Dreamsnake

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.

Seeing his people would always remind her of Grass’s death, if she were ever able to forget it. Her mistakes and misjudgments of them were the reason Grass was gone. She had expected them to accept her word despite their fear, and without meaning to they had shown her how arrogant her assumptions were.

She shook off her depression. Now she had a chance to redeem herself. If she really could go with Jesse, find out where the dreamsnakes came from, and capture new ones—if she could even discover why they would not breed on earth—she could return in triumph instead of in disgrace, succeeding where her teachers and generations of healers had failed.

It was time to return to the camp. She climbed the low rise of jumbled rock that covered the mouth of the canyon, looking for Mist. The cobra was coiled on a large chunk of basalt.

At the top of the slope Snake reached for Mist, picked her up, and stroked her narrow head. She was not so formidable unexcited, hood folded, narrow-headed as any venomless serpent. She did not need a thick-jowled head, heavy with poison. Her venom was powerful enough to kill in delicate doses.

As Snake turned, the brilliant sunset drew her gaze. The sun was an orange blur on the horizon, radiating streaks of purple and vermilion through the gray clouds.

And then Snake saw the craters, stretching away across the desert below her. The earth was covered with great circular basins. Some, lying in the path of the lava flow, had caught and broken its smooth frozen billows. Others were clearer, great holes gouged in the earth, still distinct after so many years of driving sands. The craters were so large, spread over such a distance, that they could have only one source. Nuclear explosions had blasted them. The war itself was long over, almost forgotten, for it had destroyed everyone who knew or cared about the reasons it had happened.

Snake gazed over the ravaged land, glad to be no nearer. In places like this the effects of the war had lingered visibly and invisibly to Snake’s time; they would persist for centuries beyond her life. The canyon in which she and the partners were camped was probably not completely safe itself, but they had not been here long enough to be in serious danger.

Something unusual lay out in the rubble, in line with the brilliant setting sun so it was difficult for Snake to see. She squinted at it. She felt uneasy, as if she were spying on something she had no business knowing about.

The body of a horse, decaying in the heat, lay crumpled at the edge of a crater. The dead animal’s rigid legs poked grotesquely into the air, forced up by its swollen belly. Clasping the animal’s head, a gold bridle gleamed scarlet and orange in the sunset.

Snake released her breath in a sound part sigh, part moan.

She ran back to the serpent case and urged Mist inside, picked Sand up and started back toward the camp, cursing when the rattler in his mindlessly obstinate way tried to twine himself around her arm. She stopped and held him so he could slide into his compartment, and started running again while she was still fastening the catch. The case banged against her leg.

Panting, she reached the tent and ducked inside. Merideth and Alex were asleep. Snake knelt beside Jesse and carefully pulled back the sheet.

Little more than an hour had passed since Snake had examined Jesse last. The bruises down her side had darkened and deepened, and her body was unhealthily flushed. Snake felt her forehead. It was burning hot and paper-dry. Jesse did not respond to her touch. When Snake took her hand away the smooth skin looked darker. Within minutes, while Snake watched, horrified, another bruise began to form as the capillaries ruptured, their walls so damaged by radiation that mild pressure completed their destruction. The bandage on Jesse’s thigh suddenly reddened in the center with a stain of blood. Snake clenched her fists. She was shaking, deep inside, as if from penetrating cold.

“Merideth!”

In a moment Merideth was awake, yawning and mumbling sleepily. “What’s wrong?”

“How long did it take you to find Jesse? Did she fall in the craters?”

“Yes, she was prospecting. That’s why we come here—other artisans can’t match our work because of what Jesse finds here. But this time a rim gave way. We found her in the evening.”

A whole day, Snake thought. She must have been in one of the primary craters.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Those craters are dangerous—”

“Do you believe all those old legends, healer? We’ve been coming here for a decade and nothing ever happened to us.”