Deerskin - Robin McKinley

They both heard more unspoken words, this time Ossin's. What do you owe me, then, for Ash? Your life? What risk will you take for her risk? For me? But he heard her answers to the words he did not speak: It is not like that. It is not like that. You do not understand.

I do not have to understand, he said. I have seen the scars you carry, and I love you. If you and Ash cannot run quite so far as you used because of old wounds, then we will run less far together. "I was never a runner anyway," he murmured aloud, and Lissar stirred but made no answer.

Aloud he said: "There is another reason we should marry; for you are the only person I've ever known who loves dogs, these fleethounds, as much as I do; and therefore I suspect that I am the only person you have ever known who loves them as you do."

Lissar almost smiled, and a little color came back into her face, and her eyes were hazel now. "And I promised you puppies, didn't I? Ash is pregnant by Ob now, I believe."

"You did promise me puppies," said Ossin, trembling now himself, fighting to keep his words low and kind, as he would speak to a dog so badly frightened it might be savage in its fear; knowing that she wanted to come to him, not knowing if he could depend on that wanting, clamping his arms to his sides to prevent himself from seizing her to him as he wanted to do.

"Ossin," Lissar said, and sighed, and the sigh caught in her throat; and she held one hand out toward him, hesitantly, and he put his arms around her, gently. I cannot decide; she said but not aloud; and so I will let you-and Ash-and my heart decide for me. But I do not know if this is the right thing. She remembered the Moonwoman's words: Ash is looking forward to running through meadows again; can you not give yourself leave to run through meadows too? But she remembered also that Moonwoman had said, It is a much more straightforward thing to be a dog, and a dog's love, once given, is not reconsidered.

"It is not so easy as running and not running," she said, and found that she had spoken aloud; but she was in Ossin's arms as she said it, and knew that she would stay there-for now. And she promised, herself and Ossin, and Ash and the puppies, that she would try to stay there, for as long as the length of their lives; that she would put her strength now and hereafter toward staying and not fleeing. But I do not know how strong I am, she said. I cannot promise.

It is enough, said Ossin. For who can make such promises? No one of us is so whole that he can see the future.

Then she stepped toward him of her own volition, and put her own arms around him, and he heaved his own sigh, and bent his head, and kissed her, and she relaxed forward, against his breast. And the dogs closed around them, pressing up against their thighs, wagging their tails, rubbing their noses against the two figures who were holding each other so tightly that they seemed only one figure after all.