Dreamsnake

Chapter 4

Arevin sat on a huge boulder, his cousin’s baby gurgling in a sling against his chest. The warmth and activity of the new being were a comfort to him as he stared across the desert, in the direction Snake had gone. Stavin was well and the new child healthy; Arevin knew he should feel grateful and glad of the clan’s good fortune, so he felt vaguely guilty about his lingering sorrow. He touched the place on his cheek where the white serpent’s tail had struck him. As Snake had promised, there was no scar. It seemed impossible that she had been gone long enough for the cut to scab over and heal, because he remembered everything about her as clearly as if she were still here. About Snake was none of the blurriness that distance and time impart to most acquaintances. At the same time it felt to Arevin as if she had been gone forever.

One of the huge musk oxen the clan herded ambled up and rubbed herself against the boulder, giving her side a good scratch. She whuffled at Arevin, nuzzling his foot and licking at his boot with her great pink tongue. Nearby, her half-grown calf chewed at the dry, leafless branches of a desert bush. All the beasts in the herd grew thin during each harsh summer; now their coats were dull and rough. They survived the heat well enough if their insulating undercoats were thoroughly combed out when they began shedding in the spring; since the clan kept the oxen for their fine, soft winter wool, the combing was never neglected. But the oxen, like the people, had had enough of summer and heat and foraging for dry and tasteless food. The animals were anxious, in their mild-mannered way, to return to the fresh grass of winter pastures. Ordinarily Arevin too would be glad to return to the plateaus.

The baby waved tiny hands in the air, clutched Arevin’s finger, and drew it down. Arevin smiled. “That’s one thing I can’t do for you, little one,” he said. The baby sucked at his fingertip and gummed it contentedly, without crying when no milk came. The baby’s eyes were blue, like Snake’s. Many babies’ eyes are blue, Arevin thought. But a child’s blue eyes were enough to make him drift off into dreams.

He dreamed about Snake almost every night, or at least every night he was able to sleep. He had never felt this way about anyone before. He clung to memories of the few times they had touched: leaning against each other in the desert; the touch of her strong fingers on his bruised cheek; in Stavin’s tent, where he had comforted her. It was absurd that the happiest time in his life seemed to him the moment just before he knew she must leave, when he embraced her and hoped she might decide to stay. And she would have stayed, he thought. Because we do need a healer, and maybe partly because of me. She would have stayed longer if she could.

That was the only time he had cried in as long as he could remember. Yet he understood her not being willing to stay with her abilities crippled, for right now he felt crippled too. He was no good for anything. He knew it but could do nothing about it. Every day he hoped Snake might return, though he knew she would not. He had no idea how far beyond the desert her destination lay. She might have traveled from the healers’ station for a week or a month or half a year before reaching the desert and deciding to cross it in search of new people and new places.

He should have gone with her. He was certain of that now. In her grief she could not accept him, but he should have seen immediately that she would never be able to explain to her teachers what had happened here. Even Snake’s insight would not help her comprehend the terror Arevin’s people felt toward vipers. Arevin understood it from experience, from the nightmare he still had about his little sister’s death, from the cold sweat sliding down his body when Snake had asked him to help hold Mist. And he knew it from his own deathly fear when the sand viper bit Snake’s hand, for already he loved her, and he knew she would die.

Snake was associated with the only two miracles in Arevin’s experience. She had not died, that was the first, and the second was that she had saved Stavin’s life.

The baby blinked and sucked harder on Arevin’s finger. Arevin slid down from the boulder and held out one hand. The tremendous musk ox laid her chin on his palm and he scratched her beneath the jaw.

“Will you give some dinner to this child?” Arevin said. He patted her back and her side and her stomach and knelt down beside her. She did not have a great deal of milk this late in the year, but the calf was nearly weaned. With his sleeve Arevin briefly rubbed her teat, then held his cousin’s baby in reach of it. No more afraid of the immense beast than Arevin was, the child suckled hungrily.

When the baby’s hunger was satisfied, Arevin scratched the musk ox under the jaw again and climbed back up on the boulder. After a while the child fell asleep, tiny fingers wrapped around Arevin’s hand.

“Cousin!”

He glanced around. The leader of the clan climbed the side of the boulder and sat beside him, her long hair unbound and moving in the faint wind. She leaned over and smiled at the baby.

“How has this child been behaving?”

“Perfectly.”

She shook her hair back from her face. “They’re so much easier to carry when you can put them on your back. And even put them down once in a while.” She grinned. She was not always as reserved and dignified as when she received the clan’s guests.

Arevin managed a smile.

She put her hand over his, the one the baby was holding. “My dear, do I have to ask what’s the matter?”

Arevin shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ll try to do better,” he said. “I’ve been of little use lately.”

“Do you think I’m here to criticize?”

“Criticism would be proper.” Arevin did not look at the leader of his clan, his cousin, but instead stared at her peaceful child. His cousin let go of his hand and put her arm around his shoulders.

“Arevin,” she said, speaking to him directly by name for the third time in his life, “Arevin, you are valuable to me. In time you could be elected the clan’s leader, if you wish it. But you must settle your mind. If she did not want you…”

“We wanted each other,” Arevin said. “But she couldn’t continue her work here and she said I must not go with her. I can’t follow her now.” He glanced down at his cousin’s child. Since his own parents’ deaths, Arevin had been accepted as a member of his cousin’s family group. There were six adult partners, two, now three, children, and Arevin. His responsibilities were not well defined, but he did feel responsible for the children. Especially now, with the trip to winter territory ahead, the clan needed the work of every member. From now until the end of the trip the musk oxen had to be watched night and day, or they would wander east, a few at a time, seeking the new pastures, and never be seen again. Finding food was an equally difficult problem for the human beings at this time of year. But if they left too early, they would arrive at the wintering grounds when the forage was still new-sprouted tender and easily damaged.

“Cousin, tell me what you want to say.”

“I know the clan can’t spare anyone right now. I have responsibilities here, to you, to this child… But the healer — how can she explain what happened here? How can she make her teachers understand when she can’t understand it herself? I saw a sand viper strike her. I saw the blood and poison running down her hand. But she hardly even noticed it. She said she should never have felt it at all.“

Arevin looked at his friend, for he had told no one about the sand viper before, thinking they would not be able to believe him. The leader was startled, but she did not dispute his word.

“How can she explain how we feared what she offered? She will tell her teachers she made a mistake and because of it the little serpent was killed. She blames herself. They will too, and they’ll punish her.”

The leader of the clan gazed across the desert. She reached up and pushed a lock of her graying hair back behind her ear.

“She is a proud woman,” she said. “You’re right. She wouldn’t make excuses for herself.”

“She won’t come back if they exile her,” Arevin said. “I don’t know where she will go, but we would never see her again.”

“The storms are coming,” the leader said abruptly.

Arevin nodded.

“If you went after her—”

“I can’t! Not now!”

“My dear,” the leader said, “we do things the way we do them so we can all be as free as possible most of the time, instead of only some of us being free all of the time. You’re enslaving yourself to responsibility when extraordinary circumstances demand freedom. If you were a partner in the group and it was your job to hold this child, the problem would be more difficult, but it would not necessarily be impossible to solve. As it is, my partner has had much more freedom since the child’s birth than he expected to have when we decided to conceive it. That is because of your willingness to do more than your share.”

“It isn’t like that,” Arevin said quickly. “I wanted to help with the child. I needed to. I needed—” He stopped, not knowing what he had started to say. “I was grateful to him for allowing me to help.”

“I know. And I had no objection. But he was not doing you a favor. You were doing one for him. Perhaps now it’s time to return his responsibilities.” She smiled fondly. “He is inclined to get too engrossed in his work.” Her partner was a weaver, the best in the clan, but she was right: he did often seem to drift through life in dreams.

“I should never have let her go,” Arevin said abruptly. “Why didn’t I see that before? I should have protected my sister, and I failed, and now I’ve failed the healer as well. She should have stayed with us. We would have kept her safe.”

“We would have kept her crippled.”

“She could still heal — !”

“My dear friend,” Arevin’s cousin said, “it’s impossible to protect anyone completely without enslaving them. I think that’s something you’ve never understood because you’ve always demanded too much of yourself. You blame yourself for your sister’s death—”

“I didn’t watch her carefully enough.”

“What could you have done? Remember her life, not her death. She was brave and happy and arrogant, the way a child should be. You could only protect her more by chaining her to you with fear. She couldn’t live that way, not and remain the person you loved. Nor, I think, could the healer.”

Arevin stared down at the infant in his arms, knowing his cousin was right, yet still unable to throw off his feelings of confusion and guilt.

She patted his shoulder gently. “You know the healer best and you say she cannot explain our fear. I think you’re right. I should have realized it myself. I do not want her to be punished for what we did, nor do I wish our people to be misunderstood.” The handsome woman fingered the metal circle on the narrow leather thong around her neck. “You are right. Someone must go to the healers’ station. I could go, because the clan’s honor is my responsibility. My brother’s partner could go, because he killed the little serpent. Or you could go, because you call the healer friend. The clan will have to meet to decide which. But any of us might be leader, and any of us might have feared her little serpent enough to kill it. Only you became her friend.“

She looked from the horizon to Arevin, and he knew she had been leader long enough to reason as the clan would reason.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’ve lost so many people you’ve loved. There was nothing I could do when we lost your parents, or when your sister died. But this time I can help you, even if that might take you from us.” She brushed her hand across his hair, which was graying like her own. “Please remember, my dear, that I would not like to lose you permanently.”

She climbed quickly down to the desert floor, leaving him alone with her family group’s new child. Her trust reassured him; he no longer needed to question if following the healer, if following Snake, was the right thing to do. It was, because it had to be done. At the very least the clan owed her that. Arevin eased his hand from the baby’s damp grasp, moved the sling to his back, and climbed from the boulder to the desert floor.

On the horizon, the oasis hovered so green and soft in the dull dawn light that at first Snake thought it was a mirage. She did not feel quite capable of distinguishing illusion from reality. She had ridden all night to cross the lava flow before the sun rose and the heat grew intolerable. Her eyes burned and her lips were dry and cracked.

The gray mare, Swift, raised her head and pricked her ears, nostrils flaring at the scent of water, eager to reach it after so long on short rations. When the horse broke into a trot Snake did not rein her in.

The delicate summertrees rose around them, brushing Snake’s shoulders with feathery leaves. The air beneath them was almost cool, and thick with the odor of ripening fruit. Snake pulled the end of her headcloth away from her face and breathed deeply.

She dismounted and led Swift to the dark clear pool. The mare plunged her muzzle into the water and drank. Even her nostrils were beneath the surface. Snake knelt nearby and cupped water in her hands. It splashed and ran between her fingers, brushing ripples across the pool’s surface. The ripples widened and cleared, and Snake could see herself reflected above the black sand. Her face was masked with dust.

I look like a bandit, she thought. Or a clown.

But the laughter she deserved was of contempt, not joy. Tear tracks streaked the dirt on her face. She touched them, still staring down at her reflection.

Snake wished she could forget the past few days, but they would never leave her. She could still feel the dry fragility of Jesse’s skin, and her light, questioning touch; she could still hear her voice. And she could feel the pain of Jesse’s death, which she could do nothing to prevent, and nothing to ease. She did not want to see that pain or feel it again.

Plunging her hands into the cold water, Snake splashed it across her face, washing away the black dust, the sweat, and even the tracks of her tears.

She led Swift quietly along the shore, passing tents and silent campsites where the caravannaires still slept. When she reached Grum’s camp she stopped, but the tent flaps were closed. Snake did not want to awaken the old woman or her grandchildren. Farther back from the shore Snake could see the horse corral. Squirrel, her tiger-pony, stood dozing with Grum’s horses. His black and gold coat showed the effects of a week of energetic brushing, he was fat and content, and he no longer favored his shoeless foot. Snake decided to leave him with Grum another day, and disturb neither the tiger-pony nor the old caravannaire this morning.

Swift followed Snake along the shore, nibbling occasionally at her hip. Snake scratched the mare behind the ears, where sweat had dried underneath the bridle. Arevin’s people had given her a sack of hay-cubes for Squirrel, but Grum had been feeding the pony, so the fodder should still be in camp.

“Food and a good brushing and sleep, that’s what we both need,” she said to the horse.

She had made her camp away from the others, beyond an outcropping of rock, in an area not much favored by the traders. It was safer for people and for her serpents if they were kept apart. Snake rounded the sloping stone ridge.

Everything was changed. She had left her bedroll rumpled and slept-in, but everything else had still been packed. Now someone had folded her blankets and piled them up, stacked her extra clothes nearby, and laid her cooking utensils in a row in the sand. She frowned and went closer. Healers were regarded with deference and even awe; she had not even thought of asking Grum to watch her belongings as well as her pony. That someone might bother her equipment while she was gone had never even occurred to her.

Then she saw that the utensils were dented, the metal plate bent in half, the cup crushed, the spoon twisted. She dropped Swift’s reins and hurried to the neat array of her belongings. The folded blankets were slashed and torn. She picked up her clean shirt from the pile of clothing, but it was no longer clean. It had been trampled in the mud at the water’s edge. It was old and soft and well worn, frayed and weak in spots, her comfortable, favorite shirt. Now it was ripped up the back and the sleeves were shredded; it was ruined.

The fodder bag lay in line with the rest of her things, but the scattered hay-cubes were crushed in the sand. Swift nibbled, at the fragments, while Snake stood looking at the wreck around her. She could not understand why anyone would rifle her camp, then leave the ruined gear tidily folded. She could not understand why anyone would rifle her camp at all, for she had little of value. She shook her head. Perhaps someone believed she collected large fees of gold and jewels. Some healers were rewarded richly for their services. Still, there was much honor in the desert and even people who were unprotected by awe, by their professions, thought nothing of leaving valuables unguarded.

Her torn shirt still in her hand, Snake wandered around what had been her camp, feeling too tired and empty and confused to think about what had happened. Squirrel’s packsaddle leaned against a rock; Snake picked it up for no particular reason except perhaps that it looked undamaged.

Then she saw that all its side pockets had been slashed open and torn away, though the flaps were secured only by buckles.

The side pockets had contained all her maps and records, and the journal of her unfinished proving year. She thrust her hands into corners, hoping for even a scrap of paper, but nothing at all remained. Snake flung the saddle to the ground. She hurried around the edges of her camp, looking behind rocks and kicking up the sand, hoping to see white discarded pages or to hear the crackle of paper beneath her feet, but she found nothing, there was nothing left.

She felt physically assaulted. Anything else she had, her blankets, her clothes, certainly the maps, could be useful to a thief, but the journal was worthless to anyone but her.

“Damn you!” she cried in a fury, at no one. The mare snorted and shied away, splashing into the pool. Shaking, Snake calmed herself, then turned and held out her hand and walked slowly toward Swift, speaking softly, until the horse let her take the reins. Snake stroked her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’ll be all right, never mind.” She was speaking as much to herself as to the horse. They were both up to their knees in the clear, cool water. Snake patted the mare’s shoulder, combing the black mane with her fingers. Her vision suddenly blurred and she leaned against Swift’s neck, shaking.

Listening to the strong steady heartbeat and the mare’s quiet breathing, Snake managed to calm herself. She straightened and waded out of the water. On the bank, she unstrapped the serpent case, then unsaddled the horse and began to rub her down with a piece of the torn blanket. She worked with the grimness of exhaustion. The fancy saddle and bridle, now stained with dust and sweat, could wait, but Snake would not leave Swift dirty and sweaty while she herself rested. “Snake-child, healer-child, dear girl—” Snake turned. Grum hobbled toward her, helping herself along with a gnarled walking stick. One of her grandchildren, a tall ebony young woman, accompanied her, but all Grum’s grandchildren knew better than to try to support the tiny, arthritis-bent old woman.

Grum’s white headcloth lay askew on her sparse hair. “Dear child, how could I let you pass me? I’ll hear her come in, I thought. Or her pony will smell her and neigh.” Grum’s dark-tanned age-wrinkled face showed extra lines of concern. “Snake-child, we never wanted you to see this alone.”

“What happened, Grum?”

“Pauli,” Grum said to her granddaughter, “take care of the healer’s horse.”

“Yes, Grum.” When Pauli took the reins, she touched Snake’s arm in a gesture of comfort. She picked up the saddle and led Swift back toward Grum’s camp. Holding Snake’s elbow — not for support, but to support her — Grum guided her to a chunk of rock. They sat down and Snake glanced again around her camp, disbelief overcoming exhaustion. She looked at Grum.

Grum sighed. “It was yesterday, just before dawn. We heard noises and a voice, not yours, and when we came to look we could see a single figure, in desert robes. We thought he was dancing. But when we went closer, he ran away. He broke his lantern in the sand and we couldn’t find him. We found your camp…” Grum shrugged. “We picked up all we could find, but nothing whole was left.”

Snake looked around in silence, no closer to understanding why anyone would ransack her camp.

“By morning the wind had blown away the tracks,” Grum said. “The creature must have gone out in the desert, but it was no desert person. We don’t steal. We don’t destroy.”

“I know, Grum.”

“You come with me. Breakfast. Sleep. Forget the crazy. We all have to watch for crazies.” She took Snake’s scarred hand in her small, work-hardened one. “But you shouldn’t have come to this alone. No. I should have seen you, Snake-child.”

“It’s all right, Grum.”

“Let me help you move to my tents. You don’t want to stay over here anymore.”

“There’s nothing left to move.” Beside Grum, Snake stood staring at the mess. The old woman patted her hand gently.

“He wrecked everything, Grum. If he’d taken it all I could understand.”

“Dear one, nobody understands crazies. They have no reasons.”

That was exactly why Snake could not believe a real crazy would destroy so much so completely. The damage had been inflicted in a manner so deliberate and, in a strange way, rational, that the madness seemed less the result of insanity than of rage. She shivered again.

“Come with me,” Grum said. “Crazies appear, they disappear. They’re like sand flies, one summer you hear about them every time you turn around, the next year nothing.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I am,” Grum said. “I know about these things. He won’t come back here, he’ll go somewhere else, but soon we’ll all know to look for him. When we find him we’ll take him to the menders and maybe they can make him well.”

Snake nodded tiredly. “I hope sp.”

She slung Squirrel’s saddle over her shoulder and picked up the serpent case. The handle vibrated faintly as Sand slid across himself in his compartment.

She walked with Grum toward the old woman’s camp, too tired to think anymore about what had happened, listening gratefully to Grum’s soothing words of comfort and sympathy. The loss of Grass, and Jesse’s death, and now this: Snake almost wished she were superstitious, so she could believe she had been cursed. People who believed in curses believed in ways of lifting them. Right now Snake did not know what to think or what to believe in, or how to change the course of misfortune her life had taken.

“Why did he only steal my journal?” she said abruptly. “Why my maps and my journal?”

“Maps!” Grum said. “The crazy stole maps? I thought you’d taken them with you. It was a crazy, then.”

“I guess it was. It must have been.” Still, she did not convince herself.

“Maps!” Grum said again.

Grum’s anger and outrage seemed, for the moment, to take over for Snake’s own. But the surprise in the old woman’s voice disturbed her.

Snake started violently at the sharp tug on her robe. Equally startled, the collector jumped back. Snake relaxed when she saw who it was: one of the gleaners who picked up any bit of metal, wood, cloth, leather, the discards of other camps, and somehow made use of it all. The collectors dressed in multicolored robes of cloth scraps ingeniously sewn together in geometric patterns.

“Healer, you let us take all that? No good to you—”

“Ao, go away!” Grum snapped. “Don’t bother the healer now. You should know better.”

The collector stared at the ground but did not retreat. “She can’t do with it. We can. Let us have it. Clean it up.”

“This is a bad time to ask.”

“Never mind, Grum.” Snake started to tell the collector to take everything. Perhaps they could make use of torn blankets and broken spoons; she could not. She did not even want to see any of it again; she did not want to be reminded of what had happened. But the collector’s request drew Snake from her questions and her confusion and back toward reality; she recalled something Grum had said about Ao’s people when Snake first talked to her.

“Ao, when I vaccinate the others, will you all let me vaccinate you, too?”

The collector looked doubtful. “Creepty-crawlies, poisons, magics, witches — no, not for us.”

“It’s none of that. You won’t even see the serpents.”

“No, not for us.”

“Then I’ll have to take all that trash out to the middle of the oasis and sink it.”

“Waste!” the collector cried. “No! Dirty the water? You shame my profession. You shame yourself.”

“I feel the same way when you won’t let me protect you against disease. Waste. Waste of people’s lives. Unnecessary deaths.”

The collector peered at her from beneath shaggy eyebrows. “No poisons? No magics?”

“None.”

“Go last if you like,” Grum said. “You’ll see it doesn’t kill me.”

“No creepty-crawlies?”

Snake could not help laughing. “No.”

“And then you give us that?” The collector gestured in the direction of Snake’s battered camp.

“Yes, afterward.”

“No disease afterward?”

“Fewer. I can’t stop all. No measles. No scarlet fever. No lockjaw—”

“Lockjaw! You stop that?”

“Yes. Not forever but for a long time.”

“We will come,” the collector said, turned, and walked away.

In Grum’s camp, Pauli was giving Swift a brisk rub-down while the mare pulled wisps of hay from a bundle. Pauli had the most beautiful hands Snake had ever seen, large yet delicate, long-fingered and strong, uncoarsened by the hard work she did. Even though she was tall, her hands still should have looked too big for her size, but they did not. They were graceful and expressive. She and Grum were as different as two people could be, except for the air of gentleness shared by grandmother and granddaughter, and by all Pauli’s cousins that Snake had met. Snake had not spent enough time in Grum’s camp to know how many of her grandchildren she had with her, or even to know the name of the little girl who sat nearby polishing Swift’s saddle.

“How’s Squirrel?” Snake asked.

“Fine and happy, child. You can see him there, under the tree, too lazy to run. But he’s sound again. You, now, you need a bed and rest.”

Snake watched her tiger-pony, who stood among the summertrees, switching his tail. He looked so comfortable and content that she did not call him.

Snake was weary but she could feel all her muscles tight across her neck and shoulders. Sleep would be impossible until some of the tension had drained away. She wanted to think about her camp. Perhaps she would decide that it had, as Grum said, simply been vandalized by a crazy. If so, she must understand it and accept it. She was not used to so much happening by chance.

“I’m going to take a bath, Grum,” she said, “and then you can put me someplace where I won’t be in your way. It won’t be for long.”

“As long as you are here and we are here. You’re welcome with us, healer-child.”

Snake hugged her. Grum patted her shoulder.

Near Grum’s camp one of the springs that fed the oasis sprang from stone and trickled down the rocks. Snake climbed to where sun-warmed water pooled in smooth basins. She could see the whole oasis: five camps on the shore, people, animals. The faint voices of children and the high yap of a dog drifted toward her through the heavy, dusty air. In a ring around the lake the summertrees stood like feathers, like a wreath of pale green silk.

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.