Deerskin - Robin McKinley

Why had he not called up his guards?

And so Lissar was past them before they had any thought of what to do to stop her; none had looked into her face. And she flung open the doors to the inner sanctum.

The room was big enough to hold two hundred people, and the picture they made, in their richest clothes, against the backdrop of the finest possessions of Goldhouse's ancestors, was a spectacle to dazzle the eye; no evidence here of a tin-cup, back-yard kingdom, with precious gems and metals wrought into graceful forms and figures shaping the room like a chalice. But the company, as they turned, in horror, toward the crash of the doors striking the walls, were themselves dazzled by the sight of a woman, so tall her head seemed to brush the lintel of the door, blazing like white fire, and guarded by seven dogs as great and fierce as lions.

She was so tall that as she strode into the room, even those farthest from her could see her towering head and shoulders above the crowd, her flame-white hair streaming around her like an aureole.

The group on the dais at the far end of the crowded room turned also to look toward the door. Lissar saw five frightened faces turned toward her: Ossin, Camilla, the king and queen, and the priest, whose hand, which had been upraised, dropping stiffly to his side again, as if released by a string instead of moved by conscious human volition.... The sixth figure remained facing away from the door a moment longer: as if he knew what the sound of the crashing doors meant, that his fate and his doom had arrived.

And so Lissar's first sight of her father in five and a half years was of his broad back. He stood as tall and proud as he ever had, and he stood too as a strong man stands, his feet planted and his shoulders squared; like a man who feared nothing, like a man who might have brought a leaf from the tree of joy and an apple from the tree of sorrow as a bride-present to his truelove's father, and thought little of the task. And yet, staring at his back, what she remembered was the look in his eyes, the hot stink of his body, the gauntleted hands hurling her dog into the wall: and that he was also a tall handsome man was like a poor description by someone who was a careless observer. His golden hair was as thick as ever, though there was white in it now, which had not been there five years before.

Lissar glanced once, only once, at Ossin; she could not help herself. And she saw his lips shape the name he knew her by: Deerskin. She did not understand the fear in his face; anger she would have expected, anger for this intrusion, anger after their last meeting, to meet again after what had passed between them, in these circumstances: anger she would have understood and submitted to. She did not like it that Ossin should look at her with fear. But she could not deny her poor heart one more look at his beloved face; and her heart saw something else there, love and longing, stronger than the fear. But this she discarded as soon as noticed, telling her heart it was blind and foolish.

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 you 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.