Nothing was left but the smell of death and a spirit-empty corpse, Mist cold and hissing atop it. Snake wondered if Jesse somehow had felt the pressure grow to breaking point, and had stood it as long as she could to save her partners this memory.
Shaking, Snake put Mist in the case and cleaned the body as gently as if it were still Jesse. But there was nothing left of her now; her beauty had gone with her life, leaving bruised and battered flesh. Snake closed the eyes and drew the stained sheet up over the face.
She left the tent, carrying the leather case. Merideth and Alex watched her approach. The moon had risen; she could see them in shades of gray.
“It’s over,” she said. Somehow, her voice was the same as ever.
Merideth did not move or speak. Alex took Snake’s hand, as he had taken Jesse’s, and kissed it. Snake drew back, wanting no thanks for this night’s work.
“I should have stayed with her,” Merideth said.
“Merry, she didn’t want us to.”
Snake saw that Merideth would always imagine what had happened, a thousand ways, each more horrible than the last, unless she stopped the fantasy.
“I hope you can believe this, Merideth,” she said. “Jesse said, ‘Merry took the pain away,’ and a moment later, just before my cobra struck, she died. Instantly. A blood vessel broke in her brain. She never felt it. She never felt Mist. Gods witness it, I believe that to be the truth.”
“It would have been the same, no matter what we did?”
“Yes.”
That seemed to change things for Merideth, enough to accept. It did not change anything for Snake. She still knew she would have been the cause of Jesse’s death. Seeing the self-hatred vanish from Merideth’s face, Snake started toward the crumbled part of the canyon wall where the slope led up to the lava plain.
“Where are you going?” Alex caught up to her.
“Back to my camp,” she said dully.
“Please wait. Jesse wanted to give you something.”
If he had said Jesse had asked them to give her a gift, she would have refused, but, somehow, that Jesse left it herself made a difference. Unwillingly, she stopped. “I can’t,” she said. “Alex, let me go.”
He turned her gently and guided her back to the camp. Merideth was gone, and in the tent with Jesse’s body or grieving alone.
Jesse had left her a horse, a dark-gray mare, almost black, a fine-boned animal with the look of speed and spirit. Despite herself, despite knowing it was not a healer’s horse, Snake’s hands and heart went out to her. The mare seemed to Snake the only thing she had seen in — she could not think how long — that was beauty and strength alone, unmarked by tragedy. Alex gave her the reins and she closed her hands around the soft leather. The bridle was inlaid with gold in Merideth’s delicate filigree style.
“Her name is Swift,” Alex said.
Snake was alone, on the long trek to cross the lava before morning. The mare’s hooves rang on the hollow-sounding stone, and the leather case rubbed against Snake’s leg from behind.
She knew she could not return to the healers’ station. Not yet. Tonight had proved that she could not stop being a healer, no matter how inadequate her tools. If her teachers took Mist and Sand and cast her out, she knew she could not bear it. She would go mad with the knowledge that in this town, or that camp, sickness or death occurred that she could have cured or prevented or made more tolerable. She would always try to do something.
She had been raised to be proud and self-reliant, qualities she would have to set aside if she returned to the station now. She had promised Jesse to take her last message to the city, and she would keep the promise. She would go to the city for Jesse, and for herself.
Chapter 4
Arevin sat on a huge boulder, his cousin’s baby gurgling in a sling against his chest. The warmth and activity of the new being were a comfort to him as he stared across the desert, in the direction Snake had gone. Stavin was well and the new child healthy; Arevin knew he should feel grateful and glad of the clan’s good fortune, so he felt vaguely guilty about his lingering sorrow. He touched the place on his cheek where the white serpent’s tail had struck him. As Snake had promised, there was no scar. It seemed impossible that she had been gone long enough for the cut to scab over and heal, because he remembered everything about her as clearly as if she were still here. About Snake was none of the blurriness that distance and time impart to most acquaintances. At the same time it felt to Arevin as if she had been gone forever.
One of the huge musk oxen the clan herded ambled up and rubbed herself against the boulder, giving her side a good scratch. She whuffled at Arevin, nuzzling his foot and licking at his boot with her great pink tongue. Nearby, her half-grown calf chewed at the dry, leafless branches of a desert bush. All the beasts in the herd grew thin during each harsh summer; now their coats were dull and rough. They survived the heat well enough if their insulating undercoats were thoroughly combed out when they began shedding in the spring; since the clan kept the oxen for their fine, soft winter wool, the combing was never neglected. But the oxen, like the people, had had enough of summer and heat and foraging for dry and tasteless food. The animals were anxious, in their mild-mannered way, to return to the fresh grass of winter pastures. Ordinarily Arevin too would be glad to return to the plateaus.
The baby waved tiny hands in the air, clutched Arevin’s finger, and drew it down. Arevin smiled. “That’s one thing I can’t do for you, little one,” he said. The baby sucked at his fingertip and gummed it contentedly, without crying when no milk came. The baby’s eyes were blue, like Snake’s. Many babies’ eyes are blue, Arevin thought. But a child’s blue eyes were enough to make him drift off into dreams.
He dreamed about Snake almost every night, or at least every night he was able to sleep. He had never felt this way about anyone before. He clung to memories of the few times they had touched: leaning against each other in the desert; the touch of her strong fingers on his bruised cheek; in Stavin’s tent, where he had comforted her. It was absurd that the happiest time in his life seemed to him the moment just before he knew she must leave, when he embraced her and hoped she might decide to stay. And she would have stayed, he thought. Because we do need a healer, and maybe partly because of me. She would have stayed longer if she could.
That was the only time he had cried in as long as he could remember. Yet he understood her not being willing to stay with her abilities crippled, for right now he felt crippled too. He was no good for anything. He knew it but could do nothing about it. Every day he hoped Snake might return, though he knew she would not. He had no idea how far beyond the desert her destination lay. She might have traveled from the healers’ station for a week or a month or half a year before reaching the desert and deciding to cross it in search of new people and new places.
He should have gone with her. He was certain of that now. In her grief she could not accept him, but he should have seen immediately that she would never be able to explain to her teachers what had happened here. Even Snake’s insight would not help her comprehend the terror Arevin’s people felt toward vipers. Arevin understood it from experience, from the nightmare he still had about his little sister’s death, from the cold sweat sliding down his body when Snake had asked him to help hold Mist. And he knew it from his own deathly fear when the sand viper bit Snake’s hand, for already he loved her, and he knew she would die.