Deerskin - Robin McKinley

FIFTEEN

VERY QUICKLY TRAVELLING BECAME AS FAMILIAR, AS beginningless and endless, as the long snowbound time in the hut had been. At first Lissar followed Ash, as blindly as she had done during the long dreadful days before they found the cabin, but then she found that she too seemed to know where they were going-though she knew nothing more of it than in what direction it lay.

It was like following the direction of the wind beating in her face: if she fell off the point, she could feel the change at once; if the wind shifted, she felt that at once also; but where the wind blew from she did not know. Indeed, she thought, orienting herself to the-smell? sound? touch of air against her cheek?-of that directionless direction, wind would carry more messages of its source. Wind would be warm or cold; wet or dry; smelling of flowers or trees or fire or barnyard. This sensing was a trembling of the nerves, and she might not therefore have believed in it, except that she needed some direction to set her feet and this was at least as good as any other: better, then, because it was there, and it spoke to her. More significantly, it seemed Ash's nose pointed the same way.

She remembered something of the journey to the hut, and the sense of going forward to she knew not what aroused those older memories, of when she had dumbly followed Ash, sick and weak and stumbling. Now it was as though with every step, every touch of her bare tough foot to the ground, she grew stronger.

Soon she trotted side by side with her hunting hound when the way was wide enough, a stride almost as leggy and tireless as Ash's. She began to practice throwing stones; she found as if by some further magic a little detachable pocket in her deerskin dress that was just the right place for small stones to come easily to her hand; the pocket was there just as she began to think of carrying small stones. And with that discovery the stones seemed indeed to come more easily to her hand, and her wrist and shoulder seemed to know better how to twist and flick to set the stones where her eye had sighted. She felt that she was the ruler of all the kingdoms of the world the first time that a stone of hers knocked down dinner for her and Ash, though there were none but the two of them to celebrate, and Ash took it quite calmly. She slept sweetly that night, believing now in some new way that she would win through; she would reclaim her life-she would find a life to claim.

They travelled one Moon through and into a second. One day each of those months Lissar did no travelling, but lay curled up in what haven she could find, while her mind gave her red dreams and her body sent red blood into the air of the world from a small opening between her legs. She drowsed through those days, Ash close beside her, seeing red water and red sky and red Moon and sun in her mind's eye, and yet finding the visions strangely comforting, like the hand of the Lady upon her cheek. On the second day, each month, she tied sweet grass between her legs, that she might not leave a blood trail; and she found that the white deerskin dress took no stain from blood any more than it did from dirt or sap or sweat.

Lissar began to feel that perhaps this travelling was what her life was, and was to be about; travelling in this wilderness of trees and rocks, and peaks and valleys, for she thought they walked among mountains, although she never had a long enough view to be sure. At last this occurred to her as odd, that she should not know, or seek to find out; and so one day she struck straight uphill-away from the breath of direction on her skin-away from the complex of faint trails made by wild creatures through the trees, leading to the next stream, the next nook to creep into against the weather, the next sighting of something for Ash or for a quick-thrown rock to bring down.

She felt like a wild creature herself, breaking her own trail. But it was an odd goal for any such, not to food or water or even a lookout for danger, but for the satisfaction of simple inquisitiveness: what was this place she and Ash wandered through?

She had picked herself a steep climb. They came up above the trees in some little time, and a little while after that she began to notice that her breath hurt her throat; and then her eyes began to burn, and her head felt light. The ground began to seem almost a wall, rising abruptly up before her, so that it was as logical to grasp with her hands as to tread with her feet. Once or twice she had to stop and give Ash a boost.

It was a good day for seeing distances, however; the sky was blue and clear, and as she looked around she saw the mountain tops stretching out around her.... For the first time she thought of how long it had been since she'd seen another human being, heard a human voice other than her own. And she looked around her, thoughtfully, and noticed that in one direction the mountains sank away and became hills, and the forests covered their rounded tops. As she faced that way, she felt the faint tingle of direction. We will go that way, she thought. This is the way we are going.

It was still a long time that they were in the mountains, for all that Lissar now felt and understood that they were going slowly downhill. They saw more creatures as they descended; there was more game for them-and a less devastating sense of loss if either of them missed-but more competition for prey as well, and Lissar began to build a fire in the evening for its warding properties as well as for heat and cooking.

Spring wore on, and the last buds burst into leaf. The rabbits and ootag she and Ash ate were plump now, and there was sometimes enough for breakfast even after they had eaten till their stomachs felt tight at dinner-there was breakfast, that is, if they had hidden the remains of dinner well enough before they went to sleep.

Lissar's hair grew long; she thought, vaguely, that in her previous life she must have cut it sometimes, for she could not remember its ever being so long before, and it felt somehow odd under her fingers, thicker or softer or wirier or stronger, but she thought that if Ash's hair could undergo such an odd change then she should not be troubled with her own. She kept it braided, since she still had no way to comb it, and dreaded tangles; she found a way to weave a bit of vine into the braids, which gave her something to tie it off with; only fresh vines were flexible enough, and the sap made her hair sticky, but it had a fresh, sharp, pleasant smell, and she did not mind.

She was washing sap out of her hair one day in a pond. They were well into the round hills by now, and the air seemed gentler, and the water moved more slowly. It was no longer always rushing downstream, whipping itself over drop-offs and into chasms. A swimming-bath was an extraordinary luxury; she and Ash both paddled back and forth, amazed and delighted with this new game. She had stood up in the shallows to work her fingers through her long hair. Usually she stood up straight as she did this, combing it back from her face and over her shoulders, persuading it to lie in the direction she wanted it to dry in, so that it would be as easy as possible to braid later. She wasn't conscious of deciding to do anything different today; had she thought of it, she would have been as wary of anything that might do for a looking-glass as she had ever been, now, in her new life. But today, she pulled the long tail of her hair forward, to hang down her breast, and, musingly, her eyes slid downward to the surface of the water: and the quiet pond reflected what it saw.

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.