Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  Ash, meanwhile, was equally busy; there was a heap of small furry dead bodies next to the wood-pile when twilight began closing in and Lissar began to recognize that she was tired and hungry-and to comprehend that this tiredness and hunger felt good, simple and straightforward and earned. She took the bucket one more time to the stream and filled it, and built up the fire, and threw in chunks of meat and some of the fresh green things her nose had found for her as she hauled water back and forth. And while the soup boiled she skinned and cleaned the rest of Ash's kill, and laid the strips she made out to wait till the fire had died down enough that she could hang them in the chimney; for she wanted to make some return for all the cabin had given her this winter, and there was a great deal she could not replace.

  Then she sat outside for a while; even with the fire burning higher than she had dared build it when the snow was still deep and she too weak to hunt far for wood, it would take some little time for the soup to cook to her (and Ash's) satisfaction. It grew cold as the sun set, too cold to sit, but spring was in the air, and she had been indoors for so long; she felt that she had been penned indoors all her life.... She sprang to her feet and pulled the white deerskin dress over her head, dropping it on the grass, and ran to the stream, which was only a few steps beyond the edge of the clearing, and leaped in.

  The water was cold, and this time there was no gap or distortion between her body's reaction and her mind's awareness of it. Cold! she thought. So cold it makes my teeth ache!

  But it was a wonderful kind of coldness, or maybe it was the awareness itself that was wonderful; and she rubbed herself all over, feeling the day's hard labor swept sweetly away from her. This was better than baths out of a bucket, even though they had been performed beside the heat of the fire. Speaking of the fireshe burst out of the stream again, one plait of her hair tumbling against her naked back like a whiplash of ice, her body iced with gooseftesh, and shot back to the hut, where Ash was considering trying to drink the boiling broth out of the suspended bucket. The stripped carcasses of the other small beasts lay in easy reach on the table, but Ash was, as usual, intent on cooked food. Lissar tucked her hair up again, one plait under another, pulled her dress on again, and gave them dinner.

  They spent most of another week at the hut. Lissar gathered what herbs she could find this early in the season and hung them in bunches from the low ceiling; there were hooks there already, and thread came from the unravelling of the ubiquitous washing-cloth blanket; and Lissar hoped that the meat she had smoked would keep.

  The hut blazed with cleanness; she had very nearly replenished the wood-pile, although her wood was neither of as good a quality, being only what she could pick up from the floor of the forest, or cut where it lay fallen with her small hatchet and bring back, nor was it stacked as competently. She had buried the remains of her winter latrine, or at least she dug and turned over the earth where she remembered the latrine had been, for the melt-water seemed to have taken care of it surprisingly efficiently already; and now she went far from the hut to do her business, as Ash had done automatically since they both woke on the grassy hillock. There was nothing left for her to do-except, perhaps, hope to find someone to thank, some day, and possibly put into their hands the things she had not been able to replace: apples, onions, potatoes, flour, grain, two blankets. And she would add: a comb, good soap, a second bucket, an axe. A second bucket would have been a finer luxury than fresh vegetables and silk underwear.

  She had already found that her white deerskin dress did not get dirty. She, inside it, did; but it remained as unperturbed by use and wear as Ash's new curly coat was-although Ash now required brushing, which Lissar did as best she could with her fingers and the broom, nightly, by the fire, so that mats she would not be able to deal with would not have a chance to form. But her dress did not require even this much care; if a little mud adhered to a hem, a knee, an elbow, Lissar waited till it dried and flicked it off. It fit her as well as Ash's coat fit Ash; it almost surprised her that she could take it off. It was as if it, too, had grown out of her skin. It wasn't much more improbable than that a fleethound should grow the thick shaggy fur of a northland wolf-hound. The dress seemed as well to be proof against the jabs and slashes of Lissar's vigorous outdoor life, and took no damage, no matter how dense the twigs and thorns; and Lissar's own feet and hands grew tough, till she hardly looked where to put her palm when she reached to grab a branch, till she could walk swiftly and easily even upon the streambed, which was sharp with rocks.

  The morning they set out Lissar felt a pang of parting. She could not say she had been happy here, but she had lived, and that was a great deal-she knew just how much. And while the hut-and Ash-had given her the means, still she had taken those means and used them, chosen to use them, known that she had so chosen.

  She still knew nothing of her future; she did not know where to go or what to do.

  She had one white deerskin dress and one tall curly-haired dog; she did not know what fate these might lead her to, what fate she might seek. She thought, I must remember that I possess also myself; but what this self is, after all, I still know little about. What can I say that it does, what can I say that makes predicting my future any more explicit? I who-still, again, for now-remember so little of my past? She paused in her thinking, and looked around her, at the meadow, at the small bald hollow where she and Ash had awakened after the Lady had spoken to them; and she felt the Lady's peace.

  I know I am Lissar, and that I have escaped ... something. I know that I once had a friend named Viaka who fed me, and once I had a friend named Rinnol who taught me plantcraft. And I know I once wore ceremonial robes, and that people cried my name...... "They called me princess," she murmured aloud; Ash's head turned at the sound of her voice. I was not Rinnol's apprentice, but a princess; and it was as princess I escaped.... She took a deep breath, remembering the Lady's voice; remembering that it was not the time to take down the old worn box from the attic. I cannot remember my father's name, or my mother's, or even my country's. It hurts when I try. Therefore I will not try. The past is past, and I face now the future, a future the Lady gave me.

  She had made a rough attempt to scrape and tan the hide of one of the rabbits Ash brought home, soaking it in ashes and water and then stretching and pegging it.

  She had learnt to skin Ash's small kills neatly by this time, and she wanted to leave a message for the owner of the hut, whoever he or she was who had saved her life; and she worried that what she had taken or used might risk the life of whoever came to the hut next. Besides the things she could not replace, she was taking the bigger knife and the flint with her.

  She laid the skin on the table, weighing its corners with stones, and wrote on it in charcoal: Thank you for saving my life. She wanted to say something about how she would try to return, try to repay in the coin she had spent. But she did not think it was likely enough that she would be able to find this place again, even had she anything to bring; and so she wrote no more. Furthermore, the skin was small, and her charcoal lump large and clumsy.

  She paused at the table a moment, rereading her unsatisfactory message. The flint was in the small leather pocket-bag sewn into the bodice of the deerskin dress; the knife, sheathed, hung in a loop at her hip, a loop made for just such a knife. She carried nothing else. "We're off," she said to her dog. "Can you tell me where we're going?"

  Ash turned and trotted away under the trees: trotted downhill, across the little stream, opposite the way they had come at the beginning of the winter, as if the long months at the hut were but a pause on a preordained journey. Lissar turned her face away from the little, solitary, silent house, and followed her.

  FIFTEEN

  VERY QUICKLY TRAVELLING BECAME AS FAMILIAR, AS beginningless and endless, as the long snowbound time in the hut had been. At first Lissar followed Ash, as blindly as she had done during the long dreadful days before they found the cabin, but then she found that she too seemed to know where they were going-thou
gh she knew nothing more of it than in what direction it lay.

  It was like following the direction of the wind beating in her face: if she fell off the point, she could feel the change at once; if the wind shifted, she felt that at once also; but where the wind blew from she did not know. Indeed, she thought, orienting herself to the-smell? sound? touch of air against her cheek?-of that directionless direction, wind would carry more messages of its source. Wind would be warm or cold; wet or dry; smelling of flowers or trees or fire or barnyard. This sensing was a trembling of the nerves, and she might not therefore have believed in it, except that she needed some direction to set her feet and this was at least as good as any other: better, then, because it was there, and it spoke to her. More significantly, it seemed Ash's nose pointed the same way.

  She remembered something of the journey to the hut, and the sense of going forward to she knew not what aroused those older memories, of when she had dumbly followed Ash, sick and weak and stumbling. Now it was as though with every step, every touch of her bare tough foot to the ground, she grew stronger.

  Soon she trotted side by side with her hunting hound when the way was wide enough, a stride almost as leggy and tireless as Ash's. She began to practice throwing stones; she found as if by some further magic a little detachable pocket in her deerskin dress that was just the right place for small stones to come easily to her hand; the pocket was there just as she began to think of carrying small stones. And with that discovery the stones seemed indeed to come more easily to her hand, and her wrist and shoulder seemed to know better how to twist and flick to set the stones where her eye had sighted. She felt that she was the ruler of all the kingdoms of the world the first time that a stone of hers knocked down dinner for her and Ash, though there were none but the two of them to celebrate, and Ash took it quite calmly. She slept sweetly that night, believing now in some new way that she would win through; she would reclaim her life-she would find a life to claim.

  They travelled one Moon through and into a second. One day each of those months Lissar did no travelling, but lay curled up in what haven she could find, while her mind gave her red dreams and her body sent red blood into the air of the world from a small opening between her legs. She drowsed through those days, Ash close beside her, seeing red water and red sky and red Moon and sun in her mind's eye, and yet finding the visions strangely comforting, like the hand of the Lady upon her cheek. On the second day, each month, she tied sweet grass between her legs, that she might not leave a blood trail; and she found that the white deerskin dress took no stain from blood any more than it did from dirt or sap or sweat.

  Lissar began to feel that perhaps this travelling was what her life was, and was to be about; travelling in this wilderness of trees and rocks, and peaks and valleys, for she thought they walked among mountains, although she never had a long enough view to be sure. At last this occurred to her as odd, that she should not know, or seek to find out; and so one day she struck straight uphill-away from the breath of direction on her skin-away from the complex of faint trails made by wild creatures through the trees, leading to the next stream, the next nook to creep into against the weather, the next sighting of something for Ash or for a quick-thrown rock to bring down.

  She felt like a wild creature herself, breaking her own trail. But it was an odd goal for any such, not to food or water or even a lookout for danger, but for the satisfaction of simple inquisitiveness: what was this place she and Ash wandered through?

  She had picked herself a steep climb. They came up above the trees in some little time, and a little while after that she began to notice that her breath hurt her throat; and then her eyes began to burn, and her head felt light. The ground began to seem almost a wall, rising abruptly up before her, so that it was as logical to grasp with her hands as to tread with her feet. Once or twice she had to stop and give Ash a boost.

  It was a good day for seeing distances, however; the sky was blue and clear, and as she looked around she saw the mountain tops stretching out around her.... For the first time she thought of how long it had been since she'd seen another human being, heard a human voice other than her own. And she looked around her, thoughtfully, and noticed that in one direction the mountains sank away and became hills, and the forests covered their rounded tops. As she faced that way, she felt the faint tingle of direction. We will go that way, she thought. This is the way we are going.

  It was still a long time that they were in the mountains, for all that Lissar now felt and understood that they were going slowly downhill. They saw more creatures as they descended; there was more game for them-and a less devastating sense of loss if either of them missed-but more competition for prey as well, and Lissar began to build a fire in the evening for its warding properties as well as for heat and cooking.

  Spring wore on, and the last buds burst into leaf. The rabbits and ootag she and Ash ate were plump now, and there was sometimes enough for breakfast even after they had eaten till their stomachs felt tight at dinner-there was breakfast, that is, if they had hidden the remains of dinner well enough before they went to sleep.

  Lissar's hair grew long; she thought, vaguely, that in her previous life she must have cut it sometimes, for she could not remember its ever being so long before, and it felt somehow odd under her fingers, thicker or softer or wirier or stronger, but she thought that if Ash's hair could undergo such an odd change then she should not be troubled with her own. She kept it braided, since she still had no way to comb it, and dreaded tangles; she found a way to weave a bit of vine into the braids, which gave her something to tie it off with; only fresh vines were flexible enough, and the sap made her hair sticky, but it had a fresh, sharp, pleasant smell, and she did not mind.

  She was washing sap out of her hair one day in a pond. They were well into the round hills by now, and the air seemed gentler, and the water moved more slowly. It was no longer always rushing downstream, whipping itself over drop-offs and into chasms. A swimming-bath was an extraordinary luxury; she and Ash both paddled back and forth, amazed and delighted with this new game. She had stood up in the shallows to work her fingers through her long hair. Usually she stood up straight as she did this, combing it back from her face and over her shoulders, persuading it to lie in the direction she wanted it to dry in, so that it would be as easy as possible to braid later. She wasn't conscious of deciding to do anything different today; had she thought of it, she would have been as wary of anything that might do for a looking-glass as she had ever been, now, in her new life. But today, she pulled the long tail of her hair forward, to hang down her breast, and, musingly, her eyes slid downward to the surface of the water: and the quiet pond reflected what it saw.

  It took her a moment to register what she was looking at. The long white thighs meeting in a nest of curly dark reddish-brown hair, up across the smooth belly to her hands working familiarly at the hair falling from her bent head ... her hair was white, as white as the deerskin dress, as white as a birch tree.

  Her fingers stopped moving. Her hair had been ... had been ... when had it turned white? She knew it had not always been white. How could she not have noticed?

  And yet she looked at herself as little as possible. A memory-flash, no more, of her first bath in the hut ... but when had she last looked at her hair, as she washed and braided it? She kept her eyes closed, mostly, from the habit of protecting them from the fierce soap left at the cabin; but against memory as well, against paying too great attention to herself, anything about herself, that might disturb the Lady's peace. She had faith in the Lady, but not in herself; how could anything to do with herself, who knew so little of her past and less yet of her future, not be precarious?

  She bent over the pool. She had a sudden memory that her eyes were green, amber-hazel. But they were not. They were black, as black as despair, as opaque as windowless rooms; pupil and iris alike were indistinguishable, unfathomable.

  She raised her head and watched the slim silver shape of long-haired dog'
s head; Ash was still swimming, now in circles, as if this were the most fun she'd ever had, biting at leaves and water bugs as they crossed her path, or as she altered her path to cross theirs.

  Good, said a voice in her head. They will never recognize either of you.

  Recognize me? she answered the voice. If no one recognizes me, how will I learn who I am? But her heart quailed even as she asked the question, and she was relieved when the voice had an answer to this.

  Be glad of your curly dog and your white hair and black eyes. Be glad, and go boldly into human lands, and find a new self to be.

  That night a bear stole their breakfast; Ash growled, but Lissar grabbed a handful of her chest hair, and pulled down. "No," said Lissar. "It is not worth it." Once or twice they had met wolves, which terrified Lissar; but the wolves had only looked at them with their level yellow eyes, and trotted away. Both times Lissar knew she had seen them only because they moved, and she wondered how many times she had not seen them because they had not moved, and this thought was ice down her back.

  But the only thing that offered to attack them was a small dragon.

  Ash had been increasingly unhappy about the route Lissar was insisting on, Lissar having fallen into the habit of believing that the only advice she need take was the intangible pointer in her mind, telling her her direction. Lissar was stubbornly following a trail that went in the direction she wanted; a trail that it was just beginning to occur to her was strangely worn, dusty or ashy ... she just caught a whiff of something both acrid and rotten when the creature itself came bolting out of the undergrowth at them.

  Fortunately it was a small one; but big enough for all that. It stood no higher than Ash's shoulders, but its body was almost as big and solid as a pony's, its small crooked legs thrusting out at awkward-looking angles from its heavy, ungainly body.