Dreamsnake

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Someone knocked on Arevin’s door.

  “Come in,” he said reluctantly.

  Larril, the servant woman who had pretended to be Snake, entered the room.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like some dinner?”

  “I thought she was safe,” Arevin said. “But she’s in the desert and the storms have begun.”

  “She had time to get to Center,” Larril said. “She left in plenty of time.”

  “I’ve learned a great deal about that city,” Arevin said. “Its people can be cruel. Suppose they would not let her in?”

  “She even had time to come back.”

  “But she isn’t back. No one has seen her. If she were here, everyone would know.”

  He took Larril’s silence as acquiescence and they both stared morosely out the window.

  “Maybe—” Larril cut herself off.

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should rest and wait for her, you’ve been searching so many places—”

  “That isn’t what you planned to say.”

  “No…”

  “Please tell me.”

  “There’s one more pass, to the south. No one ever uses it any more. But it’s closer to Center than we are.”

  “You’re right,” he said slowly, trying to reconstruct the map precisely in his mind. “Might she have gone there?”

  “You must have heard these words so often,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But I thank you,” Arevin said. “I might have seen it myself when I looked at the map again, or I might have given up hope. I’ll leave for there tomorrow.” He shrugged. “I tried to wait for her once and I could not. If I try again I’ll become the crazy you all feared me to be. I’m in your debt.”

  She looked away. “Everyone in this house owes you a debt, one that can’t even be paid.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “It’s forgotten.”

  That seemed to give her some comfort. Arevin looked out the window again.

  “The healer was kind to me, and you are her friend,” Larril said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No,” Arevin said. “Nothing.”

  She hesitated, turned, and walked away. After a moment Arevin realized he had not heard the door close. He glanced over his shoulder just as it swung shut.

  The crazy still could not or would not remember his name.

  Or maybe, Snake thought, he comes from a clan like Arevin’s, and he doesn’t tell his name to strangers.

  Snake could not imagine the crazy in Arevin’s clan. His people were steady and self-possessed; the crazy was dependent and erratic. One minute he thanked her for the promised dreamsnake, the next he wept and moaned that he was as good as dead, for North would kill him. Telling him to keep silent made no difference at all.

  Snake was glad to be back in the mountains where they could travel by day. The morning was cool and eerie, the trails narrow and fog-laden. The horses waded through the mist like aquatic creatures, tendrils swirling around their legs. Snake inhaled deeply until the cold air hurt her lungs. She could smell the fog, and the rich humus, and the faint spicy tang of pitch. The world lay green and gray around her, for the leaves on the overhanging trees had not yet begun to turn. Higher on the mountain, the darker evergreens looked almost black through the fog.

  Melissa rode right next to her, silent and watchful. She would not stay any closer to the crazy than she had to. He was audible but not visible, somewhere behind them. His old horse could not quite keep up with Swift and Squirrel, but at least Snake did not have to stand for riding double anymore.

  His voice grew fainter and fainter. Impatiently, Snake reined Swift in to let him catch up. Melissa stopped even more reluctantly. The crazy had refused to ride any better animal; only this one was calm enough for him. Snake had had to press payment on the horse’s owners, and she did not think the young herders had tried to refuse to sell it to her because they were not glad to get rid of it or because they wanted a higher price. Jean and Kev had been embarrassed. Well, no less was Snake.

  The horse shambled through the mist, eyelids drooping, ears flopping. The crazy hummed tunelessly.

  “Does the trail look familiar yet?”

  The crazy gazed smiling at her. “It’s all the same to me,” he said, and laughed.

  Snapping at him, cajoling him, threatening him did no good. He did not seem to be in pain or in need anymore, since being promised a dreamsnake, as if the expectation were sufficient to maintain him. He hummed and muttered contentedly and made incomprehensible jokes, and sometimes straightened up, looked around, exclaimed “Ever southward!” and subsided into tuneless songs again. Snake sighed and let the crazy’s broken down old horse pass them so the crazy could lead.

  “I don’t think he’s taking us anyplace, Snake,” Melissa said. “I think he’s just leading us around so we have to take care of him. We ought to leave him here and go somewhere else.”

  The crazy stiffened. Slowly, he turned around. The old horse stopped. Snake was surprised to see a tear spill from the crazy’s eye and drip down his cheek.

  “Don’t leave me,” he said. His expression and his tone of voice were simply pitiful. Before this he had not seemed capable of caring so much about anything at all. He gazed at Melissa, blinking his lashless eyelids. “You’re right not to trust me, little one,” he said. “But please don’t abandon me.” His eyes became unfocused and his words came from very far away. “Stay with me to the broken dome, and we’ll both have our own dreamsnakes. Surely your mistress will give you one.” He leaned toward her, reaching out, his fingers curved like claws. “You forget bad memories and troubles, you’ll forget your scars—”

  Melissa jerked back from him with an incoherent curse of surprise and anger. She clamped her legs against Squirrel’s sides and put the tiger-pony into a gallop from a standstill, leaning close over his neck and never looking back. In a moment the trees obscured all but the muffled thud of Squirrel’s hooves.

  Snake glared at the crazy. “How could you say such a thing to her?”

  He blinked, confused. “What did I say wrong?”

  “You follow us, you understand? Don’t go off the trail. I’ll find her and we’ll wait for you.” She touched Swift’s sides with her heels and cantered after Melissa. The crazy’s uncomprehending voice drifted after her.

  “But why did she do that?”

  Snake was not worried about Melissa’s safety, or Squirrel’s. Her daughter could ride any horse in these mountains all day and never put herself or her mount in danger. On the dependable tiger-pony she was doubly safe. But the crazy had hurt her and Snake did not want to leave her alone right now.

  She did not have to go far. Where the trail started to rise again, turning toward the slope of the valley and another mountain, Melissa stood beside Squirrel, hugging his neck as he nuzzled her shoulder. Hearing Swift approach, Melissa wiped her face on her sleeve and looked around. Snake dismounted and went toward her.

  “I was afraid you’d go a long way,” she said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “You can’t expect a horse to run uphill just after he’s been lame,” Melissa said matter-of-factly, but with a trace of resentment.

  Snake held out the reins of Swift’s bridle. “If you want to ride hard and fast for a while you can take Swift.”

  Melissa stared at her as if trying to perceive some sarcasm in her expression that had been absent from her tone. She did not find it.

  “No,” Melissa said. “Never mind. Maybe it would help, but I’m all right. It’s just — I don’t want to forget. Not like that, anyway.“

  Snake nodded. “I know.”

  Melissa embraced her with one of her abrupt, self-conscious hugs. Snake held her and patted her shoulder. “He is crazy.”

  “Yeah.” Melissa drew back slowly. “I know he can help you. I’m sorry I can’t keep from hating him. I’
ve tried.”

  “So have I,” Snake said.

  They sat down to wait for the crazy to come at his own slow pace.

  Before the crazy had even begun to recognize the countryside or the trail, Snake saw the broken dome. She looked at its hulking shape several moments before she realized, with a start, what it was. At first it looked like another peak of the mountain ridge; its color, gray instead of black, attracted Snake’s attention. She had expected the usual hemisphere, not a tremendous irregular surface that lay across the hillside like a quiescent amoeba. The main translucent gray was streaked with colors and reddened by afternoon sunlight. Whether the dome had been constructed in an asymmetrical form or whether it began as a round plastic bubble and was melted and deformed by the forces of the planet’s former civilization, Snake could not tell. But it had been in its present shape for a long, long time. Dirt had settled in the hollows and valleys in its surface, and trees and grass and bushes grew thick in the sheltered pockets.

  Snake rode in silence for a minute or two, hardly able to believe she had finally reached this goal. She touched Melissa’s shoulder; the child looked up abruptly from the indeterminate spot on Squirrel’s neck at which she had been staring. Snake pointed. Melissa saw the dome and exclaimed softly, then smiled with excitement and relief. Snake grinned back.

  The crazy sang behind them, oblivious to their destination. A broken dome. The words fit together strangely. Domes did not break, they did not weather, they did not change. They simple existed, mysterious and impenetrable.

  Snake stopped, waiting for the crazy. When the old horse shambled up and stopped beside her, she pointed upward. The crazy followed with his gaze. He blinked as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing.

  “Is that it?” Snake asked.

  “Not yet,” the crazy said. “No, not yet, I’m not ready.”

  “How do we get up there? Can we ride?”

  “North will see us…”

  Snake shrugged and dismounted. The way to the dome was steep and she could see no trail. “We walk, then.” She unfastened the girth straps of the mare’s saddle. “Melissa—”

  “No!” Melissa said sharply. “I won’t stay down here while you go up there alone with that one. Squirrel and Swift will be okay and nobody will bother the case. Except maybe another crazy and they’ll deserve what they get.”

  Snake was beginning to understand why her own strong will had so often exasperated the older healers, when she was Melissa’s age. But at the station there had never been much serious danger, and they could afford to indulge her.

  Snake sat down on a fallen log and motioned to her daughter to sit beside her. Melissa did so, without looking up at Snake, her shoulders set in defiance.

  “I need your help,” Snake said. “I can’t succeed without you. If something happens to me—”

  “That’s not succeeding!”

  “In a way it is. Melissa… the healers need dreamsnakes. Up in that dome they have enough to use them for play. I have to find out how they got them. But if I can’t, if I don’t come back down, you’re the only way the other healers will be able to know what happened to me. And why it happened. You’re the only way they’ll know about the dreamsnakes.”

  Melissa stared at the ground, robbing the knuckles of one hand with the fingernails of the other. “This is very important to you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Melissa sighed. Her hands were fists. “All right,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  Snake hugged her. “If I’m not back in, oh, two days, take Swift and Squirrel and ride north. Keep on going past Mountainside and Middlepass. It’s a long way, but there’s plenty of money in the case. You know how to get it safely.”

  “I have my wages,” Melissa said.

  “All right, but the other’s just as much yours. You don’t need to open the compartments Mist and Sand are in. They can survive until you get home.” For the first time she actually considered the possibility that Melissa might have to make the trip alone. “Sand is getting too fat anyway.” She forced a smile.

  “But—” Melissa cut herself off.

  “What?”

  “If something does happen to you, I couldn’t get back in time to help, not if I go all the way to the healers’ station.”

  “If I don’t come back on my own, there won’t be any way to help me. Don’t come after me by yourself. Please. I need to know you won’t.”

  “If you don’t come back in three days, I’ll go tell your people about the dreamsnakes.”

  Snake let her have the extra day, with some gratitude, in fact. “Thank you, Melissa.”

  They let the tiger-pony and the gray mare loose in a clearing near the trail. Instead of galloping toward the meadow and rolling in the grass, they stood close together, watchful and nervous, their ears swiveling, nostrils wide. The crazy’s old horse stood in the shade alone, his head down. Melissa watched them, her lips tight.

  The crazy stood where he had dismounted, staring at Snake, tears in his eyes.

  “Melissa,” Snake said, “if you do go home alone, tell them I adopted you. Then — then they’ll know you’re their daughter too.”

  “I don’t want to be their daughter. I want to be yours.”

  “You are. No matter what.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is there a trail?” she asked the crazy. “What’s the quickest way up?”

  “No trail… it opens before me and closes behind me.”

  Snake could feel Melissa restraining a sarcastic remark. “Let’s go, then,” she said, “and see if your magic will work for more than one.”

  She hugged Melissa one last time. Melissa held tight, reluctant to let her go.

  “It’ll be all right,” Snake said. “Don’t worry.”

  The crazy climbed surprisingly quickly, almost as if a path really did open up for him, and for him alone. Snake had to work hard to keep up with him, and sweat stung her eyes. She scrambled up a few meters of harsh black stone and grabbed his robe. “Not so fast.”

  His breath came quickly, from excitement, not effort. “The dreamsnakes are near,” he said. He jerked his robe from her hand and scuttled up sheer rock. Snake wiped her forehead on her sleeve, and climbed.

  The next time she caught him she grabbed him by the shoulder and did not let go until he sank down on a ledge.

  “We’ll rest here,” she said, “and then we’ll go on, more slowly and more quietly. Otherwise your friends will know we’re coming before we’re ready to have them know.”

  “The dreamsnakes—”

  “North is between us and the dreamsnakes. If he sees you first will he let you go on?”

  “You’ll give me a dreamsnake? One of my own? Not like North?”

  “Not like North,” Snake said. She sat in a narrow wedge of shade, leaning her head back against the volcanic rock. In the valley below, an edge of the meadow showed between dark evergreen branches, but neither Swift nor Squirrel was in that part of the clearing. It looked like a small scrap of velvet from this distance. Suddenly Snake felt both isolated and lonely.

  Nearby, the rock was not so barren as it appeared from below. Lichen lay in green-gray patches here and there, and small fat-leaved succulents nestled in shady niches. Snake leaned forward to see one more closely. Against black rock, in shadow, its color was indistinct.

  She sat back abruptly.

  Picking up a shard of rock, Snake leaned forward again and knelt over the squat blue-green plant. She poked at its leaves. They closed down tight.

  It’s escaped, Snake thought. It’s from the broken dome.

  She should have expected something like this; she should have known she would find things that did not belong on the earth. She prodded it again, from the same side. It was, indeed, moving. It would crawl all the way down the mountain if she let it. She slipped the rock’s point beneath it and lifted the plant out of the crevice, rolling it upside down. Except for the bristle of rootlets in its cen
ter, it looked just the same, its brilliant turquoise leaves rotating on their bases, seeking a hold. Snake had never seen this species before, but she had seen similar creatures, plants — they did not fit into the normal classifications — take over a field in a night, poisoning the ground so nothing else would grow. One summer several years before she and the other healers had helped burn off a swarm of them from nearby farms. They had not swarmed again, but little colonies of them still turned up from time to time, and the fields they had taken over were barren.

  She wanted to burn this one but could not risk a fire now. She pushed it out of the shadows into sunlight and it closed up tight. Now Snake noticed that here and there lay the shriveled hulls of other crawlies, dead and sun-dried, defeated by the barren cliff.

  “Let’s go,” Snake said, more to herself than to the crazy.

  She chinned herself over the edge of the cliff to the broken dome’s hollow. The strangeness of the place hit Snake like a physical blow. Alien plants grew all around the base of the tremendous half-collapsed structure, nearly to the cliff, leaving no clear path at all. What covered the ground resembled nothing Snake knew, not grass or scrub or bushes. It was a flat, borderless expanse of bright red leaf. Looking closer, Snake could see that it was more than a single huge leaf: each section was perhaps twice as long as she was tall, irregularly shaped, and joined at the edges to neighboring leaves by a system of intertwining hairs. Wherever more than two leaves touched, a delicate frond rose a few handsbreadths from the intersection. Wherever a fissure split the stone, a turquoise streak of crawlies parted the red ground cover, seeking shadow as deliberately as the red leaves spread themselves for light. Someday several crawlies at once would overcome the long sloping exposed cliff face and then they would take over the valley below: someday, when weather and heat and cold opened more sheltering cracks in the stone.

  The depressions in the surface of the dome retained some normal vegetation, for the crawlies’ reproductive tendrils could not reach that far. If this species was anything like the similar one Snake had seen, it produced no seeds. But other alien plants had reached the top of the dome, for the melted hollows were filled randomly, some with ordinary green, others with bold, unearthly colors. In a few of the seared, heat-sunken pockets, high above the ground, the colors warred together, one not yet having overcome the other.