Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  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 as she padded barefoot over the hard ground.

  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. Holding the serpent behind the head so it could not strike, he stroked its smooth green scales. Snake had noticed that North had no throat-scars, but now the sleeves of his robe had fallen back and she could see quite clearly that his pale arms were unscarred too.

  “Why don’t you let it bite you?” Snake said on impulse.

  Starting violently, North swung around and stared at Snake. He glanced quickly around the clearing.

  “Everyone’s asleep, North,” Snake said.

  “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 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 reached out and stroked the serpent with the tip of her finger.

  “Where’s Melissa?”

  “She’s mine,” he said. “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 lifted its lid.

  She took one involuntary backward step, drawing in a long, angry, fearful breath. The basket was nearly filled with a solid mass of dreamsnakes. She swung back 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.

  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 another pair of dreamsnakes 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—”

  “Is that what Melissa said to you when you made your creatures bite her? Why should I have any pity for you when you had none for my daughter?”

  “Someone has to stay awake—someone has to take care of the serpents while everyone else dreams.”

  “You have to keep them all under your control, you mean, so no one can diminish your power.”

  “I made them all happy. Why shouldn’t they honor me? What gives you the right to say you’re so much better?”

  Snake stopped.

  I never forced what I had to give on anyone, she thought. I never demanded that anyone treat me like a god. I never demanded payment. And I never tortured a child.

  But, slowly, she lowered her hands and drew back the serpents. She had been guilty of arrogance, she had always been guilty of arrogance. Being honored and treated with deference pleased her as much as it pleased North. Was the difference between them truly of kind, or only of degree? Snake was not sure, but she knew that if she forced these two serpents on him, whatever differences there were between them would be meaningless.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,. North. Just stay away from me. I’m going to take my daughter and go home.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Take her,” he said. “Go.”

  Snake turned.

  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.

  North rushed past Snake as the basket tipped over. The serpents squirmed out in a writhing pile.

  But Melissa was not there.

  North halted, staring at the empty basket and the dreamsnakes.

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

  “She was there! She couldn’t have got away! She was dreaming.” He gazed at Snake, blank-eyed. “And you were in the pit.”

  Yet 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. He rushed around the camp, trying to frighten the dreamsnakes back toward the clearing, toward the tunnel, anywhere away from the tangled forest. He dragged the overturned basket toward them, then tried to use it as a huge scoop. The stiff wicker scraped across the ground, pinning one of the serpents and crushing it.

  Snake cried out. Before she quite knew what she was doing she tore the basket from North’s grasp and clumsily heaved it down the hill. It bounced and rolled, somehow avoiding trees and the scant underbrush. Before North took more than a few steps toward it, it vanished.

  “You—!” North turned toward Snake, enraged. Holding her left hand around her wounded shoulder, she waited. The dreamsnakes were too far away to use against him; she could neither reach one of the free ones nor get one she had captured.

  You fool, she thought. You had your chance to stop him and now it’s too late.

  North looked from her to the dreamsnakes and back, fury and fear mixed in his expression. With a cry he flung himself away from Snake and ran after the serpents. He grabbed up one, and another, but he had nowhere to put them. He took both in one hand and reached for a third.

  Snake shrugged and turned away. She would let all North’s creatures escape if she could, but finding Melissa was more important.

  North grunted in pain, then, after a moment, he made a strange moaning sound of fear. Snake looked over her shoulder. All three captured serpents slid to the ground and away, while blood from the puncture-wounds on North’s hand delicately spattered the ground.

  “I can’t…” he whispered. He fell to his knees and balanced rigidly. “I won’t…” He crumpled forward and lay still.

  By reflex, Snake almost went to him. But he was breathing. He was not hurt, not by such a gentle fall. And the venom of one dreamsnake, one that had no doubt bitten others today, could not have very much effect on a person his size. The effect would be a construct of his mind, as it had been with Snake.

  She left him where he lay.

  The crushed dreamsnake writhed in the center of the clearing. Snake stopped, stared dully down, then knelt beside it. She ended its pain, killing it as she had killed her dreamsnake 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.

  The tangle-trees cast a deeper, darker shade than the first time Snake had passed between them, and the opening through them was narrower and lower. With chills on her bac
k, 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 between North’s camp and 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…or 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 half-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 could rise again. The trail stretched before her, and she knew how long it was.

  Snake stared at the ground, at her bare feet moving on the trail. She did not dare look up to see how far she might have come, for she was afraid of how far she still had to go. She felt weaker with each step. Melissa was a limp, increasing weight. Even the basket of dreamsnakes seemed to grow heavier, though the knowledge that she had the creatures helped to keep her going.

  I can go home now, she thought. I can go home without being dishonored. If I can just get home. If I can get to Squirrel. If I can get Melissa to camp…

  Then, followed by the tiger-pony and the gray mare, a small black horse burst through the trees on the far side of the meadow. Snake cursed in an instant of fury that one of North’s people should return to him right now.

  And then she saw Arevin.

  Astonished, she was unable to move toward him or even speak. He swung down from his mount while the horse was still galloping; he ran to Snake, his robe swirling around him. She stared at him as if he were an apparition, for she was sure he must be, even when he stopped near enough to her to touch.

  “Arevin?”

  “What happened? Who did this to you? The crazy—”

  “He’s in the dome,” she said. “With some others. They’re no danger right now. It’s Melissa, she’s in shock. I have to get her back to camp… Arevin, are you real?”

  He lifted Melissa from her shoulder; he held Snake’s daughter in one arm and supported Snake with the other.

  “Yes, I’m real. I’m here.”

  He helped her across the meadow. When they reached the spot where her gear was piled, Arevin turned to lay Melissa down. Snake knelt by her serpent case and fumbled at the catch. She opened the medicine compartment shakily.

  Arevin put his hand on her uninjured shoulder, his touch gentle.

  “Let me tend your wound,” he said.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I will be. It’s Melissa—” She glanced up at him and froze at the look in his eyes.

  “Healer,” he said, “Snake, my friend—”

  She tried to stand up; he tried to restrain her.

  “There’s nothing to be done. Let me help you.”

  “Nothing to be done—!” She struggled to her feet.

  “You’re hurt,” Arevin said desperately. “Seeing the child now will only hurt you more.”

  “Oh, gods,” Snake said. Arevin still tried to hold her back. “Let go of me!” she cried. Arevin stepped away, startled. Snake did not stop to apologize. She could not allow anyone, even him, to protect her: that was too easy, too tempting.

  Melissa lay in the deep shade of a pine tree. Snake knelt on the thick mat of brown needles. Behind her, Arevin remained standing. Snake took Melissa’s cold, pale hand. The child did not move. Her fingernails were torn and broken from dragging her along the ground. She had tried so hard to keep her promise… She had kept her promises to Snake much better than Snake had kept her promises to Melissa. Snake leaned over her, smoothing her red hair back from the terrible scars. Snake’s tears fell on Melissa’s cheek.

  “There’s nothing to be done,” Arevin said again. “Her pulse is gone.”

  “Shh,” Snake whispered, still searching for a beat in Melissa’s wrist, at her throat, now thinking she had found the pulse, now certain she had not.

  “Snake, don’t torture yourself like this. She’s dead! She’s cold!”

  “She’s alive.” She knew he thought she was losing her mind with grief; he did not move, but stared sadly down at her. She turned toward him. “Help me, Arevin. Trust me. I’ve dreamed about you. I love you, I think. But Melissa is my daughter and my friend. I’ve got to try to save her.”

  The phantom pulse faintly touched her fingers. Melissa had been bitten so often…the metabolic increase brought on by the venom could not last indefinitely. Snake feared that instead of returning to normal it had fallen sharply to a level barely sustaining life. And mind, she hoped. Without help, Melissa would die of exhaustion, of hypothermia, almost as if she were dying of exposure.

  “What should I do?” His tone was resigned, depressed.

  “Help me move her.”

  Snake spread blankets on a wide flat rock that had soaked up the sunlight all day. She was clumsy with everything. Arevin picked Melissa up and laid her on the warm blanket. Leaving her daughter for a moment, Snake spilled her saddlebags out on the ground. She pushed the canteen, the paraffin stove, and the cook-pot toward Arevin, who watched her with troubled eyes. She had hardly had the chance to look at him.

  “Heat some water, please, Arevin. Not too much.” She cupped her hands together to indicate the amount. She grabbed the packet of sugar from the medicine compartment of the serpent case.

  By Melissa’s side again, Snake tried to rouse her. The pulse appeared, disappeared, returned.

  It’s there, Snake told herself. I’m not imagining it.

  She scattered a pinch of sugar onto Melissa’s tongue, hoping there was enough moisture to dissolve it. Snake dared not force her to drink; she might choke if the water went into her lungs. Time was short, but if Snake rushed she would kill her daughter as surely as North might have done. Every minute or so, as she waited for Arevin, she gave Melissa a few more grains of sugar.

  Saying nothing, Arevin brought the steaming water. Snake put one more pinch of sugar on Melissa’s tongue and handed Arevin the pouch. “Dissolve as much of this in there as you can.” She chafed Melissa’s hands and patted her cheek. “Melissa, dear, try to wake up. Just for a moment. Daughter, help me.”

  Melissa gave no response. But Snake felt the pulse, once, again, this time strong enough to make her sure. “Is that ready?”

  Arevin swirled the hot water around in the pan: a bit too eagerly and some splashed on his hand. Alarmed, he looked at Snake.

  “It’s all right. It’s sugar.” She took the pan from him.

  “Sugar!” He wiped his fingers on the grass.

  “Melissa! Wake up, dear.” Melissa’s eyelids flickered. Snake caught her breath with relief.

  “Melissa! You need to drink this.”

  Melissa’s lips moved slightly.

  “Don’t try to talk yet.” Snake held the small metal container to her daughter’s mouth and let the thick sticky liquid flow in slowly, bit by bit, waiting until she was certain Melissa had swallowed each portion of the stimulant before she gave her any more.

  “Gods…” Arevin said in wonder.

  “Snake?” Melissa whispered.
/>   “I’m here, Melissa. We’re safe. You’re all right now.” She felt like laughing and crying at the same time.

  “I’m so cold.”

  “I know.” She wrapped the blanket around Melissa’s shoulders. That was safe, now that Melissa had the warm drink in her stomach, and the stimulant exploding energy into her blood.

  “I didn’t want to leave you there, but I promised… I was afraid that crazy would get Squirrel, I was afraid Mist and Sand would die…”

  Her last fears gone, Snake eased Melissa back on the warm rock. Nothing in Melissa’s speech or words indicated brain damage; she had survived whole.

  “Squirrel’s here with us, and so are Mist and Sand. You can go back to sleep, and when you wake up everything will be fine.” Melissa might have a headache for a day or so, depending on how sensitive she was to the stimulant. But she was alive, she was well.

  “I tried to get away,” Melissa said, not opening her eyes. “I kept going and going, but…”

  “I’m very proud of you. No one could do what you did without being brave and strong.”

  The unscarred side of Melissa’s mouth twisted into a half-smile, and then she was asleep. Snake shaded her face with a corner of the blanket.

  “I would have sworn my life she was dead,” Arevin said.

  “She’ll be all right,” Snake said, telling herself more than Arevin. “Thank gods, she will be all right.”

  “Healer,” Arevin said, “the child is safe. Think of yourself now.”

  The urgency that had possessed Snake until now was slowly draining away. She knew that soon she would have to take Melissa and Arevin out of North’s territory so he could not avenge himself on them. But for a little while, at least, Arevin was right. They were safe.