Dreamsnake (21 page)

“Where shall I look?” Arevin said suddenly.

“What?”

“I came here because I believed Snake was coming home. Now I don’t know where
she might be. It’s nearly winter. If the storms have started
…
”

“She knows better than to get stuck out on the desert in winter,” Thad said.
“No, what must have happened is somebody needed help and she had to go off the
route home. Maybe her patient was even in the central mountains. She’ll be
somewhere south of here, in Middlepass or New Tibet or Mountainside.”

“All right,” Arevin said, grateful for any possibility. “I will go south.”
But he wondered if Thad were speaking with the unquestioning self-confidence of
extreme youth.

Thad opened the front door of a long low house. Inside, rooms opened off a
central living-space. Thad threw himself down on a deep couch. Putting aside
careful manners, Arevin sat on the floor.

“Dinner’s in a while,” Thad said. “The room next to mine is free right now,
you can use it.”

“Perhaps I should go on,” Arevin said.

“Tonight? It’s crazy to ride at night around here. We’d find you at the
bottom of a cliff in the morning. At least stay till tomorrow.”

“If that is your advice.” In fact, he felt a great heavy lethargy. He
followed Thad into the spare room.

“I’ll get your pack,” Thad said. “You take a rest. You look like you need
it.”

Arevin sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.

At the door, Thad turned back. “Listen, I’d like to help. Is there anything I
can do for you?”

“No,” Arevin said. “Thank you. I am very comfortable.”

Thad shrugged. “Okay.”

The black-sand desert stretched to the horizon, flat and empty, unmarred by
any sign that it had ever been crossed. Heat waves rose like smoke. There was no
steady wind yet, but all the marks and detritus of the traders’ route had
already been obliterated: erased or covered by the shifting breezes that
preceded winter. At the crest of the central mountains’ eastern range, Snake and
Melissa looked out toward their invisible destination. They dismounted to rest
the horses. Melissa adjusted a strap on Squirrel’s new riding saddle, then
glanced back the way they had come, down into the high valley that had been her
home. The town clung to the steep mountain slope, above the fertile valley
floor. Windows and black glass panels glittered in the noon sun.

“I’ve never been this far from there before,” Melissa said with wonder. “Not
in my whole life.” She turned away from the valley, toward Snake. “Thank you,
Snake,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Melissa.”

Melissa dropped her gaze. Her right cheek, the unscarred one, flushed scarlet
beneath her tan. “I should tell you something about that.”

“About what?”

“My name. It’s true, what Ras said, that it isn’t really—”

“Never mind. Melissa is your name as far as I’m concerned. I had a different
child-name, too.”

“But they gave you your name. It’s an honor. You didn’t just take it like I
did mine.”

They remounted and started down the well-used switchback trail.

“But I could have turned down the name they offered me,” Snake said. “If I’d
done that, I would have picked my own adult name like the rest of the healers
do.”

“You could have turned it down?”

“Yes.”

“But they hardly ever give it! That’s what I heard.”

“That’s true.”

“Has anybody ever said they didn’t want it?”

“Not as far as I know. I’m only the fourth one, though, so not very many
people have had the chance. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t accepted it.”

“But why?”

“Because of the responsibility.” Her hand rested on the corner of the serpent
case. Since the crazy’s attack she had begun to touch it more often. She drew
her hand away from the smooth leather. Healers tended to die fairly young or
live to a very old age. The Snake immediately preceding her had been only
forty-three when he died, but the other two had each outlasted a century. Snake
had a tremendous body of achievement to live up to, and so far she had failed.

The trail led downward through forever trees, among the gnarled brown trunks
and dark needles of the trees legend said never bore seeds and never died. Their
resin sharpened the air with a piny tang.

“Snake
…
” Melissa said.

“Yes?”

“Are you
…
are you my mother?”

Taken aback, Snake hesitated a moment. Her people did not form family groups
quite the way others did. She herself had never called anyone “mother” or
“father,” though all the older healers bore exactly that relationship to her.
And Melissa’s tone was so wistful
…

“All healers are your family now,” Snake said, “but I adopted you, and I
think that makes me your mother.”

“I’m glad.”

“So am I.”

Below the narrow band of scraggly forest, almost nothing grew on the
mountain’s flanks but lichen, and though the altitude was still high and the
path steep, Snake and Melissa might as well have been on the desert floor
already. Below the trees, the heat and the dryness of the air increased
steadily. When they finally did reach the sand, they stopped for a moment to
change, Snake into the robes Arevin’s people had given her, Melissa into desert
clothes they had bought for her in Mountainside.

They saw no one all day. Snake glanced over her shoulder from time to time,
and kept on guard whenever the horses passed through dunefields where someone
could hide and ambush unsuspecting passersby. But there was no trace of the
crazy. Snake began to wonder if the two attacks might have been coincidence, and
her memories of other noises around her camp a dream. And if the crazy was a
crazy, perhaps his vendetta against her had by now been diverted by some other
irresistible concern.

She did not convince herself.

By evening the mountains lay far behind them, forming an abrupt wall. The
horses’ hooves crunched in the sand, but the underlying silence was complete and
unearthly. Snake and Melissa rode and talked as darkness fell. The heavy clouds
obscured the moon; the constant glow of the lightcells in Snake’s lantern,
relatively brighter now, provided just enough illumination for the travelers to
continue. Hanging from the saddle, the lantern swung with Swift’s walk. The
black sand reflected light like water. Squirrel and Swift moved closer together.
Gradually, Snake and Melissa talked more and more softly, and finally they did
not speak at all.

Snake’s compass, the nearly invisible moon, the direction of the wind, the
shapes of sand dunes all helped them proceed in the right direction, but Snake
could not put aside the pervasive wilderness fear that she was traveling in
circles. Turning in the saddle, Snake watched the invisible trail behind them
for several minutes, but no other light followed. They were alone; there was
nothing but the darkness. Snake settled back.

“It’s spooky,” Melissa whispered.

“I know. I wish we could travel by day.”

“Maybe it’ll rain.”

“That would be nice.”

The desert received rain only once every year or two, but when it came, it
usually arrived just before winter. Then the dormant seeds exploded into growth
and reproduction and the sharp-grained desert softened with green and bits of
color. In three days the delicate plants shriveled to brown lace and died,
leaving hard-cased seeds to endure another year, or two, or three, until the
rain roused them again. But tonight the air was dry and quiet and gave no hint
of any change.

A light shimmered in the distance. Snake, dozing, woke abruptly from a dream
in which the crazy was following and she saw his lantern moving closer and
closer. Up until now she had not realized how sure she was that somehow he was
still following her, still somewhere near, fired by incomprehensible motives.

But the light was not a carried lantern, it was steady and stationary and
ahead of her. The sound of dry leaves drifted toward her on faint wind: they
were nearing the first oasis on the route to Center.

It was not even dawn. Snake reached forward and patted Swift’s neck. “Not
much farther now,” she said.

“What?” Melissa, too, started awake. “Where—?”

“It’s all right,” Snake said. “We can stop soon.”

“Oh.” Melissa looked around, blinking. “I forgot where I was.”

They reached the summertrees ringing the oasis. Snake’s lantern illuminated
leaves already split and frayed by windblown sand. Snake did not see any tents
and she could not hear any sounds of people or animals. All the caravannaires,
by now, had retreated to the safety of the mountains.

“Where’s that light?”

“I don’t know,” Snake said. She glanced at Melissa, for her voice sounded
strange: it was muffled by the end of her headcloth, pulled across her face.
When no one appeared, she let it drop as if unaware that she had been hiding
herself.

Snake turned Swift around, worried about the light.

“Look,” Melissa said.

Swift’s body cut off the lantern’s light in one direction, and there against
the darkness rose a streak of luminescence. Closer, Snake could see that it was
a dead summertree, close enough to the water to rot instead of drying.
Lightcells had invaded its fragile trunk, transforming it into a glowing signal.
Snake breathed softly with relief.

They rode farther, circling the still, black pool until they found a site
with trees thick enough to give some shelter. As soon as Snake reined in,
Melissa jumped down and began unsaddling Squirrel. Snake climbed down more
slowly, for despite the constant desert climate, her knee had stiffened again
during the long ride. Melissa rubbed Squirrel with a twist of leaves, talking to
him in a barely audible voice. Soon they were all, horses and people, bedded
down to wait through the day.

Snake padded barefoot toward the water, stretching and yawning. She had slept
well all day, and now she wanted a swim before starting out again. It was still
too early to leave the shelter of the thick summertrees. Hoping to find a few
pieces of ripe fruit still on the branches, she glanced up and around, but the
desert dwellers’ harvest had been thorough.

Only a few days before, on the other side of the mountains, the foliage at
the oases had been lush and soft; here, now, the leaves were dry and dying. They
rustled as she brushed past. The brittle fronds crumbled in her hand.

She stopped where the beach began. The black strip was only a few meters
wide, a semicircle of sand around a minuscule lagoon that reflected the
overhanging latticework of branches. In the secluded spot, Melissa was kneeling
half-naked on the sand. She leaned out over the water, staring silently
downward. The marks of Ras’s beating had faded, and the fire had left her back
unscarred. Her skin was fairer than Snake would have guessed from her
deep-tanned hands and face. As Snake watched, Melissa reached out slowly and
touched the surface of the dark water. Ripples spread from her fingertips.

Melissa watched, fascinated, as Snake let Mist and Sand out of the case. Mist
glided around Snake’s feet, tasting the scents of the oasis. Snake picked her up
gently. The smooth white scales were cool against her hands.

“I want her to smell you,” Snake said. “Her instinctive reaction is to strike
at anything that startles her. If she recognizes your scent, it’s safer. All
right?”

Melissa nodded, slowly, clearly frightened. “She’s very poisonous, isn’t she?
More than the other?”

“Yes. As soon as we get home I can immunize you, but I don’t want to start
that here. I have to test you first and I don’t have the right things with me.”

“You mean you can fix it so she’d bite me and nothing would happen?”

“Not quite nothing. But she’s bitten me by mistake a few times and I’m still
here.”

“I guess I better let her smell me,” Melissa said.

Snake sat down next to her. “I know it’s hard not to be afraid of her. But
breathe deeply and try to relax. Close your eyes and just listen to my voice.”

“Horses know it, too, when you’re afraid,” Melissa said, and did as Snake
told her.

The cobra’s forked tongue flickered over Melissa’s hands, and the child
remained still and silent. Snake remembered the first time she had seen the
albino cobras: a terrifying, exhilarating moment when a mass of them, coiled
together in infinite knots, felt her footsteps and lifted their heads in unison,
hissing, like a many-headed beast or an alien plant in violent and abrupt full
bloom.

Snake kept her hand on Mist as the cobra glided over Melissa’s arms.

“She feels nice,” Melissa said. Her voice was shaky, and a little scared, but
the tone was sincere.

Melissa had seen rattlers before; their danger was a known one and not so
frightening. Sand crawled across her hands and she stroked him gently. Snake was
pleased; her daughter’s abilities were not limited to horses.

“I hoped you’d get along with Mist and Sand,” she said. “It’s important for a
healer.”

Melissa looked up, startled. “But you didn’t mean—” She stopped.

“What?”

Melissa drew in a deep breath. “What you told the mayor,” she said
hesitantly. “About what I could do. You didn’t really mean it. You had to say it
so he’d let me go.”

“I meant everything I said.”

“But I couldn’t be a healer.”

“Why not?” Melissa did not answer, so Snake continued. “I told you healers
adopt their children, because we can’t have any of our own. Let me tell you some
more about us. A lot of healers have partners who have different professions.
And not all our children become healers. We aren’t a closed community. But when
we choose someone to adopt, we usually pick someone we think could be one of
us.”

“Me?”

“Yes. If you want to. That’s the important thing. For you to do what you want
to do. Not what you think anyone else wants or expects you to do.”