Dreamsnake

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Inside the translucent dome, tall shapes showed as shadows, indistinct and strange. Between the edge of the cliff and the dome there was no cover, nor was there any other approach. Snake became painfully aware of her visibility, for she was standing silhouetted against the sky.

  The crazy clambered up beside her. “We follow the path,” he said, pointing across the flat-leaves that no trail parted. In more than one place dark veins of crawlies cut the line he indicated.

  Snake stepped forward and put her boot carefully on the edge of a flat-leaf. Nothing happened. It was no different from stepping on an ordinary leaf. Beneath it, the ground felt as solid as any other stone.

  The crazy passed her, striding toward the dome. Snake grabbed his shoulder.

  “The dreamsnakes!” he cried. “You promised!”

  “Have you forgotten that North banished you? If you could just come back here, why did you look for me?”

  The crazy stared at the ground. “He won’t like to see me,” he whispered.

  “Stay behind me,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”

  Snake started across the barely yielding leaves, placing her feet cautiously in case the wide red sheets hid a crack the blue creepers had not yet taken over. The crazy followed.

  “North likes new people,” he said. “He likes it when they come and ask him to let them dream.” His voice grew wistful. “Maybe he’ll like me again.”

  Snake’s boots left marks on the red flat-leaves, blazing her path across the outcropping that held the broken dome. She only looked back once: her footsteps lay in livid purple bruises against red all the way back to the cliff edge. The crazy’s trail was much fainter. He crept along behind her, a little to one side so he could always see the dome, not quite as frightened of this person North as he was attracted by the dreamsnakes.

  The oblong bubble was even larger than it looked from the cliff. Its translucent flank rose in an immense and gentle curve to the highest point of the surface, many times Snake’s height. The side she approached was streaked with multicolored veins. They did not fade to the original gray until they reached the far end of the dome, a long way to Snake’s right. To her left, the streaks grew brighter as they approached the structure’s narrower end.

  Snake reached the dome. The flat-leaves grew up along its sides to the level of her knees, but above that the plastic was clean. Snake put her face up close to the wall, peering between a stripe of orange and one of purple, cutting off the exterior light with her hands, but the shapes inside were still indistinct and strange. Nothing moved.

  She followed the intensifying bands of color.

  As she rounded the narrow end, she saw why it was called the broken dome. Whatever had melted the surface had a power Snake could not comprehend, for it had also blasted an opening in a material she believed indestructible. The rainbow streaks radiated from the hole along buckled plastic. The heat must have crystallized the substance, for the edges of the opening had broken away, leaving a huge, jagged entrance. Globs of plastic, fluorescent colors glowing between the leaves of alien plants, lay all over the ground.

  Snake approached the entrance cautiously. The crazy began his half-humming moan again.

  “Sh-h!” Snake did not turn back, but he subsided.

  Fascinated, Snake climbed through the hole. She felt the sharp edges against her palms but did not really notice them. Beyond the opening, where the side wall, when intact, had curved inward to form the roof, an entire archway of plastic was slumped to barely more than Snake’s height. Here and there the plastic had run and dripped and formed ropes from ceiling to floor. Snake reached out and touched one gently. It thrummed like a giant harp string, and she grabbed it quickly to silence it.

  The light inside was reddish and eerie; Snake kept blinking her eyes, trying to clear her vision. But nothing was wrong with her sight except that it could not become accustomed to the alien landscape. The dome had enclosed an alien jungle, now gone wild, and many more species than crawlies and flat-leaves crowded the ground. A great vine with a stem bigger around than the largest tree Snake had ever seen climbed up the wall, huge suckers probing the now brittle plastic, punching through to precarious holds in the dome. The vine spread a canopy across the ceiling, its bluish leaves tiny and delicate, its flowers tremendous but made up of thousands of white petals even smaller than the leaves.

  Snake moved farther inside, to where the melting, less severe, had not collapsed the ceiling. Here and there a vine had crept up the edge, then, where the plastic was both too strong to break and too slick to grasp, dropped back to earth. After the vines, the trees took over, or what passed for trees inside the dome. One stood on a hummock nearby: a tangled mass of woody stalks, or limbs, piled and twisted far above Snake’s head, spreading slowly as it rose to shape the plant into a cone.

  Recalling the crazy’s vague description, Snake pointed toward a central hill that rose almost to touch the plastic sky. “That way, hm?” She found herself whispering.

  Crouched behind her, the crazy mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Snake set out, passing beneath the lacy shadows of the tangle-trees and through occasional areas of colored light where the dome’s rainbow wounds filtered sunlight. As Snake walked she listened carefully, for the sound of another human voice, for the faint hissing of nested serpents, for anything. But even the air was still.

  The ground began to rise: they reached the foot of the hill. Here and there black volcanic rock pierced the topsoil, the alien earth for all Snake knew. It looked ordinary enough, but the plants growing from it did not. Here the ground cover looked like fine brown hair and had the same slick texture. The crazy led on, following a trail that was not there. Snake trudged after him. The hillside steepened and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her knee began to ache again. She cursed softly under her breath. A pebble rolled beneath the hair plants she stepped on and her boot slipped out from under her. Snake snatched at the grass to break her fall. It held long enough to steady her, but when she stood again she held a handful of the thin stalks. Each piece had its own delicate root, as if it really were hair.

  They climbed higher, and still no one challenged them. The sweat on Snake’s forehead dried: the air was growing cooler. The crazy, grinning and mumbling to himself, climbed more eagerly. The coolness became a whisper of air running downhill like water. Snake had expected the hilltop, right up under the crown of the dome, to be warm with trapped heat. But the higher she climbed, the colder and stronger the breeze became.

  They passed through the area of hill-hair and entered another stand of trees. These were similar to the ones below, formed of tangled branches and compact twisted roots, with tiny fluttering leaves. Here, though, they grew only a few meters high, and they clustered together in small groves of three or more, deforming each other’s symmetry. The forest thickened. Finally, winding between the twisted trunks, a pathway appeared. As the forest closed in over her, Snake caught up with the crazy and stopped him.

  “From now on stay behind me, all right?”

  He nodded without looking at her.

  The dome diffused sunlight so nothing cast a shadow, and the light was barely bright enough to penetrate the twisting, knotted branches overhead. Tiny leaves shivered in the cold breeze blowing through the forest corridor. Snake moved forward. The rocks beneath her boots had given way to a soft trail of humus and fallen leaves.

  To the right a tremendous chunk of rock rose up out of the hillside at a gentle slant, forming a ledge that would overlook the larger part of the dome. Snake considered climbing out on it, but it would put her in full view. She did not want North and his people to be able to accuse her of spying, nor did she want them to know of her presence until she walked into their camp. Pressing on, she shivered, for the breeze had become a cold wind.

  She glanced around to be sure the crazy was following her. As she did, he scurried up toward the rock ledge, waving his arms. Startled, Snake hesitated. Her first thought was that he had decided aga
in to die. In that instant Melissa dashed after him.

  “North!” he cried, and Melissa flung herself at his knees, hitting him with her shoulder and knocking him down. Snake ran toward them as Melissa fought to keep him from getting up and he fought to free himself. His single shout echoed and reechoed, rebounding from the walls and melted undulations of the dome. Melissa struggled with the crazy, half-tangled in his emaciated limbs and his voluminous desert robes, fumbling for her knife and somehow managing to keep her hold on his legs.

  Snake pulled Melissa away from him, as gently as she could. The crazy lurched around, ready to scream again, but Snake drew her own knife and held it beneath his chin. Her other hand was clenched in a fist. She opened it slowly, forcing her anger away.

  “Why did you do that? Why? We had an agreement.”

  “North—” he whispered. “North will be angry with me. But if I bring him new people…” His voice trailed off.

  Snake looked at Melissa, and Melissa looked at the ground.

  “I didn’t promise not to follow you,” she said. “I made sure of that. I know it’s cheating, but…” She raised her head and met Snake’s gaze. “There are things you don’t know about people. You trust them too much. There are things I don’t know, too, I know that, but they’re different things.”

  “It’s all right,” Snake said. “You’re right, I did trust him too much. Thank you for stopping him.”

  Melissa shrugged. “A lot of good I did. They know we’re here now, wherever they are.”

  The crazy began to giggle, rolling back and forth with his arms wrapped around him. “North will like me again.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Snake said. She slid her knife back into its sheath. “Melissa, you’ve got to get out of the dome before anyone comes.”

  “Please come with me,” Melissa said. “Nothing makes any sense around here.”

  “Someone has to tell my people about this place.”

  “I don’t care about your people! I care about you! How can I go to them and tell them I let you get killed by a crazy?”

  “Melissa, please, there isn’t time to argue.”

  Melissa twined the end of her headcloth in her fingers, pulling it forward so the material covered the scar on the side of her face. Though Snake had changed back to her regular clothes when they left the desert, Melissa had not.

  “You should let me stay with you,” she said. She turned around, shoulders slumped, and started down the trail.

  “You’ll get your wish, little one.” The voice was deep and courteous.

  For an instant Snake thought the crazy had spoken in a normal tone, but he was cowering on the bare rock beside her, and a fourth person now stood on the trail. Melissa, stopping short, started up at him and then backed away.

  “North!” the crazy cried. “North, I brought new people. And I warned you, I didn’t let them sneak up on you. Did you hear me?”

  “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 courteous tone remained, but behind it lay great pleasure in its taunting, and the man’s smile was more cruel than kind. His form was eerie in the dim light, for he was very tall, so tall he had to hunch over in the leafy tunnel, pathologically tall: pituitary gigantism, Snake thought. Emaciation accentuated every asymmetry of his body. He was dressed all in white, and he was albino as well, with chalk-white hair and eyebrows and eyelashes, and very pale blue eyes.

  “Yes, North,” the crazy said. “That’s all.”

  Heavy with North’s presence, silence lay over the woods. Snake thought she could see other movement between the trees, but she could not be sure, and the growth seemed too close and heavy for other people to be hiding there. Perhaps in this dark alien forest the trees twined and untwined their branches as easily as lovers clasp hands. Snake shivered.

  “Please, North — let me come back. I’ve brought you 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 to 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. “All for the same reason.” She felt the crazy move, as if to rush toward North and fling himself at his feet. She clamped her hand harder around the bony point of his shoulder and he slumped into lethargy again.

  “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.” That North had set himself up as a minor god, requiring tribute, using the power of the dreamsnakes to enforce his authority, angered Snake as much as anything else she had heard. Or, rather, offended her. Snake had been taught, and believed very deeply, that using healers’ serpents for self-aggrandizement was immoral and unforgivable. While visiting other people she had heard children’s stories in which villains or tragic heroes used magical abilities to make tyrants of themselves; they always came to bad ends. But healers had no such stories. It was not fear that kept them from misusing what they had. It was self-respect.

  North hobbled a few steps closer. “My dear child, you don’t understand. Once you join my camp, you don’t leave again 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. This time, in disgust, she let him go. “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 dim forest light, the gold 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, clearly wondering why she had done what she had done, her fingers clenched around the handle of her own knife.

  “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 Melissa had controlled herself nearly to her limit. Her dislike of and disgust for the crazy would push her farther than her composure would stretch.

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

  “That would be better,” Snake said. She raised her hands, but North prodded her, turned her around, and made her reach out and 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. “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. 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 together into a tapestry stretching behind her.