Dreamsnake

The collector looked doubtful. “Creepty-crawlies, poisons, magics, witches—no, not for us.”

“It’s none of that. You won’t even see the serpents.”

“No, not for us.”

“Then I’ll have to take all that trash out to the middle of the oasis and sink it.”

“Waste!” the collector cried. “No! Dirty the water? You shame my profession. You shame yourself.”

“I feel the same way when you won’t let me protect you against disease. Waste. Waste of people’s lives. Unnecessary deaths.”

The collector peered at her from beneath shaggy eyebrows. “No poisons? No magics?”

“None.”

“Go last if you like,” Grum said. “You’ll see it doesn’t kill me.”

“No creepty-crawlies?”

Snake could not help laughing. “No.”

“And then you give us that?” The collector gestured in the direction of Snake’s battered camp.

“Yes, afterward.”

“No disease afterward?”

“Fewer. I can’t stop all. No measles. No scarlet fever. No lockjaw—”

“Lockjaw! You stop that?”

“Yes. Not forever but for a long time.”

“We will come,” the collector said, turned, and walked away.

In Grum’s camp, Pauli was giving Swift a brisk rub-down while the mare pulled wisps of hay from a bundle. Pauli had the most beautiful hands Snake had ever seen, large yet delicate, long-fingered and strong, uncoarsened by the hard work she did. Even though she was tall, her hands still should have looked too big for her size, but they did not. They were graceful and expressive. She and Grum were as different as two people could be, except for the air of gentleness shared by grandmother and granddaughter, and by all Pauli’s cousins that Snake had met. Snake had not spent enough time in Grum’s camp to know how many of her grandchildren she had with her, or even to know the name of the little girl who sat nearby polishing Swift’s saddle.

“How’s Squirrel?” Snake asked.

“Fine and happy, child. You can see him there, under the tree, too lazy to run. But he’s sound again. You, now, you need a bed and rest.”

Snake watched her tiger-pony, who stood among the summertrees, switching his tail. He looked so comfortable and content that she did not call him.

Snake was weary but she could feel all her muscles tight across her neck and shoulders. Sleep would be impossible until some of the tension had drained away. She wanted to think about her camp. Perhaps she would decide that it had, as Grum said, simply been vandalized by a crazy. If so, she must understand it and accept it. She was not used to so much happening by chance.

“I’m going to take a bath, Grum,” she said, “and then you can put me someplace where I won’t be in your way. It won’t be for long.”

“As long as you are here and we are here. You’re welcome with us, healer-child.”

Snake hugged her. Grum patted her shoulder.

Near Grum’s camp one of the springs that fed the oasis sprang from stone and trickled down the rocks. Snake climbed to where sun-warmed water pooled in smooth basins. She could see the whole oasis: five camps on the shore, people, animals. The faint voices of children and the high yap of a dog drifted toward her through the heavy, dusty air. In a ring around the lake the summertrees stood like feathers, like a wreath of pale green silk.

At her feet, moss softened the rock around a bathing-basin. Snake pulled off her boots and stepped onto the cool living carpet.

She stripped and waded into the water. It was just below body temperature, pleasant but not shocking in the morning heat. There was a brisker pool higher in the rocks, a warmer one below. Snake lifted a stone from an outlet that allowed overflow water to spill down upon the sand. She knew better than to allow dirty water to continue flowing to the oasis. If she did, several angry caravannaires would come up to tell her to stop. They would do that as quietly and firmly as they would move animals corralled too close to the shore, or ask someone to leave who had the bad manners to relieve himself at water’s edge. Diseases transmitted in fouled water did not exist in the desert.

Snake slid farther into the tepid water, feeling it rise around her, a pleasurable line crossing her thighs, her hips, her breasts. She lay back against the warm black stone and let tension flow slowly away. The water tickled the back of her neck.

She thought back over the last few days: somehow the incidents seemed spread over a long span of time. They were embedded in a fog of exhaustion. She looked at her right hand. The ugly bruise was gone, and nothing was left of the sand viper’s bite but two shiny pink puncture scars. She clenched her fist and held it: no stiffness, no weakness.