Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre (Analog, October 1973) takes place at a tribal settlement in the desert where Snake, a female healer, is treating a sick young boy. It soon becomes apparent that she does not use conventional treatments:
She had to annoy Mist to make her come out. Snake rapped on the bag and finally poked her twice. Snake felt the vibration of sliding scales, and suddenly the albino cobra flung herself into the tent. She moved quickly, yet there seemed to be no end to her. She reared back and up. Her breath rushed out in a hiss. Her head rose well over a meter above the floor. She flared her wide hood. Behind her, the adults gasped, as if physically assaulted by the gaze of the tan spectacle design on the back of Mist’s hood. Snake ignored the people and spoke to the great cobra, focusing her attention by her words. “Ah, thou. Furious creature. Lie down; ’tis time for thee to earn thy dinner. Speak to this child, and touch him. He is called Stavin.” Slowly, Mist relaxed her hood and allowed Snake to touch her. Snake grasped her firmly behind the head and held her so she looked at Stavin. The cobra’s silver eyes picked up the yellow of the lamplight. “Stavin,” Snake said, “Mist will only meet you now. I promise that this time she will touch you gently.”
Mist is the one of three snakes that Snake has (Sand is a rattlesnake, and Grass is a smaller “dreamsnake” she uses for pain relief and euthanasia).
After Snake lets the cobra “taste” the boy with his tongue, she meets with the tribe’s female leader and asks for food for her pony, and for someone to help her with Mist through the night. Snake then feeds Mist a small animal that she has treated with drops from a vial.
She is joined by Arvin, one of the male tribesmen, and they spend several hours restraining the cobra, which repeatedly convulses as it manufactures a treatment for the boy’s tumour. Eventually, day comes, and Mist is ready for the boy but, when Snake goes back to the tent, she discovers (spoiler) that Grass, who she left to comfort the child, has been have killed by the frightened parents. Even though she is distraught Snake treats the boy by letting Mist bite him and inject the venom treatment.
Snake later comes close to suffering the same fate as Grass even thought the boy’s tumour starts shrinking (the tribal members are a superstitious and fearful lot), but the tribal leader intervenes to let her leave safely. Arvin wants to go with her, but Snake tells Arvin that she must return to the city where she was trained and see if she can get a replacement dreamsnake (there is the briefest hint in the story that this is a post-nuclear holocaust world). Snake promises him that if she can appease her superiors, she will return.
This is an original piece and a pretty good one too—what also marked it out at the time, apart from its original idea, was the more subdued writing style, and the story’s matriarchal society (unusual for most mid-70s SF). However, some of the novelty wears off on the second or third reading, and it also feels a little fragmentary (it is part of the Hugo and Nebula winning novel, Dreamsnake,1 which I’ve also read).
***+ (Good to Very Good). 8,200 words. Story link.
1. Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand was the first chapter of the novel Dreamsnake (1978); The Serpent’s Death (Analog, February 1978) was chapter two of the novel; and The Broken Dome (Analog, March 1978) is a condensation of the last half of chapter 9 through to chapter 12 (the last hundred pages of the book).