Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  “I heard you,” North said. “And I wondered why you disobeyed me by coming back.”

  “I thought you’d like these people.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you sure?” The man’s smile was more cruel than kind.

  “Please, North—let me come back. I’ve brought two followers—”

  Snake touched the crazy’s shoulder; he fell silent.

  “Why are you here?”

  In the last few weeks, Snake had grown wary enough not to tell North immediately that she was a healer. “For the same reason as anyone else,” she said. “I’ve come about the dreamsnakes.”

  “You don’t look like the kind of person who usually finds out about them.” He came forward, looming over her in the dimness. He glanced from her to the crazy, and then looked more carefully at Melissa. His hard gaze softened. “Ah, I see. You’ve come for her.”

  Melissa nearly snarled a denial: Snake saw her start with anger, then forcibly hold herself calm.

  “We’ve all three come together,” Snake said. “For the same reason.”

  “And what did you bring me, to initiate you?”

  “I don’t understand,” Snake said.

  North’s brief, annoyed frown dissolved in a laugh. “That’s just what I’d expect from this poor fool. He brought you here without explaining our customs.”

  “But I brought them, North. I brought them for you.”

  “And they brought you for me? That’s hardly sufficient payment.”

  “Payment can be arranged,” Snake said, “when we reach an agreement.”

  North hobbled a few steps closer. “My dear child, you really don’t understand. Once you join my camp, you don’t leave for anything until I’m certain of your loyalty. In the first place you won’t want to leave. In the second, when I send someone out it’s proof that I trust them. It’s an honor.”

  Snake nodded toward the crazy. “And him?”

  North laughed without cheer. “I didn’t send him out. I exiled him.”

  “But I know where their things are, North!” The crazy pulled away from Snake. “You don’t need them, just me.” Kneeling, he wrapped his arms around North’s legs. “Everything’s in the valley. We only need to take it.”

  Snake shrugged when North glanced from the crazy to her. “It’s well-protected. He could lead you to my gear but you couldn’t take it.” Still she did not tell him what she was.

  North extricated himself from the crazy’s arms. “I am not strong,” he said. “I don’t travel to the valley.”

  A small heavy bag landed at North’s feet. He and Snake both looked at Melissa.

  “If you need to be paid just to talk to somebody,” Melissa said belligerently, “there.”

  North bent painfully down and picked up Melissa’s wages. He opened the sack and poured the coins out into his hand. Even in the inadequate light, they glittered. He shook the gold pieces up and down thoughtfully.

  “All right, this will do as a beginning. You’ll have to give up your weapons, of course, and then we’ll go on to my home.”

  Snake took her knife from her belt and tossed it on the ground.

  “Snake—” Melissa whispered. She looked up at her, stricken.

  “If we want him to trust us, we have to trust him,” Snake said. Yet she did not trust him, and she did not want to trust him. Still, knives would be of little use against a group of people, and she did not think North had come alone.

  My dear daughter, Snake thought, I never said this would be easy.

  Melissa flinched back as North took one step toward her. Her knuckles were white.

  “Don’t be afraid of me, little one. And don’t try to be clever. I have more resources than you might imagine.”

  Melissa looked at the ground, slowly drew her knife, and dropped it at her feet.

  North ordered the crazy to Melissa with a quick jerk of his head. “Search her.”

  Snake put her hand on Melissa’s shoulder. The child was taut and trembling. “He need not search her. I give you my word that Melissa carries no other weapons.” Snake could sense that her daughter had controlled herself nearly to her limit.

  “All the more reason to search her,” North said. “We’ll not be fanatic about the thoroughness. Do you want to be first?”

  “That would be better,” Snake said. She raised her hands, but North prodded her, turned her around, then made her reach out, lean forward, and grasp the twisted branches of a tree. If she had not been worried about Melissa she would have been amused by the theatricality of it all.

  Nothing happened for what seemed a long time. Snake started to turn around again, but North touched the fresh shiny puncture scars on her hand with the tip of one pale finger, tracing the spot where the sand viper had bitten her. “Ah,” he said, very softly, so close she could feel his warm unpleasant breath. “You’re a healer.”

  Snake heard the crossbow just after the bolt plunged into her shoulder, just as the pain spread over her in a wave. Her knees swayed but she could not fall. The force of the bolt dissipated through the trunk of the twisted tree, in vibrations up and down her body. Melissa screamed—in fury, not in pain. Snake heard other people behind her. Blood ran hot down her shoulder blade, down her breast. With her left hand, she fumbled for the shaft of the thin crossbow bolt where it ripped out of her flesh and into the tree, but her fingers slipped and the living wood held the bolt’s tip fast. Melissa was at her side, holding her up as best she could. Voices wove themselves into a tapestry stretching behind her.

  She fainted.

  The coldness roused Snake first. Even half-conscious, she was surprised to be aware at all. The hatred in North’s voice when he recognized her profession had left her no hope. Her shoulder ached fiercely, but without the stabbing, thought-destroying pain.

  She struggled up, shivering, blinking, her vision blurred. “Melissa?”

  Nearby, North laughed. “Not being a healer yet, she hasn’t been hurt.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s safe,” North said. “She can stay with us. You needn’t worry, she’ll be happy here.”

  “She didn’t want to come in the first place. This isn’t the kind of happiness she wants. Let her go home.”

  “As I said before, I have nothing against her.”

  “What is it you have against healers?”

  North gazed at her steadily for a long time. “I should think that would be obvious.”

  “I’m sorry,” Snake said. “We could probably give you some ability to form melanin, but we aren’t magicians.” Her boots were gone; the cold stone sucked heat from the bare soles of her feet. She shivered violently and pain struck with even more ferocity than before. She gasped and closed her eyes, then sat very still in her own inner darkness, breathing deeply and shutting away the pain. She hoped Melissa was somewhere warmer, and she wondered where the dreamsnakes were, for they needed heat to survive.

  She opened her eyes. “And your height—” she said.

  North laughed bitterly. “Of all the things I’ve said about healers, I never said they didn’t have nerve!”

  “What?” Snake asked, confused. She was light-headed from loss of blood, and in the middle of answering North’s question. “We might have helped if we’d seen you early. You must have been grown before anyone took you to a healer.”

  North’s pale face turned scarlet with fury. “Shut up!” He leaped to his feet and dragged Snake up. She hugged her right arm to her side.

  “Do you think I want to hear that? Do you think I want to keep hearing that I might have been ordinary?” He pushed her toward the cave. She stumbled but he dragged her up again. “Healers! Where were you when I needed you? I’ll let you see how I feel—”

  “North, please, North!” Snake’s crazy plucked at North’s sleeve. “She helped me, North, I’ll take her place.”

  “Your brain’s addled,” North said. “Or you think mine is.”
<
br />   The interior of the cave glittered in the dim light of smoking torches, its walls flawed jewels of ice. Every step Snake took jarred her shoulder into pain again, and she no longer had the strength to force the sensation away.

  After a long distance the tunnel grew lighter. It ended suddenly, opening out into a depression in the top of the hill, like the crater of a volcano but clearly human-made. The black eyes of other caves stared back at her, and the dome above formed a gray directionless sky. North pushed Snake forward again. She saw things, felt things, but reacted to nothing. She could not.

  “Down there. Climb.”

  In the center of the crater, a rope ladder led into the darkness of a deep crevasse.

  “Climb,” North said again. “Or be thrown.”

  “North, please,” the crazy moaned, and Snake suddenly realized where she was being sent. North stared at her while she laughed. She felt as if strength were flowing into her, drawn from the wind and the earth.

  “Is this how you torture a healer?” she said. Clumsily but eagerly, one-handed, she lowered herself by steps into the freezing darkness.

  “We’ll see how you feel in the morning,” North said.

  The crazy’s voice rose in terror. “She’ll kill all the dreamsnakes, North!”

  “I’d like to see that,” North said. “A healer killing dreamsnakes.”

  Snake heard the soft rustling slide of small serpents. Clutching the ladder, she hung against the stone and squinted down into dimness. Light penetrated in a long narrow streak down the center of the crevasse.

  A dreamsnake slid smoothly from one edge of darkness to the other.

  Snake fumbled her way the last few meters, stepping to the floor as cautiously as she could, feeling around with her numb bare foot until she was certain nothing moved beneath it. She reached out among the shards, feeling carefully. Her fingertips brushed smooth scales, and two tiny points of pain stung her hand. In the dimness, she saw the serpent move. Catching it, she smiled and held it behind the head, by habit conserving its venom. It was wild, not tame and gentle as Grass had been. It writhed and lashed itself around her hand; its delicate trident tongue flicked out at her, and in again to taste her scent.

  As her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, Snake gradually perceived all the other dreamsnakes, all sizes of them, lone ones, clumps of them, tangles of them, more than she had ever seen before in her life, more than the healers could collect in a single place if every one of her people returned to the station at the same time.

  Once more she began to laugh. She knew she had to control herself: this was more hysteria than joy. But, for the moment, she laughed.

  “Laugh away, healer.” North’s voice echoed darkly against stone. “We’ll see how long you laugh.”

  “You’re a fool!” She laughed at the hilarity of this punishment, like a child’s story come true. She laughed until she cried, but for an instant the tears were real. She knew that when this torture did not harm her, North would find some other way. She sniffled and coughed and wiped her face on the tail of her shirt, for at least she had a little time.

  And then she saw Melissa.

  Her daughter lay crumpled on the broken stone in the narrow end of the pit. Serpents coiled against her body and made green tendrils in her auburn hair.

  Snake knelt beside Melissa and gently, carefully plucked the wild serpents away. North’s people had taken Melissa’s robe, and cut her pants off at the knee. Her arms were bare, and her boots, like Snake’s, were gone. Rope bound her hands and feet, chafing her wrists raw where she had struggled. Small bloody bites spotted her bare arms and legs. Snake remembered the crazy’s words: “It’s best if they strike you all over at once…”

  Snake untied Melissa’s wrists and ankles, fumbling left-handed with the knots. Snake cradled her in her left arm as the wild dreamsnakes crawled over her own bare feet and ankles. Once more she wondered how they lived in such cold. She would never have dared let Grass loose in this temperature. Even the case would have been too cold: she would have brought him out, warmed him in her hands, and let him loop himself around her throat.

  Snake managed to get Melissa in her lap, off the freezing ground. Her pulse was heavy and slow, her breathing deep. But each new breath came so long after the last that Snake was afraid she would stop altogether.

  The cold pressed down around them, pushing back the ache in Snake’s shoulder and draining her energy again. Stay awake, she thought. Stay awake. Melissa might stop breathing; her heart might stop from so much venom, and then she will need help. A pleasant thought insinuated itself into her mind: No one dies of dreamsnake venom. They live, or they die of their illness, in peace, when their time comes. It’s safe to sleep, she will not die. But Snake knew of no one who had ever been given such a large dose of the venom, and Melissa was only a child.

  A tiny dreamsnake slid between her leg and the side of the crevasse. She reached out with her half-numbed right hand and picked it up with wonder. Something about it was unusual: Snake looked closer.

  It was an eggling, just hatched, for it still had the beak of horny tissue common to the hatchlings of many species of serpents. It was final proof of how North obtained his dreamsnakes. He had not found an offworld supply. He did not clone them. He had a breeding population. The eggling proved it.

  She turned to lay the hatchling down behind her, but her hand knocked against the wall. Startled, the dreamsnake struck. The sharp stab of its tiny fangs made Snake flinch. The creature slid from her hand to the ground and on into shadows.

  “Snake?” Melissa’s voice, a rough whisper, roused Snake from the sleep she had fought so long.

  “I’m here.” She could just see her daughter’s face. The last diffused light shone dully on her curly hair and the thick stiff scars. Her eyes held a faraway dazed look.

  “I dreamed…” She let her voice trail away. “He was right!” she cried in sudden fury. “Damn him, he was right!” She flung her arms around Snake’s neck and hid her face. Her voice was muffled. “I did forget, for a little while. But I won’t again. I won’t…”

  “Melissa—”

  Melissa stiffened at the tone of her voice.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen. North says he won’t hurt you.” Melissa was trembling, or shivering. “If you say you’ll join him—”

  “No!”

  “Melissa—”

  “No! I won’t! I don’t care.” Her voice was high and tight with fear. “It’d be just like Ras again…”

  “Melissa, dear, you have a place to go now. You have to give yourself a chance to get away.”

  Melissa huddled against her in silence.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered finally. “I said I wouldn’t be any more, but I am. Snake, if I say I’ll join him and he says he’ll let me be bitten again I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to forget myself…but I did for a while, and…” She touched the heavy scar around her eye, something Snake had never seen her do before. “This went away. Nothing hurt any more. After a while I’d do anything for that.” Melissa closed her eyes.

  Snake grabbed one of the dreamsnakes and flung it away, handling it more roughly than she would have believed she could.

  “Would you rather die?” she asked harshly.

  “I don’t know,” Melissa said faintly, groggily. Her arms slipped from Snake’s neck and her hands lay limp. “I don’t know. Maybe I would.”

  “Melissa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—”

  But Melissa was asleep or unconscious again. Snake could hear the dreamsnakes’ scales on the damp slick rocks. For the first time in her life she felt afraid of serpents. To reassure herself, she reached out to feel the bare stone around her.

  Her hand plunged into a mass of sleek scales, writhing bodies. She jerked back as a constellation of tiny points of pain spread across her arm. The dreamsnakes were seeking warmth, but if she let them find what they needed they would find her daughter as well. Her half-numb hand
closed involuntarily around a heavy chunk of sharp volcanic rock. She lifted it, ready to smash it down on the wild dreamsnakes.

  Snake lowered her hand and willed her fingers open. The rock clattered away, among other rocks. A hot tear rolled down her cheek. When it reached her chin it felt like ice. There were too many dreamsnakes to protect Melissa against, yet North was right. Snake could not kill them.

  Desperate, she pushed herself to her feet, using the crevasse wall as support and wedging herself into the narrow space. Melissa was small for her age, and still very thin, but her limp weight seemed immense. The dreamsnakes coiled around Snake’s ankles. Melissa slipped in her arms, and Snake clutched reflexively at her with her right hand. The pain shot through her shoulder and up and down her spine. She managed to brace herself half-sitting between the rock walls, and to hold Melissa above the serpents.

  Light glimmered from above. Snake looked up slowly, but she did not move. In fact, she did not think she could move. Ropes and wood scraped against the crevasse wall and a platform sank smoothly on pulleys into the pit.

  North himself was descending.

  Snake could not hold Melissa tighter, or hide her from him, or even stand up and fight for her. North’s lights illuminated the crevasse and Snake was dazzled.

  North stepped from his platform as the pulley-ropes drooped down to its corners. Two of his followers flanked him, carrying lanterns.

  “My dreamsnakes like you,” North said, nodding toward Snake’s feet where the serpents coiled around her legs, halfway to her knees. “But you mustn’t be so selfish about them.”

  “Melissa doesn’t want them,” Snake said.

  “I must say,” he said, “I hardly expected you to be so lucid.”

  “I’m a healer.”

  North frowned a little, hesitating. “Ah. I see. Yes, I should have thought of that. You would have to be resistant to dreamsnakes, too, would you not.” He nodded to his people and they put down their lanterns and came toward Snake. She shrank away from them, but she had nowhere to go. They walked gently among the jagged stones and the dreamsnakes. Unlike Snake the followers were heavily shod. One reached out to take Melissa from her.