Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  Merideth stopped nearby, holding the limp, empty waterskin, looking at the small herd rather than at Snake. “Jesse has a gift with horses. Choosing them, training them… What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry. I must have upset her. I had no right—”

  “To tell her to live? Maybe you don’t, but I’m glad you did.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I tell her,” Snake said. “She has to want to live herself.”

  Merideth waved and yelled. The horses nearest the water shied away, giving the others a chance to drink. They jostled each other, draining the trough dry, then standing near it and waiting expectantly for more. “I’m sorry,” Merideth said. “That’s all for now.”

  “You must have to carry a great deal of water for them.”

  “Yes, but we need all of them. We come in with water and we go out with the ore and the stones Jesse finds.” The bay mare put her head over the rope fence and nuzzled Merideth’s sleeve, stretching to be scratched behind the ears and under the jaw. “Since Alex came with us we travel with more…things. Luxuries. Alex said we’d impress people that way, so they’d want to buy from us.”

  “Does it work?”

  “It seems to. We live very well now. I can choose my commissions.”

  Snake stared at the horses, who wandered one by one to the shady end of the corral. The vague glow of the sun had crept up over the edge of the wall, and Snake could feel the heat on her face.

  “What are you thinking?” Merideth asked.

  “How to make Jesse want to live.”

  “She won’t live uselessly. Alex and I love her. We’d take care of her no matter what. But that isn’t enough for her.”

  “Does she have to walk to be useful?”

  “Healer, she’s our prospector.” Merideth looked at Snake sadly. “She’s tried to teach me how to look and where to look. I understand what she tells me, but when I go out I’m as likely as not to find nothing but fused glass and fool’s gold.”

  “Have you showed her your job?”

  “Of course. We can each do a little of the other’s work. But we each have a talent. She’s better at my job than I am at hers and I’m better at hers than either of us is at Alex’s, but people don’t understand her designs. They’re too strange. They’re beautiful.” Merideth sighed, holding out a bracelet for Snake to see, the only ornament Merideth wore. It was silver, without stones, geometric and multilayered without being bulky. Merideth was right: it was beautiful, but it was strange. “No one will buy them. She knows that. I’d do anything. I’d lie to her, if it would help. But she’d know. Healer—” Merideth flung the waterskin to the sand. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I can deal with infections and diseases and tumors. I can even do surgery that isn’t beyond my tools. But I can’t force the body to heal itself.”

  “Can anyone?”

  “Not…not anyone that I know of, on this earth.”

  “You’re not a mystic,” Merideth said. “You don’t mean some spirit might cause a miracle. You mean off the earth the people might be able to help.”

  “They might,” Snake said slowly, sorry she had spoken as she had. She had not expected Merideth to sense her resentment, though she should have. The city affected all the people around it; it was like the center of a whirlpool, mysterious and fascinating. And it was the place the offworlders sometimes landed. Because of Jesse, Merideth probably knew more about them and the city than Snake did. Snake had always had to take the stories about Center on faith alone; the idea of offworlders was hard to accept for someone who lived in a land where the stars were seldom visible.

  “They might even be able to heal her in the city,” Snake said. “How should I know? The people who live there won’t talk to us. They keep us cut off out here—and as for offworlders, I’ve never even met anyone who claims to have seen one.”

  “Jesse has.”

  “Would they help her?”

  “Her family is powerful. They might be able to make the offworlders take her where she could be healed.”

  “The Center people and the offworlders are jealous of their knowledge, Merideth,” Snake said. “At least they’ve never offered to share any of it.”

  Merideth scowled and turned away.

  “I’m not saying we shouldn’t try. It could give her hope—”

  “And if they refuse, her hope is broken again.”

  “She needs the time.”

  Merideth thought, and finally replied. “And you’ll come, to help us?”

  It was Snake who hesitated now. She had already set herself to return to the healers’ station and accept the verdict of her teachers when she told them of her errors. She had prepared herself to go to the valley. But she put her mind to a different journey, and realized what a difficult task Merideth proposed. They would badly need someone who knew what care Jesse required.

  “Healer?”

  “All right. I’ll come.”

  “Then let’s ask Jesse.”

  They returned to the tent. Snake was surprised to find herself feeling optimistic; she was smiling, truly encouraged, for what seemed the first time in a long while.

  Inside, Alex sat beside Jesse. He glared at Snake when she entered.

  “Jesse,” Merideth said, “we have a plan.”

  They had turned her again, carefully following Snake’s orders. Jesse looked up tiredly, aged by deep lines in her forehead and around her mouth.

  Merideth explained with excited gestures. Jesse listened impassively. Alex’s expression hardened into disbelief.

  “You’re out of your mind,” he said when Merideth had finished.

  “I’m not! Why do you say that when it’s a chance?”

  Snake looked at Jesse. “Are we?”

  “I think so,” Jesse said, but she spoke very slowly, very thoughtfully.

  “If we got you to Center,” Snake said, “could your people help you?”

  Jesse hesitated. “My cousins have some techniques. They could cure very bad wounds. But the spine? Maybe. I don’t know. And there’s no reason for them to help me. Not anymore.”

  “You always told me how important blood ties are among the city’s families,” Merideth said. “You’re their kin—”

  “I left them,” Jesse said. “I broke the ties. Why should they take me back? Do you want me to go and beg them?”

  “Yes.”

  Jesse looked down at her long strong useless legs. Alex glared, first at Merideth, then at Snake.

  “Jesse, I can’t stand to see you as you’ve been, I can’t bear watching you want to die.”

  “They’re very proud,” Jesse said. “I hurt my family’s pride by renouncing them.”

  “Then they’d understand what it took you to ask for their help.”

  “We’d be crazy to try it,” Jesse said.

  3

  They planned to break camp that evening and cross the lava flow in darkness. Snake would have preferred to wait a few more days before moving Jesse at all, but there was no choice. Jesse’s spirits were too readily changeable to keep her here any longer. She knew the partnership had already overstayed its time in the desert. Alex and Merideth could not hide the fact that the water was running low, that they and the horses were going thirsty so she could be cleaned and bathed. A few more days in the canyon, living in the sour stench that would collect because nothing could be properly washed, would push her down into depression and disgust.

  And they had no time to waste. They had a long way to journey: up and across the lava, then east to the central mountains that separated the black desert into its western half, where they were now, and its eastern portion, where the city lay. The road cutting through the west and east ranges of the central mountains was a good one, but after the pass the travelers would enter the desert again, and head southeast, for Center. They had to hurry. Once the storms of winter began, no one could cross the desert; the city would be isolated. Already the summer was fading in stinging dust devils an
d windblown eddies of sand.

  They would not take down the tent or load the horses until twilight, but they packed all they could before it became too hot to work, stacking the baggage beside Jesse’s sacks of ore. Snake’s hand limbered up with the heavy work. The bruise was finally fading and the punctures had healed to bright pink scars. Soon the sand viper bite would match all the other scars on her hands, and she would forget which one it was. She wished now that she had captured one of the ugly serpents to take home with her. It was a species she had never seen before. Even if it had turned out not to be useful to the healers, she could have made an antidote to its venom for Arevin’s people. If she ever saw Arevin’s people again.

  Snake wrestled the last pack into the pile and wiped her hands on her pants and her face on her sleeve. Nearby, Merideth and Alex hoisted the stretcher they had built and adjusted the makeshift harnesses until it rode level between a tandem pair of horses. Snake went over to watch.

  It was the most peculiar conveyance she had ever seen, but it looked like it would work. In the desert everything had to be carried or dragged; wheeled carts would bog down in the sand or break in rocky country. As long as the horses did not shy or bolt, the stretcher would give Jesse a more tolerable ride than a travois. The big gray between the front shafts stood calm and steady as a stone; apart from a sidelong glance as it was led between the back shafts, the second horse, a piebald, showed no fear.

  Jesse must be a marvel, Snake thought, if the horses she trains will put up with such contraptions.

  “Jesse says we’ll start a fashion among rich merchants wherever we go,” Merideth said.

  “She’s right,” Alex said. He unfastened a strap and they let the stretcher fall to the ground. “But they’ll be lucky not to get kicked apart, the way most of them break horses.” He slapped the placid gray’s neck fondly and led both horses back to the corral.

  “I wish she’d been riding one of them before,” Snake said to Merideth.

  “They weren’t like that when she got them. She buys crazy horses. She can’t bear to see them mistreated. The colt was one of her strays—she had him calmed but he hadn’t found his balance yet.”

  They started back toward the tent to get out of the sun as it crept across the afternoon. The tent sagged on one side where two poles had been removed for the stretcher. Merideth yawned widely. “Best to sleep while we have the chance. We can’t afford to still be on the lava when the sun comes up.”

  But Snake was filled with a restless uncertain energy; she sat in the tent, grateful for the shade but wide-awake, wondering how the whole mad plan could work. She reached for the leather case to check on her serpents, but Jesse woke as she opened Sand’s compartment. She closed the catch again and moved closer to the pallet. Jesse looked up at her.

  “Jesse…about what I said…” She wanted to explain but could not think how to start.

  “What upset you so? Am I the first you’ve helped who might have died?”

  “No. I’ve seen people die. I’ve helped them die.”

  “Everything was so hopeless just a little while ago,” Jesse said. “A pleasant end would have been easy. You must always have to guard against…the simplicity of death.”

  “Death can be a gift,” Snake said. “But in one way or another it always means failure. That’s the guard against it. It’s enough.”

  A faint breeze whispered through the heat, making Snake feel almost cool.

  “What’s wrong, healer?”

  “I was afraid,” Snake said. “I was afraid you might be dying. If you were, you had the right to ask my help. I have the obligation to give it. But I can’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When my training ended my teachers gave me my own serpents. Two of them can be drugged for medicines. The third was the dream-giver. He was killed.”

  Jesse reached out instinctively and took Snake’s hand, a reaction to her sadness. Snake accepted Jesse’s quiet sympathy gratefully, taking comfort in the sturdy touch.

  “You’re crippled too,” Jesse said abruptly. “As crippled in your work as I.”

  Jesse’s generosity in comparing them that way embarrassed Snake. Jesse was in pain, helpless, her only chance of recovery so small that Snake stood in awe of her spirits and her renewed grasp on life. “Thank you for saying that.”

  “So I’m going back to my family to ask for help—and you were going back to yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll give you another,” Jesse said with certainty.

  “I hope so.”

  “Is there any question?”

  “Dreamsnakes don’t breed well,” Snake said. “We don’t know enough about them. Every few years a few new ones are born, or one of us manages to clone some, but—” Snake shrugged.

  “Catch one!”

  The suggestion had never occurred to Snake because she knew it was impossible. She had never considered any possibility other than returning to the healers’ station and asking her teachers to pardon her. She smiled sadly. “My reach isn’t that long. They don’t come from here.”

  “Where?”

  Snake shrugged again. “Some other world…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.

  “Then you’ll come with me beyond the city’s gates,” Jesse said. “When I go to my family, they’ll introduce you to the offworlders.”

  “Jesse, my people have been asking Center’s help for decades. They won’t even speak to us.”

  “But now one of the city’s families is obligated to you. Whether my people will take me back I don’t know. But they’ll be in debt to you for helping me, nevertheless.”

  Snake listened in silence, intrigued by the possibilities lying in Jesse’s words.

  “Healer, believe me,” Jesse said. “We can help each other. If they accept me, they’ll accept my friends as well. If not, they’ll still have to discharge their debt to you. Either one of us can present both our requests.”

  Snake was a proud woman, proud of her training, her competence, her name. The prospect of atoning for Grass’s death in some other way than begging forgiveness fascinated her. Once every decade an elder healer would make the long trip to the city, seeking to renew the breeding stock of dreamsnakes. They had always been refused. If Snake could succeed…

  “Can this work?”

  “My family will help us,” Jesse said. “Whether they can make the offworlders help us too, I don’t know.”

  During the hot afternoon, all Snake and the partners could do was wait. Snake decided to let Mist and Sand out of the satchel for a while before the long trip began. As she left the tent, she stopped beside Jesse. The handsome woman was sleeping peacefully, but her face was flushed. Snake touched her forehead. Perhaps Jesse had a slight fever; perhaps it was just the heat of the day. Snake still thought Jesse had avoided serious internal injuries, but it was possible that she was bleeding, even that she was developing peritonitis. That was something Snake could cure. She decided not to disturb Jesse for the moment, but to wait and see if the fever rose.

  Walking out of camp to find a sheltered place where her serpents would frighten no one, Snake passed Alex, staring morosely into space. She hesitated, and he glanced up, his expression troubled. Snake sat down beside him without speaking. He turned toward her, staring at her with his penetrating gaze: the goodnaturedness had vanished from his face in his torment, leaving him ugly, and sinister as well.

  “We crippled her, didn’t we? Merideth and me.”

  “Crippled her? No, of course not.”

  “We shouldn’t have moved her. I should have thought of that. We should have moved the camp to her. Maybe the nerves weren’t broken when we found her.”

  “They were broken.”

  “But we didn’t know about her back. We thought she’d hit her head. We could have twisted her body—”

  Snake put her hand on Alex’s forearm. “It was an injury of violence,” she said. “Any healer could see it. Th
e damage happened when she fell. Believe me. You and Merideth couldn’t have done any of that to her.”

  The hard muscles in his forearm relaxed. Snake took her hand away, relieved. Alex’s stocky body held so much strength, and he had been controlling himself so tightly, that Snake feared he might turn his own force unwittingly back on himself. He was more important to this partnership than he appeared, perhaps even more important than he himself knew. Alex was the practical one, the one who kept the camp running smoothly, who dealt with the buyers of Merideth’s work and balanced out the romanticism of Merideth the artist and Jesse the adventurer. Snake hoped the truth she had told him would let him ease his guilt and tension. For now, though, she could do no more for him.

  As twilight approached, Snake stroked Sand’s smooth patterned scales. She no longer wondered if the diamondback enjoyed being stroked, or even if a creature as small-brained as Sand could feel enjoyment at all. The cool sensation beneath her fingers gave her pleasure, and Sand lay in a quiet coil, now and then flicking out his tongue. His color was bright and clear; he had outgrown his old skin and shed it only recently. “I let thee eat too much,” Snake said fondly. “Thou lazy creature.”

  Snake drew her knees up under her chin. Against the black rocks, the rattlesnake’s patterns were almost as conspicuous as Mist’s albino scales. Neither serpents nor humans nor anything else left alive on earth had yet adapted to their world as it existed now.

  Mist was out of sight, but Snake was not worried. Both serpents were imprinted on her and would stay near and even follow her. Neither had much aptitude for learning beyond the imprinting, which the healers had bred into them, but Mist and Sand would return when they felt the vibration of her hand slapping the ground.

  Snake relaxed against a boulder, cushioned by the desert robe Arevin’s people had given her. She wondered what Arevin was doing, where he was. His people were nomads, herders of huge musk oxen whose undercoats gave fine, silky wool. To meet the clan again she would have to search for them. She did not know if that would ever be possible, though she very much wanted to see Arevin once more.