Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  Lissar was aware that his anxiety was for the puppies, not for her, but she said sincerely, "I thank you."

  He took a deep breath, and as he turned and the sunlight fell fully on his face, she saw how tired he was, remembering that he had said that he had been up all the night before with the bitch he could not save. "I hope I don't fall asleep in the middle of it," he added. "The count is the world's worst bore, and he always wants to tell me his hunting stories. I've heard most of them a dozen times."

  After he left, she went out to find someone who would provide her with the requisites for her attempt at puppy care. Jobe was watching for her, and led her through the open archway that Corngold had been earlier turned away from, where he introduced her to Hela and to Berry, who left at once, several dogs in his wake.

  Jobe was lugubrious and Hela brisk, but they treated her as if she knew what she was doing, which she both appreciated and simultaneously rather wished they would condescend to her instead, if the condescension would provide her with any useful advice.

  The puppies were beginning to stir and make small cheeping noises, bumbling blindly through the straw, when she returned, looking for someone who was not there. Twilight was falling; as she sat down cross-legged on the floor with her bowl of warm milk and rags, Jobe appeared with a lantern, which he hung on a hook in the wall inside the door to the puppies' stall. "There's an old fire-pot somewhere," he said. "Hela's gone to look. It would be easier if you could heat your milk here, during the nights, when our fire is banked." "Our" fire burnt in the common-room, where the staff-and most of the dogs, come evening-collected, and there was a pot of stew, firmly lidded in case of inquisitive dogs, simmering there now. "And it would give you a little extra warmth, too, as long as . . ."

  "As long as I can prevent the puppies from frying themselves," Lissar answered, and saw the faint look of approval cross his long face as he nodded. "Thank you,"

  said Lissar. "It would be helpful."

  Jobe seemed inclined to linger, but hesitated over what he wished to say. "You'll do your best and all that, of course, my lady, but the prince isn't an unfair man. He knows as well as I do you've a hopeless task, and he won't fault you for it. None of us would take it, you know."

  Lissar looked up at him, thinking of her bare feet and long plait of hair. "Why do you call me 'my lady'?"

  Jobe's expression was of patience with someone who was asking a very old and silly riddle that everyone knows the answer to. "Well, you are one, ain't you? No more than yon bitch is a street cur. They don't generally let people bring livestock to the receiving-hall, you know." He smiled a little at his own joke, and left her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SILENCE FELL AFTER HE LEFT; SHE HEARD THE OCCASIONAL

  YIP-these dogs all seemed to bark as little as Ash did-and the occasional crisp word from a human voice. My lady, she thought. I was only the apprentice to an herbalist.

  Perhaps this is why the title makes me uncomfortable; I am pretending to be what I am not. But am I not pretending worse than that, in being here at all?

  She picked up the nearest puppy, who had blundered up against her foot and was nosing it hopefully. The sounds the puppies made were no louder than rustled straw.

  She dipped a rag in the milk, and offered it to the puppy, who ignored it, now exploring her lingers. Its squeaks began to sound more anxious and unhappy, and she noticed that the little belly was concave, and the tiny ribcage through the thin hair felt as delicate and unprotected as eggshell. She squeezed the tiny raw mouth open, and dropped the milky rag inside, but the puppy spat it out again immediately, in its uncoordinated, groping way, and would not suck.

  She paused, cradling the pup in one hand. I cannot fail so immediately and absolutely, she thought. If the puppy will not suck, I must pour it down his throat somehow. I wonder what Jobe meant when he said Hela hadn't "gotten too far"?

  Had she gotten anywhere at all?

  The pup was now lying flat on her open hand, as if it had given up its search; but its little mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. The other puppies were struggling among themselves, some of them falling over the edge of the blanket and trying to propel themselves on their stomachs with dim, swimming motions of their tiny legs.

  One very bold one found Ash, and was making as much noise as it could, convinced that it had found what it was looking for, if only she would cooperate. It clambered at her front feet, mewing insistently, while poor Ash stood, her back arched as high as it would go and her four feet tightly together, pressing herself as far into the corner by the closed door as she would fit, desperately willing this importunate small being away, but too well-mannered to offer any force against anything so small and weak.

  Lissar's eye fell on the straw that made up the puppies' bedding; or rather on the straws. She picked up a stout, hollow one, blew through it once, then stopped, sucked up a strawful of milk, held it by the pressure of her tongue over the end in her mouth, gently squeezed the puppy's jaws open again, placed the straw in his mouth, and released the stream. The puppy looked startled; several drops of milk dribbled out of the sides of his mouth, but Lissar saw him swallow. And, better yet, having swallowed, he lifted his little blind face toward the general direction the straw-and-milk had come from.

  None of the puppies would suck the milky rag, but she squirted strawsful of milk down them all. Even with day-old puppies it took several squirts before Lissar was satisfied with the roundness of their small bellies. Her lips trembled with exhaustion and her tongue was sore by the end of their supper, and she'd worn out several hollow straws, but at least she had not failed her first attempt. The fed puppies were willing to lie more or less contentedly in her lap and around her knees, and Ash, having been rescued from that very dangerous puppy, had relented enough to sit down, although she would not go so far as to lie down. Her eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the puppies in case one should make threatening gestures at her again.

  There was a little milk left in the bottom of the bowl, and quite a bit of it on, rather than in, the puppies, Lissar, and the surrounding straw; but there was no doubt that six little bellies were distended with the majority of it. The puppies bestirred themselves erratically to make the small vague gestures at one another that in a few weeks would be rowdy play, including growls, pounces, savage worrying, and squeals from the losers. At the moment they looked like mechanical toys whose springs were almost wound down, and since their eyes were not yet open, even the most daring of them kept losing track of what it was doing.

  Lissar looked up to a small noise and saw Hela leaning over the half-door.

  "There's supper for you any time you want it. I congratulate you on your empty bowl; I didn't get so far."

  Lissar held up her last straw, which looked rather the worse for wear. "Hollow,"

  she said; her cheek muscles were stiff, and speaking was awkward. "Mostly they swallowed instead of spitting it up." She rubbed her face. "I'm sore."

  "Clever," said Hela, but something in her voice made Lissar look up at her again, and there was that expression, much like what she had seen in so many of the faces she had looked at since she came down from the mountains: something like awe, something like wistfulness, something like wariness.

  The prince had not looked at her like that. She wasn't sure, as she thought about it, that she had registered with him at all; he was more interested in Ash than in her human companion. Lilac hadn't looked at her that way either. She thought, Why should I care? I need not care. I have a purpose-these people have given me a purpose-and that is all that matters. I need only be grateful that they have welcomed a stranger. "I have to hope it went into their stomachs and not their lungs-but they wouldn't suck." She gestured at the rejected rag.

  She dropped her gaze to the mostly now-sleeping puppies, and smiled.

  Tomorrow she would find out how to make her way back to the stables and tell Lilac what had become of her. One puppy was attempting to worry the hem of her dress. She touched its tiny
blunt muzzle with a finger, and it turned its attention to her fingertip, chewing on it with soft naked gums. "They don't look anything like fleethounds," said Lissar. "You'd never know."

  "They're always like that at first," said Hela. "All puppies look very much alike when they're just born, only bigger or smaller."

  "It has no legs at all, or almost," said Lissar, picking up the one who was failing to make progress with her finger. She held it up, and its stubby legs waved feebly.

  "And its head is square."

  "In a fortnight you'll start to see the head and the legs," said Hela. "Er-haven't you raised dogs before?"

  "No," said Lissar. "I've only raised Ash, and she was weaned when I got her. She looked like what she was going to be, only smaller, except for her feet."

  "Ah," said Hela. "That explains how Ossin convinced you to take this job-begging your pardon-none of us who knows better will do it."

  Lissar nodded, setting the doomed puppy down to huddle among its equally doomed siblings. She was beginning to wish that people would stop reminding her quite so often that she had taken on a hopeless project. "I know. But I have no other job, and-and I like dogs," realizing as she said it that it was what she had said to the prince in the receiving-hall.

  Several expressions crossed Hela's face; among them was a look that said that she expected not to understand, but the final look was one of sympathy. "All the more reason not to want to do it, but we're all glad you're here, so I'll be quiet. Do you know about rubbing their bellies to make their bowels work?"

  "No," said Lissar.

  "Yes," said Hela, with an inscrutable glance into Lissar's face. "Mum'd do it if she was here. We've lots of blankets-the royal kennels have better laundry service than my whole village back home-I brought you some more. Make it easier for cleaning up."

  "Thank you," said Lissar.

  "And-er-there's a room for you upstairs, when you want it, and I-er-laid out some clothes for you, a tunic and leggings and-er-boots. If they don't fit, we'll find other ones. Ossin's staff also dresses better than most of my village. We-I-er-thought you won't want to get your ... dress dirty. That all comes with the job, the room and board and clothing."

  "Thank you," said Lissar again, brushing at a milk-spot on her lap. It was still wet.

  It would bead up as it dried, she knew, and brush right off. A tunic might make her less conspicuous, however, which she would prefer; perhaps it would stop some of the strange looks that came to her; perhaps Hela's natural friendliness would win out over her imposed caution.

  "Your bitch has never had puppies, has she?" said Hela.

  "No."

  "She has that look to her," said Hela, amused; " 'what are these things? I don't care! Just take them away!'-How old is she?" There was a pause.

  "I'm not sure," Lissar said at last. "I-I have trouble remembering certain things."

  Hela flushed to the roots of her hair and dropped her head. "My lady, forgive me," she said in a voice very unlike the one she had used till then; and before Lissar could think of something to say in response, Hela went hastily away. Lissar could hear her quick steps down the main aisle, back toward the common-room.

  When Lissar followed her a little later (having produced nothing in response to the belly-rubbing; perhaps there was a trick to it, I would not do to have succeeded at step one and failed at step two; she adamantly refused to let this happen, even if she did not yet see, straight away, what to do about it), conversation stopped as soon as she appeared, barefoot and silent, in the doorway. Yet she had heard what they were discussing as she walked past the heaps of sleeping dogs, for whom she must already bear the correct smell of a fellow pack-member, for none challenged her or Ash. The common-room discussion was of a recent hunt, during which one dog had done particularly well; nothing, Lissar thought, that they should have cared about her, or anyone, overhearing, nor anything that, in a collection of dog people, should have broken off upon the entry of another person.

  Jobe stood up and served her a bowl of stew, and set another one down on the floor for Ash. Lissar never quite got over her amazement at how swiftly and delicately Ash could inhale large amounts of food; it was like a magic trick, the mystic word is spoken, the hand gesture performed and presto! the food disappears, without a crumb or speck left behind. Ash looked up hopefully at the bowl in Lissar's hands.

  "Come and sit," said a man Lissar did not know. She went and sat, but she did not stay long; the conversation tried to start up again around her, but it lurched and stumbled-barely more deft than a day-old puppy. She set her bowl on the floor for Ash to perform her magic on, took a hunk of bread and a tall mug of malak-whose name drifted into her mind as she tasted it for the first time, in, when?-said

  "good-night," and left as silently as she had entered. A chorus of "good-night"

  followed her, sounding both eager and sad, like a dog who is hoping for a kind word and doubts its luck. She paused and looked back at them as they looked at her; and realized that they were not anxious for her to Ieave even if they were uneasy in her company. She smiled a little, not understanding, and returned to the puppies' pen.

  Some of them in her absence had responded in the desired way to the belly-rubbing, and some cleaning up was in order, since they did not differentiate between one substance, like straw or sibling's body, and the next. Lissar thought, frowning, that she would have to keep track of who needed more belly-rubbing. She sighed; tiredness fell on her suddenly, with the arrival of food in her own belly. She would figure it all out tomorrow.

  The fire-pot had arrived while she was at supper, and there was a low, heavy-bottomed jug of milk beside it.

  The puppies were all asleep again in their heap, as soon as she set down the cleaned-up ones. She wondered how the ones on the bottom were managing to breathe. She laid out two more of the blankets Hela had brought for a mattress, and lay down herself. Ash was standing by the closed door in alarm: You don't mean we're spending the night in here with-them?

  "Come," said Lissar. "You can lie next to the wall, and I will protect you."

  She fell asleep in some anxiety, not knowing how she would awaken to feed the puppies again. They could not be left all night, and she was too tired to remain awake. But her anxiety made her sleep lightly, and the first uncertain murmuring protests from the puppy-heap brought her awake at once, staring around a moment in fright, feeling the ceiling leaning down close to her, not able to remember where she was, or what it was that had awakened her. She staggered upright, the ceiling returning to its normal position, and went to warm the milk. Ash, who could ordinarily not be moved by force once she was comfortably asleep for the night, got up at once and perched near her. Ash had a lot to say about the whole situation, in a low rumbling mutter.

  Lissar's cheek muscles were aching before the first puppy was fed; by the sixth she was balancing the pup on her knees because she needed her other hand to keep her lips clamped on the straw. Tomorrow, she told herself fuzzily, without moving her lips, I will find an alternative. The puppies were weaving themselves back into their pile; it became impossible in the dim light to differentiate one puppy from the next. The puppyheap was one creature, fringed by tails and a surprising number of feet.

  She stroked a nearby back. Two of the puppies were discernibly weaker than the other four. She remembered what everyone kept telling her about the pups' future, and the uselessness and duration of her temporary job; what she was doing was only to reassure the prince that his bitch's last litter hadn't automatically been given up on.

  But she wanted to succeed. She didn't want to be reasonable. She wanted the pups to live. She didn't even want four pups to live; she wanted all of the remaining six.

  There was a sudden, surprising rush of heat like anger as she thought this; and, warmed and strengthened by it, she began lifting the puppies up again, one by one, and massaging their bellies. Tomorrow she would ask for an old glove, and cut the fingers off , and make a tiny hole in a fingertip, and pour milk d
own the puppies'

  throats that way.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LISSAR WOKE UP VERY WARM. ONE LARGE DOG WAS KNOTTED UP

  against her back and six tiny dogs who had, by some osmosis, slowly oozed their way the short distance across the floor during the night, were now piled up in a small irregular sausage from her breastbone to her thighs. There were various sounds of protest when she moved; a baritone grumble from behind her and a series of fairylike cheeps from before.

  "It's morning," she whispered. "Is everybody still alive?" Everybody was. Her throat relaxed, and there was suddenly more room in her chest for her heart to beat.

  But the two weak pups had been joined by a third. The worst was a tiny grey bitch, who simply lay limp in Lissar's hand, without moving her head, without making the least fluttering movement with feet or tail. "Don't die," said Lissar, sadly, "don't die": and she was warmed by another swift blaze of anger. "You haven't been alive yet; what did you go and get born for if you're just going to die?"

  It was so early there was almost no one else stirring; but Berry was in the common-room grumbling over a shortage of biscuit-meal to make dog breakfasts with, and he found her an old pair of gloves, and a pin to prick with. She took her new supplies back to the puppy pen, sawed off a glove-finger, and prepared to try out her invention. The little grey bitch lay exactly as Lissar had laid her down, looking almost more like a small grey puddle than a dog. She picked her up first.

  The pup lay dully in her hand. She weighed so little Lissar felt that if she tossed her into the air, the puppy would float to the ground, whisking gently back and forth like a leaf. Lissar wined her over, cupped her in her hand, and wiggled the little muouth open till she could get the glove-tip inside. The jaw, once open, merely hung slack; the glove-tip would not go in far enough, nor stay put. Lissar wrestled for a minute or two. The milk only leaked out of the puppy's indifferent mouth. She did not swallow, she did not resist; she did nothing. She lay in the position Lissar had pinned her among her own fingers, the any ribcage only barely registering the tiniest of breaths.