Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

But all that, Snake thought, was why healers carried dreamsnakes to begin with. The venom did not kill, and it did not make death inevitable. Rather, it eased the transition between life and death and helped the dying person accept finality.

Given time, the crazy could no doubt will himself to die. But Snake had no intention of letting him carry out his will before she found out where he came from and what was going on there. She also had no intention of staying up half the night trading watches over him with Melissa. They both needed a good night’s sleep.

The crazy’s arms were as limp as the ragged robes covering them. Snake drew his hands above his head and tied his wrists to her saddle with two sets of its packstraps. She did not tie him tightly or cruelly, just firmly enough so she would hear him if he tried to get away. The evening had turned chilly, so she threw a spare blanket over him, then she and Melissa spread their own blankets on the hard ground and went to sleep.

It must have been midnight when Snake woke again. The fire had gone out, leaving the camp pitch-dark. Snake lay without moving, expecting the sound of the crazy trying to escape.

Melissa cried out in her sleep. Snake slid toward her, groping in the dark, and touched her shoulder. She sat beside her, stroking her hair and her face.

“It’s all right, Melissa,” Snake whispered. “Wake up, you’re just having a bad dream.”

After a moment Melissa sat bolt upright. “What—”

“It’s me, it’s Snake. You were having a nightmare.”

Melissa’s voice shook. “I thought I was back in Mountainside,” she said. “I thought Ras…”

Snake held her, still stroking her soft curly hair. “Never mind. You never have to go back there.”

She felt Melissa nod.

“Do you want me to stay here next to you?” Snake asked. “Or would that bring the nightmares back?”

Melissa hesitated. “Please stay,” she whispered.

Snake lay down and pulled both blankets over them. The night had turned cold, but Snake was glad to be out of the desert, back in a place where the ground did not tenaciously hold the day’s heat. Melissa huddled against her.

The darkness was complete, but Snake could tell from Melissa’s breathing that she was already asleep again. Perhaps she had never completely awakened. Snake did not go back to sleep for some time. She could hear the crazy’s rough breath, nearly a snore, above the trickle of water from the spring, and she could feel the vibrations of Swift and Squirrel’s hooves on the hard-packed earth as the horses shifted in the night. Beneath her shoulder and hip the ground yielded not at all, and above her not a star or a sliver of moon broke through into the sky.

The crazy’s voice was loud and whiny, but much stronger than it had been the night before.

“Let me up. Untie me. You going to torture me to death? I need to piss. I’m thirsty.”

Snake threw off the blankets and sat up. She was tempted to offer him the drink of water first, but decided that was the unworthy fantasy of being awakened at dawn. She got up and stretched, yawning, then waved at Melissa, who was standing between Swift and Squirrel as they nudged her for their breakfast. Melissa laughed and waved back.

The crazy pulled at the straps. “Well? You going to let me up?”

“In a minute.” She used the privy they had dug behind some bushes, and walked over to the spring to splash water on her face. She wanted a bath, but the spring did not provide that much water, nor did she intend to make the crazy wait quite so long. She returned to camp and untied the thongs around his wrists. He sat up, rubbing his hands together and grumbling, then rose and started away.

“I don’t want to invade your privacy,” Snake said, “but don’t go out of my sight.”

He snarled something unintelligible but did not let the natural screen hide him completely. Scuffing back to Snake, he squatted down and grabbed for the water flask. He drank thirstily and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, looking around hungrily.

“Is there breakfast?”

“I thought you were planning to die.”

He snorted.

“Everyone in my camp works for their food,” Snake said. “You can talk for yours.”

The man looked at the ground and sighed. He had dark bushy eyebrows that shadowed his pale eyes.

“All right,” he said. He sat cross-legged and rested his forearms on his knees, letting his hands droop. His fingers trembled.

Snake waited, but he did not speak.

Two healers had vanished in the past few years. Snake still thought of them by their child-names, the names by which she had known them until they left on their proving years. She had not been extremely close to Philippe, but Jenneth had been her favorite older sister, one of the three people she had been closest to. She could still feel the shock of the winter and spring of Jenneth’s testing year, as the days passed and the community slowly realized she would not return. They never found out what happened to her. Sometimes when a healer died a messenger would bring the bad news to the station, and sometimes even the serpents were returned. But the healers never had any message from Jenneth. Perhaps the crazy slumping before Snake had leapt on her in a dark alley somewhere, and killed her for her dreamsnake.

“Well?” Snake asked sharply.

The crazy started. “What?” He squinted at her, struggling to focus his eyes.

Snake kept her temper. “Where are you from?”

“South.”

“What town?” Her maps showed this pass, but nothing beyond it. In the mountains as well as in the desert, people had good reason to avoid the extreme southern lands.

He shrugged. “No town. No town left, there. Just the broken dome.”

“Where did you get the dreamsnake?”

He shrugged.

Snake leaped to her feet and grabbed his dirty robe. The cloth at his throat bunched in her fist as she pulled him upright. “Answer me!”

A tear trickled down his face. “How can I? I don’t understand you. Where did I get it? I never had one. They were always there, but not mine. They were there when I went there and they were there when I left. Why would I need yours if I had some of my own?” The crazy sank to the ground as Snake slowly unclenched her fingers.

“ ‘Some’ of your own?”

He held out his hands, raising them to let the sleeves fall back to his elbows. His forearms, too, at the inside of the elbow, at the wrists, everywhere the veins were prominent, showed the scars of bites.

“It’s best if they strike you all over at once,” he said dreamily. “In the throat, that’s quick and sure, that’s for emergencies, for sustenance. That’s all North will give you, usually. But all over, if you do something special for him, that’s what he gives you.” The crazy hugged himself and rubbed his arms as if he were cold. He flushed with excitement, rubbing harder and faster. “Then you feel, you feel — everything lights up, you’re on fire, everything — it goes on and on.”

“Stop it!”

He let his hands drop to the ground and looked at her, blank-eyed again. “What?”

“This North — he has dreamsnakes.”

The crazy nodded eagerly, letting memory excite him again.

“A lot of them?”

“A whole pitful. Sometimes he lets someone down in the pit, he rewards them — but never me, not since the first time.”

Snake sat down, gazing at the crazy yet at nothing, imagining the delicate creatures trapped in a pit, exposed to the elements.

“Where does he get them? Do the city people trade with him? Does he deal with the offworlders?”

“Get them? They’re there. North has them.”

Snake was shaking as hard as the crazy. She clasped her hands hard around her knees, tensing all her muscles, then slowly making herself relax. Her hands steadied.