Suddenly she was standing on a hillside in daylight beneath the strange twisted trees. She looked around blankly, then stretched out her left hand and stroked rough tree bark. She touched a fragile leaf with an abraded, broken-nailed fingertip.
Snake wanted to sit down, laugh, rest, sleep. Instead, she turned right and followed the hillside around, hoping the long tunnel had not led her half the hill or half the dome away from North’s camp. She wished North or the crazy had said something about where they had put Melissa.
The trees ended abruptly. Snake almost walked into the clearing before she stopped herself and pulled back into the shadows. Thick low round-leafed bushes carpeted the meadow with a solid layer of scarlet vegetation. On the natural mattress lay all the people she had seen with North, and more. They were all asleep, dreaming, Snake supposed. Most lay face up with their heads thrown back, their throats exposed, revealing puncture wounds and thin trickles of blood among many sets of scars. Snake looked from person to person, recognizing no one, until her search reached the other side of the clearing. There, touched by the shade of an alien tree, the crazy lay sleeping. His position differed from that of everyone else: he was face down, stripped to the waist, and he had stretched out his arms before him as if in supplication. His legs and feet were bare. As Snake skirted the clearing, moving closer to the crazy, she saw the many fang marks on his inner arms and behind his knees. So North had found an unexhausted serpent, and the crazy had finally got what he wanted.
But North was not in the clearing, and Melissa was not there either.
A well-used trail led back into the forest. Snake followed it cautiously, ready to slip between the trees at any warning. But nothing happened. She could even hear the rustling of small animals or birds or indescribably alien beasts as she padded barefoot over the hard ground.
The trail ended just above the entrance to the first tunnel. There, next to a large basket, alone with a dreamsnake in his hands, sat North.
Snake watched him curiously. He held the serpent in the safe way, behind the head so it could not strike. With the other hand he stroked its smooth green scales. Snake had noticed that North had no throat scars, and she had assumed that for himself he used the slower and more pleasurable method of taking the venom. But now the sleeves of his robe had fallen back and she could see quite clearly that his pale arms were unscarred too.
Snake frowned. Melissa was nowhere in sight. If North had put her back in the caves Snake might search futilely for days and still not find her. She had no strength left for a long search. She stepped out into the clearing.
“Why don’t you let it bite you?” she said.
North started violently, but did not lose control of the serpent. He stared at Snake with an expression of pure confusion. He glanced quickly around the clearing as if noticing for the first time that his people were not near him.
“They’re all asleep, North,” Snake said. “Dreaming. Even the one who brought me here.”
“Come to me!” North shouted, but Snake did not obey his commanding voice, and no one at all answered.
“How did you get out?” North whispered. “I’ve killed healers — they were never magic. They were as easy to kill as any creature.”
“Where’s Melissa?”
“How did you get out?” he screamed.
Snake approached him without any idea what she would do. It was true that North was not strong, but sitting down he was still nearly as tall as she was standing, and right now she was not strong either. She stopped in front of him.
North thrust the dreamsnake toward her, as if it would frighten her or bind her with desire to his will. Snake was so close that she reached out and stroked the serpent with the tip of her finger.
“Where’s Melissa?”
“She’s mine,” he said. “She doesn’t belong in the world outside. She belongs here.”
But his pale eyes, flicking sideways, betrayed him. Snake followed his gaze: to the huge basket, nearly as long as she was tall and half that deep. Snake went to it and carefully lifted its lid. She took one involuntary backward step, drawing in a long angry breath. The basket was nearly filled with a solid mass of dreamsnakes. She swung toward North, furious.
“How could you?”
“It was what she needed.”
Snake turned her back on him and slowly, carefully began lifting dreamsnakes from the basket. There were so many of them she could not see Melissa, even as a vague shape. She took dreamsnakes out of the basket by pairs, and, once they could no longer reach her daughter, dropped them on the ground. The first one slid over her foot and coiled itself around her ankle, but the second one glided rapidly away toward the trees.
North scrambled up. “What are you doing? You can’t—” He started after the freed serpents, but one of them raised itself to strike and North flinched back. Snake dropped two more serpents on the ground. North tried once again to capture a dreamsnake, but it struck at him and he nearly fell avoiding it. North abandoned the serpent and flung himself toward Snake, using his height to threaten her, but she held a dreamsnake out toward him and he stopped.
“You’re afraid of them, aren’t you, North?” She took one step toward him. He tried to stand firm but when Snake took a second step he backed abruptly away.
“Don’t you accept your own advice?” She was angrier than she had ever been before: the sane part of her mind, driven deep, watched with shock how glad she was to be able to frighten him.
“Stay away—”
As Snake approached him he fell backward. Scrabbling at the ground he pulled himself away, and stumbled again when he tried to rise. Snake was near enough to smell the odor of him, musty and dry, nothing like human scent. Panting, like an animal at bay, he stopped and faced her, his fists clenched to strike as she brought the dreamsnake closer.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do it—”
Thinking of Melissa, Snake did not reply.
North stared at the dreamsnake, mesmerized. “No—” His voice broke. “Please—”
“Is it pity you want from me?” Snake cried with joy, knowing she would give him no more mercy than he had offered her daughter.
Suddenly North’s fists unclenched and he leaned toward her, stretching out his hands to her, exposing the fine blue veins of his wrists.
“No,” he said. “I want peace.” He trembled visibly as he waited for the dreamsnake’s strike.
Astonished, Snake drew back her hands.
“Please!” North cried again. “Gods, don’t play with me!”
Snake looked at the serpent, then at North. Her pleasure in his capitulation turned to revulsion. Was she so much like him, that she needed power over other human beings? Perhaps his accusations had been true. Honor and deference pleased her as much as they pleased him. And she had certainly been guilty of arrogance, she had always been guilty of arrogance. Perhaps the difference between her and North was not of kind, but only of degree. Snake was not sure, but she knew that if she forced this serpent on him now, while he was helpless, whatever differences there might be would have even less meaning. She stepped back, dropping the dreamsnake on the ground.
“Stay away from me.” Her voice, too, trembled. “I’m going to take my daughter and go home.”
“Help me,” he whispered. “I discovered this place, I used its creatures to help others, don’t I deserve help now?” He looked pitiably at Snake but she did not move.
Suddenly he moaned and lunged for the dreamsnake, grasping it in one hand and forcing it to bite his other wrist. He whimpered as the fangs sank in, once, again.