Deerskin by Robin McKinley

  And, for her loyalty and love, Ash had been killed. Lissar had no need to go back, because Ash was dead; and no one else had the right to demand she return.

  But Ash was not dead. Ash was crouched by her person’s bed, shivering, whining a tiny, almost subvocal whine, very deep in her throat, licking her person’s bloody, swollen face, licking her wounded, bleeding body, licking, licking, licking, anxiously, lovingly, desperately; she was saying, Come back, please come back, don’t leave me, I love you, don’t die, please don’t die, come back, come back, come back.

  Lissar opened her eyes. Ash flattened her ears, began licking Lissar’s face so wildly and eagerly that it was hard to breathe through her ministrations; the dog was trembling now more than ever, and her tiny whine, readily audible now, had risen in pitch.

  Lissar found herself slowly fitting back into the rest of her body, as if consciousness were a fluid, as if the pitcher had been upturned at the tiny spot behind her eyes, and was now flooding downward and outward, from her eyes to her ears and mouth, then down her throat; again she knew her heart beat in her breast, again she knew she breathed … again she knew that she hurt.

  She became aware of how her arms and legs lay, of how her body was twisted, one leg bent under her, her head painfully forced to one side. And then, suddenly, she began to shiver; the numbness rolled back, and she was cold, freezing cold, paralyzingly cold. She discovered that she could make at least one hand move to her will, and so she moved it; she unclenched the trembling fingers, unbent the elbow, flexed the shoulder … reached up to touch Ash’s face. Ash made a little “ow!”—not quite a bark, not quite a whimper—and climbed up on the ruined bed, and pressed herself again against her person.

  Her warmth made Lissar colder yet, as the last fragments of numbness shook themselves loose and left her, finally and absolutely, stranded in her body again; and, worse, lying passively on her bed with Ash next to her, lying fearfully and hopelessly and futurelessly, reminding her of …

  She felt consciousness begin to curl up around the edges—her edges—and retreat, leaving a thick, terrifying line of nothing dividing her mind from her body. She took a great gulp of air, hissing through her teeth, and the shock of the sudden necessary expansion of her lungs, and the pain this caused her, jolted her mind and body back together again, though they met ill, as if two badly prepared surfaces ground together, not matching but clashing. She felt nauseated and weaker than ever, and very much afraid of the nothingness’s next assault. She had decided to live. If she could not think of certain things, she would not think of them. There were other things to think of, immediate things.

  She touched Ash’s back, and her hand came away bloody; but she could not tell if the blood was her own or her dog’s. How badly were they hurt? She did not know. She feared to find out.

  She lay quietly, another minute or two, trying to gather her strength despite the dictatorial cold that shook her. She listened to the sound of two creatures breathing, a sound that, with the feat of listening, she thought she had given up, just a little time ago. The sound interested her from this new perspective, as it never had before.

  Lissar knew they dared not stay where they were. They dared not because … no, they simply dared not. She need not remember why; the instant choking crush of panic told her as much as she needed to know. And then there was the wind; there was a cold wind—the door must be open, the outside door to the garden—and she was naked and bloody on a bed that no longer had any comfort to give.

  Ash was still shivering as well, and had thrust her nose, in a trick she had had as a puppy, as far under Lissar’s shoulder and arm as she could get it; she made little determined, rootling motions now, as if, if only she could quite disappear under that arm, everything would be all right again. She made tiny distressed noises as she dug her nose farther under.

  Lissar’s shoulder hurt where Ash was joggling her with her excavations; but then her other shoulder hurt, and her head hurt, and her breast hurt, and her belly hurt, and her … no, she would not think about it … though that hurt worst of all. Slowly, slowly, slowly, she brought the elbow belonging to the shoulder Ash was not burrowing under to a place that enabled her to sit up halfway.

  The door to the garden was open, as she had guessed from the wind; but beyond that the door in the garden wall was also open. She had never seen that door open before; how strange. She had thought it buried under generations of ivy that held it shut with thousands of tiny clinging fingers. If it was open, then the tower room was no longer safe, for someone could come straight through the garden door, and then to the tower door; anyone … no, she would not think of it.

  But there was something about the door she did need to think about, although it was hard … so hard … her mind would not settle to the task, but kept trying to run away, threatening to escape into the strength-sapping nothingness again; what was it she needed to remember?

  That she was cold. She could remember that. That the open door was letting cold, late-autumn air into her bedroom. She struggled to sit up all the way, her mind settling gingerly on this single, straightforward problem. Nothingness retreated.

  There was a violent, white-hot pain through one hip that shot through her body and seemed to explode under her breastbone; and her headache—had she remembered the headache?—struck her heavily behind one eye. The combined pain made her dizzy; and then she began feeling her bruises. When she opened her mouth a little to gasp, her crusted lips cracked, and the metallic taste of blood was fresh again on her tongue; but she realized simultaneously that the rusty taste of old blood had been there already, since … no. Her mind began to fragment again. But then she found an acceptable form for memory to take, that her mind agreed to coalesce around: since she had opened her eyes to Ash’s licking her face.

  She looked down at her dog. Ash’s knobbly backbone was skinned and bleeding, like human knuckles, except that it was impossible to conceive what blow could have done … no. This time her mind only quivered, expecting to be brought back, accepting that the thoughts that could not be looked at would be snatched away and hidden in time.

  Ash had rusty brown contusions down one side of her ribcage, and a lump just over and beyond the last rib; and a dark, wet swollen place to one side of the back of her neck. Although she no longer had Lissar’s shoulder to press herself under, her eyes were tightly shut, and she lay tensely, not at her graceful ease as she usually did.

  Lissar looked down at herself and … could not. Her mind bucked and bolted, and she almost lost the struggle; but she hung on. She raised her eyes to the door again. If she shut it, she would be warmer. Could she stand up?

  It wasn’t easy. She had to think about things she hadn’t thought about since she had learned to walk; she had to cling to support as fiercely as any two-year-old. But unlike the fortunate two-year-old, Lissar hurt all over, and her head spun. Her hip sent a jolt through her that made her gasp with every movement; she found that she could only hold on with one hand, and her eyes would not focus together. She found that she was better off if she closed one eye and looked only through the other; meanwhile her headache continued, bang, bang, bang, bang.

  There was a tired moaning in the bed behind her. As she stood bent over a chair, panting, hoping to regain enough strength to stagger the rest of the way toward the door, Ash crept off the bed to join her. Lissar let one hand drop too quickly, and Ash flinched, although she did not move away from the touch.

  Lissar looked toward the open door and the night sky beyond; she thought the night was old rather than young, and that thought aroused some feeble urgency in her; yet she could not understand what the urgency wished to tell her. She feared to investigate; nothingness curled close behind her; she could feel its teasing fingers against her back.

  She stood, leaning on her chair with her good hand, the weaker one resting lightly on Ash’s back, panting, shivering. She looked down at herself again, accidentally, because her head was too heavy and aching to hold up; but she
was nonetheless shaken by another gust of panic; had Ash not been supporting her as well as the chair she might have fallen.

  She shut her eyes, but the spinning was much worse in the dark. She raised her head, painfully, opened her eyes, closed one, opened it and closed the other. The world steadied slightly; she was once again conscious of her heartbeat, and it seemed to her surprisingly strong and steady. Timidly, sadly, a thought formed, a thought expecting to be banished instantly: If I put on some clothes, I wouldn’t have to risk seeing myself.

  She managed to hold the thought despite the immediate tumult in her mind (Don’t look! Don’t look! Don’t even think about looking or not looking! Just do it!). She turned her head, feeling that her spine was grating against her skull. The wardrobe would require a detour on the way to the door. She couldn’t do it. But clothes would also be … warmer. And wasn’t that why she’d decided to stand up in the first place? She couldn’t remember.

  Clothing, she said to herself. I can remember that I want to go to the wardrobe and put clothes on. Half an era of the earth’s history passed during that journey; but she arrived. She remembered, after staring at the wardrobe door for a moment, how to lift the latch; but then the door swung open, surprising her, striking her. She grabbed the edge of it, but could not hold it, and she slid slowly, frantically, to the floor.

  She must have lost consciousness again, for again it was Ash’s tongue that recalled her from wherever she had gone; but this time there had been no brightness, nothing, only that, nothing. She had decided to live, she was resigned to this side of the abyss—if she could stay here. The bright place was beyond the abyss, and she no longer had the strength to cross it; she was expending all her little remaining energy in clinging to her decision to stay alive. There was irony in the thought, but she was too confused for irony.

  She regained her feet, made a grab with her good hand at one of the old wardrobe’s shelves; it was an enormous, heavy piece of furniture, and stood solidly as she hung from it. After a moment she groped into the darkness of the shelves. Her hand found something thick and soft; she pulled it out. She was in luck; a heavy flannel petticoat unfolded itself, and a long-sleeved flannel under-shirt fell after it. She could not get her weak arm through the sleeve, but the shirt was cut generously, and there was room for it to hang next to her body. The petticoat was harder, for she could not tie the drawstrings, and the button went stiffly through the buttonhole; but she pushed it through at last. Sweat had broken out on her face, and stung her.

  Ash left her as she dressed herself, and stood by the door, looking out. Lissar looked at her as she rested from the labor of clothing herself, and the attitude of Ash’s body suggested something to her. She raised her eyes to the patch of sky visible over Ash’s head, over the garden wall: it was definitely paler than it had been, and this frightened her. She did not want to meet anyone else—she had trouble with this concept, with the idea of the existence of other people. She knew, dimly, that other people existed, must exist, but she could not quite bring a vision of their being into her clouded mind—but she knew she did not want to meet anyone else. Her eyes drew themselves to that open door in the wall and she studied it; she closed one eye again so the door would stand still. What did the door make her think of?

  Ash stepped down, slowly, stiffly, into the garden, walked toward the other door, and then turned her head, slowly, moving her shoulder a little so that she did not have to bend her neck so far, and looked back at her person.

  Leave, came the thought to Lissar’s bruised mind. We must leave; before dawn, before there are many people about; before … her mind would permit no more, but it was enough.

  Lissar took a step forward, and another; and bumped into the table where there lay three half-eaten loaves of bread, some shreds of meat and crumbs of cheese; two apples and a pear. Food. She tried to focus her eyes on the food. She would have use for food some time, she thought; and put out her good hand, and picked up the first thing it touched, and put it in a pocket. Then she took up a second thing, and put it in another pocket; and a third; and a fourth. The petticoat had enormous pockets; she had a dim recollection of owning so unfashionable a garment because she used to go for long walks in the woods with … with … and they used to collect … she could not remember. Plants? Why would one pull the leaves off plants and put them in one’s petticoat pocket? And what matter was it if a petticoat was fashionable or not? Why did it matter if her petticoat was fashionable?

  But her mind began to shiver and pull away again, and by then her pockets were full. She made her slow, uncertain way to the open tower door.

  The flannel’s warmth, and the unexamined comfort of being clothed, and a plan, even so simple a plan as to walk through one door and then another door and then on somewhere else, cleared her head a little. She paused on the first threshold to take a deep breath; it hurt; but the strength it provided was greater than the pain, and she took a second breath. She opened both eyes, blinked, looked at the garden door, and willed her eyes to focus together.

  For a tiny flicker of a moment, they did; and heartened by this, she took a step forward, outside; and the full strength of the wind struck her, and she stumbled; pain stabbed her hip. She took a step backwards, facing into the room she had just left, her hand on the doorframe to steady herself.

  She saw several articles of clothing lying over the back of one of the chairs beside the table that bore the food. She fumbled through them, and drew out a long, heavy length of dark green stuff with a … collar. She recognized the purpose of the narrow little roll of material in the wide sweep of the thing: a cloak. Awkwardly she hung it over her shoulders.

  Then she stepped outdoors again, and followed in her dog’s wake.

  ELEVEN

  SINCE SHE KNEW NEITHER FROM WHAT THEY FLED NOR WHERE they were going, it was an odd and frustrating journey, and frequently a terrifying one. Two things lodged in her mind, and she allowed herself to be guided by them as she might have been guided by two fixed stars by which she could determine her bearings, and choose a line to take.

  The first fixed point was: away. Away from where she had been when she was first recalled to herself by Ash’s soft, frantic tongue. This first point she had mostly to leave to Ash, however; for she wandered in and out of full consciousness. Occasionally she awoke lying on the ground, without any recollection of halting to rest; sometimes she merely awoke to the knowledge that her limping feet had gone on taking one slow step after another while her mind had been elsewhere.

  Once she awoke like this standing in a stream from which Ash was drinking eagerly; and she was glad to bend cautiously down and do likewise. Sometimes she awoke to the realization that her eyes had set themselves upon a tree she was making her way toward; for she had found early on that this was the steadiest way for her to proceed, to sight at some distance some landmark and work her way toward it, and then, upon gaining it, choose another. Her balance and her vision were still too erratic to risk much looking around in the ordinary way of walking; and watching the jogging, swinging form of Ash was not to be considered.

  Or at least she guessed that her landmark-by-landmark form of travel, like a messenger riding from one road-stone to the next, was not the usual method of the healthy. She was not sure of this as she was not sure of almost everything. Was she, then, not healthy? Her hip hurt her all the time. She knew she did not like this, and guessed that it should not be that way. But should both her eyes be able to focus on a single thing? Then why had she two eyes?

  The one external fixed point in her universe was Ash, for all that she could only look at her directly when one or the other of them, and preferably both, was standing still. The one word she had said aloud since she had first opened her eyes in answer to Ash’s calling her back, was Ash’s name. She could not remember her own. She stopped trying, after a while, because it frightened her too much; both the trying to remember and the not remembering.

  Most of what they saw was trees, and, fortunately, fr
equent streams. Sometimes there was a trail, perhaps a deer track; sometimes there wasn’t; but luckily the woods were old and thick, and there was not too much low undergrowth to bar human passage, although Lissar had sometimes to duck under low limbs. This was lucky in another way, that the tree cover, even this late in the season, was heavy enough that rain did not often soak through. She was often thirsty but rarely hungry. She ate a bit of bread occasionally, when she thought of it, and fed a little to Ash, who ate it with a manner similar to her own: a sort of bemused dutifulness, nothing more.

  Ash occasionally snapped up and swallowed leaves, grass, insects, and small scuttling creatures Lissar sometimes recognized as mice and sometimes recognized as not-mice and sometimes did not see at all. As Lissar watched, another memory tried to surface: edible plants.

  She had learnt—not long ago, she thought, though she could not remember why she thought so—quite a bit about edible plants. Her good hand reached out, traced the shape of a leaf … something … she remembered. She pulled the leaf off and bit into it. Sharp; it made her eyes water. But she held it in her mouth a moment, and it began to taste good to her; it began to taste as if it would do her good.

  She pulled a few more leaves off the tall bush and gave them to her other hand to hold. She had finally worked that arm through its sleeve; that had been one long evening’s work. They did mostly halt—she remembered this from day to day, and it comforted her, this bit of continuity, this memory she could grasp any time she wished—when it grew too dark for her to see Ash easily, even glimmering as she did in shadow.

  She stood, holding leaves in one hand, thinking about what to do next; and then she brushed the edge of her cloak back so that her hand could find her pocket, and she deposited the leaves there, with the last dry-but-sticky, unpleasantly homogenous bits of their food-store. The cloak got twisted a bit too far around her throat during this process, and she had to spend a little more time to tug it awkwardly back into place. Then she hastened, in a kind of limping scuttle, after Ash; though Ash had already noticed her absence, and had stopped to wait for her.