Dreamsnake

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Snake drew her from her knees and put her arms around her, but Melissa huddled in on herself, pulling back from Snake’s embrace, then, suddenly, flinching forward with a sharp gasp as Snake, releasing her, slid her hand across the child’s shoulder blade.

  “Melissa, what is it?”

  “Nothing!”

  Snake loosened Melissa’s shirttail and looked at her back. She had been beaten with a piece of leather, or a switch: something that would hurt but not draw blood, not prevent Melissa from working.

  “How—” She stopped. “Oh, damn. Ras was angry at me, wasn’t he? I reprimanded him and just got you into trouble, didn’t I?”

  “Mistress Snake, when he wants to hit, he hits. He doesn’t plan it. It’s the same whether it’s me or the horses.” She stepped back, glancing at the door.

  “Don’t go. Stay here tonight. Tomorrow we can think of something to do.”

  “No, please, mistress, it’s all right. Never mind. I’ve been here all my life. I know how to get along. Don’t do anything. Please. I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait—”

  But Melissa slipped out of the room. The door closed behind her. By the time Snake climbed out of bed and stumbled after her, she was halfway to the stairs. Snake supported herself against the doorjamb, leaning out into the hall. “We have to talk about this!” she called, but Melissa ran silently down the stairs and vanished.

  Snake limped back to her luxurious bed, got under her warm blankets, and turned down the lamp, thinking of Melissa out in the dark, chilly night. Awakening slowly, Snake lay very still, wishing she could sleep through the day and have it over. She was so seldom sick that she had difficulty making herself take it easy when she was ill. Considering the stern lectures she had given Gabriel’s father, she would make quite a fool of herself if she did not follow her own advice now. Snake sighed. She could work hard all day; she could make long journeys on foot or on horseback, and she would be all right. But anger and adrenalin and the violence of a fight combined against her.

  Gathering herself, she moved slowly. She caught her breath and froze. The ache in her right knee, where the arthritis was worst, turned sharp. Her knee was swollen and stiff and she ached in all her joints. She was used to the aches. But today, for the first time, the worst twinges had spread to her right shoulder. She lay back. If she forced herself to travel today, she would be laid up even longer soon, somewhere out on the desert. She could make herself ignore pain when that was necessary, but it took a great deal of energy and had to be paid for afterwards. Right now her body had no energy to spare.

  She still could not remember where she had left her belt, nor, now that she thought about it, why she had been looking for it during the night — Snake sat up abruptly, remembering Melissa, and almost cried out. But guilt was as strong as the protests of her body. She had to do something. Yet confronting Ras would not help her young friend. Snake had seen that already. She did not know what she could do. For the moment she did not even know if she could get herself into the bathroom.

  That much, at least, she managed. And her belt pouch was there as well, neatly hung on a hook with her belt and knife. As far as she recalled she had left all her things where they fell. She was slightly embarrassed, for she was not ordinarily quite so untidy.

  Her forehead was bruised and the long shallow cut thickly scabbed: nothing to be done about that. Snake got her aspirin from the belt pouch, took a heavy dose, and limped back to bed. Waiting for sleep she wondered how much more frequent the arthritis attacks would get as she grew older. They were inevitable, but it was not inevitable that she would have such a comfortable place in which to recover.

  The sun was high and scarlet beyond thin gray clouds when she woke again. Her ears rang faintly from the aspirin. She bent her right knee tentatively and felt relief when she found it more limber and less sore. The hesitant knock that had awakened her came again.

  “Come in.”

  Gabriel opened the door and leaned inside.

  “Snake, are you all right?”

  “Yes, come on in.”

  Gabriel entered as she sat up.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you but I looked in a couple of times and you never even moved.”

  Snake pulled aside the bedclothes and showed him her knee. Much of the swelling had gone down, but it was clearly not normal, and the bruises had turned black and purple.

  “Good lords,” Gabriel said.

  “It’ll be better by morning,” Snake said. She moved over so he could sit beside her. “Could be worse, I guess.”

  “I sprained my knee once and it looked like a melon for a week. Tomorrow, you say? Healers must heal fast.”

  “I didn’t sprain it last night, I only bruised it. The swelling’s mostly arthritis.”

  “Arthritis! I thought you never get sick.”

  “I never catch contagious diseases. Healers always get arthritis, unless we get something worse.” She shrugged. “It’s because of the immunities I told you about. Sometimes they go a little wrong and attack the same body that formed them.” She saw no reason to describe the really serious diseases healers were prone to. Gabriel offered to get her some breakfast and she found to her surprise that she was hungry.

  Snake spent the day taking hot baths and lying in bed, asleep from so much aspirin. That was the effect it had on her, at least. Every so often Gabriel came in and sat with her for a while, or Larril brought a tray, or Brian reported on how the mayor was getting along. Gabriel’s father had not needed Snake’s care since the night he had tried to get up; Brian was a much better nurse than she.

  She was anxious to leave, anxious to cross the valley and the next ridge of mountains, anxious to get started on her trip to the city. Its potentialities fascinated her. And she was anxious to leave the mayor’s castle. She was as comfortable as she had ever been, even back home in the healers’ station. Yet the residence was an unpleasant place in which to live: familiarity with it brought a clearer perception of the emotional strains between the people. There was too much building and not enough family; too much power and no protection against it. The mayor kept his strengths to himself, without passing them on, and Ras’s strength was misused. As much as Snake wanted to leave, she did not know how she could without doing something for Melissa. Melissa…

  The mayor had a library, and Larril had brought Snake some of its books. She tried to read. Ordinarily she would have absorbed several in a day, reading much too fast, she knew, for proper appreciation. But this time she was bored and restless and distracted and disturbed.

  Midafternoon. Snake got up and limped to a chair by the window where she could look out over the valley. Gabriel was not even here to talk to, for he had gone to Mountainside to give out the description of the crazy. She hoped someone would find the madman, and she hoped he could be helped. A long trip lay ahead of her and she did not relish the thought of having to worry about her pursuer the whole time. This season of the year she would find no caravans heading toward the city; she would travel alone or not at all.

  Grum’s invitation to stay the winter at her village was even more attractive now. But the idea of spending half a year crippled in her profession, without knowing whether she would ever be able to redeem herself, was unendurable. She would go to the city, or she would return to the healers’ station and receive her teachers’ judgment.

  Grum. Perhaps Melissa could go to her, if Snake could free the child from Mountainside. Grum was neither beautiful nor obsessed with physical beauty; Melissa’s scars would not repel her.

  But it would take days to send a message to Grum and receive an answer, for her village lay far to the north. Snake had to admit to herself, too, that she did not know Grum well enough to ask her to take on a responsibility like this one. Snake sighed and combed her fingers through her hair, wishing the problem would submerge in her subconscious and reemerge solved, like a dream. She stared around the room as if something in it would tell her what to do.

  The tab
le by the window held a basket of fruit, a plate of cookies, cheese, and a tray of small meat pies. The mayor’s staff was too generous in its treatment of invalids; during the long day Snake had not even had the diversion of waiting for and looking forward to meals. She had urged Gabriel, and Larril and Brian and the other servants who had come to make the bed, polish the windows, brush away the crumbs (she still had no idea how many people worked to manage the residence and to serve Gabriel and his father; every time she learned another name a new face would appear) to help themselves to the treats, but most of the serving dishes were still almost full.

  On impulse, Snake emptied the basket of all but the most succulent pieces of fruit, then refilled it with cookies and cheese and meat pies wrapped in napkins. She started to write a note, changed her mind, and drew a coiled serpent on a bit of paper. She folded the slip in among the bundles and tucked a napkin over everything, then rang the call-bell.

  A young boy appeared — still another servant she had not encountered before — and she asked him to take the basket to the stable and put it in the loft above Squirrel’s stall. The boy was only thirteen or fourteen, lanky with rapid growth, so she made him promise not to raid the basket. In turn she promised him all he wanted of what remained on the table. He did not look underfed, but Snake had never known a child undergoing a growth-spurt who was not always a little bit hungry.

  “Is that a satisfactory bargain?” she asked.

  The boy grinned. His teeth were large and white and very slightly crooked; he would be a handsome young man. Snake reflected that in Mountainside even adolescents had clear complexions.

  “Yes, mistress,” he said.

  “Good. Be sure the stablemaster doesn’t see you. He can hunt up his own meals as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Yes, mistress!” The boy grinned again, took the basket, and left the room. From his voice, Snake decided Melissa was not the only defenseless child to feel Ras’s temper. But that was no help to Melissa. The servant boy was in no better position to speak against Ras than Melissa was.

  She wanted to talk to the child, but the day passed and Melissa did not appear. Snake was afraid to send any more definite message than the one in the basket; she did not want Melissa beaten again because of a stranger’s meddling.

  It was already dark when Gabriel returned to the castle and came to Snake’s room. He was preoccupied, but he had not forgotten his promise to replace Snake’s ruined shirt.

  “Nothing,” he said. “No one in desert robes. No one acting strangely.”

  Snake tried on the shirt, which fit surprisingly well. The one she had bought had been brown, a rough homespun weave. This one was of a much softer fabric, silky thin strong white material block-printed with intricate blue designs. Snake shrugged and held out her arms, brushing her fingertips over the rich color. “He buys new clothes — he’s a different person. A room at an inn, and nobody sees him. He probably isn’t any more unusual than any other stranger passing through.“

  “Most of the strangers came through weeks ago,” Gabriel said, then sighed. “But you’re right. Even now he wouldn’t be remarked on.”

  Snake gazed out the window. She could see a few lights, those of valley farms, widely scattered.

  “How’s your knee?”

  “It’s all right now.” The swelling was gone and the ache had subsided to what was normal during changeable weather. One thing she had liked about the black desert, despite the heat, was the constancy of its weather. There she had never awakened in the morning feeling like some infirm centenarian.

  “That’s good,” Gabriel said, with a hopeful, questioning, tentative note in his voice.

  “Healers do heal fast,” Snake said. “When we have good reason to.” She thrust aside her worries, grinned, and was rewarded with Gabriel’s radiant smile.

  This time the sound of the door opening did not frighten Snake. She awakened easily and pushed herself up on her elbow.

  “Melissa?” She turned the lamp up just enough for them to see each other, for she did not want to disturb Gabriel.

  “I got the basket,” Melissa said. “The things were good. Squirrel likes cheese but Swift doesn’t.”

  Snake laughed. “I’m glad you came up here. I wanted to talk.”

  “Yeah.” Melissa let her breath out slowly. “Where would I go? If I could.”

  “I don’t know if you can believe this, after all Ras has said. You could be a jockey, if that’s what you want, almost anyplace but Mountainside. You might have to work a little harder at first, but people would value you for who you are and what you can do.” The words sounded hollow even to Snake: You fool, she thought, you’re telling a frightened child to go out in the world and succeed all alone. She searched for something better to say.

  Lying beside her, one hand flung over her hip, Gabriel shifted and muttered. Snake glanced over her shoulder and put her hand on his. “It’s all right, Gabriel,” she said. “Go back to sleep.” He sighed and the instant of wakefulness passed.

  Snake turned back to Melissa. For a moment the child stared at her, ghostly pale in the dim light. Suddenly she spun away and fled.

  Snake jumped out of bed and followed her. Sobbing, Melissa fumbled at the door and got it open just as Snake reached her. The child plunged into the hallway, but Snake caught up to her and stopped her.

  “Melissa, what’s wrong?”

  Melissa hunched away, crying uncontrollably. Snake knelt and hugged her, drawing her slowly around, stroking her hair.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Snake murmured, just to have something to say.

  “I didn’t know, I didn’t understand…” Melissa jerked away from her. “I thought you were stronger — I thought you could do what you want, but you’re just like me.”

  Snake would not let go of Melissa’s hand. She led her into one of the other guest rooms and turned up the light. Here the floor was not heated, and the stone seemed to pull the warmth out through the soles of Snake’s bare feet. She dragged a blanket off the neat bed and wrapped it around her shoulders as she took Melissa to the window seat. They sat down, Melissa reluctantly.

  “Now. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  With her head down, Melissa hugged her knees to her chest. “You have to do what they want, too.”

  “I don’t have to do what anybody wants.”

  Melissa looked up. From her right eye, the tears slid straight down her cheek. From the left, the ridges of scar tissue led tear-tracks sideways. She put her head down again. Snake moved nearer and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Just relax. There’s no hurry.”

  “They… they do things…”

  Snake frowned, totally confounded. “What things? Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Him.”

  “Who? Not Gabriel!”

  Melissa nodded quickly without meeting her gaze.

  Snake could not imagine Gabriel hurting anyone deliberately. “What happened? If he hurt you, I’m sure it was an accident.”

  Melissa stared at her. “He didn’t do anything to me.” Her voice was contemptuous.

  “Melissa, dear, I haven’t understood a word you’ve said. If Gabriel didn’t do anything to you, why were you so upset when you saw him? He’s really very nice.” Perhaps Melissa had heard about Leah and was afraid for Snake.

  “He makes you get in his bed.”

  “That’s my bed.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose bed! Ras can’t find where I sleep, but sometimes…”

  “Ras?”

  “Me and him. You and the other.”

  “Wait,” Snake said. “Ras makes you get in his bed? When you don’t want to?” That was a stupid question, she thought, but she could not think of a better one.

  “Want to!” Melissa said with disgust.

  With the calmness of disbelief, Snake said carefully, “Does he make you do anything else?”

  “He said it would stop hurting, but it never did…” She hid her face against h
er knees.

  What Melissa had been trying to say came clear to Snake in a rush of pity and disgust. Snake hugged Melissa, patting her and stroking her hair until gradually, as if afraid someone would notice and make her stop, Melissa slipped her arms around Snake and cried against her shoulder.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more,” Snake said. “I didn’t understand, but now I do. Oh, Melissa, it’s not supposed to be like that. Didn’t anybody ever tell you?”

  “He said I was lucky,” Melissa whispered. “He said I should be grateful he would touch me.” She shuddered violently.

  Snake rocked her back and forth. “He was lucky,” she said. “He’s been lucky no one knew.”

  The door opened and Gabriel looked in. “Snake — ? Oh, there you are.” He came toward her, the light glinting off his golden body. Startled, Melissa glanced toward him. Gabriel froze, shock and horror spreading over his face. Melissa ducked her head again and held Snake tighter, shaking with the effort of controlling her sobs.

  “What — ?”

  “Go back to bed,” Snake said, even more harshly than she had meant to but less harshly than she felt toward him right now.

  “What’s going on?” he asked plaintively. Frowning, he looked at Melissa.

  “Go away! I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  He started to protest, saw Snake’s expression change, cut off his words, and left the room. Snake and Melissa sat together in silence for a long time. Melissa’s breathing slowly grew quieter and more regular.

  “You see how people look at me?”

  “Yes, dear. I see.” After Gabriel’s reaction Snake hardly felt she could paint any more rosy pictures of people’s tolerance. Yet now Snake hoped even more that Melissa would decide to leave this place. Anything would be better. Anything.

  Snake’s anger rose in a slow, dangerous, inexorable way. A scarred and hurt and frightened child had as much right to a gentle sexual initiation as any beautiful, confident one, perhaps a greater right. But Melissa had only been scarred and hurt and frightened more. And humiliated. Snake held her and rocked her. Melissa clung contentedly to her like a much younger child. “Melissa…”