manger, grabbed the edge of the hole, and chinned herself up so she could see into the loft. A small figure jumped back in fright and hid behind a bale of hay.
“Come out,” Snake said. “I won’t hurt you.” She was in a ridiculous position, hanging down in the middle of the stall with Swift nibbling her boot, without the proper leverage to climb the rest of the way into the loft. “Come on down,” she said, and let herself drop back to the ground.
She could see the form of the person in the hayloft, but not the features.
It’s a child, she thought. Just a little kid.
“It’s nothing, mistress,” the child said. “It’s just he always pretends he does all the work and there’s others do too, is all. Never mind.”
“Please come down,” Snake said again. “You did a very nice job on Swift and Squirrel and I’d like to thank you.”
“That’s thanks enough, mistress.”
“Don’t call me that. My name’s Snake. What’s yours?”
But the child was gone.
People from town, both patients and messengers, already waited to see her when she reached the top of the cliff, leading Swift. She would get no leisurely breakfast today.
She saw a good deal of Mountainside before evening. For a few hours at a stretch she worked hard, busy and hurried but content, and then as she finished with one patient and went to hear about the next, apprehension swept over her and she thought that this time she might be asked to help someone who was dying, someone like Jesse whom she could not help at all.
Today, that did not happen.
In the evening she rode Swift north along the river, passing the town on her left, as the glow of the sun sank past the clouds and touched the west mountain peaks. The long shadows crept toward her as she reached the mayor’s pasture and stables. Seeing no one around, she took Swift into the barn herself, unsaddled her, and began to brush her smooth dappled coat. She was not particularly anxious to return to the mayor’s residence and its atmosphere of dogged loyalty and pain.
“Mistress, that’s not for you to do. Let me. You go on up the hill.”
“No, you come on down,” Snake said to the disembodied whispery voice. “You can help. And don’t call me mistress.”
“Go on, now, mistress, please.”
Snake brushed Swift’s shoulder and did not answer. When nothing happened she thought the child had gone; then she heard a rustling in the hay above her. On impulse she stroked the brush backwards across Swift’s flank. An instant later the child was beside her, taking the brush gently from her hand.
“You see, mistress—”
“ ‘Snake.’”
“ — This is no job for you. You know healing, I know horse-brushing.”
Snake smiled.
The little girl was only nine or ten, small and spare. She had not looked up at Snake; now she brushed Swift’s ruffled hair straight again, her face turned down and close to the mare’s side. She had bright red hair, and dirty, chewed fingernails.
“You’re right,” Snake said. “You are better at that than I am.”
The child was silent for a moment. “You fooled me,” she said sullenly, without turning around.
“A little,” Snake admitted. “But I had to or you wouldn’t let me thank you face to face.”
The child spun around, glaring up. “Then thank me!” she cried.
The left side of her face was twisted with a terrible scar.
Third-degree burns, Snake thought. The poor child — ! And then she thought: If a healer had been near, the scar would not have been so bad.
But at the same time she noticed the bruise along the right side of the little girl’s face. Snake knelt and the child shrank back from any contact, turning so the scar would be less visible. Snake touched the bruise gently.
“I heard the stablemaster yelling at someone this morning,” Snake said. “It was you, wasn’t it? He hit you.”
The child turned back and stared at her, her right eye wide, the left held partly closed by scar tissue.
“I’m all right,” she said. Then she slid out of Snake’s hands and ran up a ladder into the darkness.
“Please come back,” Snake called. But the child had disappeared, and even when Snake followed her into the loft she could not find her.
Snake hiked up the trail to the residence, her shadow pushed back and forth by the swaying of the lantern she carried. She thought about the nameless little girl ashamed to come into the light. The bruise was in a bad spot, just at the temple. But she had not flinched from Snake’s touch — at least not the touch to the bruise — and she had none of the symptoms of a concussion. Snake did not have to worry about the child’s immediate health. But in the future?
Snake wanted to help somehow, but she knew that if she had the stablemaster reprimanded, the little girl would be left with the consequences when Snake went away.
Snake climbed the stairs to the mayor’s room.
Brian looked exhausted, but the mayor was fresh. Most of the swelling had left his leg. The punctures had scabbed over but Brian was doing a good job of keeping the main wound open and clean.
“When can I get up?” the mayor asked. “I have work to do. People to see. Disputes to settle.”
“You can get up any time,” Snake said. “If you don’t mind having to stay in bed three times as long afterwards.”
“I insist—”
“Just stay in bed,” Snake said tiredly.
She knew he would disobey. Brian, as usual, followed her to the hall.
“If the wound bleeds in the night, come get me,” she said. She knew it would, if the mayor got up, and she did not want the old servant to have to deal with the injury alone.
“He is all right? He will be?”
“Yes, if he doesn’t push himself too hard. He’s mending fairly well.”
“Thank you, healer.”
“Where’s Gabriel?”
“He does not come up here any more.”
“Brian, what’s the matter between him and his father?”
“I’m sorry, healer, I cannot say.”
You won’t, you mean, Snake thought.
Snake stood looking out over the dark valley. She did not feel like going to sleep yet. That was one of the things she did not much like about her proving year: most of the time, she went to bed alone. Too many people in the places she had gone knew about healers by reputation only, and were afraid of her. Even Arevin feared her at the beginning, and by the time his fear ebbed, and their mutual respect changed to attraction, Snake had to leave. They had no chance together.
She leaned her forehead against the cool glass.
When Snake first crossed the desert, it was to explore, to see the places healers had not visited in decades or that they had never visited before. She had been presumptuous, perhaps, or even foolish, to do what her teachers no longer did and no longer considered doing. There were not even enough healers for the people on this side of the desert. If Snake succeeded on her visit to the city, all that might change. But Jesse’s name was the only difference between Snake and any other healer to ask Center for knowledge. If she failed — Her teachers were good people, tolerant of differences and eccentricities, but how they would react to the errors Snake had made, she did not know.
The knock at her door came as a relief, for it interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in.”
Gabriel entered, and she was struck once more by his beauty.
“Brian tells me my father’s doing well.”
“Well enough.”
“Thank you for helping him. I know he can be difficult.‘’ He hesitated, glanced around, shrugged. ”Well… I just came in to see if there’s anything I can do for you.“
Despite his preoccupation, he seemed gentle and pleasant, qualities that attracted Snake as much as his physical beauty. And she was lonely. She decided to accept his well-mannered offer.
“Yes,” she said. “Thanks.” She stopped before him, touched his cheek, took his hand and led him toward a couch. A flask of wine and some glasses stood on a low table near the window.
Snake realized that Gabriel was blushing scarlet.
If she did not know all the desert customs, she knew those of the mountains: she had not overstepped her privileges as a guest, and he
“Gabriel, what’s the matter?”
“I… I misspoke myself. I didn’t mean — If you like I can send someone to you—”
She frowned. “If ‘someone’ was all I wanted I could have hired them from town. I wanted someone I like.”
He gazed at her, with a quick faint grateful smile. Perhaps he had decided to stop repressing his beard and grow it out at the same time he decided to leave his father’s house, for his cheeks showed a trace of fine red-gold hair.
“Thank you for that,” he said.
She guided him to the couch, made him sit down, and sat beside him. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. His hair fell across his forehead, half hiding his eyes.
