Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  Jesse’s lips were darkening to purple. Her lower lip had split. Snake dabbed at the blood, but it was thin as water and she could not stop the flow.

  “You keep going,” Jesse whispered.

  “What?”

  “To the city. You still have a claim on them.”

  “Jesse, no—”

  “Yes. They live under a stone sky, afraid of everything outside. They can help you, and they need your help. They’ll all go mad in a few more generations. Tell them I lived and I was happy. Tell them I might not have died if they had told the truth. They said everything outside killed, so I thought nothing did.”

  “I’ll carry your message.”

  “Don’t forget your own. Other people need…” She ran out of breath, and Snake waited in silence for the command that would come next. Sweat slid down her sides. Sensing her distress, Mist coiled tighter on her arm.

  “Healer?”

  Snake patted her hand.

  “Merry took the pain away. Please let me go before it comes back.”

  “All right, Jesse.” She freed Mist from her arm. “I’ll try to make it as quick as I can.”

  The handsome ruined face turned toward her. “Thank you.”

  Snake was glad Jesse could not see what was about to happen. Mist would strike one of the carotid arteries, just beneath the jaw, so the poison would flow to Jesse’s brain and kill her instantly. Snake had planned that out very carefully, dispassionately, at the same time wondering how she could think about it so clearly.

  Snake began to speak soothingly, hypnotically. “Relax, let your head fall back, close your eyes, pretend it’s time to sleep…” She held Mist over Jesse’s breast, waiting as the tension flowed away and the slight tremor ceased. Tears ran down her face, but her sight was brilliantly clear. She could see the pulse-beat in Jesse’s throat. Mist’s tongue flicked out, in. Her hood flared. She would strike straight forward when Snake released her. “A deep sleep, and joyful dreams…” Jesse’s head lolled, exposing her throat. Mist slid in Snake’s hands. Snake felt her fingers opening as she thought Must I do this? and suddenly Jesse convulsed, her upper spine arched, flinging her head back. Her arms went rigid and her fingers spread and tensed into claws. Frightened, Mist struck. Jesse convulsed again, hands clenching, and relaxed completely, all at once. Blood pulsed in two thin drops from the marks of Mist’s fangs. Jesse shuddered, but she was already dead.

  Nothing was left but the smell of death and a spirit-empty corpse, Mist cold and hissing atop it. Snake wondered if Jesse somehow had felt the pressure grow to breaking point, and had stood it as long as she could to save her partners this memory.

  Shaking, Snake put Mist in the case and cleaned the body as gently as if it were still Jesse. But there was nothing left of her now; her beauty had gone with her life, leaving bruised and battered flesh. Snake closed the eyes and drew the stained sheet up over the face.

  She left the tent, carrying the leather case. Merideth and Alex watched her approach. The moon had risen; she could see them in shades of gray.

  “It’s over,” she said. Somehow, her voice was the same as ever.

  Merideth did not move or speak. Alex took Snake’s hand, as he had taken Jesse’s, and kissed it. Snake drew back, wanting no thanks for this night’s work.

  “I should have stayed with her,” Merideth said.

  “Merry, she didn’t want us to.”

  Snake saw that Merideth would always imagine what had happened, a thousand ways, each more horrible than the last, unless she stopped the fantasy.

  “I hope you can believe this, Merideth,” she said. “Jesse said, ‘Merry took the pain away,’ and a moment later, just before my cobra struck, she died. Instantly. A blood vessel broke in her brain. She never felt it. She never felt Mist. Gods witness it, I believe that to be the truth.”

  “It would have been the same, no matter what we did?”

  “Yes.”

  That seemed to change things for Merideth, enough to accept. It did not change anything for Snake. She still knew she would have been the cause of Jesse’s death. Seeing the self-hatred vanish from Merideth’s face, Snake started toward the crumbled part of the canyon wall where the slope led up to the lava plain.

  “Where are you going?” Alex caught up to her.

  “Back to my camp,” she said dully.

  “Please wait. Jesse wanted to give you something.”

  If he had said Jesse had asked them to give her a gift, she would have refused, but, somehow, that Jesse left it herself made a difference. Unwillingly, she stopped. “I can’t,” she said. “Alex, let me go.”

  He turned her gently and guided her back to the camp. Merideth was gone, and in the tent with Jesse’s body or grieving alone.

  Jesse had left her a horse, a dark-gray mare, almost black, a fine-boned animal with the look of speed and spirit. Despite herself, despite knowing it was not a healer’s horse, Snake’s hands and heart went out to her. The mare seemed to Snake the only thing she had seen in—she could not think how long—that was beauty and strength alone, unmarked by tragedy. Alex gave her the reins and she closed her hands around the soft leather. The bridle was inlaid with gold in Merideth’s delicate filigree style.

  “Her name is Swift,” Alex said.

  Snake was alone, on the long trek to cross the lava before morning. The mare’s hooves rang on the hollow-sounding stone, and the leather case rubbed against Snake’s leg from behind.

  She knew she could not return to the healers’ station. Not yet. Tonight had proved that she could not stop being a healer, no matter how inadequate her tools. If her teachers took Mist and Sand and cast her out, she knew she could not bear it. She would go mad with the knowledge that in this town, or that camp, sickness or death occurred that she could have cured or prevented or made more tolerable. She would always try to do something.

  She had been raised to be proud and self-reliant, qualities she would have to set aside if she returned to the station now. She had promised Jesse to take her last message to the city, and she would keep the promise. She would go to the city for Jesse, and for herself.

  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 bl
ue, 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.