I reclaim my own body for myself: for my use, for my understanding, for my kindness and care. Go on. And the fingers walked cautiously on, over the curiously muscleless, faintly ridged flesh, cooler than the rest of the body, across the tender nipple, into the deep cleft between, and out onto the breast that lay limp and helpless and hardly recognizable as round, lying like a hunting trophy over her other arm.
Mine, she thought. My body. It lives on the breaths I breathe and the food I eat; the blood my heart pumps reaches all of me, into all my hidden crevices, from my scalp to my heels.
She sat up, and began slowly and dizzily to wash her body; then she mopped the floor, and hauled the dirty water outdoors, to spill it over the latrine-corner; it would be frozen by the time she brought the next bucket of dirty water out.
The private places between her legs were still sore, and some old scab cracked open and began bleeding anew. She knelt by the fire, her arms wrapped over her clean belly, and her hand holding the bloody cloth, and wept for the loss of whatever she had lost, for whatever it was that had brought her here, to a tiny one-room hut with snow lying waist-deep around it, and a too-rapidly diminishing store of wood and food, alone with her dog, and afraid of herself-afraid of the touch of her own flesh, afraid to give herself a bath, afraid to do what she wished to do; afraid to be clean, afraid to relish being clean, which would be a new, more complete reinhabiting of the bruised and humiliated body she feared and tried to ignore.
She wrapped herself in the cleanest of the blankets when she was through, and Ash came and nuzzled her, and sniffed and licked some of the bits of her that were exposed to view. Lissar stared at the sodden, streaky grey-brown heap of her clothing, and wondered if she could ever get it clean, even if she had proper soap, instead of the soft, crumbly eye-and-nose-burning stuff she had found in a small lidded bowl. There wasn't much of it, but it burnt her hands as well till it was mixed with a great deal of water, so she did not worry about this, at least, running out; though they could not eat soap. She sacrificed the biggest bowl, the shallow one she used for making bread, to put her clothing in to soak for a while.
But her bath had cleaned some window or mirror in her mind as it had cleaned her skin, and she began to have visions, sleeping and waking, that came between her and the simple time-consuming tasks that were now her life. She saw the faces of people that were no longer around her, but that she knew had once been a part of her ordinary days; and always, just out of sight, was the monster who haunted her, who still entered her dreams at night and woke her with her own screams.
Even in daylight its looming, oppressive presence was near her, just out of sight, just out of reach; she found herself looking over her shoulder for it, and not believing that it hadn't been there the second before she turned her head. She felt more vulnerable to it, whatever it was, now that her skin was clean, as if the dirt and the half-healed wounds, the sores that by some miracle were not infected, had been protection. Now that she could feel the air on her skin, she could feel her oppressor's presence more clearly too.
She was also, now, often faintly nauseated. She did not vomit again-because she did not let herself. She set her will to this, and her will responded. She and Ash did not have any food to waste, and so she did not waste it. But what this meant in practice was that her meals often took a very long time, as she had to eat mouthful by slow mouthful and dared swallow again only after the last bit declared its intention to remain quietly in her belly, and her belly declared itself willing to cooperate. Even so, twice or three times, she miscalculated, and found herself on her knees, her mouth clamped shut and her hands tight over both nose and mouth, while her stomach tried to heave its contents out and away from her. I will not, she thought fiercely, eyes and nose streaming and throat raw. I will not. And she didn't.
Ash's eyes grew bright and her coat again shone. "Rotten meat and moldy onions agree with you," said Lissar affectionately, and Ash rose gracefully on her hind legs and kissed her on the nose. Ash now spent some time outdoors every day; Lissar loved to watch her.
Ash would pause at the edge of the porch, looking around her, as if for bears or toro; and then she would bound joyously out into the open ground. She disappeared to her high-held head when she sank into the deepest drifts of snow over hidden concavities, but she emerged again with each astonishing kick of her muscular hind legs, the snow falling off her like stars, and seemed to fly, her legs outstretched in her next bound, much farther than any simple physical effort, however powerful, could be responsible for; till she came gracefully down again, her front feet pointed as perfectly as a dancer's. And she sank into the snow again, only to leap out.
Lissar had made herself a very rough dress by cutting a hole in the lightest of the blankets, and poking her head through it. Her own clothing had largely disintegrated under the stress of washing; some flannel strips she salvaged, and some bigger swatches of the cloak, but no more. One of the strips she now used as a belt. With the coat, mittens and hat, the latter tied with another flannel strip in such a way that it could not swallow her entire head and blind and smother her, Lissar ventured at last out into the meadow. Her hip was a little better, or perhaps it was that the walls of the little cabin seemed to press in around a shrinking space. The boots were so large that she could not pick her feet up, but had to shuffle, or wade, sliding one foot after the other, even though she padded them somewhat with more of the ubiquitous flannel strips. Awkwardly she dug a path all the way around the hut with the shovel, but left the meadow for Ash.
The hut was set at one end of the clearing, and the snow was much less under the trees; in places the ground was almost bare, and Lissar could walk, or could have walked if the boots had let her. She followed a curve of ground downhill one day into a cleft and found a stream, not quite frozen; followed the stream a little way till it emerged from the cleft and wandered out into a clear space that Lissar could recognize from the patchy look of the snow-cover as a swamp. Here she found cattails still standing, and another of the lessons she had learnt from Rinnol came back to her. But it had been a long walk-too long-and she was limping badly by the time she got back to the meadow.
Ash met her on the porch that day, tail high and waving proudly back and forth-and a rabbit in her mouth. As Lissar waded up to her, she laid it at Lissar's amazed feet.
She watched hopefully as Lissar wrestled, messily and only somewhat effectively, with disembowelling and then skinning it. Lissar gave her the entrails, which disappeared in one gulp, and then Lissar had to sit down with her head between her knees for a few minutes. The mouse had not prepared her enough.
The soup that night was almost stew; and while it tasted a little odd, Lissar didn't know whether this had to do with her lack of hunterly skills or with the fact that she had forgotten what fresh meat tasted like. Ash made no complaints. Ash seemed to have a mysterious preference for cooked meat.