If the mayor could risk accepting her ultimatum, Snake could not risk bringing it into force. She could not chance leaving Melissa with Ras another day, another hour; Snake had put her in too much danger. What was more, she had shown her dislike of the stablemaster, so the mayor might not believe what she said about him. Even if Melissa accused him, there was no proof. Snake searched desperately for another way to win Melissa’s freedom; she hoped she had not already ruined any chance of gaining it directly.
She spoke as calmly as she could. “I withdraw my request.”
Melissa caught her breath but did not look up again. The mayor’s expression turned to one of relief, and Ras sat back in his chair.
“On one condition,” Snake said. She paused to choose her words well, to say only what could be proven. “On one condition. When Gabriel leaves, he’s going north. Let Melissa go with him, as far as Middlepath.” Snake said nothing about Gabriel’s plans; they were his business and no one else’s. “A fine women’s teacher lives there, and she wouldn’t turn down anyone who needed her guidance.”
A small damp patch widened on the front of Melissa’s shirt, as tears fell silently on the rough material. Snake hurried on.
“Let Melissa go with Gabriel. Her training might take longer than usual because she’s so old to start. But it’s for her health and her safety. Even if Ras loves—” she almost choked on the word — “loves her too much to give her up to the healers, he won’t keep her from this.”
Ras’s ruddy complexion paled.
“Middlepath?” The mayor scowled. “We have perfectly good teachers here. Why does she need to go to Middlepath?”
“I know you value beauty,” Snake said, “but I think you also value self-control. Let Melissa learn the skills, even if she has to go elsewhere to find a teacher.“
“Do you mean to tell me this child has never been to one?”
“Of course she has!” Ras cried. “It’s a trick to get the girl out of our protection! You think you can come to a place and change everybody around to suit yourself!” Ras yelled at Snake. “Now you think people will believe anything you and that ungrateful little brat can make up about me. Everybody else is afraid of you and your slimy reptiles, but I’m not. Set one on me, go ahead, and I’ll mash it flat!” He stopped abruptly and glanced right and left as if he had forgotten where he was. He had no way to make a dramatic exit.
“You needn’t guard yourself against serpents,” Snake said.
Ignoring him, ignoring Snake, the mayor leaned toward Melissa. “Child, have you been to a women’s teacher?”
Melissa hesitated, but finally she answered. “I don’t know what that is.”
“No one would accept her,” Ras said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Our teachers don’t refuse people. Did you take her to one or not?”
Ras stared at his knees and said nothing more.
“It’s easy enough to check.”
“No, sir.”
“No! No?” The mayor flung off the bedclothes and got up, stumbling but catching himself. He stood over Ras, a big man confronting another big man, two huge handsome creatures facing each other, one livid, one pale before the other’s rage.
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t need a teacher.”
“How dare you do such a thing!” The mayor leaned forward until Ras was pressed back in the chair away from him. “How dare you endanger her! How dare you condemn her to ignorance and discomfort!”
“She isn’t in danger! She doesn’t need to protect herself — who would ever touch her?”
“You touch me!” Melissa ran to Snake and flung herself against her. Snake hugged the child close.
“You—” The mayor straightened and stepped back. Brian, appearing silently, supported him before his leg failed him. “What does she mean, Ras? Why is she so frightened?”
Ras shook his head.
“Make him say it!” Melissa cried, facing them squarely. “Make him!”
The mayor limped to her and stooped down awkwardly. He looked Melissa directly in the face. Neither he nor she flinched.
“I know you’re frightened of him, Melissa. Why is he so frightened of you?”
“Because Mistress Snake believes me.”
The mayor drew in a long breath. “Did you want him?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Ungrateful little brat!” Ras yelled. “Spiteful ugly thing! Who else but me would ever touch her?”
The mayor ignored Ras and took Melissa’s hand in both his.
“The healer’s your guardian from now on. You’re free to go with her.”
“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”
The mayor lurched back to his feet. “Brian, find me her guardianship papers in the city records — Sit down, Ras — And Brian, I’ll want a messenger to ride into town. To the menders.”
“You slaver,” Ras growled. “So this is how you steal children. People will—”
“Shut up, Ras.” The mayor sounded exhausted far beyond his brief exertion, and he was pale. “I can’t exile you. I have a responsibility to protect other people. Other children. Your troubles are my troubles now, and they must be resolved. Will you talk to the menders?”
“I don’t need the menders.”
“Will you go voluntarily or would you prefer a trial?”
Ras lowered himself slowly back into the chair, and finally nodded. “Voluntarily,” he said.
Snake stood up, her arm around Melissa’s shoulders, Melissa with an arm around her waist and her head turned slightly so the scar was almost concealed. Together they walked away.
“Thank you, healer,” the mayor said.
“Good-bye,” Snake said, and shut the door.
She and Melissa walked through the echoing hallway to the second tower.
“I was so scared,” Melissa said.
“So was I. For a little while I thought I’d have to steal you.”
Melissa looked up. “Would you really do that?”
“Yes.”
Melissa was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry! What for?”
“I should have trusted you. I didn’t. But I will from now on. I won’t be scared any more.”
“You had a right to be scared, Melissa.”
“I’m not now. I won’t be any more. Where are we going?” For the first time since Melissa had offered to ride Squirrel, her voice held self-confidence and enthusiasm with no undertone of dread.
“Well,” Snake said, “I think you should go on up north to the healers’ station. Home.”
“What about you?”
“I have one more thing I have to do before I can go home. Don’t worry, you can go almost halfway with Gabriel. I’ll write a letter for you to take, and you’ll have Squirrel. They’ll know I sent you.”
“I’d rather go with you.”
Realizing how shaken Melissa was, Snake stopped. “I’d rather have you come too, please believe me. But I have to go to Center and it might not be safe.”
“I’m not afraid of any crazy. Besides, if I’m along we can keep watch.”
Snake had forgotten about the crazy; the reminder brought a quick shock of memory.
“Yes, the crazy’s another problem. But the storms are coming, it’s nearly winter. I don’t know if I can get back from the city before then.” And it would be better for Melissa to become established at the station, before Snake returned, in case the trip to Center failed. Then, even if Snake had to leave, Melissa would be able to remain.
“I don’t care about the storms,” Melissa said. “I’m not afraid.”
“I know you’re not. It’s just that there’s no reason for you to be in danger.”
Melissa did not reply. Snake knelt down and turned the child toward her.
“Do you think I’m trying to avoid you now?”
After a few moments, Melissa said, “I don’t know what to think, Mistress Snake. You said if I didn’t live here I could
be responsible for myself and do what I thought was right. But I don’t think it’s right for me to leave you, with the crazy and the storms.”
Snake sat back on her heels. “I did say all that. I meant it, too.” She looked down at her scarred hands, sighed, and glanced up again at Melissa. “I better tell you the real reason I want you to go home. I should have told you before.”
“What is it?” Melissa’s voice was tight, controlled; she was ready to be hurt again. Snake took her hand.
“Most healers have three serpents. I only have two. I did something stupid and the third one was killed.” She told Melissa about Arevin’s people, about Stavin and Stavin’s younger father and Grass.
“There aren’t very many dreamsnakes,” Snake said. “It’s hard to make them breed. Actually we never make them breed, we just wait and hope they might. The way we get more is something like the way I made Squirrel.”
“With the special medicine,” Melissa said.
“Sort of.” The alien biology of dreamsnakes lent itself neither to viral transduction nor to microsurgery. Earth viruses could not interact with the chemicals the dreamsnakes used in place of DNA, and the healers had been unsuccessful in isolating anything comparable to a virus from the alien serpents. So they could not transfer the genes for dreamsnake venom into another serpent, and no one had ever been successful in synthesizing all the venom’s hundreds of components.
“I made Grass,” Snake said, “and four other dreamsnakes. But I can’t make them anymore. My hands aren’t steady enough, the same thing’s wrong with them that was wrong with my knee yesterday.” Sometimes she wondered if her arthritis was as much psychological as physical, a reaction against sitting in the laboratory for hours at a time, delicately manipulating the controls of the micropipette and straining her eyes to find each of the innumerable nuclei in a single cell from a dreamsnake. She had been the first healer in some years to succeed in transplanting genetic material into an unfertilized ovum. She had had to prepare several hundred to end up with Grass and his four siblings; even so, her percentage was better than that of anyone else who had ever managed the task. No one at all had ever discovered what made the serpents mature. So the healers had a small stock of frozen immature ova, gleaned from the bodies of dreamsnakes that had died, but no one could clone them; and a frozen stock of what was probably dreamsnake sperm, cells too immature to fertilize the ova when they were mixed in a test tube.
Snake believed her success to be a matter of luck as much as technique. If her people had the technology needed to build one of the electron microscopes described in their books, she felt sure they would find genes independent of the nuclear bodies, molecules so small they could not be seen, too small to transplant unless the micropipette sucked them up by chance.
“I’m going to Center to deliver a message, and to ask the people there to help us get more dreamsnakes. But I’m afraid they’ll refuse. And if I have to go home without any, after I lost mine, I don’t know what will happen. A few dreamsnakes might have hatched since I left, some might even have been cloned, but if not, I might not be allowed to be a healer. I can’t be a good one without a dreamsnake.“
“If there aren’t any others they should give you one of the ones you made,” Melissa said. “That’s the only thing that’s fair.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to the younger healers I gave them to, though,” Snake said. “I’d have to go home and say to a brother or sister that they couldn’t be a healer unless the dreamsnakes we have reproduce again.” She let out her breath in a long sigh. “I want you to know all that. That’s why I want you to go home before I do, so everyone gets a chance to know you. I had to get you away from Ras, but if you go home with me, I don’t know for sure that things will be much better.”
“Snake!” Melissa was angry. “No matter what, being with you will be better than — than being in Mountainside. I don’t care what happens. Even if you hit me—”
“Melissa!” Snake said, as shocked as the child had been.
Melissa grinned, the right side of her mouth curving up slightly. “See?” she said.
“Okay.”
“It’ll be all right,” Melissa said. “I don’t care what happens at the healers’ station. And I know, the storms are dangerous. And I saw you after you fought the crazy, so I know he’s dangerous too. But I still want to go with you. Please don’t make me go with anybody else.”
“You’re sure.”
Melissa nodded.
“All right,” Snake said. She grinned. “I never adopted anybody before. Theories aren’t the same when you actually have to start using them. We’ll go together.” In truth, she appreciated the complete confidence that Melissa, at least, had in her.
They walked down the hall hand in hand, swinging their arms like two children instead of a child and an adult. Then they rounded the last corner and Melissa suddenly pulled back. Gabriel was sitting outside Snake’s door, saddle-pack by his side, his chin on his drawn-up knees.
“Gabriel,” Snake said.
He looked up, and this time he did not flinch when he saw Melissa.
“Hello,” he said to her. “I’m sorry.”
Melissa had turned toward Snake so the worst of the scar was hidden. “It’s all right. Never mind. I’m used to it.”
“I wasn’t really awake last night…” Gabriel saw the look on Snake’s face and fell silent.
Melissa glanced at Snake, who squeezed her hand, then at Gabriel, and back at Snake. “I better — I’ll go get the horses ready.”
“Melissa—” Snake reached for her but she fled. Snake watched her go, sighed, and opened the door to her room. Gabriel stood up.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“You do have a knack.” She went inside, picked up her saddlebags, and tossed them on the bed.
Gabriel followed her. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.” She opened the flaps. “I was last night, but I’m not now.”
“I’m glad.” Gabriel sat on the bed and watched her pack. “I’m ready to leave. But I wanted to say goodbye. And thank you. And I’m sorry…”
“No more of that,” Snake said. “All right.”
Snake folded her clean desert robes and put them in the saddlebag.
“Why don’t I go with you?” Gabriel leaned forward anxiously with his elbows on his knees. “It must be easier to travel with someone to talk to than alone.”
“I won’t be alone. Melissa’s coming with me.”
“Oh.” He sounded hurt. “I’m adopting her, Gabriel. Mountainside isn’t a place for her — no more than it is for you, right now. I can help her, but I can’t do anything for you. Except make you dependent on me. I don’t want to do that. You’ll never find your strengths without your freedom.“
Snake put the sack with her toothpowder and comb and aspirin and soap into the saddlebag, buckled the flap, and sat down. She took Gabriel’s soft strong hand.
“Here they make it too hard for you. I could make it too easy. Neither way is right.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it, the tanned, scarred back and the cup of her palm.
“You see how fast you learn?” She brushed her other hand across his fair fine hair.
“Will I ever see you again?”
“I don’t know,” Snake said. “Probably not.” She smiled. “You won’t need to.”
“I’d like to,” he said wistfully.
“Go out in the world,” Snake said. “Take your life in your hands and make it what you want.”
He stood up, leaned down, and kissed her. Rising, she kissed him back more gently than she wanted to, wishing they had more time, wishing she had met him first in a year or so. She spread her fingers across his back and turned the embrace into a hug.
“Good-bye, Gabriel.”
“Good-bye, Snake.”
The door closed softly behind him.
Snake let Mist and Sand out of the serpent case for a short spell of freed
om before the long trip. They glided over her feet and around her legs as she looked out the window.
There was a knock on Snake’s door.
“Just a minute.” She let Mist crawl up her arm and over her shoulder, and picked Sand up in both hands. It would not be long before he would grow too large to coil comfortably around her wrist.
“You can come in now.”
Brian entered, then stepped back abruptly.
“It’s all right,” Snake said. “They’re calm.”
Brian retreated no farther but watched the serpents carefully. Their heads turned in unison whenever Snake moved; their tongues flicked out and in as the cobra and the rattler peered at Brian and tasted his odor.
“I brought the child’s papers,” Brian said. “They prove you are her guardian now.”
Snake coiled Sand around her right arm and took the papers left-handed. Brian gave them to her gingerly. Snake looked at them with curiosity. The parchment was stiff and crinkly, heavy with wax seals. The mayor’s spidery signature was on one corner, Ras’s opposite, elaborate and shaky.
“Is there any way Ras can challenge this?”
“He could,” Brian said. “But I think he will not. If he claims he was compelled to sign, he will have to say what the compulsion was. And then he would have other… compulsions… to explain. I think he prefers a voluntary retreat to a publicly enforced one.”
“Good.”
“Something else, healer.”
“Yes?”
He handed her a small heavy bag. Inside, coins touched with the clear hard sound of gold. Snake glanced at Brian quizzically.
“Your payment,” he said, and offered her a receipt and a pen to sign it with.
“Is the mayor still afraid he’ll be accused of bonding?”
“It could happen,” Brian said. “It’s best to be on guard.”
Snake amended the receipt to read “Accepted for my daughter, in payment of her wages for horse training,” signed it, and handed it back. Brian read it slowly.
“I think that’s better,” Snake said. “It’s only fair to Melissa, and if she’s being paid she obviously isn’t bonded.”
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