Dreamsnake (20 page)

The wind in Arevin’s face felt cool and clean. He was grateful for the
mountain climate, free of dust and heat and the ever present sand. At the crest
of a pass he stood beside his horse and looked out over the countryside Snake
had been raised in. The land was bright and very green, and he could both see
and hear great quantities of free-flowing water. A river meandered through the
center of the valley below, and a stone’s throw from the trail a spring gushed
across mossy rock, His respect for Snake increased. Her people did not migrate;
they lived here all year around. She would have had little experience with
extreme climates when she entered the desert. This was no preparation for the
black sand waste. Arevin himself had not been prepared for the central desert’s
severity. His maps were old; no member of the clan still living had ever used
them. But they had led him safely to the other side of the desert, following a
line of trustworthy oases. It was so late in the season that he had met no one
at all: no one to ask advice about the best route, no one to ask about Snake.

He mounted his horse and rode down the trail into the healers’ valley.

Before he encountered any dwellings he reached a small orchard. It was
unusual: the trees farthest from the road were full-grown, gnarled, while the
nearest ones were merely saplings, as if a few trees had been planted every year
for many years. A youth of fourteen or fifteen lounged in the shade, eating a
piece of fruit. When Arevin stopped, the young man glanced up, rose, and started
toward him. Arevin urged his horse across the grassy edge of the meadow. They
met in a row of trees that seemed perhaps five or six years old.

“Hi,” the young man said. He picked another piece of fruit and held it out
toward Arevin. “Have a pear? The peaches and the cherries are all gone and the
oranges aren’t quite ripe yet.”

Arevin saw that, in fact, each tree bore fruit of several different shapes,
but leaves of only a single shape. He reached uncertainly for the pear,
wondering if the ground the trees grew on was poisoned.

“Don’t worry,” the young man said. “It isn’t radioactive. There aren’t any
craters around here.”

At this Arevin drew back his hand. He had not said a word, yet the youth
seemed to know what he was thinking.

“I made the tree myself, and I never work with hot mutagens.”

Arevin had no idea what the boy was talking about except that he seemed to be
assuring him that the fruit was safe. He wished he understood the boy as well as
the boy understood him. Not wishing to be impolite, he took the pear.

“Thank you.” Since the youth was watching him both hopefully and expectantly,
Arevin bit into the fruit. It was sweet and tart at the same time, and very
juicy. He took another bite. “It’s very good,” he said. “I’ve never seen a plant
that would produce four different things.”

“First project,” the boy said. He gestured back toward the older trees. “We
all do one. It’s pretty simple-minded but it’s traditional.”

“I see,” Arevin said.

“My name’s Thad.”

“I am honored to meet you,” Arevin said. “I am looking for Snake.”

“Snake!” Thad frowned. “I’m afraid you’ve had a long ride for nothing. She
isn’t here. She isn’t even due back for months.”

“But I could not have passed her.”

Thad’s pleasant and helpful expression changed to one of worry. “You mean
she’s coming home already? What happened? Is she all right?”

“She was well when I saw her last,” Arevin said. Surely she should have
reached her home well ahead of him, if nothing had happened. Thoughts of
accidents, unlike viper bites, to which she would be vulnerable, assailed him.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Thad was beside him, holding his elbow to steady him.

“Yes,” Arevin said, but his voice was shaky.

“Are you sick? I’m not done with my training yet but one of the other healers
can help you.”

“No, no, I’m not ill. But I can’t understand how I reached this place before
she did.”

“But why’s she coming home so early?”

Arevin gazed down at the intent young man, now as concerned as Arevin
himself.

“I do not think I should tell her story for her,” he said. “Perhaps I should
speak to her parents. Will you show me where they live?”

“I would if I could,” Thad said. “Only she doesn’t have any. Won’t I do? I’m
her brother.”

“I’m sorry to cause you distress. I did not know your parents were dead.”

“They aren’t. Or they might be. I don’t know. I mean I don’t know who they
are. Or who Snake’s are.”

Arevin felt thoroughly confused. He had never had any trouble understanding
what Snake said to him. But he did not think he had comprehended half of what
this youth had told him in only a few minutes.

“If you do not know who your parents are, or whose Snake’s are, how can you
be her brother?”

Thad looked at him quizzically. “You really don’t know much about healers, do
you?”

“No,” Arevin said, feeling that the conversation had taken still another
unexplained turn. “I do not. We have heard of you, of course, but Snake is the
only one to visit my clan.“

“The reason I asked,” Thad said, “is because most people know we’re all
adopted. We don’t have families, exactly. We’re all one family.”

“Yet you said you are her brother, as if she did not have another.” Except
for his blue eyes, and they were not the same shade at all, Thad did not look
anything like Snake.

“That’s how we think of each other. I used to get in trouble a lot when I was
a kid and she’d always stick up for me.”

“I see.” Arevin dismounted and adjusted his horse’s bridle, considering what
the boy had told him. “You are not blood kin with Snake,” he said, “but you feel
a special relationship to her. Is this correct?”

“Yes.” Thad’s easygoing attitude had vanished.

“If I tell you why I have come, will you advise me, thinking first of Snake,
even if you should have to go against your own customs?”

Arevin was glad the youth hesitated, for he would not have been able to
depend on an impulsive and emotional answer.

“Something really bad has happened, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Arevin said. “And she blames herself.”

“You feel a special relationship for her, too, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And she for you?”

“I think so.”

“I’m on her side,” Thad said. “Always.”

Arevin unbuckled the horse’s bridle and slipped it off so his mount could
graze. He sat down beneath Thad’s fruit tree and the boy sat nearby.

“I come from the other side of the western desert,” Arevin said. “There we
have no good serpents, only sand vipers whose bite means death
…
”

Arevin told his story and waited for Thad to respond, but the young healer
stared at his scarred hands for a long time.

“Her dreamsnake was killed,” he said finally.

Thad’s voice held shock and hopelessness; the tone chilled Arevin all the way
to his almost impervious, controlled center.

“It was not her fault,” Arevin said again, though he had continually stressed
that fact. Thad now knew about the clan’s fear of serpents and even about
Arevin’s sister’s horrible death. But Arevin could see quite clearly that Thad
did not understand.

The boy looked up at him. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “This is
really awful.” He paused and looked around and rubbed the heel of his hand
across his forehead. “I guess we better talk to Silver. She was one of Snake’s
teachers and she’s the eldest now.”

Arevin hesitated. “Is that wise? Pardon me, but if you, Snake’s friend,
cannot comprehend how all this happened, will any of the other healers be able
to?”

“I understand what happened!”

“You know what happened,” Arevin said. “But you do not understand it. I do
not want to offend you, but I fear what I say is true.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Thad said. “I still want to help her. Silver will think
of something to do.”

The exquisite valley in which the healers lived combined areas of total
wilderness with places of complete civilization. What appeared to Arevin to be
virgin climax forest, ancient and unchanging, spread as far as he could see,
beginning on the north slope of the valley. Yet immediately downhill from the
tremendous dark old trees, an array of windmills spun gaily. The forest of trees
and the forest of windmills harmonized.

The station was a serene place, a small town of well-built wood and stone
houses. People greeted Thad or waved to him, and nodded to Arevin. The faint
shouts of a children’s game drifted down the breeze.

Thad left Arevin’s horse loose in a pasture, then led Arevin to a building
somewhat larger than the others, and somewhat removed from the main group.
Inside, Arevin was surprised to observe, the walls were not of wood but of
smooth white glazed ceramic tile. Even where there were no windows, the
illumination was as bright as day, neither the eerie blue glow of
bioluminescence nor the soft yellow light of gas flames. The place possessed a
feeling of activity quite different from the placid atmosphere of the town
itself. Through a half-open door Arevin saw several young people, younger even
than Thad, bending over complicated instruments, completely absorbed in their
work.

Thad gestured toward the students. “These are the labs. We grind the lenses
for the microscopes right here at the station. Make our own glassware too.”

Almost all the people Arevin saw here—and, now that he thought of it, most of
the people in the village— were either very young or elderly. The young ones in
training, he thought, and the old ones teaching. Snake and the others out
practicing their profession.

Thad climbed a flight of stairs, went down a carpeted hall, and knocked
softly on a door. They waited for several minutes, and Thad seemed to think this
quite ordinary, for he did not become impatient. Finally a pleasant, rather
high-pitched voice said, “Come in.”

The room beyond was not so stark and severe as the labs. It was wood-paneled,
with a large window overlooking the windmills. Arevin had heard of books, but he
had never actually seen one. Here, two walls lined with shelves were full of
them. The old healer sitting in a rocking chair held a book in her lap.

“Thad,” she said, nodding, with a welcoming yet questioning tone.

“Silver.” He brought Arevin in. “This is a friend of Snake’s. He’s come a
long way to talk to us.”

“Sit down.” Her voice and her hands shook slightly. She was very old, her
joints swollen and twisted. Her skin was smooth and soft and translucent, deeply
lined on the cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were blue.

Following Thad’s lead, Arevin sat on a chair. He felt uncomfortable; he was
accustomed to sitting cross-legged on the ground. . “What do you wish to say?”

“Are you Snake’s friend?” Arevin asked. “Or only her teacher?”

He thought she might laugh, but she gazed at him somberly. “Her friend.”

“Silver nominated her for her name,” Thad said. “Did you think I wanted you
to talk to just anybody?”

Still, Arevin wondered if he should tell his story to this kindly old woman,
for he remembered Snake’s words all too clearly: “My teachers seldom give the
name I bear, and they’ll be disappointed.” Perhaps Silver’s disappointment would
be great enough to exile Snake from her people.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Silver said. “Snake is my friend, and I love her. You
need not fear me.”

Arevin told his story for the second time that day, watching Silver’s face
intently. Her expression did not change. Surely, after all the experiences she
must have had, she could understand what had happened better than young Thad
could.

“Ah,” she said. “Snake went across the desert.” She shook her head. “My brave
and impulsive child.”

“Silver,” Thad said, “what can we do?”

“I don’t know, my dear.” She sighed. “I wish Snake had come home.”

“Surely the small serpents die,” Arevin said. “Surely others have been lost
in accidents. What is done?”

“They live a long time,” Thad said. “Longer than their healers, sometimes.
They don’t breed well.”

“Every year we train fewer people because we have too few dreamsnakes,”
Silver said in her feathery voice.

“Snake’s excellence must entitle her to another serpent,” Arevin said.

“One cannot give what one does not have,‘” Silver said.

“She thought some might have been born.”

“Only a few ever hatched,” the old woman said sadly.

Thad glanced away. “One of us might decide not to finish their training
…
”

“Thad,” Silver said, “we haven’t enough for all of you now. Do you think
Snake would ask you to return the dreamsnake she gave you?”

Thad shrugged, still not meeting Silver’s gaze or Arevin’s. “She shouldn’t
have to ask. I should give it to her.”

“We cannot decide without Snake,” Silver said. “She must come home.”

Arevin looked down at his hands, realizing that there would be no easy
solution to this dilemma, no simple explanation of what had happened, then
forgiveness for Snake.

“You mustn’t punish her for my clan’s error,” he said again.

Silver shook her head. “It is not a question of punishment. But she cannot be
a healer without a dreamsnake. I have none to give her.”

They sat together in silence. After a few minutes Arevin wondered if Silver
had fallen asleep. He started when she spoke to him without glancing away from
the view out her window.

“Will you keep looking for her?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“When you find her, please tell her to come home. The council will meet with
her.”

Thad rose, and with a deep sense of failure and depression Arevin understood
that they had been dismissed.

They went back outside, leaving the workrooms and their strange machines,
their strange light, their strange smells. The sun was setting, joining the long
shadows together into darkness.