Dreamsnake

Fascinated, Snake climbed through the hole. She felt the sharp edges against her palms but did not really notice them. Beyond the opening, where the side wall, when intact, had curved inward to form the roof, an entire archway of plastic was slumped to barely more than Snake’s height. Here and there the plastic had run and dripped and formed ropes from ceiling to floor. Snake reached out and touched one gently. It thrummed like a giant harp string, and she grabbed it quickly to silence it.

The light inside was reddish and eerie; Snake kept blinking her eyes, trying to clear her vision. But nothing was wrong with her sight except that it could not become accustomed to the alien landscape. The dome had enclosed an alien jungle, now gone wild, and many more species than crawlies and flat-leaves crowded the ground. A great vine with a stem bigger around than the largest tree Snake had ever seen climbed up the wall, huge suckers probing the now brittle plastic, punching through to precarious holds in the dome. The vine spread a canopy across the ceiling, its bluish leaves tiny and delicate, its flowers tremendous but made up of thousands of white petals even smaller than the leaves.

Snake moved farther inside, to where the melting, less severe, had not collapsed the ceiling. Here and there a vine had crept up the edge, then, where the plastic was both too strong to break and too slick to grasp, dropped back to earth. After the vines, the trees took over, or what passed for trees inside the dome. One stood on a hummock nearby: a tangled mass of woody stalks, or limbs, piled and twisted far above Snake’s head, spreading slowly as it rose to shape the plant into a cone.

Recalling the crazy’s vague description, Snake pointed toward a central hill that rose almost to touch the plastic sky. “That way, hm?” She found herself whispering.

Crouched behind her, the crazy mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Snake set out, passing beneath the lacy shadows of the tangle-trees and through occasional areas of colored light where the dome’s rainbow wounds filtered sunlight. As Snake walked she listened carefully, for the sound of another human voice, for the faint hissing of nested serpents, for anything. But even the air was still.

The ground began to rise: they reached the foot of the hill. Here and there black volcanic rock pierced the topsoil, the alien earth for all Snake knew. It looked ordinary enough, but the plants growing from it did not. Here the ground cover looked like fine brown hair and had the same slick texture. The crazy led on, following a trail that was not there. Snake trudged after him. The hillside steepened and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her knee began to ache again. She cursed softly under her breath. A pebble rolled beneath the hair plants she stepped on and her boot slipped out from under her. Snake snatched at the grass to break her fall. It held long enough to steady her, but when she stood again she held a handful of the thin stalks. Each piece had its own delicate root, as if it really were hair.

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.