Deerskin - Robin McKinley

The hut stank and was filthy. Methodically Lissar noticed this, and then, methodically, began setting it to rights. First she hauled all the blankets outdoors, following the loudest sound of running water, and dumped them in the stream, weighing them down with rocks that they might not escape her. Then she began hauling water, bucket by bucket, back to the hut. At first she merely poured it across the floor, and swept it back out again; later she scrubbed, the floor, the walls, the table, the cupboard and the bedframe. It astonished her, and dismayed her a little, how very dirty the hut was; for she remembered that she had done the best she could cleaning with tepid snow-water and rough soap. Yet everything was dark with grime, and the blankets smelled strangely musty and sour, and had unbent stiffly, and seemed more dilapidated than she remembered; and the walls and furniture seemed to bear the dark accumulation of years.

The stain on the floor would not fade, however much she scrubbed and soaked and scrubbed again.

The straw mattress she dragged outdoors and let lie in the sun. First she thumped it all over with the handle end of her broom, and was gratified by several tiny grey bodies bolting out of several holes in the cover, and disappearing into the grass. The holes she sewed up, and then she flung the mattress over the edge of the porch roof-far enough up that its edge only dangled over the roof edge, and the entire mattress did not slide off again-that its ex-inhabitants might find the way home a little more difficult, and that the sun could bake the dankness out of it.

Ash, meanwhile, was equally busy; there was a heap of small furry dead bodies next to the wood-pile when twilight began closing in and Lissar began to recognize that she was tired and hungry-and to comprehend that this tiredness and hunger felt good, simple and straightforward and earned. She took the bucket one more time to the stream and filled it, and built up the fire, and threw in chunks of meat and some of the fresh green things her nose had found for her as she hauled water back and forth. And while the soup boiled she skinned and cleaned the rest of Ash's kill, and laid the strips she made out to wait till the fire had died down enough that she could hang them in the chimney; for she wanted to make some return for all the cabin had given her this winter, and there was a great deal she could not replace.

Then she sat outside for a while; even with the fire burning higher than she had dared build it when the snow was still deep and she too weak to hunt far for wood, it would take some little time for the soup to cook to her (and Ash's) satisfaction. It grew cold as the sun set, too cold to sit, but spring was in the air, and she had been indoors for so long; she felt that she had been penned indoors all her life.... She sprang to her feet and pulled the white deerskin dress over her head, dropping it on the grass, and ran to the stream, which was only a few steps beyond the edge of the clearing, and leaped in.

The water was cold, and this time there was no gap or distortion between her body's reaction and her mind's awareness of it. Cold! she thought. So cold it makes my teeth ache!

But it was a wonderful kind of coldness, or maybe it was the awareness itself that was wonderful; and she rubbed herself all over, feeling the day's hard labor swept sweetly away from her. This was better than baths out of a bucket, even though they had been performed beside the heat of the fire. Speaking of the fireshe burst out of the stream again, one plait of her hair tumbling against her naked back like a whiplash of ice, her body iced with gooseftesh, and shot back to the hut, where Ash was considering trying to drink the boiling broth out of the suspended bucket. The stripped carcasses of the other small beasts lay in easy reach on the table, but Ash was, as usual, intent on cooked food. Lissar tucked her hair up again, one plait under another, pulled her dress on again, and gave them dinner.

They spent most of another week at the hut. Lissar gathered what herbs she could find this early in the season and hung them in bunches from the low ceiling; there were hooks there already, and thread came from the unravelling of the ubiquitous washing-cloth blanket; and Lissar hoped that the meat she had smoked would keep.

The hut blazed with cleanness; she had very nearly replenished the wood-pile, although her wood was neither of as good a quality, being only what she could pick up from the floor of the forest, or cut where it lay fallen with her small hatchet and bring back, nor was it stacked as competently. She had buried the remains of her winter latrine, or at least she dug and turned over the earth where she remembered the latrine had been, for the melt-water seemed to have taken care of it surprisingly efficiently already; and now she went far from the hut to do her business, as Ash had done automatically since they both woke on the grassy hillock. There was nothing left for her to do-except, perhaps, hope to find someone to thank, some day, and possibly put into their hands the things she had not been able to replace: apples, onions, potatoes, flour, grain, two blankets. And she would add: a comb, good soap, a second bucket, an axe. A second bucket would have been a finer luxury than fresh vegetables and silk underwear.

She had already found that her white deerskin dress did not get dirty. She, inside it, did; but it remained as unperturbed by use and wear as Ash's new curly coat was-although Ash now required brushing, which Lissar did as best she could with her fingers and the broom, nightly, by the fire, so that mats she would not be able to deal with would not have a chance to form. But her dress did not require even this much care; if a little mud adhered to a hem, a knee, an elbow, Lissar waited till it dried and flicked it off. It fit her as well as Ash's coat fit Ash; it almost surprised her that she could take it off. It was as if it, too, had grown out of her skin. It wasn't much more improbable than that a fleethound should grow the thick shaggy fur of a northland wolf-hound. The dress seemed as well to be proof against the jabs and slashes of Lissar's vigorous outdoor life, and took no damage, no matter how dense the twigs and thorns; and Lissar's own feet and hands grew tough, till she hardly looked where to put her palm when she reached to grab a branch, till she could walk swiftly and easily even upon the streambed, which was sharp with rocks.

The morning they set out Lissar felt a pang of parting. She could not say she had been happy here, but she had lived, and that was a great deal-she knew just how much. And while the hut-and Ash-had given her the means, still she had taken those means and used them, chosen to use them, known that she had so chosen.

She still knew nothing of her future; she did not know where to go or what to do.

She had one white deerskin dress and one tall curly-haired dog; she did not know what fate these might lead her to, what fate she might seek. She thought, I must remember that I possess also myself; but what this self is, after all, I still know little about. What can I say that it does, what can I say that makes predicting my future any more explicit? I who-still, again, for now-remember so little of my past? She paused in her thinking, and looked around her, at the meadow, at the small bald hollow where she and Ash had awakened after the Lady had spoken to them; and she felt the Lady's peace.

I know I am Lissar, and that I have escaped ... something. I know that I once had a friend named Viaka who fed me, and once I had a friend named Rinnol who taught me plantcraft. And I know I once wore ceremonial robes, and that people cried my name...... "They called me princess," she murmured aloud; Ash's head turned at the sound of her voice. I was not Rinnol's apprentice, but a princess; and it was as princess I escaped.... She took a deep breath, remembering the Lady's voice; remembering that it was not the time to take down the old worn box from the attic. I cannot remember my father's name, or my mother's, or even my country's. It hurts when I try. Therefore I will not try. The past is past, and I face now the future, a future the Lady gave me.