Od

This was the character from Od Magic that I wished to learn more about:

She was quite tall, almost a giant, barefoot and big-boned as an ox. Her long hair, a mingling of ivory cloud and smoke, swept nearly to her ankles. Nothing in her broad, weathered face had passed anywhere near the realm of beauty. It looked plain and durable and ageless, like a good shovel or cauldron. Her long mouth lifted to one side in a friendly smile as Brenden stared at her. Any number of animals seemed to be crawling over her. Mice peered from one shoulder; a raven with a missing claw perched on the other. Lizards clung to her hair. A ferret stuck its head out of her cloak pocket. A great albino ox with a broken horn stood at a polite distance behind her...It carried an owl on its unbroken horn. A few mongrels, feral cats, and an old blind she-wolf sat waiting behind the ox.

"Brenden Vetch?" the stranger said in her rough, vigorous voice. Brenden nodded wordlessly. No on in his life had ever needed to ask before. The giant's eyes were gray as oysters, and as wrinkled around the edges. Gazing at them, Brenden remembered, very suddenly, what layers and depths a human eye could hold. In that moment he saw what those eyes saw: not a wind-gnarled tree or a weathered stone, but a young man who had mislaid himself...

She sat down on the ground beside him, carefully trailing her cloak across the grass so that stray mice or lizards would not get squashed. "My name is Od. I heard you are good with plants."

--Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip