Robin McKinley - Deerskin

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.

There was a further development about this flat land with its scarce trees the next day: she recognized the regular rows of planting set among clean smooth earth, and knew this for human farming. She knew at the same time that she had not remembered "farmland" one day before, but now that it was before her eyes she had a name for it, and memories of farmers, male and female, behind ploughs pulled by horses or oxen, or even pulling the ploughs themselves; and the rhythmic flash of the scythes at harvest, and the tidy-wild, great round heaps of gold-brown grain. She even remembered, with the smell of tilled earth in her nostrils, the smell of cows and chickens, of milk in a pail; she remembered Rinnol astonished at how little a. . . a ...

at how little she, Lissar, knew, because she was a ...

It was like a great rock, holding her memory down, or the door of it closed; as if she camped uneasily at a barricaded gate, afraid to leave, afraid not to leave; as if occasionally words were shouted to her over the barrier, which sometimes she understood and sometimes did not. Perhaps her memory was merely very small; perhaps this is the way memory is, tight and sporadic and unreliable; perhaps everyone could remember some things one day and not another day. Perhaps everyone saw the Lady. She stared at the tall grasses and the flower-spangled banks that ran along the road. Was it only that she was far from her home that she could put names to so few things? Rinnol had been a good teacher.

Ash and Lissar walked on. As twilight came on again, Lissar broke into a trot, and they went on so till the Moon rose and sank. And then Lissar found a stream that ran through a hedgerow, and a little hollow on one bank just large enough for a woman and a dog to sleep curled up together; and there they stopped. The sun rose over them and spattered them with light, for the leaves of spring had not gained their full growth; but they slept on. It was late afternoon when Lissar woke, and shook Ash (who, as usual, protested).

Lissar slipped out of the white deerskin dress and stepped into a quiet place in the stream, lined with reeds, where the water bulged into the same soft place in the earth where she and Ash had slept; and she stood there long enough for the fish to decide she was some strange new kind of flotsam; and she flipped their breakfast, flapping and scaly, up on dry ground. Ash was still the best at rabbits, but only she could catch fish. The water was cold; after the necessity for standing perfectly still was over with the sudden plunge and dip for her prey, her body broke into violent trembling, and gooseflesh ridged her all over. It was some minutes of dancing around and waving her arms before she was warm enough to hold tinder steadily and make fire. It had occurred to her more than once that the reason Ash did not learn fishing was because she did not like standing in cold water; and streambanks were rarely a suitable shape for fishing dry-shod.

It took Lissar two or three days to notice that she had switched them over to travelling at night-travelling from shadow to shadow like ootag giving wide berth to the scent of yerig. I'm frightened of facing human beings again, she thought. I don't know where I am; I do not know even if I speak the language of this place . . . I do not know the name of the language that I do speak. I do not know who I am or where I come from; I do not know why and how I know that there are different human tongues. I am frightened of the things I cannot explain.

She thought: I long for another human face just as I fear it. She paused and looked out over the Moon-silvered landscape. This looked much like the farms she remembered-but how did she understand what she remembered? She had not remembered farming till she had seen fresh-sown cropland and the green coming growth of the early crops laid out in front of her. Perhaps she did not recognize the difference between these lands and where she had lived before because ... she had thought, sometimes, that the bits of her memory she could clearly recall felt stretched, as if they were obliged to cover more territory than they could or should.... Perhaps she had come back to the place she had left ... escaped from. Her heart began beating in her throat, and she put her hands up to hold it in: she could feel it against her palms, as if it would burst through her skin.

No, said the voice in her head. This is a different place. You have come a long way from where you left. That place is far from here. I will believe you, she thought, slowly, in the voice she thought of as her own, because I want to. She and Ash walked on.

That morning, as dawn slowly warmed the countryside, Lissar did not look for a place to sleep, to hide, but kept on-walking, but slowly, for it had been a long night, down the rough, endless road. And so that morning, at last, she saw another human being; and that human being spoke to her.

He was leaning on his gate, watching her. She had seen him emerge from his house-a thin curl of smoke from its chimney had suggested to her that its occupants were awake-with harness over one shoulder and a fierce-looking rake over the other.

She watched him move, and thought how strange he looked, how unwieldy, reared up on his hind legs like that; utterly without the grace of dogs, deer, of everything she had seen moving during her long solitude in the mountains, even the dragon.

How very oddly human beings were made; and she wondered how she looked in Ash's eyes.

The man paused at the roadside before putting his hand to the gate-latch, looking up and down the road as he did every morning, expecting to see, perhaps, that damned dog of Bel's out getting up to mischief again, or maybe someone getting an early start for a trip into town. And what he saw was a Moon-haired woman in a Moon-colored dress with a tall Moon-colored dog at her side. She was barefoot, and her hair hung down her back in a single long plait. Her dress was so white it almost hurt the eyes, while the dog's long curly coat was softer, silver-grey, almost fawn, like the Moon in a summer fog. He paused, waiting, his hand on the latch.

"Good morrow to you," he said as she drew near.

She started, though he had seen her looking back at him, had known he was there.

She started, and stood still. She was close enough for him to see her eyes, black as her hair was white. The dog paused too, looked up into her lady's face, then glanced at him and gave one brief, polite wave of her plumy tail.

"Good morrow," she said, with a long pause between the two short words; but he heard nonetheless that she spoke with an accent he did not know. This did not surprise him; it was her existence that surprised him. He had seen no one the least like her before; given that she existed, that she stood before him at the gate of his farm, she must speak unlike his neighbors. It was reassuring that she did so; had she not, she must be a dream, and he was not given to dreams, or a ghost. He wondered if his language was strange to her; and then; even in the thought wondering that he should think such a thing, him, a farmer, who occupied his days with seeds and crops, and mending harness and sharpening tools, and the wiles and whims of beasts both wild and tame-wondered if perhaps this woman spoke a language belonging only to her, that she spoke it aloud only to hear the sound of her own voice, for only her ears recognized the meaning of the words. Even if she were not a ghost or a dream there was some magic about her; he moved uneasily, and then thought, No. If she bears magic, there is no evil in it.

She looked around, taking in his farm, the harness, his hand on the latch. He saw her understanding what these things meant, and was almost disappointed that such mundane matters were decipherable to her.

"Is it far to the city?" she said.

"The city?" he echoed, himself now startled; what could this woman want with the city, with her shadow eyes and her naked feet? "Oh, aye, it is a long way."

She nodded, and made to pass on.

"Your dog, now," he said, surprising himself by speaking his thought aloud before he had come to the end of it in his own mind: "your dog has a bit of the look of the prince's dogs." This was perhaps her reason for venturing down from her mountainsfrom the wild land beyond the farmland that was his life and his home-to go to the city. Something about her dog.

She nodded again although whether in agreement or merely acknowledgement that he had spoken, he could not tell; and then she went on. Her footfalls were as silent as her dog's. The farmer stared after them, relieved that their feet displaced the dust in the road.

The next morning Lissar had two rabbits flung over her shoulder; this morning she met a man trudging toward her with a mysterious bit of ironwork over his shoulder. She guessed he was on his way to the smithy she had seen as they trotted through a village in the dark hour just before dawn. Smithy, her mind had told her, the mountaintop voice had told her; she listened. She had been emboldened by her first conversation with the man at his gate, and was almost sorry to be passing through her first village while everyone was sleeping. Not one glimpse of candlelight did she see, not one person waiting up for a birth or a death, or putting the last stitches in a wedding-dress or a shroud.

This man had his head bent, his back bowed with the weight of his load. "Good morrow," she said as she approached; he looked up in surprise, for he had not heard her footsteps, and she further knew, and was glad for the relief the knowledge brought her that her accent branded her a stranger.

"Good morrow," he said, politely, the curiosity in his face open but not unkind.

"Do you know anyone hereabout who would be willing to trade a fresh-killed rabbit for a loaf of bread?" She had thought of doing this just after she had left the man with his hand on his gate-latch, and the hope of its success made her mouth water. She had not eaten any bread since she had left the hut, and remembered further that not all bread was necessarily slightly gritty and musty-tasting.

A flash of white teeth. "Ask for two loaves," he said, "which is more nearly a fair trade. Your catch looks plump, and the skins are worth something besides. Ask for some of last year's apples too, or maybe a pumpkin that wintered over."

She smiled back at him. It was an involuntary gesture, his smile begetting hers; yet she found the sense of contact pleasant, and she saw that he was pleased that she smiled. "My wife would give you bread," he went on; "she did her baking yesterday.

And we've still a few turnips and pumpkins in the barn. You ask her. My name is Barley. The house isn't far; there's a red post out front, you'll see it. Her name is Ammy. There are chickens in the yard. 'Ware the black and white hen; she's a devil.

Dog's tied up out back, won't trouble yours." Any other dog he might have questioned the manners of, in a yard full of chickens; somehow he did not question this dog any more than he felt the need to question the woman. His own dog was of a more ordinary breed; he and his wife were as well.

"I am grateful for your hospitality," Lissar said gravely, and they parted.

She found the red post without difficulty; and the black and white hen took one look at Ash and retired from the field. The house door opened before they arrived at the step, and a smiling woman looked out at them, a curiosity a little touched with awe, much like her husband's, bright in her eyes.

"B-Barley said you might trade us a loaf of bread for my rabbits," said Lissar. As soon as she had really to ask barter of a person who could say yes or no, she lost all faith that her offer was a reasonable one; forgot what Barley had said, forgot that this was his wife and that he had already bargained with her for a better price than she asked. She found, too, that it was hard to pronounce his name, to say to his wife, I know this person well enough to have his name to use.

The woman's eyes moved to the limp, furry forms dangling from Lissar's shoulder. "I can do better than that," said she, "and shame to him if he did not tell you so. Come in. I'll give you breakfast. And I'll cook both rabbits, and you can take one away with you, and two loaves of bread."

"I thank you," said Lissar shyly, and ducked her head under the low lintel. "He-he did say that one loaf was too little."

"I'm glad to hear it." The woman glanced again at Lissar, measuringly, this time, and said, hesitantly, "I mean no offense, but I think you have been on the road a long time. Is there anything an ordinary house and an ordinary house-woman might offer you?"

"Soap," breathed Lissar in a long sigh, only just realizing she was saying it, not conscious of the thought that must have preceded it. "And hot water."

The woman laughed, and was more comfortable at once, for her visitor's exotic looks had made her wonder ... well, it was no matter what she had wondered, for this woman's answer was just what she would herself have answered in similar circumstances. "I can give you a bath by the fire. Barley won't return before sundown, there are only the two of us."

It seemed the greatest luxury Lissar could imagine, a bath, hot water in a tub big enough to sit in, beside a hearth with a fire burning. She watched in a haze of happiness as the great kettle she had helped fill from a well-spout in the yard came to a slow Irickle of steam over the fire. She ate breakfast while the water heated; Ammy declared that she had eaten already, but she fried eggs and bread and slabs of smoked meat, and long thin spicy greens and short frilly mild ones, and Lissar ate it all. Ammy, watching her narrowly, then did it all over again. She had much experience of farm appetities, and Lissar ate like a harvester at the end of a long sennight. By the time Lissar had eaten her second enormous meal she had slowed down a good deal and Ammy did not threaten her with a third.