Dreamsnake (24 page)

Snake realized reluctantly that she could not stay at Center. It was
simply too dangerous to spend any time exploring the mountain caves, though
they drew her strongly. They might lead eventually to the city, but they
might as easily trap her, and Melissa, in a mesh of sterile stone tunnels.
The rain offered a single reprieve: if Snake did not accept it, she and her
daughter, the horses and the serpents, would have no second chance.

Somehow it did not seem fair or right to Snake that her return to the
mountains was as easy as a pleasure trip through meadowlands. For that was
what the desert metamorphosed into after a rain. All day the horses snatched
mouthfuls of tender leaves as they walked, while their riders picked great
bouquets of honeycups and sucked the flowers’ ends for their nectar. Pollen
hung heavy in the air. Leading the horses, Snake and Melissa walked far into
the night, while the aurora borealis danced; the desert became luminous and
neither horses nor riders seemed tired. Snake and Melissa ate at random
intervals, chewing on dry fruit or jerky as they traveled; near dawn, they
flung themselves on soft, lush grass where only sand had been a few hours
before. They slept a short while and woke at sunrise, refreshed.

The plants on which they rested had already budded. By afternoon flowers
covered the dunes in drifts of color, one hill white, the next bright
purple, a third multicolored in streamers of species that led from crest to
valley. The flowers moderated the heat, and the sky was clearer than Snake
had ever seen it. Even the contours of the dunes were altered by the rain,
from soft rolling billows to sharp-edged eroded ridges, marked by the narrow
canyons of short-lived streams.

The third morning the dust clouds began to gather again. The rain had all
seeped away or evaporated; the plants had captured all they could. Now
dryness mottled the leaves with brown as the plants shriveled and died.
Their seeds drifted across Snake’s path in eddies of the wind.

The vast desert’s peace wrapped itself around her shoulders, but the
eastern foothills of the central mountain range rose before her, reminding
her again of failure. She did not want to go home.

Swift, responding to some unconscious movement of Snake’s body, her
reluctance to go on, stopped abruptly. Snake did not urge her forward. A few
paces farther along, Melissa reined in and looked back.

“Snake?”

“Oh, Melissa, what am I taking you to?”

“We’re going home,” Melissa said, trying to soothe her.

“I might not even have a home anymore.”

“They won’t send you away. They couldn’t.”

Snake wiped tears fiercely away on her sleeve, the fabric silky against
her cheek, Hopelessness and frustration would give her no comfort and no
relief. She leaned down against Swift’s neck, clenching her fists in the
mare’s long black mane.

“You said it was your home, you said they were all your family. So how
could they send you away?”

“They wouldn’t,” Snake whispered. “But if they said I couldn’t be a
healer, how could I stay?”

Melissa reached up and patted her awkwardly. “It’ll be all right. I know
it will. How can I make you not be so sad?”

Snake let out her breath in a long sigh. She looked up. Melissa gazed at
her steadily, never flinching. Snake turned and kissed Melissa’s hand; she
enfolded it in her own.

“You trust me,” she said. “And maybe that’s what I need most right now.”

Melissa half smiled in embarrassment and encouragement and they started
onward, but after a few paces Snake reined Swift in again. Melissa stopped
too, looking up at her with worry.

“Whatever happens,” Snake said, “whatever my teachers decide about me,
you’re still their daughter as much as mine. You can still be a healer. If I
have to go away—”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Melissa—”

“I don’t care. I never wanted to be a healer anyway,” Melissa said
belligerently. “I want to be a jockey. I wouldn’t want to stay with people
who made you leave.”

The intensity of Melissa’s loyalty troubled Snake. She had never known
anyone who was so completely oblivious to self-interest. Perhaps Melissa
could not yet think of herself as someone with a right to her own dreams;
perhaps so many of her dreams had been taken from her that she no longer
dared to have them. Snake hoped that somehow she could give them back to her
daughter.

“Never mind,” she said. “We aren’t home yet. We can worry about it then.”

Melissa’s set mask of decision relaxed slightly, and they rode on.

By the end of the third day the tiny plants had fallen to dust beneath
the horses’ hooves. A fine brown haze covered the desert. Now and then a
cloud of feathery seeds drifted by, cast to the air. When the wind was
stronger, heavier seeds skittered along the sand like tides. When night fell
Snake and Melissa had already entered the foothills, and the desert had
turned bare and black behind them.

They had returned to the mountains traveling straight west, the quickest
way to safety. Here, the foothills rose more gently than the steep cliffs at
Mountainside, far to the north; the climb was easier but much longer than at
the northern pass. At the first crest, before they started toward the next,
higher, hills, Melissa reined Squirrel in and turned around, gazing back at
the darkening desert. After a moment she grinned at Snake. “We made it,” she
said.

Snake smiled slowly in return. “You’re right,” she said. “We did.” Her
most immediate fear, of the storms, dissolved slowly in the clearer, colder
air of the hills. The clouds hung oppressively low, disfiguring the sky. No
one, caravannaire or mountain dweller, would see even a patch of blue, or a
star, or the moon, until next spring, and the sun’s disc would fade duller
and duller. Now, sinking beneath the mountain peaks, it cast Snake’s shadow
back toward the darkening stark sand plain. Beyond the reach of the most
violent wind, beyond the heat and waterless sand, Snake urged Swift on,
toward the mountains where they all belonged.

Snake kept a lookout for a place to camp. Before the horses descended
very far she heard the welcome trickle of running water. The trail led past
a small hollow, the source of a spring, a spot that looked as if it had been
used as a campsite, but long ago. The water sustained a few scrubby forever
trees and some grass for the horses. In the center of a bare-beaten patch of
ground the earth was smudged with charcoal, but Snake had no firewood. She
knew better than to try chopping down the forever trees, unlike some
travelers who had left futile ax marks, now grown half together, in the
rough bark. The wood beneath was as hard and resilient as steel.

Night travel in the mountains was as difficult as day travel in the
desert, and the easy return from the city had not wiped out the strain of
the complete journey. Snake dismounted. They would stop for the night, and
at sunrise—

At sunrise, what? She had been in a hurry for so many days, rushing
against sickness or death or the implacable sands, that she had to stop and
make herself realize that she had no reason for hurrying any more, no
overwhelming need to get from here to anywhere else, nor to sleep a few
hours and rise yawning at sunrise or sunset. Her home awaited her, and she
was not at all sure it would still be her home once she reached it. She had
nothing to take back but failure and bad news and one violent-tempered sand
viper that might or might not be useful. She untied the serpent case and
laid it gently on the ground.

When the horses were rubbed down, Melissa knelt by the packs and started
getting out food and the paraffin stove. This was the first time since they
started out that they had made a proper camp. Snake sat on her heels by her
daughter to help with dinner.

“I’ll do it,” Melissa said. “Why don't you rest?”

“That doesn’t seem quite fair,” Snake said.

“I don’t mind.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“I like to do things for you,” Melissa said.

Snake put her hands on Melissa’s shoulders, not forcing or even urging
her to turn. “I know you do. But I like to do things for you, too.”

Melissa’s fingers fumbled with buckles and straps. “That isn’t right,”
she said finally. “You’re a healer, and I—I work in a stable. It’s right for
me to do things for you.”

“Where does it say that a healer has more rights than someone who used to
work in a stable? You’re my daughter, and we’re a partnership.”

Melissa flung herself around and hugged Snake tightly, hiding her face
against her shirt. Snake embraced her and held her, rocking back and forth
on the hard ground, comforting Melissa as if she were the much younger child
she had never had the chance to be.

After a few minutes Melissa’s arms loosened and she pulled back,
self-contained again, glancing away in embarrassment.

“I don’t like not doing anything.”

“When did you ever have the chance to try?”

Melissa shrugged.

“We can take turns,” Snake said, “or split the chores every day. Which
would you rather do?”

Melissa met her gaze with a quick, relieved smile. “Split the chores
every day.” She glanced around as if seeing the camp for the first time.
“Maybe there’s dead wood farther on,” she said. “And we need some water.”
She reached for the woodstrap and the waterskin.

Snake took the waterskin from her. “I’ll meet you back here in a few
minutes. If you don’t find anything don’t spend a lot of time looking.
Whatever falls during the winter probably gets used up by the first traveler
every spring. If there is a first traveler every spring.” The place not only
looked as though no one had been here for many years, it had an undefinable
aura of abandonment.

The spring flowed swiftly past the camp and there was no sign now of mud
where Swift and Squirrel had drunk, but Snake walked a short distance
upstream anyway. Near the source of the spring she put the waterskin down
and climbed to the top of a tremendous boulder that provided a view of most
of the surrounding area. No one else was in sight, no horses, no camps, no
smoke. Snake was finally almost willing to let herself believe the crazy was
gone, or never really there at all, a coincidence of her meeting one real
crazy and a misguided and incompetent thief. Even if they were the same
person, she had seen no sign of him since the street fight. That was not as
long ago as it seemed, but perhaps it was long enough.

Snake climbed back down to the spring and held the waterskin just beneath
the silvery surface. Water gurgled and bubbled into the opening and slipped
over her hands and through her fingers, cold and quick. Water was a
different being in the mountains. The leather bag bulged up full. Snake
looped a couple of half hitches around its neck and slung the strap over her
shoulder.

Melissa had not yet returned to camp. Snake puttered around for a few
minutes, getting together a meal of dried provisions that looked the same
even after they had been soaked. They tasted the same, too, but they were a
little bit easier to eat. She unrolled the blankets. She opened the serpent
case but Mist remained inside. The cobra often stayed in her dark
compartment after a long trip, and grew bad-tempered if disturbed. Snake
felt uneasy with Melissa out of sight. She could not dispel her discomfort
by reminding herself that Melissa was tough and independent. Instead of
opening Sand’s compartment so the rattler could come out, or even checking
on the sand viper, a task she did not much enjoy, she refastened the case
and stood up to call her daughter. Suddenly Swift and Squirrel shied
violently, snorting in fear, Melissa cried “Snake! Look out!” in a voice of
warning and terror, and rocks and dirt clattered down the side of the hill.

Snake ran toward the sound of scuffling, the knife on her belt
half-drawn. She rounded a boulder and slid to a stop.

Melissa struggled violently in the grasp of a tall, cadaverous figure in
desert robes. He had one hand over her mouth and the other around her,
pinning her arms. She fought and kicked, but the man did not react in either
pain or anger.

“Tell her to stop,” he said. “I won’t hurt her.” His words were thick and
slurred, as if he were intoxicated. His robes were torn and soiled and his
hair stood out wildly. The irises of his eyes seemed paler than the
bloodshot whites, giving him a blank, inhuman look. Snake knew immediately
that this was the crazy, even before she saw the ring that had cut her
forehead when he attacked her on the streets of Mountainside.

“Let her go.”

“I’ll trade you,” he said. “Even trade.”

“We don’t have much, but it’s yours. What do you want?”

“The dreamsnake,” he said. “No more than that.” Melissa struggled again
and the man moved, gripping her more tightly and more cruelly.

“All right,” Snake said. “I haven’t any choice, have I? He’s in my case.”

He followed her back to camp. The old mystery was solved, a new one
created.

Snake pointed to the case. “The top compartment,” she said.

The crazy sidled toward it, pulling Melissa awkwardly along. He reached
toward the clasp, then jerked back his hand. He was trembling.

“You do it,” he said to Melissa. “For you it’s safe.”

Without looking at Snake, Melissa reached for the clasp. She was very
pale.

“Stop it,” Snake said. “There’s nothing in there.”

Melissa let her hand fall to her side, looking; at Snake with mixed
relief and fear.

“Let her go,” Snake said again. “If the dreamsnake is what you want, I
can’t help you. He was killed before you even found my camp.”

Narrowing his eyes, he stared at her, then turned and reached for the
serpent case. He flicked the catch open and kicked the whole thing over.

The grotesque sand viper lurched out in a tangle, writhing and hissing.
It raised its head for an instant as if to strike in retaliation for its
captivity, but both the crazy and Melissa stood frozen. The viper slithered
around and slid toward the rocks. Snake sprang forward and pulled Melissa
away from the crazy, but he did not even notice.