following the healer, if following Snake, was the right thing to do. It was, because it had to be done. At the very least the clan owed her that. Arevin eased his hand from the baby’s damp grasp, moved the sling to his back, and climbed from the boulder to the desert floor.
On the horizon, the oasis hovered so green and soft in the dull dawn light that at first Snake thought it was a mirage. She did not feel quite capable of distinguishing illusion from reality. She had ridden all night to cross the lava flow before the sun rose and the heat grew intolerable. Her eyes burned and her lips were dry and cracked.
The gray mare, Swift, raised her head and pricked her ears, nostrils flaring at the scent of water, eager to reach it after so long on short rations. When the horse broke into a trot Snake did not rein her in.
The delicate summertrees rose around them, brushing Snake’s shoulders with feathery leaves. The air beneath them was almost cool, and thick with the odor of ripening fruit. Snake pulled the end of her headcloth away from her face and breathed deeply.
She dismounted and led Swift to the dark clear pool. The mare plunged her muzzle into the water and drank. Even her nostrils were beneath the surface. Snake knelt nearby and cupped water in her hands. It splashed and ran between her fingers, brushing ripples across the pool’s surface. The ripples widened and cleared, and Snake could see herself reflected above the black sand. Her face was masked with dust.
I look like a bandit, she thought. Or a clown.
But the laughter she deserved was of contempt, not joy. Tear tracks streaked the dirt on her face. She touched them, still staring down at her reflection.
Snake wished she could forget the past few days, but they would never leave her. She could still feel the dry fragility of Jesse’s skin, and her light, questioning touch; she could still hear her voice. And she could feel the pain of Jesse’s death, which she could do nothing to prevent, and nothing to ease. She did not want to see that pain or feel it again.
Plunging her hands into the cold water, Snake splashed it across her face, washing away the black dust, the sweat, and even the tracks of her tears.
She led Swift quietly along the shore, passing tents and silent campsites where the caravannaires still slept. When she reached Grum’s camp she stopped, but the tent flaps were closed. Snake did not want to awaken the old woman or her grandchildren. Farther back from the shore Snake could see the horse corral. Squirrel, her tiger-pony, stood dozing with Grum’s horses. His black and gold coat showed the effects of a week of energetic brushing, he was fat and content, and he no longer favored his shoeless foot. Snake decided to leave him with Grum another day, and disturb neither the tiger-pony nor the old caravannaire this morning.
Swift followed Snake along the shore, nibbling occasionally at her hip. Snake scratched the mare behind the ears, where sweat had dried underneath the bridle. Arevin’s people had given her a sack of hay-cubes for Squirrel, but Grum had been feeding the pony, so the fodder should still be in camp.
“Food and a good brushing and sleep, that’s what we both need,” she said to the horse.
She had made her camp away from the others, beyond an outcropping of rock, in an area not much favored by the traders. It was safer for people and for her serpents if they were kept apart. Snake rounded the sloping stone ridge.
Everything was changed. She had left her bedroll rumpled and slept-in, but everything else had still been packed. Now someone had folded her blankets and piled them up, stacked her extra clothes nearby, and laid her cooking utensils in a row in the sand. She frowned and went closer. Healers were regarded with deference and even awe; she had not even thought of asking Grum to watch her belongings as well as her pony. That someone might bother her equipment while she was gone had never even occurred to her.
Then she saw that the utensils were dented, the metal plate bent in half, the cup crushed, the spoon twisted. She dropped Swift’s reins and hurried to the neat array of her belongings. The folded blankets were slashed and torn. She picked up her clean shirt from the pile of clothing, but it was no longer clean. It had been trampled in the mud at the water’s edge. It was old and soft and well worn, frayed and weak in spots, her comfortable, favorite shirt. Now it was ripped up the back and the sleeves were shredded; it was ruined.
The fodder bag lay in line with the rest of her things, but the scattered hay-cubes were crushed in the sand. Swift nibbled, at the fragments, while Snake stood looking at the wreck around her. She could not understand why anyone would rifle her camp, then leave the ruined gear tidily folded. She could not understand why anyone would rifle her camp at all, for she had little of value. She shook her head. Perhaps someone believed she collected large fees of gold and jewels. Some healers were rewarded richly for their services. Still, there was much honor in the desert and even people who were unprotected by awe, by their professions, thought nothing of leaving valuables unguarded.
Her torn shirt still in her hand, Snake wandered around what had been her camp, feeling too tired and empty and confused to think about what had happened. Squirrel’s packsaddle leaned against a rock; Snake picked it up for no particular reason except perhaps that it looked undamaged.
Then she saw that all its side pockets had been slashed open and torn away, though the flaps were secured only by buckles.
The side pockets had contained all her maps and records, and the journal of her unfinished proving year. She thrust her hands into corners, hoping for even a scrap of paper, but nothing at all remained. Snake flung the saddle to the ground. She hurried around the edges of her camp, looking behind rocks and kicking up the sand, hoping to see white discarded pages or to hear the crackle of paper beneath her feet, but she found nothing, there was nothing left.
She felt physically assaulted. Anything else she had, her blankets, her clothes, certainly the maps, could be useful to a thief, but the journal was worthless to anyone but her.
“Damn you!” she cried in a fury, at no one. The mare snorted and shied away, splashing into the pool. Shaking, Snake calmed herself, then turned and held out her hand and walked slowly toward Swift, speaking softly, until the horse let her take the reins. Snake stroked her.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’ll be all right, never mind.” She was speaking as much to herself as to the horse. They were both up to their knees in the clear, cool water. Snake patted the mare’s shoulder, combing the black mane with her fingers. Her vision suddenly blurred and she leaned against Swift’s neck, shaking.
Listening to the strong steady heartbeat and the mare’s quiet breathing, Snake managed to calm herself. She straightened and waded out of the water. On the bank, she unstrapped the serpent case, then unsaddled the horse and began to rub her down with a piece of the torn blanket. She worked with the grimness of exhaustion. The fancy saddle and bridle, now stained with dust and sweat, could wait, but Snake would not leave Swift dirty and sweaty while she herself rested. “Snake-child, healer-child, dear girl—” Snake turned. Grum hobbled toward her, helping herself along with a gnarled walking stick. One of her grandchildren, a tall ebony young woman, accompanied her, but all Grum’s grandchildren knew better than to try to support the tiny, arthritis-bent old woman.
Grum’s white headcloth lay askew on her sparse hair. “Dear child, how could I let you pass me? I’ll hear her come in, I thought. Or her pony will smell her and neigh.” Grum’s dark-tanned age-wrinkled face showed extra lines of concern. “Snake-child, we never wanted you to see this alone.”
“What happened, Grum?”
“Pauli,” Grum said to her granddaughter, “take care of the healer’s horse.”
“Yes, Grum.” When Pauli took the reins, she touched Snake’s arm in a gesture of comfort. She picked up the saddle and led Swift back toward Grum’s camp. Holding Snake’s elbow — not for support, but to support her — Grum guided her to a chunk of rock. They sat down and Snake glanced again around her camp, disbelief overcoming exhaustion. She looked at Grum.
Grum sighed. “It was yesterday, just before dawn. We heard noises and a voice, not yours, and when we came to look we could see a single figure, in desert robes. We thought he was dancing. But when we went closer, he ran away. He broke his lantern in the sand and we couldn’t find him. We found your camp…” Grum shrugged. “We picked up all we could find, but nothing whole was left.”
Snake looked around in silence, no closer to understanding why anyone would ransack her camp.
“By morning the wind had blown away the tracks,” Grum said. “The creature must have gone out in the desert, but it was no desert person. We don’t steal. We don’t destroy.”
“I know, Grum.”
“You come with me. Breakfast. Sleep. Forget the crazy. We all have to watch for crazies.” She took Snake’s scarred hand in her small, work-hardened one. “But you shouldn’t have come to this alone. No. I should have seen you, Snake-child.”
“It’s all right, Grum.”
“Let me help you move to my tents. You don’t want to stay over here anymore.”
“There’s nothing left to move.” Beside Grum, Snake stood staring at the mess. The old woman patted her hand gently.
“He wrecked everything, Grum. If he’d taken it all I could understand.”
“Dear one, nobody understands crazies. They have no reasons.”
That was exactly why Snake could not believe a real crazy would destroy so much so completely. The damage had been inflicted in a manner so deliberate and, in a strange way, rational, that the madness seemed less the result of insanity than of rage. She shivered again.
“Come with me,” Grum said. “Crazies appear, they disappear. They’re like sand flies, one summer you hear about them every time you turn around, the next year nothing.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I am,” Grum said. “I know about these things. He won’t come back here, he’ll go somewhere else, but soon we’ll all know to look for him. When we find him we’ll take him to the menders and maybe they can make him well.”
Snake nodded tiredly. “I hope sp.”
She slung Squirrel’s saddle over her shoulder and picked up the serpent case. The handle vibrated faintly as Sand slid across himself in his compartment.
She walked with Grum toward the old woman’s camp, too tired to think anymore about what had happened, listening gratefully to Grum’s soothing words of comfort and sympathy. The loss of Grass, and Jesse’s death, and now this: Snake almost wished she were superstitious, so she could believe she had been cursed. People who believed in curses believed in ways of lifting them. Right now Snake did not know what to think or what to believe in, or how to change the course of misfortune her life had taken.
“Why did he only steal my journal?” she said abruptly. “Why my maps and my journal?”
“Maps!” Grum said. “The crazy stole maps? I thought you’d taken them with you. It was a crazy, then.”
“I guess it was. It must have been.” Still, she did not convince herself.
“Maps!” Grum said again.
Grum’s anger and outrage seemed, for the moment, to take over for Snake’s own. But the surprise in the old woman’s voice disturbed her.
Snake started violently at the sharp tug on her robe. Equally startled, the collector jumped back. Snake relaxed when she saw who it was: one of the gleaners who picked up any bit of metal, wood, cloth, leather, the discards of other camps, and somehow made use of it all. The collectors dressed in multicolored robes of cloth
