Dreamsnake

Taken aback, Snake hesitated a moment. Her people did not form family groups quite the way others did. She herself had never called anyone “mother” or “father,” though all the older healers bore exactly that relationship to her. And Melissa’s tone was so wistful…

“All healers are your family now,” Snake said, “but I adopted you, and I think that makes me your mother.”

“I’m glad.”

“So am I.”

Below the narrow band of scraggly forest, almost nothing grew on the mountain’s flanks but lichen, and though the altitude was still high and the path steep, Snake and Melissa might as well have been on the desert floor already. Below the trees, the heat and the dryness of the air increased steadily. When they finally did reach the sand, they stopped for a moment to change, Snake into the robes Arevin’s people had given her, Melissa into desert clothes they had bought for her in Mountainside.

They saw no one all day. Snake glanced over her shoulder from time to time, and kept on guard whenever the horses passed through dunefields where someone could hide and ambush unsuspecting passersby. But there was no trace of the crazy. Snake began to wonder if the two attacks might have been coincidence, and her memories of other noises around her camp a dream. And if the crazy was a crazy, perhaps his vendetta against her had by now been diverted by some other irresistible concern.

She did not convince herself.

By evening the mountains lay far behind them, forming an abrupt wall. The horses’ hooves crunched in the sand, but the underlying silence was complete and unearthly. Snake and Melissa rode and talked as darkness fell. The heavy clouds obscured the moon; the constant glow of the lightcells in Snake’s lantern, relatively brighter now, provided just enough illumination for the travelers to continue. Hanging from the saddle, the lantern swung with Swift’s walk. The black sand reflected light like water. Squirrel and Swift moved closer together. Gradually, Snake and Melissa talked more and more softly, and finally they did not speak at all.

Snake’s compass, the nearly invisible moon, the direction of the wind, the shapes of sand dunes all helped them proceed in the right direction, but Snake could not put aside the pervasive wilderness fear that she was traveling in circles. Turning in the saddle, Snake watched the invisible trail behind them for several minutes, but no other light followed. They were alone; there was nothing but the darkness. Snake settled back.

“It’s spooky,” Melissa whispered.

“I know. I wish we could travel by day.”

“Maybe it’ll rain.”

“That would be nice.”

The desert received rain only once every year or two, but when it came, it usually arrived just before winter. Then the dormant seeds exploded into growth and reproduction and the sharp-grained desert softened with green and bits of color. In three days the delicate plants shriveled to brown lace and died, leaving hard-cased seeds to endure another year, or two, or three, until the rain roused them again. But tonight the air was dry and quiet and gave no hint of any change.

A light shimmered in the distance. Snake, dozing, woke abruptly from a dream in which the crazy was following and she saw his lantern moving closer and closer. Up until now she had not realized how sure she was that somehow he was still following her, still somewhere near, fired by incomprehensible motives.

But the light was not a carried lantern, it was steady and stationary and ahead of her. The sound of dry leaves drifted toward her on faint wind: they were nearing the first oasis on the route to Center.

It was not even dawn. Snake reached forward and patted Swift’s neck. “Not much farther now,” she said.

“What?” Melissa, too, started awake. “Where—?”

“It’s all right,” Snake said. “We can stop soon.”

“Oh.” Melissa looked around, blinking. “I forgot where I was.”

They reached the summertrees ringing the oasis. Snake’s lantern illuminated leaves already split and frayed by windblown sand. Snake did not see any tents and she could not hear any sounds of people or animals. All the caravannaires, by now, had retreated to the safety of the mountains.

“Where’s that light?”

“I don’t know,” Snake said. She glanced at Melissa, for her voice sounded strange: it was muffled by the end of her headcloth, pulled across her face. When no one appeared, she let it drop as if unaware that she had been hiding herself.

Snake turned Swift around, worried about the light.

“Look,” Melissa said.

Swift’s body cut off the lantern’s light in one direction, and there against the darkness rose a streak of luminescence. Closer, Snake could see that it was a dead summertree, close enough to the water to rot instead of drying. Lightcells had invaded its fragile trunk, transforming it into a glowing signal. Snake breathed softly with relief.