Dreamsnake

They rode farther, circling the still, black pool until they found a site with trees thick enough to give some shelter. As soon as Snake reined in, Melissa jumped down and began unsaddling Squirrel. Snake climbed down more slowly, for despite the constant desert climate, her knee had stiffened again during the long ride. Melissa rubbed Squirrel with a twist of leaves, talking to him in a barely audible voice. Soon they were all, horses and people, bedded down to wait through the day.

Snake padded barefoot toward the water, stretching and yawning. She had slept well all day, and now she wanted a swim before starting out again. It was still too early to leave the shelter of the thick summertrees. Hoping to find a few pieces of ripe fruit still on the branches, she glanced up and around, but the desert dwellers’ harvest had been thorough.

Only a few days before, on the other side of the mountains, the foliage at the oases had been lush and soft; here, now, the leaves were dry and dying. They rustled as she brushed past. The brittle fronds crumbled in her hand.

She stopped where the beach began. The black strip was only a few meters wide, a semicircle of sand around a minuscule lagoon that reflected the overhanging latticework of branches. In the secluded spot, Melissa was kneeling half-naked on the sand. She leaned out over the water, staring silently downward. The marks of Ras’s beating had faded, and the fire had left her back unscarred. Her skin was fairer than Snake would have guessed from her deep-tanned hands and face. As Snake watched, Melissa reached out slowly and touched the surface of the dark water. Ripples spread from her fingertips.

Melissa watched, fascinated, as Snake let Mist and Sand out of the case. Mist glided around Snake’s feet, tasting the scents of the oasis. Snake picked her up gently. The smooth white scales were cool against her hands.

“I want her to smell you,” Snake said. “Her instinctive reaction is to strike at anything that startles her. If she recognizes your scent, it’s safer. All right?”

Melissa nodded, slowly, clearly frightened. “She’s very poisonous, isn’t she? More than the other?”

“Yes. As soon as we get home I can immunize you, but I don’t want to start that here. I have to test you first and I don’t have the right things with me.”

“You mean you can fix it so she’d bite me and nothing would happen?”

“Not quite nothing. But she’s bitten me by mistake a few times and I’m still here.”

“I guess I better let her smell me,” Melissa said.

Snake sat down next to her. “I know it’s hard not to be afraid of her. But breathe deeply and try to relax. Close your eyes and just listen to my voice.”

“Horses know it, too, when you’re afraid,” Melissa said, and did as Snake told her.

The cobra’s forked tongue flickered over Melissa’s hands, and the child remained still and silent. Snake remembered the first time she had seen the albino cobras: a terrifying, exhilarating moment when a mass of them, coiled together in infinite knots, felt her footsteps and lifted their heads in unison, hissing, like a many-headed beast or an alien plant in violent and abrupt full bloom.

Snake kept her hand on Mist as the cobra glided over Melissa’s arms.

“She feels nice,” Melissa said. Her voice was shaky, and a little scared, but the tone was sincere.

Melissa had seen rattlers before; their danger was a known one and not so frightening. Sand crawled across her hands and she stroked him gently. Snake was pleased; her daughter’s abilities were not limited to horses.

“I hoped you’d get along with Mist and Sand,” she said. “It’s important for a healer.”

Melissa looked up, startled. “But you didn’t mean—” She stopped.

“What?”

Melissa drew in a deep breath. “What you told the mayor,” she said hesitantly. “About what I could do. You didn’t really mean it. You had to say it so he’d let me go.”

“I meant everything I said.”

“But I couldn’t be a healer.”

“Why not?” Melissa did not answer, so Snake continued. “I told you healers adopt their children, because we can’t have any of our own. Let me tell you some more about us. A lot of healers have partners who have different professions. And not all our children become healers. We aren’t a closed community. But when we choose someone to adopt, we usually pick someone we think could be one of us.”

“Me?”

“Yes. If you want to. That’s the important thing. For you to do what you want to do. Not what you think anyone else wants or expects you to do.”

“A healer…” Melissa said.

The quality of wonder in her daughter’s voice gave Snake another compelling reason to make the city people help her find more dreamsnakes.

The second night Snake and Melissa rode hard. There was no oasis, and in the morning Snake did not stop at dawn, though it was really too hot to travel. Sweat drenched her. The sticky beads rolled down her back and sides. They slid halfway down her face and dried into salty grit. Swift’s coat darkened as sweat streamed down her legs. Every step flung droplets from her fetlocks.

“Mistress…”