Dreamsnake

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—!”