“He said I was lucky,” Melissa whispered. “He said I should be grateful he would touch me.” She shuddered violently.
Snake rocked her back and forth. “He was lucky,” she said. “He’s been lucky no one knew.”
The door opened and Gabriel looked in. “Snake — ? Oh, there you are.” He came toward her, the light glinting off his golden body. Startled, Melissa glanced toward him. Gabriel froze, shock and horror spreading over his face. Melissa ducked her head again and held Snake tighter, shaking with the effort of controlling her sobs.
“What — ?”
“Go back to bed,” Snake said, even more harshly than she had meant to but less harshly than she felt toward him right now.
“What’s going on?” he asked plaintively. Frowning, he looked at Melissa.
“Go away! I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He started to protest, saw Snake’s expression change, cut off his words, and left the room. Snake and Melissa sat together in silence for a long time. Melissa’s breathing slowly grew quieter and more regular.
“You see how people look at me?”
“Yes, dear. I see.” After Gabriel’s reaction Snake hardly felt she could paint any more rosy pictures of people’s tolerance. Yet now Snake hoped even more that Melissa would decide to leave this place. Anything would be better. Anything.
Snake’s anger rose in a slow, dangerous, inexorable way. A scarred and hurt and frightened child had as much right to a gentle sexual initiation as any beautiful, confident one, perhaps a greater right. But Melissa had only been scarred and hurt and frightened more. And humiliated. Snake held her and rocked her. Melissa clung contentedly to her like a much younger child. “Melissa…”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Ras is an evil man. He’s hurt you in ways no one who wasn’t evil would ever hurt anyone. I promise you he’ll never hurt you again.”
“What does it matter if it’s him or somebody else?”
“Remember how surprised you were that someone tried to rob me?”
“But that was a crazy. Ras isn’t a crazy.”
“There are more crazies like that than people like Ras.”
“That other one is like Ras. You had to be with him.”
“No, I didn’t. I invited him to stay with me. There are things people can do for each other—”
Melissa glanced up. Snake could not tell if her expression was curiosity or concern, her face was so stiff with the terrible scars of burning. For the first time Snake could see that the scars extended beneath the collar of the child’s shirt. Snake felt the blood drain from her face.
“Mistress, what’s wrong?”
“Tell me something, dear. How badly were you burned? Where are the scars?”
Melissa’s right eye narrowed; that was all she could make of a frown. “My face.” She drew back and touched her collarbone, just to the left of her throat. “Here.” Her hand moved down her chest to the bottom of her rib cage, then to her side. “To here.”
“No farther down?”
“No. My arm was stiff for a long time.” She rotated her left shoulder: it was not as limber as it should have been. “I was lucky. If it was worse and I couldn’t ride, then I wouldn’t be worth keeping alive to anybody.”
Snake released her breath slowly with great relief. She had seen people burned so badly they had no sex left at all, neither external organs nor capacity for pleasurable sensation. Snake thanked all the gods of all the people of the world for what Melissa had told her. Ras had hurt her, but the pain was because she was a child and he was a large and brutal adult, not because the fire had destroyed all other feeling except pain.
“People can do things for each other that give them both pleasure,” Snake said. “That’s why Gabriel and I were together. I wanted him to touch me and he wanted me to touch him. But when someone touches another person without caring how they feel — against their wishes!” She stopped, for she could not understand anyone twisted enough to turn sexuality into assault. “Ras is an evil man,” she said again.
“The other one didn’t hurt you?”
“No. We were having fun.”
“All right,” Melissa said reluctantly.
“I can show you.”
“No! Please don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Snake said. “Don’t worry. From now on nobody will do anything to you that you don’t want.”
“Mistress Snake, you can’t stop him. I can’t stop him. You have to go away, and I have to stay here.”
Anything would be better than staying here, Snake had thought. Anything. Even exile. Like the dream she had been searching for, the answers slipped up into Snake’s mind, and she laughed and cried at herself for not seeing them sooner.
“Would you come with me, if you could?”
“Come with you?”
“Yes.”
“Mistress Snake — !”
“Healers adopt their children, did you know that? I didn’t realize it before, but I’ve been looking for someone for a long time.”
“But you could have anybody.”
“I want you, if you’ll have me as your parent.”
Melissa huddled against her. “They’ll never let me go,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”
Snake, stroked Melissa’s hair and stared out the window at the darkness and the scattered lights of wealthy, beautiful Mountainside. Some time later, just on the edge of sleep, Melissa whispered, “I’m scared.”
Chapter 8
Snake woke at the first rays of scarlet morning sun. Melissa was gone. She must have slipped out and returned to the stable, and Snake was afraid for her.
Snake unfolded herself from the window seat and padded back to her room, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The tower was silent and cool. Her room was empty. Just as well that Gabriel had left, for though she was annoyed at him she did not want to dissipate her anger. It was not he who deserved it, and she had better uses for it. After washing she dressed, looking out over the valley. The eastern peaks still shadowed much of its floor. As she watched, the darkness crept back from the stable and its geometric white-fenced paddocks. Everything was still.
Suddenly, a horse strode from shade to sunlight. Tremendously lengthened, its shadow sprang from its hooves and marched like a giant through the sparkling grass. It was the big piebald stallion, with Melissa perched on his back.
The stallion broke into a canter and moved smoothly across the field. Snake wished she too were riding through the morning with the wind on her face; she could almost hear the hollow drumming of hooves on earth, smell the fragrance of new grass, see glistening dewdrops flung up by her passing.
The stallion galloped across the field, mane and tail flying. Melissa hunched close over his withers. One of the high stone boundary walls loomed before them.
Snake caught her breath, certain the stallion was out of Melissa’s control. His pace never slackened. Snake leaned forward as if she could reach out and stop them before the horse threw the child against the wall. She could see the tension in him, but Melissa sat still and calm. The horse steadied and sailed over the barrier, clean.
A few paces later his canter slowed; he trotted a few steps and then walked, sedately, grandly, toward the stable, as if he, like Melissa, were in no hurry to return.
If she had had any doubts about the truth of anything Melissa had told her, they were gone now. She had not doubted that Ras abused the child: Melissa’s distress and confusion were all too real. Snake had wondered if riding Gabriel’s horse had been an understandable fantasy, but it was equally real and it made Snake understand how difficult it might be to free her young friend. Melissa was valuable to Ras and he would not want to let her go. Snake was afraid to go straight to the mayor, with whom she had no rapport, and denounce Ras for the twisted thing he was. Who would believe her? In daylight she herself had trouble believing such a thing could ever happen, and Melissa was too frightened to accuse Ras directly. Snake did not blame her.