Deerskin Quotes
"They lit their world as the sun lights the great world, and every one of their subjects loved them and was grateful."
"It was the princess’s nursemaid who told her this story, and told it often."
"She had eyes only for the raven-haired lady sitting at her father’s side."
"Your lovely mother cast her eyes down when her new people said such things to her, for she was a modest girl then as she is a modest woman now."
"And always there was a radiance like sunlight flung around them."
"The word came that the fifth king had been killed, and that the sixth had thought better of his third cousin twice removed, and went home and married her."
"Tokens worth the finest treasure in this world or any other, tokens no living man should be able to bear; and he threw them into the fire for the love of your mother, and felt no regret."
"For, he said, all the joy he needed was in your mother’s eyes; and he could withstand any sorrow so long as he had once known that joy."
"Because he loved her beyond life itself, and because he knew she loved him equally, he knew he must return; that knowing was greater than time and mortality."
"I am dying," she said, through her veil, and the light cloth rippled with her breathing."
"It is unlikely that anyone there was entirely undazzled, entirely themselves, or much inclined to see anything that they had not already decided beforehand that they would see."
"She bore this without protest; she had found that she did not want to think about her prospective marriage after all, because it would take away Rinnol and Viaka and her garden."
"It’s time to go out," said Lissar. "You will go, or I will pull you out of bed by your tail."
"I am dying, she thought, in the guttering of consciousness, I am dying, she thought, in the encroaching cold stillness. I am dying, and I am glad, for Ash is already dead, and it will all be over soon."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"SINCE SHE KNEW NEITHER FROM WHAT THEY FLED NOR WHERE they were going, it was an odd and frustrating journey, and frequently a terrifying one."
"The first fixed point was: away. Away from where she had been when she was first recalled to herself by Ash’s soft, frantic tongue."
"She had learnt—not long ago, she thought, though she could not remember why she thought so—quite a bit about edible plants."
"Lissar stood for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust. By the dim light of the open door, and the memory of the shape and placement of a rough stone chimney on the rear wall, visible over the roof of the wood-pile, she saw the fireplace opposite the door."
"The nights grew longer and the days colder, and Lissar shivered even with the cloak clutched closely around her, walking as swiftly as she could."
"She knew that they were not going very far, each day; but they kept going, kept putting one aching foot in front of the other."
"Ash occasionally snapped up and swallowed leaves, grass, insects, and small scuttling creatures Lissar sometimes recognized as mice and sometimes recognized as not-mice and sometimes did not see at all."
"What mattered was that she and Ash were going to come through."
"They ran till the sound of water distracted them; and then they halted for some brief ablutions. And then ran on."
"She saw a man who stood laughing beside her, a man she feared with all her heart and soul, despite the great crowd surrounding them that insisted he was her friend."
"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."
"She had made a rough attempt to scrape and tan the hide of one of the rabbits Ash brought home, soaking it in ashes and water and then stretching and pegging it."
"At the earliest greying of the sky she roused Ash and they went on."
"It was like a great rock, holding her memory down, or the door of it closed; as if she camped uneasily at a barricaded gate, afraid to leave, afraid not to leave."
"Perhaps her memory was merely very small; perhaps this is the way memory is, tight and sporadic and unreliable."
"She thought: I long for another human face just as I fear it."
"But the habits of the last months were still strong in Lissar; furthermore all the noises she heard here were unfamiliar and therefore suspicious."
"In the unlikely event of Ash’s waking up voluntarily, she didn’t want her wandering around; she didn’t know what the rules of this new place were."
"I have been, perhaps, too long in the mountains."
"She remembered the kind man handing her an armful of eager puppy."
"But she wanted to succeed. She didn’t want to be reasonable. She wanted the pups to live."
"You haven’t been alive yet; what did you go and get born for if you’re just going to die?"
"I wish to make your impossible task as nearly possible as—as mortal flesh and blood can."
"She wanted the recognition that such a feat would bring—not her, but her dogs."
"Her face was composed but a little distant, as if she were thinking of something else, or as if she kept herself carefully at some distance behind the face she showed the world."
"I have wondered a little that you have not named them before; pups around here have names sometimes before their eyes are open."
"And was not naming a way of establishing a pattern, of declaring control?"
"I am sorry to be one of your failures, but I cannot bear it. I still cannot bear it."
"Time enough to grow strong enough to remember."
"You remind me of someone, and I’m trying to think of whom."
"She was as beautiful as her mother might once have curtseyed."
"She was not who she had been, and this was not the man who had led her through those old dancing figures."
"I carried your child—my own father's child—five months for that night's work; and I almost died again when that poor dead thing was born of me."
"I am hurt … in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me."
"It is not like that," she whispered. "It is not like that."
"And I promised you puppies, didn’t I? Ash is pregnant by Ob now, I believe."
"I do not know how strong I am, I cannot promise."