to smell the odor of him, musty and dry, nothing like human scent. Panting, like an animal at bay, he stopped and faced her, his fists clenched to strike as she brought the dreamsnake closer.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do it—”

  Thinking of Melissa, Snake did not reply.

  North stared at the dreamsnake, mesmerized. “No—” His voice broke. “Please—”

  “Is it pity you want from me?” Snake cried with joy, knowing she would give him no more mercy than he had offered her daughter.

  Suddenly North’s fists unclenched and he leaned toward her, stretching out his hands to her, exposing the fine blue veins of his wrists.

  “No,” he said. “I want peace.” He trembled visibly as he waited for the dreamsnake’s strike.

  Astonished, Snake drew back her hands.

  “Please!” North cried again. “Gods, don’t play with me!”

  Snake looked at the serpent, then at North. Her pleasure in his capitulation turned to revulsion. Was she so much like him, that she needed power over other human beings? Perhaps his accusations had been true. Honor and deference pleased her as much as they pleased him. And she had certainly been guilty of arrogance, she had always been guilty of arrogance. Perhaps the difference between her and North was not of kind, but only of degree. Snake was not sure, but she knew that if she forced this serpent on him now, while he was helpless, whatever differences there might be would have even less meaning. She stepped back, dropping the dreamsnake on the ground.

  “Stay away from me.” Her voice, too, trembled. “I’m going to take my daughter and go home.”

  “Help me,” he whispered. “I discovered this place, I used its creatures to help others, don’t I deserve help now?” He looked pitiably at Snake but she did not move.

  Suddenly he moaned and lunged for the dreamsnake, grasping it in one hand and forcing it to bite his other wrist. He whimpered as the fangs sank in, once, again.

  Snake backed away from him, but he no longer paid any attention to her. She turned toward the huge wicker basket.

  The dreamsnakes had begun to escape of their own accord now. One slithered over the basket’s side and fell to the earth with a soft thud. Several more peered over, and gradually the weight of the whole mass of them bulged out the wicker and tilted the basket. It tipped over, and the serpents squirmed out in a writhing pile.

  But Melissa was not there.

  North swept past Snake, oblivious to her, and plunged his pale blood-spotted hands into the mass of dreamsnakes.

  Snake grabbed him and pulled him around. “Where is she?”

  “What—?” He strained feebly toward the serpents, his translucent eyes glassy.

  “Melissa—where is she?”

  “She was dreaming…” He gazed at the dreamsnakes. “With them.”

  Somehow, Melissa had got away. Somehow, her will had defeated North, the venom, the lure of forgetfulness. Snake looked around the camp, searching again, seeing everything but what she wished to see.

  North moaned in frustration and Snake let him go. He grabbed at escaping serpents as they slid away into the forest. His arms were a mass of bloody pinpricks, and each time he recaptured another of his creatures he forced it to strike at him.

  “Melissa!” Snake called, but there was no answer.

  Suddenly North grunted; then, after a moment, he made a strange moaning sound. Snake looked over her shoulder. North rose slowly, a serpent in his bloody hands, thin trickles of blood flowing from a bite in his throat. He stiffened, and the dreamsnake writhed. North fell to his knees and balanced there. He toppled forward and lay still, and his power drained away from him as the alien dreamsnakes escaped back into their alien forest.

  By reflex, Snake went to him. He breathed evenly. He was not hurt, not by such a gentle fall. Snake wondered if the venom would affect him as it affected his followers. But even if it did not, even if his dread of it caused him to react badly, she could do nothing for him.

  The dreamsnake he still held squirmed and flailed itself from his grasp. Snake caught her breath in memory and sorrow. Its spine was broken. Snake knelt beside it and ended its pain, killing it as she had killed Grass.

  With the taste of its blood chill and salty on her lips, she fumbled for the strap of her small wicker basket and hoisted it across her shoulders. It did not occur to her to look for Melissa anywhere but on the trail leading down the hill, toward the break in the dome.

  The tangle-trees cast a deeper, darker shade here than in the first place Snake had passed among them, and the opening through them was narrower and lower. With chills on her back, Snake pushed herself as fast as she could go. The alien forest that surrounded her could harbor any sort of creature, from dreamsnakes to silent carnivores. Melissa was completely unprotected; she did not even have her knife anymore.

  When Snake had begun to believe she was on the wrong trail, she reached the rock outcropping where the crazy had betrayed her. It was a long way from North’s camp to the ledge, and Snake wondered how Melissa could have got this far.

  Maybe she escaped and hid herself, Snake thought. Maybe she’s still up near North’s camp, sleeping, or dreaming…and dying.

  She went a few steps farther, hesitated, decided, and plunged ahead.

  Stretched out on the trail, her fingers digging into the ground to pull her even a little farther, Melissa lay unconscious just around the next turn. Snake ran to her, stumbled, fell to her knees beside her.

  Snake gently turned her daughter over. Melissa did not move, and she was very limp and cold. Snake searched for a pulse, now thinking it was there, now certain it was not. Melissa was in deep shock, and Snake could do nothing for her here.

  Melissa, my daughter, she thought, you tried so hard to keep your promise to me, and you nearly succeeded. I made promises to you, too, and they’ve all been broken. Please let me have another chance.

  Awkwardly, forced to use her nearly crippled right arm, Snake wrestled Melissa’s small body up on her left shoulder. She staggered to her feet, nearly losing her balance. If she fell she did not think she would be able to rise again. The trail stretched before her, and she knew how long it was.

  13

  Snake trudged across the flat-leaves, stumbling once crossing a crevice full of blue-green crawlies, slipping, nearly falling, on a surface made slick and slimy by recent rain. Melissa never moved. Afraid to put her down, Snake kept going.

  There’s nothing I can do for her up here, she thought again, and fixed her attention on the downward climb.

  Melissa seemed terribly cold, but Snake could not trust her own perceptions. She was pushing herself beyond sensation of any kind. She plodded on like a machine, watching her body from a faraway vantage point, knowing she could get to the bottom of the hill but ready to scream in frustration because the body moved so slowly, stolidly onward, one step, another, and would not go any faster.

  The cliff looked much steeper, viewed from above, than it had appeared when Snake climbed up it. Standing at its edge she could not even recall how she had made her way to the top. But the forest and meadow below, the lovely shades of green, reassured her.

  Snake sat and eased herself over the edge of the cliff. At first she slid slowly, braking herse
lf with her sore bare feet and managing to keep her balance. She bumped over the stone; the wicker basket scraped and bounced along behind her. But near the bottom she picked up speed, Melissa’s limp weight pulled her off balance, and she slipped and skidded sideways. She fought to keep from rolling, succeeded at the cost of some skin on her back and elbows, and stopped finally at cliff’s end in a shower of dirt and pebbles. She lay still for a moment, with Melissa limp against her and the battered wicker carrier crunched up under her shoulder. The dreamsnakes slithered over each other, but found no holes quite large enough to crawl through. Snake passed her hand over her breast pocket and felt the eggling dreamsnake move beneath her fingers.

  Only a little farther, she thought. I can almost see the meadow. If I lie here very quietly I’ll be able to hear Squirrel eating grass…

  “Squirrel!” She waited a moment, then whistled. She called him again and thought she heard him neigh, but could not be sure. He would usually follow her around if he were nearby, but he only responded to his name or a whistle when he was in the proper mood. Right now he did not seem to be in the proper mood.

  Snake sighed and rolled over and struggled to her knees. Melissa lay pale and cold before her, her arms and legs streaked with dry blood. Snake lifted Melissa to her shoulder; her right arm was nearly useless. Gathering her strength, Snake pushed herself to her feet. The strap of the carrier slipped and hung in the crook of her arm. She took one step forward. The basket bumped against her leg. Her knees were shaking. She took another step, her vision blurred with fear for Melissa’s life.