Dreamsnake (10 page)
At her feet, moss softened the rock around a bathing-basin. Snake pulled off
her boots and stepped onto the cool living carpet.
She stripped and waded into the water. It was just below body temperature,
pleasant but not shocking in the morning heat. There was a brisker pool higher
in the rocks, a warmer one below. Snake lifted a stone from an outlet that
allowed overflow water to spill down upon the sand. She knew better than to
allow dirty water to continue flowing to the oasis. If she did, several angry
caravannaires would come up to tell her to stop. They would do that as quietly
and firmly as they would move animals corralled too close to the shore, or ask
someone to leave who had the bad manners to relieve himself at water’s edge.
Diseases transmitted in fouled water did not exist in the desert.
Snake slid farther into the tepid water, feeling it rise around her, a
pleasurable line crossing her thighs, her hips, her breasts. She lay back
against the warm black stone and let tension flow slowly away. The water tickled
the back of her neck.
She thought back over the last few days: somehow the incidents seemed spread
over a long span of time. They were embedded in a fog of exhaustion. She looked
at her right hand. The ugly bruise was gone, and nothing was left of the sand
viper’s bite but two shiny pink puncture scars. She clenched her fist and held
it: no stiffness, no weakness.
Such a short time for so many changes. Snake had never before encountered
adversity. Her work and training had not been made easy, but they were possible,
and no suspicions or uncertainties or crazies had marred the calm passage of
days. She had never failed at anything. Everything had been crystal-clear, right
and wrong well defined. Snake smiled faintly: if anyone had tried to tell her or
the other students that reality was different, fragmentary and contradictory and
surprising, she would not have believed. Now she understood the changes she had
seen in students older than she, after they came back from their proving years.
And, more, she understood why a few had never returned. Not all had died,
perhaps not even most. Accidents and crazies were the only dangers that would
have no respect for a healer. No, some had realized they were not meant for the
healer’s life, and had abandoned it for something else.
Snake, though, had discovered that no matter what, with all her serpents or
none of them, she would always be a healer. The few worst days of self-pity over
losing Grass were gone; the bad times of grief over Jesse had passed. Snake
would never forget Jesse’s death, but she could not excoriate herself for the
manner of it forever. Instead she intended to carry out Jesse’s wishes.
She sat up and scrubbed herself all over with sand. The stream flowed around
her and spilled through the outlet onto the sand. Snake’s hands lingered on her
body. The pleasure of cool water, relaxation, and touch reminded her with an
almost physical shock how long it was since anyone had touched her, since she
had acted on desire. Lying back in the pool, she fantasied about Arevin.
Barefoot and bare-breasted, her robe slung over her shoulder, Snake descended
from the bathing-pool. Halfway back to Grum’s camp, she stopped short, listening
again for a sound that had touched the edge of her hearing. It came again: the
smooth slide of scales on rock, the sound of a moving serpent. Snake turned
carefully toward the noise. At first she saw nothing, but then, finally, a sand
viper slid from a crack in the stone. It raised its grotesque head, flicking its
tongue out and in.
With a faint mental twinge, recalling the other viper’s bite, Snake waited
patiently until the creature crawled farther from its hiding place. It had none
of the ethereal beauty of Mist, no striking patterns like Sand. It was simply
ugly, with a head of lumpy protuberances and scales of a muddy dark brown. But
it was a species unfamiliar to the healers, and, more, it was a threat to
Arevin’s people. She should have caught one near his camp, but she had not
thought to. That she had regretted ever since.
She had not been able to vaccinate his clan because, not yet knowing what
diseases were endemic, she could not prepare the right catalyst for Sand. When
she returned, if she were ever permitted to return, she would do that. But if
she could capture the viper sliding softly toward her, she could make a vaccine
against its venom as well, as a gift.
The slight breeze blew from the viper to her; it could not scent her. If it
had heat-receptors, the warm black rocks confused it. It did not notice Snake.
Its vision, she supposed, was no better than any other serpent’s. It crawled
right in front of her, almost over her bare foot. She leaned down slowly,
extending one hand toward its head and the other out in front of it. When the
motion startled it, it drew back to strike and put itself right in her grasp.
Snake held it firmly, giving it no chance to bite. It lashed itself around her
forearm, hissed and struggled, showing its startlingly long fangs.
Snake shivered.
“You’d like a taste of me, wouldn’t you, creature?” Awkwardly, one-handed,
she folded her headcloth up and tied the serpent into the makeshift bag so it
would frighten no one when she returned to camp.
She padded on down the smooth stone trail.
Grum had readied a tent for her. It was pitched in shade, its side flaps open
to catch the faint cool early-morning breeze. Grum had left her a bowl of fresh
fruit, the first ripe berries of the summertrees. They were blue-black, round,
smaller than a hen’s egg. Snake bit into one slowly, cautiously, for she had
never eaten one fresh before. The tart thin juice spurted from the berry’s
broken skin. She ate it slowly, savoring it. The seed inside was large, almost
half the volume of the fruit. It had a thick casing to protect it through the
storms of winter and long months or years of drought. When she had finished the
berry, Snake put the seed aside, for it would be planted near the oasis, where
it would have a chance to grow. Lying down, Snake told herself to remember to
take a few summertree seeds with her. If they could be made to live in the
mountains, they would be a good addition to the orchard. A moment later she fell
asleep.
She slept soundly, dreamlessly, and when she awoke that evening, she felt
better than she had for days; she felt good. The camp was quiet. For Grum and
her grandchildren, this was a planned rest-stop for their pack animals and
themselves. They were traders, returning home after a summer of bartering and
buying and selling. Grum’s family, like the other families camped here, held
hereditary rights to a portion of the summertree berries. When the harvest was
over and the fruit dried, Grum’s caravan would leave the desert and travel the
last few days to winter quarters. The harvest would begin soon: the air was
bright with the fruit’s sharp scent.
Grum stood near the corral, her hands folded across the top of her walking
stick. Hearing Snake, she glanced around and smiled. “Sleep well, healer-child?”
“Yes, Grum, thanks.”
Squirrel looked almost ordinary among Grum’s horses; the old trader fancied
appaloosas, piebalds, paints. She thought they made her caravan more noticeable,
and probably she was right. Snake whistled and Squirrel tossed his head and
cantered toward her, kicking his heels, completely sound.
“He’s been lonely for you.”
Snake scratched Squirrel’s ears as he pushed her with his soft muzzle. “Yes,
I can see he’s been pining away.”
Grum chuckled. “We do feed them well. No one ever accused me and mine of
mistreating an animal.”
“I’ll have to coax him to leave.”
“Then stay—come to our village with us and stay the winter. We’re no
healthier than any other people.”
“Thank you, Grum. But I have something I have to do first.” For a moment she
had almost put Jesse’s death out of her mind, but she knew it would never be far
away. Snake ducked under the rope fence. Standing at the tiger-pony’s shoulder,
she lifted his foot.
“We tried to replace the shoe,” Grum said. “But all ours are too big and
there’s no smith to reforge his or make him a new one. Not here, not this late.”
Snake took the pieces of the broken shoe. It was nearly new, for she had had
Squirrel reshod before ever entering the desert. Even the edges at the toe were
still sharp and square. The metal itself must have been flawed. She handed the
pieces back to Grum. “Maybe Ao can use the metal. If I take Squirrel carefully,
can he get to Mountainside?”
“Oh, yes, since you can ride the pretty gray.”
Snake regretted having ridden Squirrel at all. Usually she did not. Walking
was fast enough for her, and Squirrel carried the serpents and her gear. But
after leaving Arevin’s camp she had felt the effects of the sand viper’s bite
again, when she thought she had overcome them. Intending to ride Squirrel only
until she stopped feeling faint, Snake had got on him, and then actually
fainted. He carried her patiently, slumped as she was over his withers, on
across the desert. Only when he began to limp did she come to, hearing the clank
of the broken iron.
Snake scratched her pony’s forehead. “We’ll go tomorrow, then, as soon as the
heat fades. That leaves all day to vaccinate people, if they’ll come to me.”
“We’ll come, my dear, many of us. But why leave us so soon? Come home with
us. It’s the same distance as to Mountainside.”
“I’m going on to the city.”
“Now? It’s too late in the year. You’ll be caught in the storms.”
“Not if I don’t waste any time.”
“Healer-child, dear one, you don’t know what they’re like.”
“Yes, I do. I grew up in the mountains. I watched them down below every
winter.”
“Watching from a mountaintop’s nothing like trying to live through them,”
Grum said.
Squirrel wheeled away and galloped across the corral toward a group of horses
dozing in the shade. Snake suddenly laughed.
“Tell me the joke, little one.”
Snake looked down at the hunched old woman, whose eyes were as bright and
clever as those of a fox.
“I just noticed which of your horses you put him in with.”
Grum’s deep tan flushed pink. “Healer, dear girl, I planned not to let you
pay for his keep—I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Grum, it’s all right. I don’t mind. I’m sure Squirrel doesn’t. But I’m
afraid you’ll be disappointed come foaling time.”
Grum shook her head wisely. “No, I won’t, he’s well behaved for a little
stallion, but he knows what he’s about. The spotty horses are what I like,
especially the leopard ones.” Grum had a leopard-spot appaloosa, her prize:
white with coin-sized black spots all over. “And now I’ll have stripy ones to go
with them.”
“I’m glad you like his color.” Inducing a virus to encapsulate the proper
genes had taken Snake a good bit of work. “But I don’t think he can get you many
foals.”
“Why not? As I said—”
“He may surprise us—I hope he does, for you. But I think he’s probably
sterile.”
“Ah,” Grum said. “Ah, too bad. But I understand. He’s from a horse and one of
those stripy donkeys I heard about once.”
Snake let it pass. Grum’s explanation was quite wrong; Squirrel was no more a
hybrid than any of Grum’s horses, except at a single short gene complex. But
Squirrel was resistant to the venom of Mist and Sand, and though the cause was
different, the result was the same as if he were a mule. His immunities were so
efficient that his system quite likely did not recognize haploid cells, the
sperm, as “self,” and so destroyed them.
“You know, Snake-child, I once had a mule that was a good stud. It happens
sometimes. Maybe this time.”
“Maybe,” Snake said. The chance that her pony’s immunities had left him
fertile was no more remote than the chance of getting a fertile mule: Snake did
not feel she was deceiving Grum with her cautious agreement.
Snake returned to her tent, let Sand out of the serpent case, and milked him
of his venom. He did not fight the process. Holding him behind the head, she
squeezed his mouth open gently and poured a vial of catalyst down his throat. He
was much easier to drug than Mist. He would simply coil up sleepily in his
compartment, little different from normal, while the poison glands manufactured
a complicated chemical soup of several proteins, antibodies for a number of
endemic diseases, stimulants to the immune systems of human beings. Healers had
been using rattlers much longer than they had had cobras; compared to Mist, the
diamondback was tens of generations and hundreds of genetic experiments more
adapted to catalytic drugs and their changes.
In the morning, Snake milked Sand into a serum bottle. She could not use him
to administer the vaccine, for each person required only a small amount. Sand
would inject too much of it too deeply. For vaccinations, she used an
inoculator, an instrument with a circle of short, needle-sharp points that
pressed the vaccine down just beneath the skin. She returned the rattler to his
compartment and went outside.
The people from the camps had begun to gather, adults and children, three or
four generations in each family. Grum stood first in line with all her
grandchildren around her. Altogether there were seven, from Pauli, the oldest,
to a child about six, the little girl who had polished Swift’s tack. They were
not all Grum’s direct descendants, for her clan’s organization depended on a
more extended family. The children of her long-deceased partner’s siblings, of
her sister, and of her sister’s partner’s siblings, were equally considered her
grandchildren. All those people had not come with her, only those who were her
apprentices as future caravannaires.
“Who’s first?” Snake asked cheerfully.
“Me,” Grum said. “I said me, so me it is.” She glanced at the collectors, who
stood in a colorful huddle off to one side. “You watch, Ao!” she called to the
one who had asked for Snake’s broken gear. “You’ll see it doesn’t kill me.”
“Nothing could kill you, old rawhide-skin. I wait to see what happens to the
others.”
“ ‘Old rawhide-skin’? Ao, you old ragbag!”
“Never mind,” Snake said. She raised her voice slightly. “I want to tell you
all two things. First, some people are sensitive to the serum. If the mark turns
bright red, if it hurts sharply, if the skin is hot, come back. I’ll be here
till evening. If anything is going to happen it’ll happen before then, all
right? If someone’s sensitive I can keep them from getting sick. It’s very
important that you come to me if you feel anything worse than a dull ache. Don’t
try to be brave about it.”
Among the nods and agreements Ao spoke up again. “This says you might kill.”
“Are you foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong if you break your leg?”
Ao snorted in derision.
“Then you’re not foolish enough to pretend nothing’s wrong and let yourself
die if you overreact.” Snake took off her robe and pushed up the very short
sleeve of her tunic. “The second thing is this. The vaccination leaves a small
scar, like this one.” She went from group to group, showing them the mark of her
first immunization against venom. “So if anyone wants the scar in a place less
obvious, please tell me now.”
Seeing the tiny innocuous scar calmed even Ao, who muttered without
conviction that healers could stand any poison, and then shut up.
Grum came first in line, and Snake was surprised to see she was pale. “Grum,
are you all right?”
“It’s blood,” Grum said. “Must be, Snake-child. I don’t like to see blood.”
“You’ll hardly see any. Just let yourself relax.” Talking to Grum in a
soothing voice, Snake swabbed the old woman’s arm with alcohol-iodine. She had
only one bottle of the disinfectant left in the medicine compartment of the
serpent case, but that was enough for today and she could get more at the
chemist’s in Mountainside. Snake squeezed a drop of serum onto Grum’s upper arm
and pressed the inoculator through it into her skin.
Grum flinched when the points entered, but her expression did not change.
Snake put the inoculator into alcohol-iodine and swabbed Grum’s arm again.
“There.”
Grum peered at her in surprise, then glanced down at her shoulder. The
pinpricks were bright red but not bleeding. “No more?”
“That’s all.”
Grum smiled and turned toward Ao. “You see, old pothole, it’s nothing.”
“We wait,” Ao said.
The morning progressed smoothly. A few of the children cried, more because of
the sting of the alcohol than the shallow pricks of the inoculator. Pauli had
offered to help, and amused the little ones with stories and jokes while Snake
worked. Most of the children, and not a few of the adults, remained to listen to
Pauli after Snake had vaccinated them.
Apparently Ao and the other collectors were reassured about the safety of the
vaccine, for no one had yet fallen down dead when their turn came. They
submitted stoically to needle pricks and alcohol sting.
“No lockjaw?” Ao said again.
“This will protect you for ten years or so. After that it’s safest to get
another vaccination.”
Snake pressed the inoculator against Ao’s arm, then swabbed the skin. After a
moment of grim hesitation, Ao smiled, for the first time, a wide, delighted
smile. “We fear lockjaw. An evil disease. Slow. Painful.”
“Yes,” Snake said. “Do you know what causes it?”
Ao put one forefinger against the palm of the other hand and made a skewering
gesture. “We are careful, but
…
”
Snake nodded. She could see how the collectors might get serious puncture
wounds more often than other people, considering their work. But Ao knew the
connection between the injury and the disease; a lecture about it would be
patronizing.
“We never see healers before. Not on this side of the desert. People from
other side tell us.”
“Well, we’re mountain people,” Snake said. “We don’t know much about the
desert, so not many of us come here.” That was only partly true, but it was the
easiest explanation to give.
“None before you. You first.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“I was curious. I thought I might be useful.”
“You tell others to come too. No danger for them.” Suddenly the expression on
Ao’s weather-creased face darkened. “Crazies, yes, but no more than in
mountains. Crazies everywhere.”
“I know.”
“Sometime we find him.”
“Will you do one thing for me, Ao?”
“Anything.”
“The crazy took nothing but my maps and my journal. I suppose he’ll keep the
maps if he’s sane enough to use them, but the journal’s worthless to anyone but
me. Maybe he’ll throw it away and your people will find it.”
“We keep it for you!”
“That’s what I’d like.” She described the journal. “Before I leave I’ll give
you a letter for the healers’ station in the north mountains. If a messenger
going that way took the journal and the letter there they’d be sure to get
paid.”
“We look. We find many things but not books too often.”
“Probably it’ll never turn up, I know that. Or the crazy thought it was
something valuable and burned it when he realized it wasn’t.”
Ao flinched at the thought of perfectly good paper being burned to nothing.
“We look hard.”
“Thank you.”
Ao went off after the other collectors.
As Pauli finished the story of Toad and the Three Tree Frogs, Snake checked
the children and was glad not to find the swelling and redness of any allergic
reactions.
“ ‘And Toad didn’t mind not being able to climb trees any more,’ ” Pauli
said. “And that’s the end. Go on home, now. You’ve all been very good.”
They ran off in a bunch, yelling and making frog-croak sounds. Pauli sighed
and relaxed. “I hope the real frogs don’t think mating time’s arrived out of
season. We’ll have them hopping all over camp.”
“That’s the kind of chance an artist takes,” Snake said.
“An artist!” Pauli laughed and started rolling up her sleeve.
“You’re as good as any minstrel I’ve ever heard.”
“Storyteller, maybe” Pauli said. “But not a minstrel.”
“Why not?”
“I’m tone-deaf, I can’t sing.”
“Most of the minstrels I’ve met can’t make a story. You have a gift.”
Snake prepared the inoculator and put it against Pauli’s velvet-soft skin.
The tiny needles sparkled in the drop of vaccine they held.
“Are you sure you want this scar here?” Snake asked suddenly.
“Yes, why not?”
“Your skin’s so beautiful I hate to mark it.” Snake showed Pauli her free
hand, the scars. “I think I envy you a little bit.”
Pauli patted Snake’s hand, her touch as gentle as Grum’s but steadier, and
with more strength behind it. “Those are scars to take pride in. I’ll be proud
of the one you give me. Whoever sees it will know I’ve met a healer.”
Reluctantly, Snake pressed the needles against Pauli’s arm.
Snake rested through the hot afternoon, as did everyone else in camp. She had
nothing else to do after she wrote Ao’s letter, nothing to pack. She had nothing
left. Squirrel would carry only his saddle, for the frame was intact and Snake
could have the leather repaired. Other than that and the clothes she wore, she
had only the serpent case, and Mist and Sand, and the ugly sand viper in the
place where Grass should be.
Despite the heat, Snake lowered the tent flaps and opened two of the case’s
compartments. Mist flowed out like water, raising her head and spreading her
hood, flicking out her tongue to taste the strangeness of the tent. Sand, as
usual, crawled out at his leisure. Watching them glide through the warm dimness,
with only the faint blue light of the bioluminescent lantern glinting on their
scales, Snake wondered what would have happened if the crazy had ransacked her
camp while she was there. Had the serpents been in their compartments he could
have crept in unnoticed, for she had slept heavily while recovering from the
viper bite. The crazy could have knocked her on the head and begun his
vandalism, or his search. Snake still could not understand why a crazy would
destroy everything so methodically unless he were making a search, and,
therefore, not a crazy at all. Her maps were no different from those most desert
people carried and shared. She would have let anyone who asked copy them. The
maps were essential but easily obtained. The journal, though, was valueless
except to Snake. She almost wished the crazy had attacked the camp while she was
there, for if he had ripped open the serpent case he would not destroy anyone
else’s camp ever again. Snake was not pleased with herself for considering that
possibility with any sort of pleasure, but it was exactly how she felt.
Sand slid across her knee and wrapped himself around her wrist, making a
thick bracelet. He had fit there much better several years before, when he was
small. A few minutes later Mist glided around Snake’s waist and up and across
her shoulders. In better times, if all were well, Grass would have circled her
throat, a soft, living emerald necklace.
“Snake-child, is it safe?” Grum did not pull the tent flaps aside even enough
to peek through.
“It’s safe, if you aren’t afraid. Shall I put them away?”
Grum hesitated. “Well
…
no.”
She came through the entrance sideways, shouldering the tent flaps open. Her
hands were full. While her eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light, she
stood quite still.
“It’s all right,” Snake said. “They’re both over here with me.”
Blinking, Grum came closer. Next to the packsaddle she laid a blanket, a
leather folder, a waterskin, a small cook-pot. “Pauli is getting provisions,”
she said. “None of this will make up for what happened, but—”
“Grum, I haven’t even paid you for Squirrel’s keep yet.”
“Nor shall you,” Grum said, smiling. “I explained about that.”
“You have the bad end of a gamble that costs me nothing.”
“Never mind. You visit us in the spring and see the little stripy foals your
pony sires. I have a feeling.”
“Then let me pay for the new equipment.”
“No, we all talked, and we wanted to give it to you.” She shrugged her left
shoulder where she had been vaccinated. The place was probably sore by now. “To
thank you.”
“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” Snake said, “but the vaccinations are
something no healer ever accepts payment for. No one here was ill. I’ve done
nothing for anyone.”
“No one was ill, no, but had we been you would have helped. Am I right?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“You would give, if someone could not pay. Should we do any less? Should we
send you into the desert with nothing?”
“But I can pay.” In her case she carried gold and silver coins.
“Snake!” Grum was scowling, and the endearments left her speech abruptly.
“Desert people do not steal, and they do not allow their friends to be stolen
from. We failed you. Leave us our honor.”
Snake realized Grum did not intend, had never intended, to be persuaded to
take payment. Snake’s accepting the gift was important to her.
“I’m sorry, Grum. Thank you.”
The horses were saddled and ready to go. Snake put most of the equipment on
Swift so Squirrel would not have much to carry. The mare’s saddle, though
decorated and intricately tooled, was functional. It fit the horse so well and
was so comfortable and of such excellent quality that Snake began to feel less
uneasy about the flamboyance of it.
Grum and Pauli had come to see her off. No one had had any adverse reaction
to the vaccination, so it was safe for Snake to leave. She hugged both the women
gently. Grum kissed her cheek, her lips soft and warm and very dry.
“Good-bye,” Grum whispered as Snake mounted the mare. “Good-bye!” she called
louder.
“Good-bye!” Snake rode away, turning in the saddle to wave back.
“If the storms come,” Grum cried, “find a rock-cave. Don’t forget the
landmarks, they’ll get you to Mountainside quicker!”
Smiling, Snake rode the mare between the summertrees, still able to hear
Grum’s advice and cautions about oases and water and the orientation of the sand
dunes, the direction of the wind, the ways the caravannaires had of keeping
their bearings in the desert; and about trails and roads and inns once Snake
reached the central mountains, the high range separating the eastern and western
deserts. Squirrel trotted at Snake’s side, sound on his unshod forefoot.
The mare, well rested and well fed, would have galloped, but Snake held her
to a jog. They had a long way to go.
