Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

“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.