Dreamsnake

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Someone grabbed the crossbow bolt and jerked it loose, wrenching it through muscle. The scrape of wood on bone wrung a gasp from her. The cool smooth metal point slid from the wound.

  “Kill her now,” the crazy said. The words came fast with excitement. “Kill her and leave her here as a warning.”

  Snake’s heart pumped hot blood down her shoulder. She staggered, caught herself, and fell to her knees. The force hit the small of her back, vibrating with the pain, and she tried but failed to cringe away from it, like poor little Grass writhing with a severed spine.

  Melissa stood before her, her scarred face and red hair uncovered as she tried clumsily, blinded with tears, whispering comfort as she would to a horse, to wind her headcloth over the wound.

  So much blood from such a small arrow, Snake thought.

  She fainted.

  The coldness roused Snake first. Even as she regained consciousness, Snake 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 flexed her right hand. It was weak, but it moved.

  She struggled up, shivering, blinking, her vision blurred.

  “Melissa?” she whispered.

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

  Cold air flowed around her. Snake shook her head and drew her sleeve across her eyes. Her sight cleared abruptly. The effort of sitting up made her break out in a sweat that the air turned icy. North sat before her, smiling, flanked by his people, who closed the human circle around her. The blood on her shirt, except immediately over the wound, was brown: she had been unconscious for some time.

  “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.” The frigid air flowed from a cave behind her, billowing around her, raising goose bumps on her arms. Her boots were gone; the cold stone sucked heat from the bare soles of her feet. But it also numbed the ache in her shoulder. Then she shivered violently and pain struck with even more ferocity than before. She gasped and closed her eyes for a moment, then sat very still in her own inner darkness, breathing deeply and shutting away her perception of the wound. It was bleeding again, in back where it would be hard to reach. She hoped Melissa was somewhere warmer, and she wondered where the dreamsnakes were, for they needed warmth to survive. Snake 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 lightheaded from loss of blood, and in the middle of replying to North. “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 could have been ordinary?” He pushed her toward the cave. She stumbled into the wind 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 sidled out of the crowd of North’s emaciated followers, whom Snake now only perceived as vague shapes. “She helped me, North, I’ll take her place.” He plucked at North’s sleeve, moaning and pleading. North pushed him away and he fell and lay still.

  “Your brain’s addled,” North said. “Or you think mine is.”

  The interior of the cave glittered in the dim light of smoking torches, its walls flawed jewels of ice. Above the torches sooty stone showed in large round patches. Melt-water trickled into pools of slush that spread across the floor and ran together in a rivulet. Water dripped everywhere with a cold sound of crystal clarity. Every step Snake took jarred her shoulder again, and she no longer had the strength to force the sensation away. The air was heavy with the smell of burning pitch. Gradually she became aware of a low hum of machinery, felt rather than heard. It crept through her body, into her bones.

  Ahead 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. Snake stood in the mouth of the icy tunnel and blinked, looking stupidly around. The black eyes of other caves stared back at her. The dome above formed a gray, directionless sky. Across from her the cold air flowed from the largest tunnel, forming an almost palpable lake, drained by the smaller tunnels. North pushed Snake forward again. She saw things, felt things, but reacted to nothing. She could not.

  “Down there. Climb.” North kicked a coil of rope and wood and it clattered into the deep crack in the rock in the center of the crater. The tangle unrolled: a rope ladder. Snake could see its top but its lower end was in darkness.

  “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. She swung herself down into the crevasse, clumsily but eagerly. One-handed, she lowered herself by steps into the freezing darkness, catching each rung with her bare toes and pulling it outward so she had a foothold. Above, she heard the crazy break down in helpless sobs.

  “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! North, that’s what she came here for.”

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

  From the echoes as the rungs clattered against the walls of the crevasse, Snake knew she was nearing the bottom. It was not quite dark, but her eyes accustomed themselves slowly. Damp with sweat and shivering again, she had to pause. She rested her forehead against cold stone. Her toes and the knuckles of her left hand were scraped raw, for the ladder lay flush against stone.

  It was then, finally, that she heard the soft rustling slide of small serpents. Clutching the ropes, Snake hung against the stone and squinted into the dimness below. 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 knelt. Cold jagged chunks of stone cut into her knees, and the only warmth was the fresh blood on her shoulder. But she reached out among the shards, feeling carefully. Her fingertips brushed the smooth scales of a serpent as it slid silently away. She reached out again, ready this time, and caught the next one she touched. Her hand stung at two tiny points. She smiled and held the dreamsnake gently behind the head, by habit conserving its venom. She brought it close enough to see. 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. But it did not hiss, just as Grass had never hissed.

  As her eyes became more and more used to the darkness, Snake gradually perceived the rest of the crevasse, and 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 her people could gather together
at the station, if all the healers brought their dreamsnakes home at the same time.

  The dreamsnake she held grew quiet in the meager warmth of her hand. One drop of blood collected over each puncture of its bite, but the sting of its venom had lasted only an instant. Snake sat back on her heels and stroked the dreamsnake’s head. 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 cried with glee, with dreamsnakes all around her and in her hand. 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 could not harm her, North would find some other way. She sniffed 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 crevasse. Snake moved carefully to her side, trying not to injure any of the serpents she passed, nor to startle those that lay curled around Melissa’s arms, or coiled together against her body. They made green tendrils in her bright red 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 knees. 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. A dreamsnake struck: its fangs sank into Snake’s flesh and the creature jerked back almost too fast to see. Her teeth clenched, Snake remembered the crazy’s words: “It’s best if they strike you all over at once…”

  With her own body, Snake blocked the serpents away from Melissa and freed her wrists, fumbling left-handed with the knots. Melissa’s skin was cold and dry. 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 the 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.

  Melissa’s hand slid limply against the rocks. Blood smeared in streaks from the puncture wounds where her skin rubbed cloth or stone. 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. Despite herself, Snake’s eyes went out of focus and her eyelids drooped; each time she nodded asleep she jerked herself awake again. 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 numb right hand and picked it up with wonder. It lay coiled in her palm, staring toward her with its lidless eyes, its trident tongue tasting the air. 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. In this pit were all sizes and all ages, from egglings to mature individuals larger than any dreamsnakes Snake had ever seen.

  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.

  “North!” Snake’s voice was hoarse. She cleared her dry throat and tried again. “North!”

  In time, his silhouette appeared at the rim of the crevasse. By his easy smile Snake knew he expected her to beg him for her freedom. He looked down at her, noting the way she had positioned herself between Melissa and the serpents.

  “She could be free if you’d let her,” he said. “Don’t keep her from my creatures.”

  “Your creatures are wasted here, North,” Snake said. “You should take them out into the world. You’d be honored by everyone, particularly the healers.”

  “I’m honored here,” North said.

  “But this must be a difficult life. You could live in comfort and ease—”

  “There’s no comfort for me,” North said. “You of all people should realize that. Sleeping on the ground or wrapped in featherbeds, it’s all the same to me.”

  “You’ve made dreamsnakes breed,” Snake said. She glanced down at Melissa. Several of the serpents had insinuated themselves past Snake. She grabbed one just before it reached her daughter’s bare arm. The serpent struck and bit her. She put it and the others behind her with stinging hands, ignoring their fangs. “However you do it, you should take the knowledge out and give it to others.”

  “And what’s your place in this plan? Should I bring you up to be my herald? You could dance into each new town and tell them I was coming.”

  “I admit I wouldn’t care to die down here.”

  North laughed harshly.

  “You could help so many people. There was no healer when you needed one because we haven’t got enough dreamsnakes. You could help people like you.”

  “I help the people who come to me,” North said. “Those are the people who are like me. They’re the only ones I want.” He turned away.

  “North!”

  “What?”

  “At least give me a blanket for Melissa. She’ll die if I can’t keep her warm.”

  “She won’t die,” North said. “Not if you leave her to my creatures.” His shadow and his form disappeared.

  Snake hugged Melissa closer, feeling each slow, heavy beat of the child’s heart through her own body. She was so cold and tired that she could not think any longer. Sleep would start to heal her, but she had to stay awake, for Melissa’s sake and for her own. One thought remained strong: defy North’s wishes. Above everything, she knew she and her daughter were both lost if they obeyed him.

  Moving slowly so the work of drawing pain from her shoulder would not be undone, Snake took Melissa’s hands in her own and chafed them, trying to bring back circulation and warmth. The blood on the dreamsnake bites was dry now. One of the serpents wrapped itself around Snake’s ankle. She wiggled her toes and flexed her ankle, hoping the dreamsnake would crawl, away again. Her foot was so chilled she barely felt the serpent’s fangs sink into her instep. She continued to rub Melissa’s hands. She breathed on them and kissed them. Her breath plumed out before her. The dim light was failing. Snake looked up. The slice of gray dome visible between the edges of the crevasse had turned nearly black with gathering night. Snake felt an overwhelming sensation of grief. This was how it had been the night Jesse died, lacking only stars, the sky as clear and dark, the rock walls surrounding her just as steep, the cold as exhausting as the desert’s heat. Snake hugged Melissa closer and bent over her, sheltering her from shadows. Because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Jesse; because of the dreamsnakes, she could do nothing for Melissa.

  The dreamsnakes massed together and slithered toward her, the sound of their scales on fogdamp stone whispering around her — Snake came abruptly awake out of the dream.

  “Snake?” Melissa’s voice was the rough whisper she had heard.

  “I’m here.” She could just see her daughter’s face. The last diffused light shone dully on her c
urly 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. “It’d be just like Ras again…”

  “Melissa, dear, you have a place to go now. It’s the same as when we talked before. Our people need to know about this place. You have to give yourself a chance to get away.”

  Melissa huddled against her in silence.

  “I left Mist and Sand,” she said finally. “I didn’t do what you wanted, and now they’ll starve to death.”

  Snake stroked her hair. “They’ll be all right for a while.”

  “I’m scared,” Melissa whispered. “I promised 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. Snake had never seen her do that 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.”