Lissar lay the glove-finger down, picked up a straw, stared at it, sighed. She thrust the tip in the bowl of milk, sucked it full, thrust the straw down the pup's throat, and let the milk loose. The pup gasped, coughed, choked-and kicked; the milk all came out again. But the pup was startled; she made a little mewling noise, her blind head trembled, her tiny paws twitched.
Lissar refilled the straw hastily, stuck it not quite as far down the puppy's throat, and released the milk. This time the puppy gasped, choked, kicked-and swallowed.
Very little milk reappeared. The puppy swallowed several more strawsful without further complaint; her little belly had a faint new convexity of outline. Lissar laid her down very tenderly.
As predicted deprecatingly by Jobe and Hela, the puppies all developed diarrhea.
The first night was the last real sleep Lissar had for ten days. Hela helped sometimes, but it was obvious her heart was not in it, and she avoided handling the puppies herself. She said it was because as few people as possible should handle puppies so young; but Lissar did not think that was the real reason. She was grateful for Hela's help in fetching milk and clean cloths, and cleaning up; but she knew that she and the puppies were still ostracized-and the puppies at least, condemned.
Ossin himself was a more valuable assistant. He had looked in and seen them all sleeping, that first night, and gone quietly away again; but after that he came every day. He had no qualms about touching the pups, although at first the little bodies were so dwarfed by his big hands that she wondered how he could cope with handling anything so small. But he fed them more easily than she did-and praised her ingenuity with straws and glove-fingers, although she knew that these ideas were not new, that her ingenuity was only that she was willing to think about how to keep the pups alive and then put her ideas into practice.
He never spoke a sharp or angry word himself, however sharp Lissar's exhaustion made her, and how much she forgot to whom she spoke, or rather, did not speak, for she was too tired for courtesy. He insisted instead that she not forget herself entirely; he brought her her meals occasionally, when those in the commonroom suspected she had missed eating; he sent her off for a nap in the bathhouse ("just don't drown") saying that an hour there would do her more good than an entire night of unbroken sleep.
And once she woke with the horrid awareness that she had slept too long, and saw him with a puppy in one hand and a damp, distended glove-finger in the other; and straw in his hair. He had been there all night; she remembered him bringing her her supper, and how she had sunk down, her head on her arm, to rest for just a few minutes. And now there was early morning creeping through the window.
"All still alive?" she said. It was a reflex. She said these words more often than any others, even when her first words should have been, Your greatness, I am so sorry, why did you not awaken me?
He turned his face toward her, and there was no reproach in it; instead a tired smile curled the corners of his mouth. "Yes," he said, with evident satisfaction, as if her question were the correct response to his presence.
But she was not unaware, and she began to make her belated excuses, whereupon his face closed down and he turned away from her again. "I wish to make your impossible task as nearly possible as-as mortal flesh and blood can. It is I who wished it tried at all, and I who know, none better, that no one will help you but me. I am glad to do it. Here, you"-and he directed his attention to the puppy in his hand, who was attempting to play with the glove-finger instead of nurse from it.
Lissar pushed the hair out of her face, and crawled toward the puppies. Two or three of them now had narrow slits of eye showing between the lids, and most of them were swimming, belly to the floor, fairly actively; occasionally they took a few staggering almost-steps, their little legs crooked out at painfullooking angles, moving like turtles, as if they bore great unwieldy weights on their backs. But there were still two who moved very little, who moved only when they were lifted up for milk, whose heads hung over the palms of the hands that held them if they were not picked up carefully, as if their necks were nothing but bits of string; who would not nurse but needed straws thrust down their throats, who needed the most belly-rubbing and yet simultaneously had the most persistent diarrhea.
Lissar looked at the six of them-all still alive, against the odds-and her heart quailed; there were still long weeks ahead of her before her task could be declared accomplished, success or failure; and if it was over before then it was only because she had absolutely failed. She picked up one of the two smallest puppies, rolling its unprotesting body in her hand; feeling the butterfly heartbeat, and picked up a hollow straw.
Without speaking a word about it, Ossin fell into the habit of spending every other night in the puppy pen; and Lissar got a little more sleep that way, although never again did she embarrass herself by sleeping through the night. The prince stayed sitting up, snoring faintly sometimes as his head dropped to his chest; Lissar lay down, near the wall, with Ash stretched out behind her. Ossin never acknowledged his own regular presence by pressing Lissar to leave the puppies to him and go to her own room, the bed she had never yet slept in; and so Lissar never quite dared protest what he was doing. And at some dim distance she also knew that she appreciated his company, not only for the practical help and human reassurance he provided.
Over the course of every night, wherever the puppy-heap had begun, it rearranged itself to spill over Lissar's hands and feet, or to press against her belly. Ash mellowed to the point where she would not instantly leap to her feet on a puppy's coming in contact with her; but she never offered to let Lissar lie next to the wall either. Lissar woke up sometimes by the sensation of a puppy being gently lifted off her; which meant that the prince had already warmed the milk on the tiny fire-pot, rust-free and freshly blacked, that stood always in the corner of the stall. After this had happened two or three times Lissar woke once to a large shadowy figure reaching down to her, stooped over her, and she sat up with a gasp, throwing herself backwards, against Ash, who yelped.
Ossin straightened up and took a step backwards. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's only me, not a night-monster. We turn them away at the city gates, you know. You can sleep quietly here." He was standing perfectly still, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. She recognized the tone of voice even as it worked on her: he wished to soothe her as he might a frightened dog.
"I-forgive me. I-I must have been having a bad dream, although I ... don't remember it."
The first three weeks were the worst. Not only was there the persistent fear of one of the weaker ones giving up entirely-and the need therefore to feed them oftener because they would swallow or keep down less, and used it less efficiently than the stronger ones-but as soon as they all seemed more or less thriving for half a day, that was a sure sign that one whose health she had begun to take for granted would suddenly reject its food, or cry and cry and refuse to defecate or to settle down to sleep. Lissar worried also that they would strangle on a broken straw, or a shred of blanket; that one of the bigger puppies would smother one of the weaker ones and she would not notice till too late; that she herself would crush one in her sleep, for none of them had any sense about where they disposed themselves around her.