“Sugar!” He wiped his fingers on the grass.
“Melissa! Wake up, dear.” Melissa’s eyelids flickered. Snake caught her breath with relief.
“Melissa! You need to drink this.”
Melissa’s lips moved slightly.
“Don’t try to talk yet.” Snake held the small metal container to her daughter’s mouth and let the thick, sticky liquid flow in slowly, bit by bit, waiting until she was certain Melissa had swallowed each portion of the stimulant before she gave her any more.
“Gods…” Arevin said in wonder.
“Snake?” Melissa whispered.
“I’m here, Melissa. We’re safe. You’re all right now.” She felt like laughing and crying at the same time.
“I’m so cold.”
“I know.” She wrapped the blanket around Melissa’s shoulders. That was safe, now that Melissa had the warm drink in her stomach, and the stimulant exploding energy into her blood.
“I didn’t want to leave you there, but I promised… I was afraid that crazy would get Squirrel, I was afraid Mist and Sand would die…”
Her last fears gone, Snake eased Melissa back on the warm rock. Nothing in Melissa’s speech or words indicated brain damage; she had survived whole.
“Squirrel’s here with us, and so are Mist and Sand. You can go back to sleep, and when you wake up everything will be fine.” Melissa might have a headache for a day or so, depending on how sensitive she was to the stimulant. But she was alive, she was well.
“I tried to get away,” Melissa said, not opening her eyes. “I kept going and going, but…”
“I’m very proud of you. No one could do what you did without being brave and strong.”
The unscarred side of Melissa’s mouth twisted into a half smile, and then she was asleep. Snake shaded her face with a corner of the blanket.
“I would have sworn my life she was dead,” Arevin said.
“She’ll be all right,” Snake said, to herself more than to Arevin. “Thank gods, she will be all right.”
The urgency that had possessed her, the fleeting strength brought on by adrenalin, had slowly drained away without her noticing. She could not move, even to sit down again. Her knees had locked; all that was left for her to do was fall. She could not even tell if she was swaying or if her eyes were playing tricks on her, for objects seemed to approach and recede randomly.
Arevin touched her left shoulder. His hand was just as she remembered it, gentle and strong.
“Healer,” he said, “the child is safe. Think of yourself now.” His voice was completely neutral.
“She’s been through so much,” Snake whispered. The words came out with difficulty. “She’ll be afraid of you…”
He did not reply, and she shivered. Arevin supported her and eased her to the ground. His hair had come loose; it fell around his face and he looked just as he had the last time she had seen him.
He held his flask to her dry lips, and she drank warm water freshened with wine.
“Who did this to you?” he asked. “Are you still in danger?”
She had not even thought what could happen when North and his people revived. “Not now, but later, tomorrow—” Abruptly, she struggled to rise. “If I sleep, I won’t wake up in time—”
He soothed her. “Rest. I’ll keep watch till morning. Then we can move to a safer place.”
With his reassurance, she could rest. He left her for a moment, and she lay flat on the ground, her fingers spread wide and pressing down, as if the earth held her to it yet gave something back. Its coolness helped ease her returning awareness of the crossbow wound. She heard Arevin kneel beside her, and he laid a cool, wet cloth across her shoulder to soak loose the frayed material and dry blood. She watched him through her eyelashes, again admiring his hands, the long lines of his body. But his touch was as neutral as his words had been.
“How did you find us?” she asked. “I thought you were a dream.”
“I went to the healers’ station,” he said. “I had to try to make your people understand what happened and that the fault was my clan’s, not yours.” He glanced at her, then away, sadly. “I failed, I think. Your teacher said only that you must go home.”
Before, there had been no time for Arevin to respond to what she had said to him, that she dreamed about him and loved him. But now he acted as if she had never said those things, as if he had done what he had done out of duty alone. Snake wondered, with a great empty feeling of loss and regret, if she misunderstood his feelings. She did not want more gratitude and guilt.
“But you’re here,” she said. She pushed herself up on her elbow, and with some effort sat to face him. “You didn’t have to follow me, if you had a duty it ended at my home.”
He met her gaze. “I… dreamed about you, too.” He leaned toward her, forearms resting on his knees, hands outstretched. “I never exchanged names with another person.”
Slowly, gladly, Snake slid her dirty, scarred left hand around his clean, dark-tanned right one.
He looked up at her. “After what happened—”
Wishing even more now that she was not hurt, Snake released his hand and reached into her pocket. The eggling dreamsnake coiled itself around her fingers. She brought it out and showed it to Arevin. Nodding toward the wicker basket, she said, “I have more in there, and I know how to let them breed.”
He stared at the small serpent, then at her, in wonder. “Then you did reach the city. They accepted you.”
“No,” she said. She glanced toward the broken dome. “I found dreamsnakes up there. And a whole alien world, where they live.” She let the eggling slip back into her pocket. It was growing used to her already; it would make a good healer’s serpent. “The city people sent me away, but they haven’t seen the last of healers. They still owe me a debt.”
“My people owe you a debt, too,” Arevin said. “A debt I’ve failed to repay.”
“You helped save my daughter’s life! Do you think that counts for nothing?” Then, more calmly, Snake said, “Arevin, I wish Grass were still alive. I can’t pretend I don’t. But my negligence killed him, nothing else. I’ve never thought anything but that.”
“My clan,” Arevin said, “and my cousin’s partner—”
“Wait. If Grass hadn’t died, I’d never have started home when I did.”
Arevin smiled slightly.
“And if I hadn’t come back then,” Snake said, “I never would have gone to Center. I never would have found Melissa. And I never would have encountered the crazy or heard about the broken dome. It’s as if your clan acted as a catalyst. If not for you we would have kept on begging the city people for dreamsnakes, and they would have kept on refusing us. The healers would have gone on unchanging until there were no dreamsnakes and no healers left. That’s all different now. So maybe I’m in as much debt to you as you think you are to me.”
He looked at her for a long time. “I think you are making excuses for my people.”
Snake clenched her fist. “Is guilt all that can exist between us?”
“No!” Arevin said sharply. More quietly, as if surprised by his own outburst, he said, “At least, I’ve hoped for something more.”
Relenting, Snake took his hand. “So have I.” She kissed his palm.
Slowly, Arevin smiled. He leaned closer, and a moment later they were embracing each other.
“If we’ve owed each other, and repaid each other, our people can be friends,” Arevin said. “And perhaps you and I have earned the time you once said we needed.”
“We have,” Snake said.
Arevin brushed the tangled hair back from her forehead. “I’ve learned new customs since I came to the mountains,” he said. “I want to take care of you while your shoulder heals. And when you’re well, I want to ask if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
Snake returned his smile; she knew they understood each other. “That’s a question I’ve wanted to ask you, too,” she said, and then she grinned. “Healers mend quickly, you know.”