A few minutes later Snake still watched as the pinto horse switched his long black and white tail and disappeared around the last visible turn in the northbound trail. Other hooves clattered in the courtyard below.
Snake returned her thoughts to her own journey. Melissa, riding Squirrel and leading Swift, looked up and beckoned to her. Snake smiled and nodded, threw her saddlebags over her shoulder, picked up the serpent case, and went to join her daughter.
Chapter 9
The wind in Arevin’s face felt cool and clean. He was grateful for the mountain climate, free of dust and heat and the ever present sand. At the crest of a pass he stood beside his horse and looked out over the countryside Snake had been raised in. The land was bright and very green, and he could both see and hear great quantities of free-flowing water. A river meandered through the center of the valley below, and a stone’s throw from the trail a spring gushed across mossy rock, His respect for Snake increased. Her people did not migrate; they lived here all year around. She would have had little experience with extreme climates when she entered the desert. This was no preparation for the black sand waste. Arevin himself had not been prepared for the central desert’s severity. His maps were old; no member of the clan still living had ever used them. But they had led him safely to the other side of the desert, following a line of trustworthy oases. It was so late in the season that he had met no one at alclass="underline" no one to ask advice about the best route, no one to ask about Snake.
He mounted his horse and rode down the trail into the healers’ valley.
Before he encountered any dwellings he reached a small orchard. It was unusuaclass="underline" the trees farthest from the road were full-grown, gnarled, while the nearest ones were merely saplings, as if a few trees had been planted every year for many years. A youth of fourteen or fifteen lounged in the shade, eating a piece of fruit. When Arevin stopped, the young man glanced up, rose, and started toward him. Arevin urged his horse across the grassy edge of the meadow. They met in a row of trees that seemed perhaps five or six years old.
“Hi,” the young man said. He picked another piece of fruit and held it out toward Arevin. “Have a pear? The peaches and the cherries are all gone and the oranges aren’t quite ripe yet.”
Arevin saw that, in fact, each tree bore fruit of several different shapes, but leaves of only a single shape. He reached uncertainly for the pear, wondering if the ground the trees grew on was poisoned.
“Don’t worry,” the young man said. “It isn’t radioactive. There aren’t any craters around here.”
At this Arevin drew back his hand. He had not said a word, yet the youth seemed to know what he was thinking.
“I made the tree myself, and I never work with hot mutagens.”
Arevin had no idea what the boy was talking about except that he seemed to be assuring him that the fruit was safe. He wished he understood the boy as well as the boy understood him. Not wishing to be impolite, he took the pear.
“Thank you.” Since the youth was watching him both hopefully and expectantly, Arevin bit into the fruit. It was sweet and tart at the same time, and very juicy. He took another bite. “It’s very good,” he said. “I’ve never seen a plant that would produce four different things.”
“First project,” the boy said. He gestured back toward the older trees. “We all do one. It’s pretty simple-minded but it’s traditional.”
“I see,” Arevin said.
“My name’s Thad.”
“I am honored to meet you,” Arevin said. “I am looking for Snake.”
“Snake!” Thad frowned. “I’m afraid you’ve had a long ride for nothing. She isn’t here. She isn’t even due back for months.”
“But I could not have passed her.”
Thad’s pleasant and helpful expression changed to one of worry. “You mean she’s coming home already? What happened? Is she all right?”
“She was well when I saw her last,” Arevin said. Surely she should have reached her home well ahead of him, if nothing had happened. Thoughts of accidents, unlike viper bites, to which she would be vulnerable, assailed him.
“Hey, are you all right?”
Thad was beside him, holding his elbow to steady him.
“Yes,” Arevin said, but his voice was shaky.
“Are you sick? I’m not done with my training yet but one of the other healers can help you.”
“No, no, I’m not ill. But I can’t understand how I reached this place before she did.”
“But why’s she coming home so early?”
Arevin gazed down at the intent young man, now as concerned as Arevin himself.
“I do not think I should tell her story for her,” he said. “Perhaps I should speak to her parents. Will you show me where they live?”
“I would if I could,” Thad said. “Only she doesn’t have any. Won’t I do? I’m her brother.”
“I’m sorry to cause you distress. I did not know your parents were dead.”
“They aren’t. Or they might be. I don’t know. I mean I don’t know who they are. Or who Snake’s are.”
Arevin felt thoroughly confused. He had never had any trouble understanding what Snake said to him. But he did not think he had comprehended half of what this youth had told him in only a few minutes.
“If you do not know who your parents are, or whose Snake’s are, how can you be her brother?”
Thad looked at him quizzically. “You really don’t know much about healers, do you?”
“No,” Arevin said, feeling that the conversation had taken still another unexplained turn. “I do not. We have heard of you, of course, but Snake is the only one to visit my clan.“
“The reason I asked,” Thad said, “is because most people know we’re all adopted. We don’t have families, exactly. We’re all one family.”
“Yet you said you are her brother, as if she did not have another.” Except for his blue eyes, and they were not the same shade at all, Thad did not look anything like Snake.
“That’s how we think of each other. I used to get in trouble a lot when I was a kid and she’d always stick up for me.”
“I see.” Arevin dismounted and adjusted his horse’s bridle, considering what the boy had told him. “You are not blood kin with Snake,” he said, “but you feel a special relationship to her. Is this correct?”
“Yes.” Thad’s easygoing attitude had vanished.
“If I tell you why I have come, will you advise me, thinking first of Snake, even if you should have to go against your own customs?”
Arevin was glad the youth hesitated, for he would not have been able to depend on an impulsive and emotional answer.
“Something really bad has happened, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Arevin said. “And she blames herself.”
“You feel a special relationship for her, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And she for you?”
“I think so.”
“I’m on her side,” Thad said. “Always.”
Arevin unbuckled the horse’s bridle and slipped it off so his mount could graze. He sat down beneath Thad’s fruit tree and the boy sat nearby.
“I come from the other side of the western desert,” Arevin said. “There we have no good serpents, only sand vipers whose bite means death…”