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 talclass="underline" 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 deniaclass="underline" 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.