Deerskin - Robin McKinley

She looked down at her dog. Ash's knobbly backbone was skinned and bleeding, like human knuckles, except that it was impossible to conceive what blow could have done ... no. This time her mind only quivered, expecting to be brought back, accepting that the thoughts that could not be looked at would be snatched away and hidden in time.

Ash had rusty brown contusions down one side of her ribcage, and a lump just over and beyond the last rib; and a dark, wet swollen place to one side of the back of her neck. Although she no longer had Lissar's shoulder to press herself under, her eyes were tightly shut, and she lay tensely, not at her graceful ease as she usually did.

Lissar looked down at herself and ... could not. Her mind bucked and bolted, and she almost lost the struggle; but she hung on. She raised her eyes to the door again.

If she shut it, she would be warmer. Could she stand up?

It wasn't easy. She had to think about things she hadn't thought about since she had learned to walk; she had to cling to support as fiercely as any two-year-old. But unlike the fortunate two-year-old, Lissar hurt all over, and her head spun. Her hip sent a jolt through her that made her gasp with every movement; she found that she could only hold on with one hand, and her eyes would not focus together. She found that she was better off if she closed one eye and looked only through the other; meanwhile her headache continued, bang, bang, bang, bang.

There was a tired moaning in the bed behind her. As she stood bent over a chair, panting, hoping to regain enough strength to stagger the rest of the way toward the door, Ash crept off the bed to join her. Lissar let one hand drop too quickly, and Ash flinched, although she did not move away from the touch.

Lissar looked toward the open door and the night sky beyond; she thought the night was old rather than young, and that thought aroused some feeble urgency in her; yet she could not understand what the urgency wished to tell her. She feared to investigate; nothingness curled close behind her; she could feel its teasing fingers against her back.

She stood, leaning on her chair with her good hand, the weaker one resting lightly on Ash's back, panting, shivering. She looked down at herself again, accidentally, because her head was too heavy and aching to hold up; but she was nonetheless shaken by another gust of panic; had Ash not been supporting her as well as the chair she might have fallen.

She shut her eyes, but the spinning was much worse in the dark. She raised her head, painfully, opened her eyes, closed one, opened it and closed the other. The world steadied slightly; she was once again conscious of her heartbeat, and it seemed to her surprisingly strong and steady. Timidly, sadly, a thought formed, a thought expecting to be banished instantly: If I put on some clothes, I wouldn't have to risk seeing myself.

She managed to hold the thought despite the immediate tumult in her mind (Don't look! Don't look! Don't even think about looking or not looking! Just do it!). She turned her head, feeling that her spine was grating against her skull. The wardrobe would require a detour on the way to the door. She couldn't do it. But clothes would also be ... warmer. And wasn't that why she'd decided to stand up in the first place?

She couldn't remember.

Clothing, she said to herself. I can remember that I want to go to the wardrobe and put clothes on. Half an era of the earth's history passed during that journey; but she arrived. She remembered, after staring at the wardrobe door for a moment, how to lift the latch; but then the door swung open, surprising her, striking her. She grabbed the edge of it, but could not hold it, and she slid slowly, frantically, to the floor.

She must have lost consciousness again, for again it was Ash's tongue that recalled her from wherever she had gone; but this time there had been no brightness, nothing, only that, nothing. She had decided to live, she was resigned to this side of the abyss-if she could stay here. The bright place was beyond the abyss, and she no longer had the strength to cross it; she was expending all her little remaining energy in clinging to her decision to stay alive. There was irony in the thought, but she was too confused for irony.

She regained her feet, made a grab with her good hand at one of the old wardrobe's shelves; it was an enormous, heavy piece of furniture, and stood solidly as she hung from it. After a moment she groped into the darkness of the shelves. Her hand found something thick and soft; she pulled it out. She was in luck; a heavy flannel petticoat unfolded itself, and a long-sleeved flannel under-shirt fell after it. She could not get her weak arm through the sleeve, but the shirt was cut generously, and there was room for it to hang next to her body. The petticoat was harder, for she could not tie the drawstrings, and the button went stiffly through the buttonhole; but she pushed it through at last. Sweat had broken out on her face, and stung her.

Ash left her as she dressed herself, and stood by the door, looking out. Lissar looked at her as she rested from the labor of clothing herself, and the attitude of Ash's body suggested something to her. She raised her eyes to the patch of sky visible over Ash's head, over the garden wall: it was definitely paler than it had been, and this frightened her. She did not want to meet anyone else-she had trouble with this concept, with the idea of the existence of other people. She knew, dimly, that other people existed, must exist, but she could not quite bring a vision of their being into her clouded mind-but she knew she did not want to meet anyone else. Her eyes drew themselves to that open door in the wall and she studied it; she closed one eye again so the door would stand still. What did the door make her think of?

Ash stepped down, slowly, stiffly, into the garden, walked toward the other door, and then turned her head, slowly, moving her shoulder a little so that she did not have to bend her neck so far, and looked back at her person.

Leave, came the thought to Lissar's bruised mind. We must leave; before dawn, before there are many people about; before ... her mind would permit no more, but it was enough.

Lissar took a step forward, and another; and bumped into the table where there lay three half-eaten loaves of bread, some shreds of meat and crumbs of cheese; two apples and a pear. Food. She tried to focus her eyes on the food. She would have use for food some time, she thought; and put out her good hand, and picked up the first thing it touched, and put it in a pocket. Then she took up a second thing, and put it in another pocket; and a third; and a fourth. The petticoat had enormous pockets; she had a dim recollection of owning so unfashionable a garment because she used to go for long walks in the woods with... with... and they used to collect...

she could not remember. Plants? Why would one pull the leaves off plants and put them in one's petticoat pocket? And what matter was it if a petticoat was fashionable or not? Why did it matter if her petticoat was fashionable?

But her mind began to shiver and pull away again, and by then her pockets were full. She made her slow, uncertain way to the open tower door.

The flannel's warmth, and the unexamined comfort of being clothed, and a plan, even so simple a plan as to walk through one door and then another door and then on somewhere else, cleared her head a little. She paused on the first threshold to take a deep breath; it hurt; but the strength it provided was greater than the pain, and she took a second breath. She opened both eyes, blinked, looked at the garden door, and willed her eyes to focus together.

For a tiny flicker of a moment, they did; and heartened by this, she took a step forward, outside; and the full strength of the wind struck her, and she stumbled; pain stabbed her hip. She took a step backwards, facing into the room she had just left, her hand on the doorframe to steady herself.