Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

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.

“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.”