Deerskin - Robin McKinley

Lilac, seeing this, thought only that she wept for Ash, for the memory of seeing her when the blow had just been dealt, when fear of her dying would have squeezed Lissar's heart to a stop; for she had some good guess, as a friend will, of what these two meant to each other, though she had no guess of why. And she knew too that Lissar could not speak, though she again guessed only that it was to do with Ash: and she cast around for something to break the silence. Anything would do. "What

... you must have had to sew it together. What did you use?"

"Flax thread," said Lissar. "It was ... awful. But she didn't mind when I pulled them out; O-Ossin," she said, stumbling over the name, "had told me that they don't hurt coming out, but I didn't believe it: I had been there when Jobe stitched up Genther's side, after he was struck by a boar." But her tears fell only faster.

"And her hair came out with the stitches," said Lilac, watching her friend's face worriedly, guessing now that there was some great trouble that was not healed like Ash's side. "An interesting side effect. She really is a fleethound now, you know.

She even looks like one of ours-of Ossin's. I see the ones that people from Fragge or Dula bring, fleethounds, and your Ash looks like she was bred here."

There was another pause, and Lissar's tears stopped falling. "Yes," she said at last. She opened her mouth to say more, but knew she could not, and closed it again.

Lilac smiled a little. "I've been sorry, occasionally, that your tongue doesn't run on wheels, as mine does. It gives me more room, of course, and I dislike anyone talking over me! But I would know your history several times over by now, if you were a talker, and I can listen, I just think silence is wasteful when there is someone to talk to. I guess. . ." She looked into Lissar's face and saw the unhealed trouble there, and realized that she believed her friend would tell her of it if she could; and wished there were some better way to show her sympathy than only in not pressing her about it.

She said at last: "You've come back just this sennight rather than the next for the wedding, I suppose? Leave it to the Moonwoman to have heard of it even from the top of her mountain."

Lissar found she still could not speak.

"One would expect the Moonwoman to keep track of time well, of course," said Lilac, "even if your reappearance just now is a trifle melodramatically late. You should get used to it, Deerskin; they've been calling you Moonwoman since I first found you, and after you spent last autumn haring around-pardon me, Harefoot-silently catching toros and finding rare herbs and lost children, there was no more chance of your being spared. And Deerskin isn't your real name either, is it?" Lilac went on without pausing, without looking at Lissar. "And if you're not thinking of coming back to stay"-here she risked a look up, and Lissar shook her head. Lilac sighed before she went on. "Well, you have yourself and seven dogs to keep, and the Moonwoman will always be welcome."

"I will give the puppies back." But her voice was a croak.

Lilac looked down. When she had stood up from examining Ash, the dogs had rearranged themselves around Lissar, as integral a part of her as the spokes of a wheel were to the hub, even if the hub remained unaware of it. "Of course you will,"

said Lilac; "and I will fly over the rooftops to get back to the stables with these abominable streamers that simply must be attached to the carriage trappings or the wedding can't possibly come off. If you'll wait a little, I'll come with you to the city; they've got every seamstress working on it, they should be done before midday. And stay with me if you'd ... rather not go back to the kennels."

Lissar found her voice at last. "I thank you. I-I don't know quite what I want to do. I hadn't thought that far ahead. Just-when I heard-"

"It will be pretty spectacular; gold ribbons on black horses, and a golden carriage-real gold, they say, or anyway real gold overlay. He likes showing off, that one."

"He?" said Lissar, slowly. "It's not Trivelda?"

"Trivelda?" said Lilac. "She's not getting married till summer, and it won't happen here in all events; the Cum has fallen on his feet there. The wedding Trivelda's parents will lay on for her should gratify even his vanity, though the country will be paying for it into their grandchildren's time."

"But . . ." faltered Lissar. "But I thought Ossin . . ."

"Ossin's not getting married," said Lilac, watching her closely. "Certainly not to Trivelda. He wasn't very nice to her at the ball, you know; went off in the middle of it and only came back at the very end with this really lame excuse about a sick dog.

You could see poor Clementina turning pale even from where I was standing; and Trivelda's father turning purple. I found out what he'd said later, about the dog, I mean; my friend Whiteoak was waiting on Clementina that night, and just then standing very near.

"You might accept that excuse, or I, but not our Trivelda. She was furious. I gather she hadn't liked the ball very well anyway; there were too many low people there from places like the kennels and the stables. No, she's marrying the Cum of Dorl, who attended her beautifully all that otherwise unsatisfactory evening, blinking his long curling eyelashes and comparing his soft pink hands and smooth round fingernails with hers, I imagine."

Lissar barely heard most of this. "Then who-?"

"Camilla. Ossin's sister." Lilac frowned. "It's all been very quick; it's only two months ago his emissaries arrived, and he followed them ... well, I'm not the only one who thinks there's something a little too hasty about it; but there isn't anything anyone can point to about its being wrong.

"Camilla is willing; of course it's very flattering for her. I don't think she ever really loved the Cum, but it must have been a little hard on her, and she's so young; but I really think that it's not the flattery alone, but the feeling that she's doing her best by her own country by making so grand a match. She's like that, you know. Not much sense of humor but a lot of responsibility-and she's always been like that, since she was a baby.

"And it's flattering for the whole country, come to that. If the stories are right his palace is about the size of our city. Cofta and Clementina are a little dazed, I think, but Ossin would stop it if he could, because Camilla is so young; but he has nothing to work with, the rest of the family and all the court sort of smiling bemusedly and saying but it's such an opportunity for her as if marriage were a kind of horse race, where if you see a gap between the leaders you automatically drive for it. And Camilla herself has a will of iron, and she's decided that she is going to do this. It's not that she loves him; she's barely met him, and he's very stiff and proud."

"I-I thought the heir was supposed to many first," said Lissar, wondering why she felt no relief that Ossin was not to many.

"Ah, yes, that is sticky. But I think Cofta and Clem are a bit put out at the way he missed his chance-again-worse than missed it-with Trivelda, and are glad to be marrying anyone off. It's also why Ossin's not in a good position to try and stop it.

And I think probably at least partly why Camilla is so set on it: take herself off her parents' hands and do it brilliantly as well. Because it is such a grand alliance, that works against everything too-or for it, depending on your point of view."

There was no reason for the rising panic Lissar felt; she should be feeling-guilty, embarrassed, crestfallen, relieved. But the question came up at once: why had she been drawn here so urgently for Ossin's sister, whom she barely knew; as it was not to show herself that she had done right-that Ossin had returned to his proper track-in fleeing him, six months ago, then why? She had thought she must be coming here to set that part of her life finally aside. She felt as if she were standing in a world suddenly strange, as if she had looked around and discovered the trees were pink and orange instead of green; her mind spun, and yet the directional buzz was as strong as ever. She had come to where she was supposed to be; but she had never come to the place directed before and not known what she was to do there.