Deerskin

by Robin McKinley

  The prince strode after them without pause; Nob and Tolly circled Ash carefully to stay at his heels. Lissar and Ash followed a little more warily. The floor was hard-packed earth, and well-swept; Lissar thought of the double handful she had combed out of Ash that morning, and wondered how often someone swept here, even with short-haired dogs. The hall was lined with half-doors, the tops mostly open and the bottoms mostly shut. One wall by the wide doorway was covered with hooks from which hung a wide assortment of dog-harness.

  The roof was much higher on one side than the other, and the high side held a line of windows, so that the entire area was flooded with light (Lissar was faintly reassured to see a few short dog-hairs floating in the sunbeams). The dogs that had come out to look them over were retiring through one or two of the open half-door bottoms; one disappeared through a tall open arch, and Lissar heard: “It is not mealtime, as you perfectly well know, Corngold! Get out of here or I’ll lock you up.” Corngold, looking not the least abashed, trotted out again, exchanged looks with Ash, and went off after the others.

  Ossin paused and opened the top of one of the half-doors. Lissar stepped forward and looked over the bottom half. There was a small, pathetically small, rounded, lumpy pile in one corner of the small room, which was ankle-deep in straw. A small window—this room was on the low side of the hall, and the door ran up to the ceiling—let sunlight in, a long yellow wedge falling across the floor and brightening the white-and-brindle rumps of a couple of the tiny puppies in the pile. Lissar could see blanket-ends protruding from under tiny heads and feet.

  “There they are,” said the prince sadly. “I thought of putting a bitch in with them, but my two most reliable mothers have litters of their own. By the time I found out if one of the others would accept them and start producing milk, if the answer was no, it would probably be too late to try again.”

  Lissar softly pulled the bolt on the lower half-door and stepped inside. She knelt down beside them and touched a small back, ran a finger down the fragile spine. The puppy made a faint noise, half murmur, half squeak, a minuscule wriggle, and subsided. She looked around. Ash was standing in the doorway with a look of what Lissar guessed to be consternation on her face; Nob and Tolly were nowhere to be seen. There was a water dish with a piece of straw floating in it, near the puppy-heap. The little run was very clean.

  “That water dish is doing a lot of good,” said the prince irritably. “Jobe—has anyone tried to feed Ilgi’s litter?”

  Lissar heard footsteps stop. “Hela tried, but I don’t think she got too far.” The voice was that of the messenger who is not completely sure that his message won’t get him killed.

  “Oh, get out of here, I’m not asking you to be wet-nurse,” said the prince in the same tone. The footsteps began again, quicker this time, and then a pause, and a voice, as if thrown back over a shoulder, “There’s six left.”

  “There were nine born, live and perfect,” said Ossin, and there was both anger and grief in his voice. “While they’re asleep, I’ll show you where your room is—after I ask Berry what’s available. Cory’s old room, I expect.”

  Lissar shook her head. “I’ll sleep here, if you don’t mind, and I have no possessions to keep. Ash will stay with me.” She looked up, sitting on her folded legs; the prince was looking at her with an expression she could not read. It might have been surprise, or relief. It was not wistfulness or longing; it might have been hope. “They will have to be fed every couple of hours anyway,” she said. “And kept warm.”

  The prince shook himself, rather like a dog. “As you wish. Washrooms and baths are that way”—he raised an arm, the hand invisible behind the frame of the door. “Jobe and Hela and Berry can get you anything you need—milk, meal, rags and so on—you and the dogs get the same stew, most of the time, but my dogs eat very well, so it’s not a hardship, and the baker is the same one providing bread for my father’s table.” The prince’s smile reappeared, and fell away again immediately. “I have to go attend some devils-take-it banquet tonight, and I will probably be trapped till late. I’ll come by when I can, to see how you are doing.”

  Lissar was aware that his anxiety was for the puppies, not for her, but she said sincerely, “I thank you.”

  He took a deep breath, and as he turned and the sunlight fell fully on his face, she saw how tired he was, remembering that he had said that he had been up all the night before with the bitch he could not save. “I hope I don’t fall asleep in the middle of it,” he added. “The count is the world’s worst bore, and he always wants to tell me his hunting stories. I’ve heard most of them a dozen times.”

  After he left, she went out to find someone who would provide her with the requisites for her attempt at puppy care. Jobe was watching for her, and led her through the open archway that Corngold had been earlier turned away from, where he introduced her to Hela and to Berry, who left at once, several dogs in his wake. Jobe was lugubrious and Hela brisk, but they treated her as if she knew what she was doing, which she both appreciated and simultaneously rather wished they would condescend to her instead, if the condescension would provide her with any useful advice.

  The puppies were beginning to stir and make small cheeping noises, bumbling blindly through the straw, when she returned, looking for someone who was not there. Twilight was falling; as she sat down cross-legged on the floor with her bowl of warm milk and rags, Jobe appeared with a lantern, which he hung on a hook in the wall inside the door to the puppies’ stall. “There’s an old fire-pot somewhere,” he said. “Hela’s gone to look. It would be easier if you could heat your milk here, during the nights, when our fire is banked.” “Our” fire burnt in the common-room, where the staff—and most of the dogs, come evening—collected, and there was a pot of stew, firmly lidded in case of inquisitive dogs, simmering there now. “And it would give you a little extra warmth, too, as long as …”

  “As long as I can prevent the puppies from frying themselves,” Lissar answered, and saw the faint look of approval cross his long face as he nodded. “Thank you,” said Lissar. “It would be helpful.”

  Jobe seemed inclined to linger, but hesitated over what he wished to say. “You’ll do your best and all that, of course, my lady, but the prince isn’t an unfair man. He knows as well as I do you’ve a hopeless task, and he won’t fault you for it. None of us would take it, you know.”

  Lissar looked up at him, thinking of her bare feet and long plait of hair. “Why do you call me ‘my lady’?”

  Jobe’s expression was of patience with someone who was asking a very old and silly riddle that everyone knows the answer to. “Well, you are one, ain’t you? No more than yon bitch is a street cur. They don’t generally let people bring livestock to the receiving-hall, you know.” He smiled a little at his own joke, and left her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SILENCE FELL AFTER HE LEFT; SHE HEARD THE OCCASIONAL YIP—these dogs all seemed to bark as little as Ash did—and the occasional crisp word from a human voice. My lady, she thought. I was only the apprentice to an herbalist. Perhaps this is why the title makes me uncomfortable; I am pretending to be what I am not. But am I not pretending worse than that, in being here at all?

  She picked up the nearest puppy, who had blundered up against her foot and was nosing it hopefully. The sounds the puppies made were no louder than rustled straw. She dipped a rag in the milk, and offered it to the puppy, who ignored it, now exploring her fingers. Its squeaks began to sound more anxious and unhappy, and she noticed that the little belly was concave, and the tiny ribcage through the thin hair felt as delicate and unprotected as eggshell. She squeezed the tiny raw mouth open, and dropped the milky rag inside, but the puppy spat it out again immediately, in its uncoordinated, groping way, and would not suck.

  She paused, cradling the pup in one hand. I cannot fail so immediately and absolutely, she thought. If the puppy will not suck, I must pour it down his throat somehow. I wonder what Jobe meant when he said Hela hadn’t “gotten too far�
�? Had she gotten anywhere at all?

  The pup was now lying flat on her open hand, as if it had given up its search; but its little mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. The other puppies were struggling among themselves, some of them falling over the edge of the blanket and trying to propel themselves on their stomachs with dim, swimming motions of their tiny legs.

  One very bold one found Ash, and was making as much noise as it could, convinced that it had found what it was looking for, if only she would cooperate. It clambered at her front feet, mewing insistently, while poor Ash stood, her back arched as high as it would go and her four feet tightly together, pressing herself as far into the corner by the closed door as she would fit, desperately willing this importunate small being away, but too well-mannered to offer any force against anything so small and weak.

  Lissar’s eye fell on the straw that made up the puppies’ bedding; or rather on the straws. She picked up a stout, hollow one, blew through it once, then stopped, sucked up a strawful of milk, held it by the pressure of her tongue over the end in her mouth, gently squeezed the puppy’s jaws open again, placed the straw in his mouth, and released the stream. The puppy looked startled; several drops of milk dribbled out of the sides of his mouth, but Lissar saw him swallow. And, better yet, having swallowed, he lifted his little blind face toward the general direction the straw-and-milk had come from.

  None of the puppies would suck the milky rag, but she squirted strawsful of milk down them all. Even with day-old puppies it took several squirts before Lissar was satisfied with the roundness of their small bellies. Her lips trembled with exhaustion and her tongue was sore by the end of their supper, and she’d worn out several hollow straws, but at least she had not failed her first attempt. The fed puppies were willing to lie more or less contentedly in her lap and around her knees, and Ash, having been rescued from that very dangerous puppy, had relented enough to sit down, although she would not go so far as to lie down. Her eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the puppies in case one should make threatening gestures at her again.

  There was a little milk left in the bottom of the bowl, and quite a bit of it on, rather than in, the puppies, Lissar, and the surrounding straw; but there was no doubt that six little bellies were distended with the majority of it. The puppies bestirred themselves erratically to make the small vague gestures at one another that in a few weeks would be rowdy play, including growls, pounces, savage worrying, and squeals from the losers. At the moment they looked like mechanical toys whose springs were almost wound down, and since their eyes were not yet open, even the most daring of them kept losing track of what it was doing.

  Lissar looked up to a small noise and saw Hela leaning over the half-door. “There’s supper for you any time you want it. I congratulate you on your empty bowl; I didn’t get so far.”

  Lissar held up her last straw, which looked rather the worse for wear. “Hollow,” she said; her cheek muscles were stiff, and speaking was awkward. “Mostly they swallowed instead of spitting it up.” She rubbed her face. “I’m sore.”

  “Clever,” said Hela, but something in her voice made Lissar look up at her again, and there was that expression, much like what she had seen in so many of the faces she had looked at since she came down from the mountains: something like awe, something like wistfulness, something like wariness.

  The prince had not looked at her like that. She wasn’t sure, as she thought about it, that she had registered with him at all; he was more interested in Ash than in her human companion. Lilac hadn’t looked at her that way either. She thought, Why should I care? I need not care. I have a purpose—these people have given me a purpose—and that is all that matters. I need only be grateful that they have welcomed a stranger. “I have to hope it went into their stomachs and not their lungs—but they wouldn’t suck.” She gestured at the rejected rag.

  She dropped her gaze to the mostly now-sleeping puppies, and smiled. Tomorrow she would find out how to make her way back to the stables and tell Lilac what had become of her. One puppy was attempting to worry the hem of her dress. She touched its tiny blunt muzzle with a finger, and it turned its attention to her fingertip, chewing on it with soft naked gums. “They don’t look anything like fleethounds,” said Lissar. “You’d never know.”

  “They’re always like that at first,” said Hela. “All puppies look very much alike when they’re just born, only bigger or smaller.”

  “It has no legs at all, or almost,” said Lissar, picking up the one who was failing to make progress with her finger. She held it up, and its stubby legs waved feebly. “And its head is square.”

  “In a fortnight you’ll start to see the head and the legs,” said Hela. “Er—haven’t you raised dogs before?”

  “No,” said Lissar. “I’ve only raised Ash, and she was weaned when I got her. She looked like what she was going to be, only smaller, except for her feet.”

  “Ah,” said Hela. “That explains how Ossin convinced you to take this job—begging your pardon—none of us who knows better will do it.”

  Lissar nodded, setting the doomed puppy down to huddle among its equally doomed siblings. She was beginning to wish that people would stop reminding her quite so often that she had taken on a hopeless project. “I know. But I have no other job, and—and I like dogs,” realizing as she said it that it was what she had said to the prince in the receiving-hall.

  Several expressions crossed Hela’s face; among them was a look that said that she expected not to understand, but the final look was one of sympathy. “All the more reason not to want to do it, but we’re all glad you’re here, so I’ll be quiet. Do you know about rubbing their bellies to make their bowels work?”

  “No,” said Lissar.

  “Yes,” said Hela, with an inscrutable glance into Lissar’s face. “Mum’d do it if she was here. We’ve lots of blankets—the royal kennels have better laundry service than my whole village back home—I brought you some more. Make it easier for cleaning up.”

  “Thank you,” said Lissar.

  “And—er—there’s a room for you upstairs, when you want it, and I—er—laid out some clothes for you, a tunic and leggings and—er—boots. If they don’t fit, we’ll find other ones. Ossin’s staff also dresses better than most of my village. We—I—er—thought you won’t want to get your … dress dirty. That all comes with the job, the room and board and clothing.”

  “Thank you,” said Lissar again, brushing at a milk-spot on her lap. It was still wet. It would bead up as it dried, she knew, and brush right off. A tunic might make her less conspicuous, however, which she would prefer; perhaps it would stop some of the strange looks that came to her; perhaps Hela’s natural friendliness would win out over her imposed caution.

  “Your bitch has never had puppies, has she?” said Hela.

  “No.”

  “She has that look to her,” said Hela, amused; “‘what are these things? I don’t care! Just take them away!’—How old is she?”

  There was a pause. “I’m not sure,” Lissar said at last. “I—I have trouble remembering certain things.”

  Hela flushed to the roots of her hair and dropped her head. “My lady, forgive me,” she said in a voice very unlike the one she had used till then; and before Lissar could think of something to say in response, Hela went hastily away. Lissar could hear her quick steps down the main aisle, back toward the common-room.

  When Lissar followed her a little later (having produced nothing in response to the belly-rubbing; perhaps there was a trick to it. It would not do to have succeeded at step one and failed at step two; she adamantly refused to let this happen, even if she did not see, straight away, what to do about it), conversation stopped as soon as she appeared, barefoot and silent, in the doorway. Yet she had heard what they were discussing as she walked past the heaps of sleeping dogs, for whom she must already bear the correct smell of a fellow pack-member, for none challenged her or Ash. The common-room discussion was of a recent hunt, during which one
dog had done particularly well; nothing, Lissar thought, that they should have cared about her, or anyone, overhearing, nor anything that, in a collection of dog people, should have broken off upon the entry of another person.

  Jobe stood up and served her a bowl of stew, and set another one down on the floor for Ash. Lissar never quite got over her amazement at how swiftly and delicately Ash could inhale large amounts of food; it was like a magic trick, the mystic word is spoken, the hand gesture performed and presto! the food disappears, without a crumb or speck left behind. Ash looked up hopefully at the bowl in Lissar’s hands.

  “Come and sit,” said a man Lissar did not know. She went and sat, but she did not stay long; the conversation tried to start up again around her, but it lurched and stumbled—barely more deft than a day-old puppy. She set her bowl on the floor for Ash to perform her magic on, took a hunk of bread and a tall mug of malak—whose name drifted into her mind as she tasted it for the first time, in, when?—said “good-night,” and left as silently as she had entered. A chorus of “good-night” followed her, sounding both eager and sad, like a dog who is hoping for a kind word but doubts its luck. She paused and looked back at them as they looked at her; and realized that they were not anxious for her to leave even if they were uneasy in her company. She smiled a little, not understanding, and returned to the puppies’ pen.

  Some of them in her absence had responded in the desired way to the belly-rubbing, and some cleaning up was in order, since they did not differentiate between one substance, like straw or sibling’s body, and the next. Lissar thought, frowning, that she would have to keep track of who needed more belly-rubbing. She sighed; tiredness fell on her suddenly, with the arrival of food in her own belly. She would figure it all out tomorrow.