Snake’s compass, the nearly invisible moon, the direction of the wind, the shapes of sand dunes all helped them proceed in the right direction, but Snake could not put aside the pervasive wilderness fear that she was traveling in circles. Turning in the saddle, Snake watched the invisible trail behind them for several minutes, but no other light followed. They were alone; there was nothing but the darkness. Snake settled back.

“It’s spooky,” Melissa whispered.

“I know. I wish we could travel by day.”

“Maybe it’ll rain.”

“That would be nice.”

The desert received rain only once every year or two, but when it came, it usually arrived just before winter. Then the dormant seeds exploded into growth and reproduction and the sharp-grained desert softened with green and bits of color. In three days the delicate plants shriveled to brown lace and died, leaving hard-cased seeds to endure another year, or two, or three, until the rain roused them again. But tonight the air was dry and quiet and gave no hint of any change.

A light shimmered in the distance. Snake, dozing, woke abruptly from a dream in which the crazy was following and she saw his lantern moving closer and closer. Up until now she had not realized how sure she was that somehow he was still following her, still somewhere near, fired by incomprehensible motives.

But the light was not a carried lantern, it was steady and stationary and ahead of her. The sound of dry leaves drifted toward her on faint wind: they were nearing the first oasis on the route to Center.

It was not even dawn. Snake reached forward and patted Swift’s neck. “Not much farther now,” she said.

“What?” Melissa, too, started awake. “Where — ?”

“It’s all right,” Snake said. “We can stop soon.”

“Oh.” Melissa looked around, blinking. “I forgot where I was.”

They reached the summertrees ringing the oasis. Snake’s lantern illuminated leaves already split and frayed by windblown sand. Snake did not see any tents and she could not hear any sounds of people or animals. All the caravannaires, by now, had retreated to the safety of the mountains.

“Where’s that light?”

“I don’t know,” Snake said. She glanced at Melissa, for her voice sounded strange: it was muffled by the end of her headcloth, pulled across her face. When no one appeared, she let it drop as if unaware that she had been hiding herself.

Snake turned Swift around, worried about the light.

“Look,” Melissa said.

Swift’s body cut off the lantern’s light in one direction, and there against the darkness rose a streak of luminescence. Closer, Snake could see that it was a dead summertree, close enough to the water to rot instead of drying. Lightcells had invaded its fragile trunk, transforming it into a glowing signal. Snake breathed softly with relief.

They rode farther, circling the still, black pool until they found a site with trees thick enough to give some shelter. As soon as Snake reined in, Melissa jumped down and began unsaddling Squirrel. Snake climbed down more slowly, for despite the constant desert climate, her knee had stiffened again during the long ride. Melissa rubbed Squirrel with a twist of leaves, talking to him in a barely audible voice. Soon they were all, horses and people, bedded down to wait through the day.

Snake padded barefoot toward the water, stretching and yawning. She had slept well all day, and now she wanted a swim before starting out again. It was still too early to leave the shelter of the thick summertrees. Hoping to find a few pieces of ripe fruit still on the branches, she glanced up and around, but the desert dwellers’ harvest had been thorough.

Only a few days before, on the other side of the mountains, the foliage at the oases had been lush and soft; here, now, the leaves were dry and dying. They rustled as she brushed past. The brittle fronds crumbled in her hand.

She stopped where the beach began. The black strip was only a few meters wide, a semicircle of sand around a minuscule lagoon that reflected the overhanging latticework of branches. In the secluded spot, Melissa was kneeling half-naked on the sand. She leaned out over the water, staring silently downward. The marks of Ras’s beating had faded, and the fire had left her back unscarred. Her skin was fairer than Snake would have guessed from her deep-tanned hands and face. As Snake watched, Melissa reached out slowly and touched the surface of the dark water. Ripples spread from her fingertips.

Melissa watched, fascinated, as Snake let Mist and Sand out of the case. Mist glided around Snake’s feet, tasting the scents of the oasis. Snake picked her up gently. The smooth white scales were cool against her hands.

“I want her to smell you,” Snake said. “Her instinctive reaction is to strike at anything that startles her. If she recognizes your scent, it’s safer. All right?”

Melissa nodded, slowly, clearly frightened. “She’s very poisonous, isn’t she? More than the other?”

“Yes. As soon as we get home I can immunize you, but I don’t want to start that here. I have to test you first and I don’t have the right things with me.”

“You mean you can fix it so she’d bite me and nothing would happen?”

“Not quite nothing. But she’s bitten me by mistake a few times and I’m still here.”

“I guess I better let her smell me,” Melissa said.

Snake sat down next to her. “I know it’s hard not to be afraid of her. But breathe deeply and try to relax. Close your eyes and just listen to my voice.”

“Horses know it, too, when you’re afraid,” Melissa said, and did as Snake told her.

The cobra’s forked tongue flickered over Melissa’s hands, and the child remained still and silent. Snake remembered the first time she had seen the albino cobras: a terrifying, exhilarating moment when a mass of them, coiled together in infinite knots, felt her footsteps and lifted their heads in unison, hissing, like a many-headed beast or an alien plant in violent and abrupt full bloom.

Snake kept her hand on Mist as the cobra glided over Melissa’s arms.

“She feels nice,” Melissa said. Her voice was shaky, and a little scared, but the tone was sincere.

Melissa had seen rattlers before; their danger was a known one and not so frightening. Sand crawled across her hands and she stroked him gently. Snake was pleased; her daughter’s abilities were not limited to horses.

“I hoped you’d get along with Mist and Sand,” she said. “It’s important for a healer.”

Melissa looked up, startled. “But you didn’t mean—” She stopped.

“What?”

Melissa drew in a deep breath. “What you told the mayor,” she said hesitantly. “About what I could do. You didn’t really mean it. You had to say it so he’d let me go.”

“I meant everything I said.”

“But I couldn’t be a healer.”

“Why not?” Melissa did not answer, so Snake continued. “I told you healers adopt their children, because we can’t have any of our own. Let me tell you some more about us. A lot of healers have partners who have different professions. And not all our children become healers. We aren’t a closed community. But when we choose someone to adopt, we usually pick someone we think could be one of us.”

“Me?”

“Yes. If you want to. That’s the important thing. For you to do what you want to do. Not what you think anyone else wants or expects you to do.”

“A healer…” Melissa said.

The quality of wonder in her daughter’s voice gave Snake another compelling reason to make the city people help her find more dreamsnakes.

The second night Snake and Melissa rode hard. There was no oasis, and in the morning Snake did not stop at dawn, though it was really too hot to travel. Sweat drenched her. The sticky beads rolled down her back and sides. They slid halfway down her face and dried into salty grit. Swift’s coat darkened as sweat streamed down her legs. Every step flung droplets from her fetlocks.