Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

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.