Dusssie (7 page)

“Flowers? Take them up to the nurses' station on the fifth floor, west wing.”

So I headed up there. But I didn't stop at the nurses' station. I strode past, into the west wing, trying to look like I worked there or something, like I did this every day of my life and I was busy and nobody better bother me.

It wasn't hard to find Troy. I just followed the crowd of white coats. No visitors? Ha. Maybe they weren't letting in kids Troy knew from school, but it looked like doctors had come from all over the country to have a look at the stone boy.

They were mostly men, taller than I am, talking medical stuff to each other right over the top of my head. They didn't notice me. I slipped between them and peeked in at the door first, to be sure it was Troy's room, and saw his stone Nikes and blue-jeans—well, white stone jeans now—at the bottom of the bed.

Forget having a few moments alone with him. It was standing room only in there. White coats everywhere.

But I had to try to help him.

There had to be something I could do …

Sssilly girl, grumbled the indigo snake. I don't underssstand. Why not jussst leave him
?

Dusssie's half-human
, said a corn snake kindly.
She'sss concerned—

Ssso? That'sss her problem. We were jussst doing our job
—

Sssh!
whimpered the yellow-bellied racer.
I'm ssscared
.

So was I. But I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then started to edge through the whispering crowd in Troy's room, working my way to his bedside.

I caught glimpses between the white coats, seeing Troy in bits and pieces. Wires punched into the stone of his arms and body, right through his stone clothing, wires leading to, like, TV screens. And tubes in him leading to machines with plastic bags that put liquids into him—the part that was still alive, I mean, under the stone—or took liquids out of him, whatever. And his poor stone hands, up in the air rigid as if he thought somebody was going to hit him. I saw a stone Band-Aid on the web of his left thumb, like he'd cut himself slicing a bagel. And when I saw his face …

For a moment I felt weak. I had to stand still and swallow hard.

It didn't matter that his eyes were no longer the color of tarnished silver, that they stared at the ceiling stony blind and white. He was still Troy, yet more than Troy. I saw all the Prince Charmings of the world in that marble face no human hand had carved, perfect stone softness of brow and cheekbones and jaw and chin, perfect white marble blemish on one side of his nose, his stone lips parted slightly in—terror. He looked so scared.

I got myself moving again and wormed my way between two nurses to lay the roses on the bed by his head. Maybe he could smell them, I hoped. “Troy,” I told him softly, “it's me, Dusie.”

Of course he couldn't say anything, or move, or even blink. There was no way for me to tell whether he could hear me, and if he did, whether he hated me. Whether he would want to put me in jail—

This was no time to start worrying about myself.

I bent close to his ear. “Troy,” I whispered, “I don't know how, but I'm going to try to help—”

“Hey!” a man's voice boomed out behind me. “What's that girl doing in here?”

Somebody else ordered, “Get her out of here!”

I felt a nurse grab my arms.

“Wait!” yelled another man's voice. “Look at the heart monitor!”

A babble of voices broke out as I yanked myself free of the hands trying to pull me away from Troy.

“His heart's going like a racehorse!”

“His pulse is up to—”

“What's he reacting to?”

“The girl! What did—”

Quickly, before they could pull me away again, I bent and kissed Troy on his slightly parted lips, thinking Troy, Troy, wake up … I could feel a warm breath gasping in his mouth, but his lips felt so hard, so cold. Stone.

And they stayed that way. All that happened was that the doctors kept yelling. “His body temperature just spiked!”

“His respiration's way up!”

“All his vital signs—”

I didn't care. Kissing him like he was Sleeping Beauty hadn't worked, so what now? Tell him I loved him and I would marry him, like in Beauty and the Beast? But no, I had it backwards, he was Beauty and I was the Beast, so he should tell
me
.

I couldn't think what to do. There was too much yelling.

“How could he feel that?”

“He didn't. She said something to him—”

“He heard her?”

“Young lady!” I felt a heavy hand on my arm. “What did you—”

I hate it when anybody lays a hand on me; it just flips me out. As Troy had discovered, poor guy. I snatched my arm away, and my snakes started to coil. Under its blue velvet hat, my head started to hiss. Voices inside my skull started to chorus worse than the voices in Troy's hospital room.

Predator!

Roussse! Roussse! Deploy necksss!

Deploy fangsss!

Prepare to ssstrike!

No! Ssslither away!

Essscape!

Good idea. Doctors and nurses grabbed at me from all directions.

Dusssie, essscape!
urged the scarlet king snake.

I wrestled myself free and ran.

There was nothing else I could do.

Hanging onto my hat brim with both hands, I put my head down and scuttled between their legs like a—like a salamander or something. Sometimes being smaller has advantages. I scooted, I darted, I wormed and squirmed, I snaked right through the crowd in Troy's room and sprinted down the hallway. I jumped in front of some poor lady with a cart full of food trays and grabbed her elevator. The service elevator. I hit the close door button and the ground floor button and stood panting, trying to catch my breath, as the elevator lumbered down, down. It dumped me in the kitchen, and I took one look and ran for daylight. Out back of the hospital someplace, I dashed up a street, saw a bus pulling into a stop, and hopped on.

The bus rolled. I'd gotten away.

I slumped in a backseat for a long time, trying to think, wondering whether Troy … had his heartbeat gone up because he liked me as a girl, the way those doctors seemed to think?

Or because he was terrified of me?

Did he know I was trying to help him?

Did he know I … I had no idea how to do it?

I guess my snakes knew I didn't want to talk, because they kept silent. They weren't so bad really, sometimes.

They stayed out of my hair, so to speak, while I got off the bus, caught another, and went home.

It was still morning.

Already I had failed.

I ate lunch—leftover paella, leftover London broil, leftover General Tso's chicken, scrambled eggs, a can of tuna. I felt bummed, depressed, fat, fit to splat, yet I couldn't stop eating till I felt like I'd swallowed a pig.

Then I waddled to the sofa, where I collapsed and turned on the TV. I wanted to forget about my weird, messed-up life by watching cartoons or something, but the indigo snake commanded,
Sssnake show!

And they all started yammering.

Sssnake man!

Python!

Boomssslang!

Sssidewinder!

“Oh, for God's sake,” I complained. We'd caught a couple of segments of the animal channel the night before, that was my mistake. I was in no mood to watch any insane biologist dancing with reptiles. I whammed the power button to kill the TV, jumped up, yanked on my coat and an ugly head scarf, and slammed out.

I started walking with no idea where I was going. Thinking about Troy had me so bummed that even going nowhere felt better than sitting still. There was nothing much to see except chichi restaurants, big snooty art galleries, and expensive stores. And skyscrapers in the distance, dark against a smoggy gray sky.

My mood was pretty dark and pretty gray, too. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and something rotting, maybe the Hudson River. I wished I'd thought to bring along my iPod so I could listen to music and not think. I wondered what Troy was thinking about me inside his stone skull. I wondered whether Troy's parents cried about him a lot. I wondered whether they visited him every day. I wondered whether they would keep him in the hospital or take him home and stand him in a corner. My snakes stopped hissing about the TV and went quiet, maybe rocked by the rhythm of my walking, maybe listening to my thoughts.

Sssome thingsss you can control, sssome thingsss you can't
, said a gentle dandelion-yellow voice, a corn snake.
No ussse worrying
.

Like I said, sometimes they weren't so bad. “Corny,” I grumbled, but I did feel better. Walking seemed to be a good idea.

Dusssie
, said one of the little garter snakes,
tell usss a ssstory
.

“
Huh?
” What was this?

A ssstory!
said several voices at once. Ribbon snakes, queen snakes, milk snakes.

The garter snake elaborated,
A ssstory about what it'sss like to have legsss
.

No! Tell usss about intessstinal parasssitesss
, demanded a king snake.

Whoa. Who did they think I was, their mother? I was just a girl—well, I used to be just a girl—not a storyteller. “You tell
me
a story,” I said, just to argue.

For once they all shut up; there was a silence in my mind. I walked aimlessly, watching the wind scuttle scraps of paper along the gutters like white rats, feeling so clueless that I guess my snakes sensed it. In a moment, a voice said,
Very well. I will tell usss all a ssstory
.

It was the smooth green snake, which was a surprise, to me at least. She hardly ever said anything.

She continued,
I will tell usss the ssstory of the Ssserpent Mother and the Jewel of Wisssdom
.

And she did. But I can't even begin to tell it the way she did, because I don't remember any words at all, just—just story, with colors that had fragrance and smells that sang and flickering tastes brighter than any dream:

A sun snake-ray flew to Mother Serpent and told her to go into the dark place. Back then snakes could fly, because they lived in the sky, rain snakes and wind snakes and the white-fire serpent of lightning and many others. But Mother Serpent was the first to crawl on the earth. She could fly without wings and run without legs, but now she had to venture into the dark. Why? she asked, and the sun snake told her: to find wisdom for the world
.

She did not understand, but she obeyed. She burrowed down through sharp rocks that battered her bright scales. She burrowed through groping willow roots that tried to grab her. She became weak with hunger, for there was nothing to eat. She burrowed through masses of attack worms. Then when she got to the center of the earth she found a Wyrm, which was worse, a kind of giant worm dragon, coiled in the mouth of the World Tree
.

The Mother Serpent smelled the presence of Wyrm with her forked tongue. She told him, I have come for Wisdom. No, he told her, you will never be wise. She told him again, I have come for Wisdom. He dared her, saying, Take it from me if you can. She anchored herself with a coil and reared her hard body to its full height and swelled her muscles and flattened her neck and hissed, Give me Wisssdom. And Wyrm told her, bite your tail, worm
.

Now to call a serpent a worm is the greatest insult. So Mother Serpent knew she had to battle him, and she knew that it was as he had said, she was not wise and she never would be, for she knew Wyrm would kill her
.

So they battled, and he did. He sank his fiery fangs deep into her head, blinding her, and shook her until her spine snapped, and flung her far away. She dragged her broken body out of the dark place, and when she felt the rays of the sun she stopped, and laid many moon-round eggs, and then she died
.

The sun serpents kept the eggs warm. And out of them hatched many serpents, tree boas and sea serpents and adders and glass snakes and sidewinders and anacondas and little striped garter snakes and many, many more, all the serpents of the world. And they crawled the earth, for none of them could fly, but each of them bore between its eyes a singular jewel, sapphire or ruby or topaz or emerald or amethyst, as befit the First Serpents of Earth. They all slipped through the great rib arches of the Mother Serpent's body, then slithered away north and south and east and west. The first humans saw the First Serpents, and coveted the jewels between their eyes, and tried to kill them. And many humans died trying. Some snakes died also, but many lived, and mated and laid eggs and gave more serpents to the world
.

As time and generations passed, the jewel could no longer be seen, but all serpents bear it still between their eyes, within their minds, and the name of that jewel is Wisdom. And to this day, humans still hate and fear serpents and try to kill them, although they have forgotten why
.

That was the story the green snake told. After it was over, there was silence. I kept walking till the gray sky over the city turned even darker. But my mind no longer felt dark and gray. The story gave me an awesome feeling that stayed with me for hours afterward, like Eternity perfume.

“… startling development in the Troy Lindquist case,” the TV reporter said.

Halfway listening from my bedroom as Mom watched the news, I mumbled, “Uh-oh.”

“… when a mystery girl somehow bypassed hospital security, entered the stone boy's room, and kissed him,” the anchorman was saying. “He responded …”

Mom yelled, “Dusie!”

I didn't move or answer.

“… markedly elevated heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, and brain activity.” The anchorman sounded smug, like this was supposed to make people chuckle. “Doctors are no longer in any doubt that Troy Lindquist has intact hearing and can react to external stimuli. The mystery girl, however, vanished in the confusion. Witnesses remember only that she was wearing a large blue velvet hat …”