They climbed higher, and still no one challenged them. The sweat on
Snake’s forehead dried: the air was growing cooler. The crazy, grinning
and mumbling to himself, climbed more eagerly. The coolness became a
whisper of air running downhill like water. Snake had expected the
hilltop, right up under the crown of the dome, to be warm with trapped
heat. But the higher she climbed, the colder and stronger the breeze
became.
They passed through the area of hill-hair and entered another stand
of trees. These were similar to the ones below, formed of tangled
branches and compact twisted roots, with tiny fluttering leaves. Here,
though, they grew only a few meters high, and they clustered together in
small groves of three or more, deforming each other’s symmetry. The
forest thickened. Finally, winding between the twisted trunks, a pathway
appeared. As the forest closed in over her, Snake caught up with the
crazy and stopped him.
“From now on stay behind me, all right?”
He nodded without looking at her.
The dome diffused sunlight so nothing cast a shadow, and the light
was barely bright enough to penetrate the twisting, knotted branches
overhead. Tiny leaves shivered in the cold breeze blowing through the
forest corridor. Snake moved forward. The rocks beneath her boots had
given way to a soft trail of humus and fallen leaves.
To the right a tremendous chunk of rock rose up out of the hillside
at a gentle slant, forming a ledge that would overlook the larger part
of the dome. Snake considered climbing out on it, but it would put her
in full view. She did not want North and his people to be able to accuse
her of spying, nor did she want them to know of her presence until she
walked into their camp. Pressing on, she shivered, for the breeze had
become a cold wind.
She glanced around to be sure the crazy was following her. As she
did, he scurried up toward the rock ledge, waving his arms. Startled,
Snake hesitated. Her first thought was that he had decided again to die.
In that instant Melissa dashed after him.
“North!” he cried, and Melissa flung herself at his knees, hitting
him with her shoulder and knocking him down. Snake ran toward them as
Melissa fought to keep him from getting up and he fought to free
himself. His single shout echoed and reechoed, rebounding from the walls
and melted undulations of the dome. Melissa struggled with the crazy,
half-tangled in his emaciated limbs and his voluminous desert robes,
fumbling for her knife and somehow managing to keep her hold on his
legs.
Snake pulled Melissa away from him, as gently as she could. The crazy
lurched around, ready to scream again, but Snake drew her own knife and
held it beneath his chin. Her other hand was clenched in a fist. She
opened it slowly, forcing her anger away.
“Why did you do that? Why? We had an agreement.”
“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.
“All the more reason to search her,” North said. “We’ll not be
fanatic about the thoroughness. Do you want to go first?”
“That would be better,” Snake said. She raised her hands, but North
prodded her, turned her around, and made her reach out and lean forward
and grasp the twisted branches of a tree. If she had not been worried
about Melissa she would have been amused by the theatricality of it all.
Nothing happened for what seemed a long time. Snake started to turn
around again, but North touched the fresh shiny puncture scars on her
hand with the tip of one pale finger. “Ah,” he said, very softly, so
close she could feel his warm, unpleasant breath. “You’re a healer.”
Snake heard the crossbow just after the bolt plunged into her
shoulder, just as the pain spread over her in a wave. Her knees swayed
but she could not fall. The force of the bolt dissipated through the
trunk of the twisted tree, in vibrations up and down her body. Melissa
screamed in fury. Snake heard other people behind her. Blood ran hot
down her shoulder blade, down her breast. With her left hand, she
fumbled for the shaft of the thin crossbow bolt where it ripped out of
her flesh and into the tree, but her fingers slipped and the living wood
held the bolt’s tip fast. Melissa was at her side, holding her up as
best she could. Voices wove themselves together into a tapestry
stretching behind her.
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.