The next few days were a nightmare version of the first days with the puppies, almost nine months ago. Lissar did not sleep; she dozed, sometimes, curled around her charge, achingly sensitive to any signal Ash might make. For while nine months before she had worked as hard as she knew how, and feared, every time she woke from an unscheduled nap, to find one of her small charges fallen into the sleep no one wakes from, it was not the same. If Ash died, a part of Lissar would die with her; a part she knew she could not spare.
She was bitterly lonely in the long watches of the night, listening to Ash's faint, rough, tumultuous breathing; for not only was Ash not there to comfort her, but she had lost Ossin as well, Ossin, who was so much of the reason why she had saved the puppies; so much of the reason why she had believed she would save the puppies. And now she found she could not stop herself holding a little aloof from them, because of the ghost of Ossin that lay between them. She was lonelier than she had ever been, because she now understood what loneliness was.
Lost him. Run away from him; fled him; threw him away.
Once she woke, not knowing she had slept, with Ash's head in her lap; it was her own voice that woke her, murmuring, "Not Ash too. Please-not Ash too."
She left the fireside only long enough to fetch more wood; six dogs followed her, two limping, which reminded her that her body had the same functions. Her body seemed an odd and distant stranger, a machine she rested in, and pushed levers and pulled handles or wires to make function, lost as she was in a haze of pain and fear and love and loss, where the promptings of her own bladder and bowels seemed like the voices of strangers. For the first time since she had awakened on the mountaintop, this mountaintop, after meeting the Lady, she did not greet her Moon-blood with gladness, did not welcome the red dreams the first night brought.
Her dreams were of blood already, and blood now to her was only about dying.
She hauled snow for water, which took more time than bringing in wood, since so much produced so little; and one morning, perhaps the second after Ash was wounded, she suddenly remembered the corpse of the toro, which they had killed at such cost. And at that she abruptly noticed she was hungry; that she had been hungry for a long time. The puppies had to be ravenous, and yet none of them had made any move toward the end of the rabbit-broth still simmering on the fire, which she poured drops of down Ash's throat as she could; nor had any of them made any move to investigate the dead toro when they followed her outdoors.
Suddenly, as she pried Ash's stiff jaws apart, the smell of the broth registered: food. There was little enough of it anyway; but it was as if it caught in her eyes and throat now, like smoke. She looked up, blinking, and found six pairs of eyes looking at her hopefully. Tenderly she laid Ash down and covered her closely with blankets.
Then she checked that her small knife was in its strap at her hip. She stared at the bigger kitchen knife and, after a moment's thought, picked up both the small hatchet and the bigger axe she used for wood, and went to the door. The puppies piled after her, the four sound ones giving space to Harefoot and Pur, although the latter's flank was almost healed already, thanks to the remains of the poultice Lissar had made for Ash.
The weather had remained unrelentingly cold; the carcass had not spoiled, although she suspected that, since she had not gutted it, she would find some spoilage inside-if she could get inside, for it was now frozen solid. Perhaps it had frozen quickly enough to leave little odor; for no scavengers had been attracted to it, and the snow around it bore only their own footprints. Lissar recognized immediately the blood-stained hollow where Ash had lain.
The puppies were all looking at her. She looked at the huge crumpled body, chose what might or might not be the likeliest spot, and raised her axe.
The resulting stew was not her best; it was, to her human taste, almost inedibly gamy, but the puppies ate it with alacrity and enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that she had to tackle the gruesome carcass again almost immediately, although her wrists and shoulders still ached with hacking the first chunk free.
After eyeing the thing with loathing she spent some time chopping it free of its icy foundation; it was in a shaded spot till late afternoon where it lay, and the sun, as the season swung back toward spring, had some heat to it by midday. It might make the thing stink without making it any easier to cut; but it was worth the trial, or so her sore bones told her. Meanwhile it also gave her something besides Ash to think about.
Ash did not die, but Lissar could not convince herself that she grew any better either. Lissar tipped as much of the reeking broth down Ash's throat as she could, till Ash gave up even the pretense of swallowing; even at that Lissar wasn't sure, looking at the puddle on the floor, how much had gone down her at all. Ash's pulse was still thready and erratic, and she was hot to the touch, hotter than a dog's normally hotter-than-human body heat. She never slept nor awakened completely, although Lissar took some comfort in the fact that her eyes did open all the way occasionally, and when they rested on Lissar, they came into focus, if only briefly.
But she lay, almost motionless; always a clean dog, she now relieved herself as she needed to, with no attempt to raise herself out of the way before or after, as it she had no control, or as if she had given up. Lissar cleaned up after her without any thought of complaint; it was not the cleaning up that she minded, but what Ash's helplessness told her about Ash's condition. The only comfort Lissar had was that Ash's wound did not fester; it was even, slowly, closing over; it was not swollen, and it did not smell bad. Lissar kept it covered with poultices, which she changed frequently; the air of the hut was thick with the smell of illness, spoiled meat, urine, feces, and the cutting sharpness of healing herbs. But Lissar cared nothing about this either. Lissar only cared that Ash should live, and if she died, she did not care what she died of, and for the moment, dying was what she looked to be doing.
Lissar hauled the vast frozen dead beast into the middle of the snowy meadow with all the savagery of despair.
One night, having soaked more meat soft enough to skin, she was boiling the noisome stuff. She tried not to breathe at all though the puppies all sniffed the air with the appearance of pleasant anticipation. She sat with Ash's head in her lap, running her hand down the once-sleek jowl and throat, now harsh with dry, staring hair. Don't die, she thought. Don't die. There's already little enough of me; if you leave me, the piece of me you'll take with you might be the end of me, too.