Vonda McIntyre - Dreamsnake

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.