Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  Then she turned back to the task she had come to do, and prepared not to look at Ossin again, ever again. But she let her eyes sweep over the rest of the group before the priest, and saw the fear in their faces too, and wondered at it, and wondered too that in none of their faces was recognition; it was only Ossin who had known who she was.

  "Father!" said the blazing woman; and the doors slammed shut again, but as they jarred in their frames they shattered, and through the gaping hole a wind howled, and lifted the tapestries away from the walls, and the great jewelled urns shivered on their pedestals, and the light through the stained glass turned dull and faint and flickering, like a guttering candle, though it was a bright day outside. Several people screamed, and a few fainted.

  And the foreign king who was to have married Camilla turned slowly around and faced his daughter.

  "You shall not marry this woman, nor any woman, in memory of what you did to me, your own daughter," said the blazing figure; and the people in the receiving-hall heard the words, borne on a storm-wind, as did the people who had followed the Moonwoman's race through the city; as did Lilac, who sat, her head in her hands, on the edge of a water-cistern at a crossroads where not far away seamstresses sat embroidering streamers of gold and felt their fingers falter, and a chill fall on them, for no reason they knew, and they suddenly felt that the streamers so urgently ordered would never be used. But Lilac, her head in her hands, heard no storm-wind; the words Lissar spoke, over a league away, in Goldhouse's throne room, fell into the silence around her, the silence that had held her since Lissar had left her, and the words were as clear as if Lissar had returned and stood before her.

  Lissar knew she was shouting; only those few words made her throat sore and raw, and she felt almost as though they had been ripped out of her, as if it were not her tongue and vocal cords that gave them shape and sound. She held up her hands, fingers spread; but curled them into fists, and shook them at her father, and her sleeves fell backwards, leaving her arms bare. Her father stood, looking at her, motionless, but as he might look at a basilisk or an assassin. Her own flesh seemed to shimmer in her eyes; but the blood was pounding so in her head that it was hard to blink her vision clear of it. Every time she closed her eyes, for however brief a flicker of time, the sight of a small round pink-hung room flashed across her vision and dizzied her.

  He knew what she was there for, but he did not see her, his daughter, and his eyes were blank, as unseeing as they had been the night he had come through the garden door and flung Ash against the wall so hard as to break her skull, and then raped his daughter, once, twice, three times, for the nights that she had locked her door against him, for he was her father and the king, and his will was law.

  But his daughter had been dead for five years; he had mourned her all that time, and was here now only because his ministers demanded it. He did not care for Camilla or any other woman. He had ordered dresses for his daughter lovelier even than those her mother had worn: one the color of the sky, one brighter than the sun, one more radiant than the Moon. But she had never worn them, she who was more beautiful than all these together. Camilla was dull clay beside her. His daughter! He missed her still. He closed his blind eyes in memory and in pain.

  Father! screamed the figure, only half visible through the brilliance of the white light that surrounded it, brighter than sun or Moon or noon sky; but then as its fists opened, everyone saw hands, ordinary human hands, and bare arms beneath them.

  But there was blood running from the hollows of the cupped hands, as if the fingernails had gouged the flesh in some private agony; but there was too much blood for that, and it ran and ran down the bare white arms, and as the blood coursed down it put out the light around the figure, as water will put out a fire.

  The mysterious wind died, and the company, silent with shock, now heard the terrifying soft sound of warm human blood dripping from outstretched arms and striking the floor, a sound as innocent as rainfall. Lilac heard that sound, and she slid off her perch at the edge of the cistern, and sat on the ground, drawing her knees to her chin, laying her face down upon them, and wrapping her arms around her head.

  Open your eyes! said the bleeding woman, her voice like a wound itself. Open your eyes and look at me!

  The foreign king opened his eyes and looked at her. Lissar staggered as from a blow, and pulled her arms back to herself again, sliding the red palms down her white hair, and then dropping her hands to her sides where her fingers touched Ash and Ob; and she could feel them growling. They gave her strength, that touch of warm dog against her fingertips, the reverberation of their growls; and she let her hands rest on them quietly, reminding herself of her dogs, reminding herself that she was alive, and here for a purpose.

  Deerskin, breathed the company. The blazing figure had dwindled as its fire was put out, and they saw her at last. It is our Deerskin. What is she doing here? How can she be the foreign king's daughter? She is poor and barefoot, as she was when she first came here, a year ago, when our prince was kind to her, and gave her a place in his kennels, because she liked dogs.

  But the ministers and the courtiers who had come with the foreign king staggered as Lissar had when her father's eyes opened. Lissar! they murmured. For the blood was running down the long white hair of this wild woman in her wild deerskin dress, and it darkened and spread like dye through cloth, till her hair took on the astonishing almost-black of her mother's, Lissla Lissar's mother's hair, mahogany-black, red-black, like the last, deepest drop of heart's blood, brought to light only by violent death. And they recognized the face, for it bore the same expression as it had when their king had declared that he would marry his daughter, eons ago, eons during which they had wrought mightily with their king, to get him to this place that he might honorably marry again at last, and get his country, and his ministers, a proper new heir. And with this thought they grew angry: they all thought Lissar had died. She was supposed to have died! Why must she ruin their plans thus again, this wild woman in her white dress, spoiling the marriage of their king, the marriage they had worked so hard to bring about.

  Our Deerskin would not lie, murmured Goldhouse's court, much troubled. Our prince and his dogs love her. The Moonwoman is here to rescue us, murmured those who had followed her. Rescue us and our princess, as she has rescued our lost children.

  It was only a young woman of slightly more than average height, although with astonishing red-black hair, who stood before them now in her blood-spattered white deerskin dress, bright blood also on the floor before her, and in her face a haggard weariness that belonged to someone much older. She dropped her eyes from the figures on the dais, and with her gaze her head dropped also, sagging forward on her neck as if she could keep it upright no longer. So she stood, gazing at the floor, as if at a loss; and she began to look out of place, among the richness of style and dress, furniture and ornament, around her; and the blasted doors behind her were an embarrassment, as if a careless servant had dropped a laden tray, making a mess on the fine carpet, and spraying the dinner guests with gravy and wine-dregs.

  Thoughtfully she knelt, and touched her sullied hands to the red shining pool; thoughtfully she raised one finger and drew a red line down her cheek. The room was utterly silent; no rustle of satin nor tap of shod foot nor gasp of indrawn breath.

  At her back Lissar felt the warmth and presence of her dogs; and Ash's whiskers brushed the back of her neck. "I remember," she said, in quite an ordinary voice, "I remember waking up, after you left me, the last night I spent under your roof. I thought I was dead, or dying, and I wanted to be dead."

  She sprang to her feet. "I carried your child-my own father's child-five months for that night's work; and I almost died again when that poor dead thing was born of me.

  I had forgotten how to take care of myself. I had forgotten almost everything but a madness I could not name; I often thought that I would choose to die than risk remembering what drove me to madness, for I believed the shame was mine. For y
ou were king, and your will was law, and I was but a girl, or rather a woman, forced into my womanhood." She gripped her hands together, and they began to glow, as she had glittered in the eyes of the company when she first strode through the doors.

  She stared at her glowing hands, and she felt her dogs pressing around her, offering her their courage, offering her their lives in any way she might ask of them.

  In a new, hard voice, she said, "I was no child, for you and my mother gave me no childhood; and my maidenhood you tore from me, that I might never become a woman; and a woman I have not become, for I have been too afraid.

  "But I return to you now all that you did give me: all the rage and the terror, the pain and the hatred that should have been love. The nightmares, and the waking dreams that are worse than nightmares because they are memories. These I return to you, for I want them no more, and I will bear them not one whit of my time on this earth more."

  But she staggered again, and dropped to one knee, and loosed her hands from each other, and clasped her belly, and curled around it, and the glow curled around her, like a halo, or like the embracing arms of a beloved friend. "Ah, no!" she cried, in a voice like the sound of the executioner's axe; and Lilac huddled down farther by the cistern while hot tears ran from her eyes down her folded legs, digging her knees into her eyesockets as if to stop the tears, but they swelled and overflowed anyway, and ran down the insides of her thighs.

  "No!" cried Lissar. "I cannot bear it again. I cannot!" And Ash turned, and sank her teeth into Lissar's shoulder, but only to bruise and startle; she did not break the skin, or perhaps the deerskin dress did not let her. Lissar's eyes flew open, and she gave one great cry, and a burst of blood flowed from between her legs, thick, dark blood, not bright blood as from a clean wound as had flowed from her hands. This was the secret female blood, heavy with mystery, and it mixed with the more innocent blood already shed; and the intermingled blood sank into the floor, leaving a pattern of arcs and spirals and long twisting curves that forever after seemed to move if any eye tried too long to trace them. In later years that bit of floor came to be declared an oracle, and persons who wished advice on some great matter came to look at it, and see where the pattern led them, and many came away comforted, or clearer in their minds, and able to make decisions that had seemed too hard for their strength. And the throne room became the oracle room, bare and plain, containing nothing but the glowing pattern on the floor, and the shadows of the stained glass, which moved less enigmatically.

  "I give it back to you," said Lissar, panting, on her knees, marked with her own blood. "All-I give it all back to you." And suddenly she was again the blazing figure she had been when she stepped across the threshold into the throne room, but she was all the colors of fire now, no longer white but red and golden. She stepped up onto the dais.

  But for some of those watching the woman made of flame was two women, and they were identical, except that they were inimical. Some who saw thought of Moonwoman, and how she is both black and white, but they rejected the image, for Moonwoman was still and always herself, and what they saw now was ... water and salt, wind and sand, fire and firewood-but which was the water and which the salt?

  The watchers shivered, and wondered at what they saw, and wondered at themselves. Some of them remembered their own nightmares, and perhaps it was those who had nightmares to remember who saw the second woman: and they watched fearfully.

  The two figures shimmered, red and golden, and there was no differentiating them, except that there were two; as if a mirror stood somewhere that no one could see, and none therefore knew which was the real woman and which the reflection.

  But a change came, though the onlookers could not have said what the change was; only that the balance of their fear shifted, and they were suddenly afraid ... terrified

  ... panic-stricken at the thought that the one red-gold shape and not the other might be left when the mirror shattered, and only one remained.

  If any of the watchers had looked further, they would also have seen that Ossin put out his hand toward one, toward one and not the other, though he was too far away to touch her. What those who watched did see was that one of the flame-women put out only one hand while the other reached out with both of hers; and in the moment before they touched the watchers saw that the beauty of the one who held out both her hands was the greater, but that the greater beauty was of the kind that stopped hearts and did not lift them or bring them joy. And it was she who was the more beautiful who suddenly was no longer there, and the flame-woman remaining opened and shut her single outstretched hand as if she could no longer remember what she was reaching for.

  Deerskin, murmured the watchers who had seen the two women; we have our Deerskin. Their hearts lifted, in joy and not only in relief of terror.

  And Lissar, dazed, knew that she had seen her mother, but did not remember how; and thought it was perhaps only a fragment of old nightmares. She shook her head; for she saw her father standing before her, but her vision was blurred and flickering, as if she saw him through a sheet of flame. Her father? Her mother? Her mother had been dead-dead-as dead as her daughter three nights after her seventeenth birthday; but no, her daughter had not died, but had lived . . . lived to see her mother again upon a mountaintop, a mountaintop covered with snow....

  Nightmare. But nightmare was a word used to mean unimportant and not real; and she had seen her mother, then and now. Her hands trembled, with memory and with present pain: for both were burned, one as if it had been plunged in fire, or as if she had been hurled bodily into the fire but had miraculously escaped, all but her poor hand, which she had put out to save herself. The other felt burnt as if from a rope-as if a rope had been thrown, awkwardly and almost too late, a homely rope, meant not for such adventures but for the tethering of horses, the tying of ill-fitting doors shut or shaken-loose bits back on waggons.

  Almost she had not noticed it, almost she had not recognized it; but she had grabbed it at the last, and her shoulder ached from the rough jerk, and her palm was lacerated with the coarse fibers of it. But her hands were only sore, and she was alive.

  Alive: alive and here, not in her father's court, no longer on a mountain, but in the throne room of the Gold House, watched by the people who had taken her in, a year ago, taken her in only because she had asked it, asked for work to do and a place to stay. How dared she answer their generosity by destroying the triumphant marriage of their princess-was it not enough that she had destroyed her own place among them?

  She blinked: for her mother's face briefly re-formed before her, swimming into existence from the dizzy golden-red blur before her eyes. But it was not her mother's face, but the face of the painting, the painting that had hung behind her father's throne since her mother had died. The painting was there before her, as beautiful and horrible as she remembered, as clear as though she could touch the painted canvas; she recoiled from the thought, recoiled from the painting, recoiled from her mother: No! she told it. No! And the golden-red blur thickened, but as she stared, wide-eyed, her mother's face began to blacken, her mother's eyes dimmed and became only cracked paint, and the smell of burning canvas was in her nostrils.

  She blinked again: and knew where she was, and why, and that she came not to destroy Camilla's future but to save it. She saw who stood before her, and recognized him, and did not cringe, although she hated what must come next. And she strode forward onto the dais, and all cowered away from her, all but two.

  Her father she seized, she knew not how, for she would not have touched his flesh willingly; nor could those looking on decipher how the flame licked at him; but a look of horror, of an understanding beyond the grasp of mortality, and beyond the profoundest guesses of the still living about the darkest pits of hell, ran fingers like claws over his face, and left a broken old man where a proud king had once stood.

  The entire dais was lit as if by flame, and all those that stood by heard a roaring in their ears, as if the entire city was burning
down around them. Almost they felt the heat of it, and the air seemed too hot to breathe, and struck harshly on their faces; and outside the throne room the people looked through the shattered doors as if down the red gullet of a Great Dragon.

  When the fire released him, the foreign king would have fled, but his own ministers stood in his way, as they tried to press as far from this unknown figure of fire as they could: there had been something about Lissar, but this was not Lissar; this was-something beyond their ken. This was some outlandishness from a barbarian country steeped no doubt in witchcraft; it had been chosen merely because it was the nearest with a marriageable princess. This had been a mistake. It had nothing to do with them. They coughed, and their eyes burned, as if from standing too near a fire. When the dreadful being that stood too near them spoke, they heard the snarl of a crackling fire; but they feared to turn their backs on it to flee to a safer distance because of the seven vast lion-like creatures that stood around it, their jaws a little parted so the white teeth showed, their brilliant eyes fixing at once on any sudden movement. The ministers shuddered, and one of them wept, and so they barred their own king's way in their fear they would not accept as fear. Yet the king could not have fled as he wished even had the way been clear, for he was an old man now, and weak, and slow.

  Ossin was the other figure who had stood firm at the coming of the fire. He was the only one of all in the room who had both seen what all the others had seen and yet equally still seen Lissar. He did not think the fire would burn him, or perhaps he did not care. "Deerskin," he said. "Lissar."