Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  Lissar surprised herself in this, since she had been given so few lessons to learn in her life she did not know that she was quite able to learn, and was further surprised to find that she could like learning besides. Hurra had taught her her letters, but those lessons had been given her grudgingly, and that she learned them seemed almost cause for shame. She knew how to ride a horse, so long as the horse was reasonably cooperative, and how to curtsey, and how to dance, which she believed she disliked, for she had never danced with a friend. But these things had not engaged her. She was stiff with Rinnol at first, and Rinnol with her, and Rinnol was not a cheerful personality, as Viaka was. Viaka, after one or two meetings, avoided Rinnol; plantlore did not interest her, and Rinnol was herself so dour. But Rinnol, like many people who follow a vocation and know they do well by it, was won over by Lissar's attention.

  Their unlikely friendship blossomed to the point that Lissar visited her at home several times, in her little house an hour's brisk walk from the palace; for the odd erratic attention that her father's ministers paid her was such that she could absent herself even overnight occasionally with no one to tell her nay. There was indeed no one in a position to tell her anything but her father, and he seemed willing to let her avoid him, and live out her young girlhood with few adult restraints and admonitions.

  Lissar then filled her days with Ash and Viaka and Rinnol, and they were enough.

  She bore with state dinners, and with the occasional attempts by some member or other of the court to cultivate her. The seasons passed, and she watched them with greater attention than she had before Rinnol had come into her life, and she found that everything in nature interested her, and that she was happy to spend entire days walking the wide lands beyond the beyond the court gardens with no companion but her dog. And almost she managed to convince herself that she took no thought for the future

  SIX

  FOR LISSAR'S SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY THERE WAS TO BE A GRAND ball. Lissar did not know who made the decision; she was informed of it by one of the oldest and grandest court ladies, who occasionally embarrassed Lissar by trying, in her orotund and inflexible way, to mother her. Lissar received the news in silence and waited on events.

  The portrait of the queen, which had hung in terrible splendor in the receiving-hall for the last year and a half, was to be moved, hung in the ballroom for this event. Its placement seemed to be the first and most important decision to be made, and everything else was arranged from that first priority. It was impossible to say whether the haunted portrait was assumed to be casting its blessing on its human child, or making sure that that child could never compete with its beauty; no one, afterwards, could remember where the initial idea of moving the portrait originated, although everyone vaguely, or hastily, guessed that it must have been upon the king's orders.

  Because the curious thing was that it was not only Lissar who found the portrait's magnificence oppressive, or eerie, or ... no one was willing to pursue this thought because everyone insisted on grieving for the queen and loving her memory; but even the servants no longer went in the receiving-hall alone, when it was not in use, but always at least in pairs. No one ever remarked on this or made it difficult to accomplish; the feeling was too general. And so the beautiful queen stared down, glittering, and her people scuttled by her.

  Lissar did not look forward to her birthday banquet and ball. There would be many foreign lords and princes there, as well as all the more local lords, and she knew she was now old enough to be auctioned off in marriage to the alliance best for her country. She knew because her waiting-women had kept her apprised of this, all through her seventeenth year, till the birthday at its climactic end began to look as dreadful as the thought of dancing, gracefully and gaily, before her mother's portrait was. When she heard, not that the portrait was to be moved, because she was rarely told anything directly, but of the moving of it, it was like the Iast blow of a long and tiring joust; this one knocked her out of the saddle at last, and she lay on the ground gasping for her lost breath. She did not look forward to her inevitable marriage, but she thought of it in terms of being sent away from her father, and this she found hopeful. In the meanwhile there was the ball to be got through.

  Another very great lady, and one that brooked no nonsense about motherliness, attended to the production of Lissar's first real ball-gown. Everyone who might be expected to have the price of a ball-gown was invited to this royal birthday-party, and so the seamstresses and tailors had instantly been swamped; the very great lady, having been assigned this task a little late, merely plucked the seamstresses she wished to patronize from whatever other commitments they had (neither giving birth nor dying would have been sufficient excuse), as, perhaps, a farmwife might choose a chicken or two from the flock for the evening's supper. The chicken does not argue.

  Lissar's gown was to have a vast skirt, and to be covered with so many tiny glinting stones as to be blinding to look upon. The grand lady thought privately that the princess was a washed-out little thing, and that to make her visible at all, drastic measures were required. The lady granted that there were points to work with; Lissar's hair had left off being mousy, and had darkened to black, except when the light struck it, when it gave off red sparks, just like her mother's. And she was tall and slender, as her mother had been, and could stand well, although she was still inclined to move awkwardly (the lady had only seen her in court situations), particularly if startled. Her tendency, indeed, to look like a trapped wild creature was the greatest difference between her and her mother; her mother had had all the poise and graciousness in the world. The very grand lady had the unexpected thought that perhaps this had been as much a part of her reputation as the anatomical facts of her beauty; for Lissar, upon close inspection, nhysically resembled her mother a great deal. If only she were less timid! Even her complexion was pale, and she looked at the grand lady as if the grand lady were a judge about to pronounce her sentence.

  The grand lady was not much given to thought, and this one thought she had about the resemblance between the late queen and her daughter became so unsettling, as she began to follow it to its logical conclusion, that she banished thought altogether (as she had banished acknowledging her faint uneasiness about the rather overwhelming portrait that had been moved to the ballroom), and began treating Lissar with a kind of impatient briskness, as if Lissar herself were an obstacle to be got round.

  Lissar 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 did not occur to her that she might request Viaka, at least, to go with her as her companion; but it did not occur to her either that any husband she might have could object to Ash.

  On the day of the ball Lissar's hair was dressed very early, and then she was told to behave herself and not disturb any of the coils so delicately arranged, nor the golden filigree woven through it, to hold the fresh flowers that would be thrust among its tiny links at the very last moment that evening. Lissar felt as if she were carrying a castle on her head, and it made her scalp itch. Ash was put off by the perfumes of the hair oils, although nothing would keep Ash away from Lissar for long.

  So Lissar took Viaka and went up the long stairs and down the long halls to visit Hurra, for Hurra liked to hear of grand doings at the palace, which would remind her of the grander doings in the queen's day, which would then be her opportunity, eagerly seized, to retell these at length. Lissar could sit at her usual place next to the (closed) window, and not get herself or her hair into any impetuous draughts.

  Hurra told the story of the first ball that the old king had given to honor his son's new bride, and how lovely the bride had been; Hurra herself had been there, in one of the trains of one of the grand ladies. She lost herself in the telling, as she always did; but on some days her mad gaze softened and looked inward, and even Lissar could sit near her and be untroubled. When Hurra's voice fell into silence, Lissar stood up an
d came to stand behind Viaka's chair. Some shadow of her movement disturbed Hurra's reverie, and she looked up, blinking through tears, at Lissar's face.

  A look of puzzlement passed over her face, and with it a look Lissar had not seen in two years: recognition. "Why, Lissla Lissar, child, is that you? You're all grown up. How can I not have noticed? I almost didn't recognize you, you have such a look of your mother. My dear, how much you do look like your mother!"

  Lissar's hands clamped down on the back of Viaka's chair. "Thank you, Hurra,"

  she said in a voice she could barely hear over the ringing in her ears, "but you do me too much honor. It is the headdress merely."

  But Hurri shook her old head stubbornly, staring with bright, curiously fierce eyes at the young woman who had once been her charge. As Viaka stood up to join the princess in leave-taking, Hurri look a firmer grip on the young hands she held. "She looks like the queen! She does. Can't you see it?" She gave Viaka's hands a shake.

  "Look! Don't you see it?"

  Viuku turned awkwardly, her hands still imprisoned, to look over her shoulder at the princess; what she saw was the princess, looking white and frightened. Because she was the princess's friend she said: "I see Lissar in a splendid headdress for her first ball."

  Hurra dropped her hands, and the bright fierce look faded from her face, and she began to work her empty hands in her lap, and to rock, and murmur, "The most beautiful woman in seven kingdums,"

  Lissar, without another word, turned and fled, Ash, her ears flat with worry, crowding into her side. Viaka paused only long enough to pat the old woman's hand and say, with the distinctness she reserved for her own old and wits'-wandering relatives, "Good-bye, Hurra, we'll tell you all about the ball when we come next,"

  and then hurried after her friend.

  "I don't look like my mother," said Lissar, as Viaka caught up with her. She stopped, whirled around, seized Viaka by the shoulders. "Do I?"

  Viaka shook her head, not knowing what to say, for Hurra was right. But Lissar had none of the manner of her mother, as the very grand lady had already noted, none of the regal graciousness, the consciousness of her own perfection, which was why Viaka herself had not observed the growing resemblance; that, and the fact that the queen had been dead for two years and the memory of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms begins over time to adapt somewhat to the rememberer's personal preferences in beauty.

  Viaka went into the receiving-hall no oftener than Lissar did and so did not have her memory-or her awe-freshened by the scintillant example of the master painter's art. She did remember that when she was younger, and her parents had a few times taken their flock of children to some grand event where the king and queen were present, Viaka had been more frightened than drawn by the king's grandeur and the queen's exquisiteness, which qualities seemed to stand out around them like a mist that it would be dangerous for more ordinary mortals to breathe. Viaka remembered one occasion vividly, when a very pretty young woman had collapsed, sobbing, at the queen's feet, and Viaka had taken her breath in in a little jerk of fear when the queen bent down to the girl. She had been surprised, and then wondered at the strength of that surprise, both at the gentleness of the queen's touch and at the look of passionate adoration on the girl's face as she permitted herself to be lifted up.

  All these thoughts went confusedly and fragmentarily through Viaka's head; they produced no useful possibilities for soothing remarks. "Your-your hair is a little like," stammered poor Viaka at last, quailing under the princess's eyes. "It is only old Hurra, you know, and she is easily confused."

  "My hair is brown!" cried Lissar. "The queen's hair was black!" Viaka said nothing, but the spell had been broken, and Lissar felt a little relieved; she dropped her hands from her friend's shoulders and charged off down the hall, her skirts whipping around her, making Ash half-invisible amid them and, from the weight of her grandly arranged and decorated hair, holding her chin much higher than usual.

  Viaka had to look up at her, as she hurried beside her; Viaka had been the taller a year ago, but Lissar had grown.

  Perhaps it was the unusual angle, or the unusual expression on Lissar's face-unlike the very grand lady, Viaka knew Lissar's face often bore high color and animation; but the very grand lady had never seen the princess playing with her dog. This was nothing like the beaming face she daily turned to Ashand to Viaka; this was an obsessed intensity that-Viaka thought suddenly-made her indeed resemble the queen.

  Lissar parted her lips a little and flared her nostrils, and Viaka remembered something her parents had said of the queen: "When she lets her lower lip drop a little, and her chin comes up and her nostrils flare-get out of the way! If she notices you, you'll be sorry."

  "Lissar-" Viaka began, hesitatingly.

  Lissar stopped. Viaka stumbled several more steps before she caught her balance to stop and turn; her friend was still staring straight ahead with that queer glassy fierce look. But then Ash, re-emerging from the quieting froth of petticoats, put her nose under her mistress's hand, and Lissar's gaze came back into ordinary focus.

  Her chin dropped, and as it did so her headdress overbalanced her, and she put her free hand up to it with a little grimace of irritation. With that grimace Lissar was herself again. She looked at Viaka and smiled, if a little wryly.

  "Well, I am not my mother, of course," she said. "Even if I am wearing too much hair and too many petticoats today. And that's all that really matters, isn't it?" She ran a thoughtful finger down the delicate ridge in the center of Ash's skull. "You know they've rehung the-the portrait"-Viaka did not have to ask what portrait "in the ballroom, don't you?" Viaka nodded. Lissar tried to laugh, and failed. "That should stop everyone from thinking I look like my mother. I'll try to be grateful. Come, help me dress, will you?"

  "Oh yes," said Viaka, whose own toilette would be much simpler. "Yes, I would like to."

  "Thank you. You can protect me from Lady Undgersim," Lissar said; Lady Undgersim was the very grand lady. "Shall we go to your rooms first, and get you in your dress: it will be practice for all the buttons and laces and nonsense on mine."

  Viaka laughed, for her own dress was very pretty, and both of them knew that Viaka did not envy Lissar her splendid dress nor the position that went with it. "Yes, let's."

  SEVEN

  THE PRINCESS'S FIRST BALL WAS AS GRAND AS ANY PROUD AND

  domineering lady could want. Lissar, watching from the corner of her eye, could see Lady Undgersim swell with gratified vanity at the immediate attention, the reverberent bustle involving many servants and lesser notables, that their entrance produced.

  Lady Undgersim, indeed, had visible difficulty not pushing herself forward into the center of events; Lissar, on the other hand, would have been delighted to permit her to do so, and wished it were possible. She, Lissar, would be overlooked in Lady Undgersim's large shadow--or, better yet, her invisibility could have been such that she could have remained quietly in her little round room, keeping Ash company.

  Ash, who hated to be parted from her princess, was capable on such occasions (said the maids, and there were the shredded bedding and seat covers as proof) of actual, incontrovertible bad temper. Lissar guessed there would be some marks of chaos when she got back. She wished she could shred a blanket herself, or rip a pillow apart, and throw the feathers into all these staring eyes.

  Without warning, her father, resplendent in sapphire blue, was at her side, offering her his arm. Too suddenly: for she did not have time to compose herself, to prevent her body's automatic recoil from his nearness; and she knew by the tiny ripple of stillness around her that her involuntary step back had not been unnoticed. She swallowed, laid a suddenly cold, reluctant hand on his arm, and said, in a voice she did not recognize, "Forgive me my surprise. My eyes are dazzled by the lights, and I did not at once understand the great blue shadow that stooped over me." She thought that the courtiers would accept this-for how else to explain an only daughter, especially one so richly t
aken care of, cringing away from the touch of her father's hand? How indeed?

  She looked briefly into his face and saw there the look she had spent the last two years eluding; the look she found treacherous but with no word for the treachery.

  She had the sudden thought that these last two years of her life had been pointless, that she had learned nothing that was of any use to her, if she still could not escape that look in her father's eyes. It was all she could do not to snatch her hand away again, and the palm felt damp against the hot blue velvet.

  The crowd parted as the king led the princess down the length of the huge hall; at the far end hung the painting of the dead queen. Lissar felt that she watched them come, but she dared not look into the queen's blazing face for fear of what she would find there: not treachery but understanding of treachery, and from that understanding; hatred. She kept her eyes fixed on the bottom of the frame, upon the small plaque, too small to read at a distance, that stated the queen's name and the artist's. "How beautiful she is!" Lissar heard, and her first thought was that they spoke of the queen.

  "How beautiful she has grown!"

  "How handsome he is!"

  "What a beautiful couple they make!"

  No, no! Lissar wanted to cry out; we do not make a beautiful Couple! He is my father!

  "It is almost like seeing the king and queen when he first brought her home! She looks so like her mother! And see how proud he is of her! He is young again in his pride; he might not he a day over twenty himself, with the queen at his side!"

  There was a wide clear space in front of the painting of the queen, for this was where the dancing was to be held. To one side the musicians sat, and she felt their eyes piercing her; their gaze felt like nails, and she felt dizzy, as if from loss of blood.