Dreamsnake

by Vonda McIntyre

  She’s feigning sleep, Snake thought, for the line of her arm, the curl of her fingers, showed not relaxation but tension. Or wishing it, like me. Both of us would like to sleep, sleep and ignore reality.

  “Jesse,” she said softly, and again, “Jesse, please.”

  Jesse sighed and let her hand fall to the sheet.

  “There’s broth here when you feel strong enough to drink it. And wine, if you’d like.”

  A barely perceptible shake of the head, though Jesse’s lips were dry. Snake would not allow her to become dehydrated, but she did not want to have to argue her into eating, either.

  “It’s no good,” Jesse said.

  “Jesse—”

  Jesse reached out and laid her hand over Snake’s. “No, it’s all right. I’ve though about what’s happened. I’ve dreamed about it.” Snake noticed that her dark brown eyes were flecked with gold. The pupils were very small. “I can’t live like this. Neither can they. They’d try—they’d destroy themselves trying. Healer—”

  “Please…” Snake whispered, afraid again, more afraid than she had ever been in her life. “Please don’t—”

  “Can’t you help me?”

  “Not to die,” Snake said. “Don’t ask me to help you die!”

  She bolted to her feet and outside. The heat slammed against her, but there was nowhere to go to escape it. The canyon walls and tumbled piles of broken rock rose up around her.

  Head down, trembling, with sweat stinging her eyes, Snake stopped and collected herself. She had acted foolishly and she was ashamed of her panic. She must have frightened Jesse, but she could not yet make herself return and face her. She walked farther from the tent, not toward the desert where the sun and sand would waver like a fantasy, but toward a pocket in the canyon wall that was fenced off as a corral.

  It seemed to Snake hardly necessary to pen the horses at all, for they stood in a motionless group, heads down, dusty, lop-eared. They did not even flick their tails; no insects existed in the black desert. Snake wondered where Merideth’s handsome bay mare was. These are a sorry lot of beasts, she thought. Hanging on the fence or lying in careless heaps, their tack shone with precious metal and jewels. Snake put her hands on one of the roped wooden stakes and rested her chin on her fists.

  At the sound of falling water she turned, startled. At the other end of the corral’s rope section, Merideth filled a leather trough held up by a wooden frame. The horses came alive, raising their heads, pricking their ears. They started across the sand, trotting, then cantering, all in a turmoil, squealing and nipping and kicking up their heels at each other. They were transformed. They were beautiful.

  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 back into the canyon. 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?”

  “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, 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—I’m better at hers than either of us is at Alex’s—but people don’t understand her designs. No one will buy them. 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. “She knows all 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—it might be able to make them 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 this time. 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. Now 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.

  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 other 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. Once the storms of winter began, no one could cross the desert; the city was isolated. Already the summer was fading in stinging dust-devils and wind-blown 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 half-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 she can train horses to 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… It’s so…”

  “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’re 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 other possibility besides 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 your path lies with ours farther than you thought,” Jesse said. “You’ll stay with me when I go to my family, and they will 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 possibilit
ies lying in Jesse’s words…by the hope…

  “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?”

  “Only to make my family 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.”