Robin McKinley - Deerskin

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.

It paused, briefly confused by the fact that there were two of them, and swung its ugly, smoke-leaking head back and forth for a moment-and then chose Lissar.

"Ash, no!" Lissar said, just in time, and Ash hesitated in her spring, and Lissar grabbed an overhead branch and pulled, just missing the thin, stinking stream of fire the dragon spat at her.

"Ash, run!" she shouted, almost in tears. Dragons are stupid creatures. When she pulled herself into the tree it lost her, forgot about her. But its short legs could move its bulk at astonishing speed; in short bursts it might even be as swift as a fleethound.

The dragon was turning toward Ash when, at the sound of her voice, it stopped again and looked up at her with its little, deep-set eyes, red with malice. She thought that if it spouted fire at her again she would not be able to get out of the way in time.

The branches were close-set, and she was not an agile climber. And she was afraid to climb higher because she was afraid of what Ash would do-for Ash had not run away.

She fumbled in her pocket for a stone as the dragon opened its mouth-as Ash began her charge; and such was the swiftness of a fleethound of impeccable breeding when she is protecting someone she loves, Ash outran the dragon's fire as it swung its aim away from Lissar and toward her dog.

Ash bowled it over, but she was bred to pull down long-legged deer by grasping the nose, and letting the weight of her leaping body do the rest; or to snatch a rabbit mid-spring as she outmatched its speed. She did not know what to do with a dragon. Its thick hide gave her teeth no purchase, and it was too bulky to bowl over very effectively, or for very long. Lissar's heart nearly stopped her breath, it thundered so mightily. She flung her stone-and by good luck struck the dragon squarely in the eye. The eye was much protected by its horny socket, but the dragon was at least confused, for it fell again as it tried to stumble to its feet after Ash's attack; and when it parted its scummy jaws again, it was only to pant.

Lissar threw herself down from the tree, clapped Ash on the shoulder as she hurled herself into her best running stride-feeling the heat of the dragon's skin as she swept by it-and said "Come on!"-and Ash did, although she refused to run any faster than Lissar.

They ran for a long time, for as long as it took the panic to sweat out through Lissar's pores; as long as it took for what she knew of dragons to recall itself to her mind: that they were dismayingly, fatally swift, but only over short distances. She and Ash had left this one behind long ago.

Lissar did not sleep well that night. The brief battle with the dragon brought other images to her mind; glimpses of-she knew not what. It was as if a door had opened and closed again too quickly for her eyes to recognize anything behind it; a brief stab of horror assailed her, like a clap of thunder might strike her ears. While it shook her, as lightning striking too near may throw someone to the ground, she could not see where the horror came from, nor what were its dimensions or its name.

At the earliest greying of the sky she roused Ash and they went on.

One day they struck a road.

It was really not more than a path, a track; but it had been worn by human feet in leather, pounded by the iron shoes of domestic horses and rutted by the narrow strike of wheels.

Lissar stood, a little back from it, still hidden in the trees, and looked. Ash sat down and let her tongue unroll; she scratched an ear, investigated a flank, and, when her companion still showed no sign of moving, sprawled down full length on the ground for a nap, her head on Lissar's foot for safekeeping. Long months of life in the wild had not eradicated Ash's belief that her person was the chief mover of the world; on the other hand, Lissar, looking down, saw the cocked ear, and knew that Ash's nap was more apparent than real.

Lissar found herself willing to go on standing still simply because Ash's head was resting on one of her feet. It was not as though Ash had not leaned against or collapsed upon all portions of Lissar's anatomy many times before, had been unloaded as many times with protesting groans, and instantly did it again as soon as an opportunity presented itself-thus proving no hard feelings, nor any intention of altering her behavior. But in this particular case Lissar knew she had come to what she had decided, weeks ago, on a mountaintop, she wished to look for-signs of humanity. Having found what she sought, she was grateful for anything, even a dog's resting head, that might be held to be preventing her from acting on her discovery.

When Ash raised her head in response to a crackle in the undergrowth (which might be dinner), Lissar slowly, stiffly, lifted her freed foot and set it down in front of the other one. Then she raised that one and set it down in front of the first; then-then a silvery-fawn streak blasted silently past her, and across the portentous road. There was a brief rustle and squeak, and Ash reappeared at a more moderate gait. She crossed the road once more as if roads were nothing to her, something hairy and mottled brown dangling from her jaws.

Lissar stopped, still several steps away from the road. "We'll camp here tonight,"

she said aloud, to Ash, who twitched her ears. It was rare any more that Lissar needed words to communicate with her dog. She used them occasionally to remind herself she could, to remember what her voice sounded like.

They moved far enough back from the road that Lissar felt relatively safe from discovery, even with a small fire burning. She knew that the road was not heavily used; not only was it narrow, but she had seen no sign of human habitation-inns, she thought tentatively; rest houses for wayfarers, their gear and their beasts-and there were grass and weeds striking up through old ruts and hoofprints. But that the road existed at all meant someone used it; and the weather had been dry, so there was no mud to tell any tales of recent travellers, nor any recent piles of dung to tell of their beasts. All that meant to her, in her anxious frame of mind, was that it was the more likely that travellers would come soon. She stared through the trees toward the road; she felt as if she could smell it, as she had-belatedly-smelled the dragon. As if a miasma or a magic hung over it, a magic derived from the simple friction of human feet against the wild ground.

She drifted off to sleep with her head on Ash's flank, the curly hair tickling her cheek and getting sucked occasionally into the corner of her mouth or her nose as she breathed, so she made little snorting noises in her sleep. She woke up to a sound of roaring; Ash had curled around her, and put her nose in her ear. They rearranged themselves, and fell asleep again.

Lissar gave herself no time to think the next morning. She rolled to her feet, rubbed her face, pulled the white deerskin dress to order, and trotted off to the road, her muscles (and bladder) protesting such rough usage so immediately on arising.

Ash, grumbling and out of sorts at such abrupt behavior during her least favorite time of day, followed her, and they struck the road together, although Ash had set foot on it already and had not noticed this as a significant act. Lissar felt a tingle up through the bottoms of her callused feet as she ran along the road; a tingle she was willing to believe was imaginary, and yet no less important-no less felt-to her for that.

They ran till the sound of water distracted them; and then they halted for some brief ablutions. And then ran on. Lissar had chosen downhill, not because it was faster-though there were moments when running upon the particular angle of slope felt like flying-but because she thought she remembered that cities were more likely to occur on flat plains and meadows beyond the feet of mountains; and it was cities that contained the most people.

But did she want so many people at once? a little voice, scared, whispered to her.

Her direction-pointer had disappeared as soon as she first recognized a human-used trail, as if the pointer were a guide through a limited territory, and, having brought her to the edge of its own land, left her there. Sh,e was a human being; presumably she belonged in human landscapes. But its desertion made her feel lost, more tentative about her decision; it had helped to keep her back among the trees, with Ash's head on her foot. Perhaps, she thought, the words of her thinking coming in the same rhythm as her running footsteps, perhaps what she wanted was a village, something a little smaller than a city.

No, whispered the same voice she'd heard on the mountaintop. City.

She shook her head. There was already too much that was peculiar about what did and did not go on in her mind. She would have preferred simple memories, like other people had ... like she supposed other people had ... But perhaps other people had voices in their heads too, voices that told them what to do, or not to do. She remembered the Lady's voice, the sound of running water and bells.

She and Ash ran on, looking for a city.

SIXTEEN

WHEN THEY BROKE OUT OF THE TREES LISSAR STUMBLED AND

almost fell. Her horizons had opened too suddenly; her vision could not take it all in, and her feet faltered. She slowed to an uneven walk, and great shuddering breaths shook her that had nothing to do with the pace they had been keeping. She kept spinning to look behind her, behind her, always behind her; the wind whispered strangely out here in the open.... She wanted a tree to hide behind, a rock to put her back against. She stood still-turned a quarter circumference-paused-another quarter turn-paused-another. Her breath refused to steady.

Ash had initially wandered off on her own errands when they had come out from the forest, but now she trotted up and looked at Lissar inquiringly. Ash was a sighthound; open ground with long plain vision in all directions must be her heart's delight-or at worst a situation no stranger or more alarming than any other. Lissar lowered her hands to her dog's silky head and stood facing the same direction for several long moments, till her heart and her breathing had slowed. Then they went on, but walking now, Lissar looking to left and right as far as her neck would stretch.

She had noticed, a day or two since, that the trees were thinning, the road almost imperceptibly widening, though the surface grew no better; and there had been clearings that took half a hundred running strides to cross, and much longer spaces that were not forest at all but fields with scattered trees in them. In one the grass and heliotrope stood higher than her head, and as she swam through it she came unexpectedly upon three crushed circles where some creatures had briefly nested; a tuft of brownish-grey fur remained on a sharp stem-elbow.

But this was something different. When-the afternoon light was turning the world soft and gold-edged she turned and looked back, and saw the mountains looming up over her, and knew that they had reached the flat land she sought. They slept that night at the edge of a meadow full of daisies and vetch, and clouds of lavender-pink trollbane.