Robin McKinley

by Deerskin

  Her father swept her around, to face back the way they had come; her full white skirts whirled as she turned, and twinkled in the light. She raised her chin to look out steadily over the heads of her father's people, and she heard a collective sigh as they stared at her. Then she felt her father's big heavy hand clamp down over the fingers that rested so gingerly on his sleeve, and she felt as if his hand were a gaoler's bracelet of iron, and as she caught her breath in a gasp she heard, like a chorus with an echo, "How like her mother she is!"

  "She is the perfect image of her mother!"

  She found herself trembling, and her father's hand weighed on her more and more till she thought she would go mad, and there before all the people staring at her, try to gnaw her hand off at the wrist, like an animal in a trap. Her mouth fell open a little and she panted, like a trapped animal. Her headdress was as heavy as a mountain, and she could not keep her chin up; it was pushing her down, down to the floor, through it to the cold implacable earth, and she could feel her father's body heat, standing next to him, standing too close to him.

  "She is just as her mother was!"

  "How proud he must be!"

  "How proud he is! You can see it in his eyes!"

  "I give you," said the king, and at his side the princess trembled, "the princess Lissla Lissar, my daughter, who is seventeen years old today!"

  The applause and cheers filled the room like thunder. She took the occasion to snatch her hand free, to bury both hands in her flooding skirts, and curtsey low to the people who hailed her. They loved this, and the cheers grew as enthusiastic as courtiers, well aware of their own dignity, ever permit themselves to become. The king raised his hands for silence, and the princess rose gracefully, tipping her chin up again in just the way her mother had, the white flowers in her headdress framing her young regal face. The king gestured to the musicians and caught the princess around the waist.

  Perhaps a few of the onlookers noticed how stiffly the princess responded, how awkward she seemed to find it, held so in her father's arms. But the occasion was grand and dizzying, and she was known to be a modest girl. The light flickered as if the air itself were the breeze-ruffled surface of some great bright lake. There were thousands of candles hung in the great chandeliers of silver and gold, and thousands of clear drops and icicles of crystal that reflected each candleflame thousands upon thousands of times. The saner, more sober oil lamps that stood at all times at intervals around the huge room were lit, and, as always, polished till they were almost as bright as the crystals on the chandeliers, and the light they reflected was golden.

  But for grand occasions there were also heavy gem-studded rings hung round their throats, and these on this night flashed and sparkled as well.

  The costumes the courtiers wore were the grandest thing of all, grander even than the tapestries that hung on the walls, that were worth the fortunes of many generations of kings. All the colors and fabrics that were the finest and richest shone and gleamed upon arms and shoulders, backs and breasts. Local seamstresses and tailors had outdone themselves, and when even this surpassing splendor was not enough, messengers had been sent far away for strange rare decorations heretofore unseen in this country; for Lissar's father's courtiers were very conscious that they were the richest of the seven kingdoms and must not be outshone by any visitors, however lofty and important. All the jewellery that present wealth could buy or past victories bestow upon its heirs was on display.

  It is unlikely that anyone there was entirely undazzled, entirely themselves, or much inclined to see anything that they had not already decided beforehand that they would see. Almost everyone decided that the young princess looked just like her mother, and looked no further. Only two sets of eyes saw anything different: Viaka watched anxiously, but from such a distance, as she was not an important person, that she could not say for sure that the princess's frozen look was anything but the grandness of the occasion and the gorgeous dishonesty of thousands of candles reflected in thousands of gems and crystal drops. And the queen's eyes knew the truth, and hated it, but she was only paint on canvas, and could do nothing but watch.

  And within her costume, her magnificence, her heritage, Lissar moved, invisible to the crowd. The music howled in her ears; it sounded no different to her, no more like music, than had the cheers of the crowd earlier. She went as her father guided her, and had no need to listen to the music, for this was the easiest thing she did that whole long desperate night, moving as quickly as possible away from her father's lightest touch, that he might not touch her any more firmly. As the king was an excellent dancer, Lissar stepped here and there as if she were an accomplished dancer herself, as if the music itself moved her feet.

  And so the royal couple passed, magnificent, as dazzling as any chandelier, with the shining medals and golden chains upon the king's breast, and the gleaming tiny colored stones sewn upon Lissar's white dress, down the long hall they had walked up. And then the first dance was over, and most people stopped looking at the king and princess so that they might look for a partner, and seized upon whom they would or could; and the dancing became general.

  The king courted the princess as assiduously as a young lover might; rarely and reluctantly, it seemed, did he release her into another man's arms. One foreign prince took offense, for he had understood that the purpose of the ball had been to introduce the princess to possible suitors, and he saw the king's reluctance as an insult to his eligibility. He and his courtiers left early, watched in dismay by the king's ministers, for he was a very wealthy prince. Two of the ministers then bore down upon the king; one took Lissar's hand and presented her to a duke who was looking for a young wife, and could afford to pay for one that suited him.

  Lissar took the proffered arm in a daze, and danced away with the duke, the size of whose midsection necessitated a somewhat awkward arrangement Lissar's hand reached only as far as the duke's large, soft upper arm. Lissar danced lightly with this partner too, her body reflexively glancing away from the guiding hand at her waist. "How ethereal she looks!" murmured the onlookers. "Even with that great clumsy brute she moves like flower petals on the wind."

  "How modest she is!" thought the duke. "She would do."

  But the king would not listen to his ministers. After but the one dance with the duke he took his daughter away again for himself, and so the long night wore on.

  Occasionally she was permitted to stop, to rest, to sit down on some tall padded chair, to drink something cool and sweet. When it was once Viaka who brought her her glass, she barely recognized her friend; Viaka, looking into her face, thought she looked like one in a fever, her eyes too bright and unfocussed, but she dared not say anything. She dropped a curtsey to the king without looking into his face, where her friendship for the princess might have given her the same knowledge that glittered in the queen's eyes; but then perhaps not, for she loved her own parents, and they loved their children, as parents and as children. She went away again, swearing to herself that she would stay up however late she had to, to see the princess to bed herself.

  Lissar drank what was brought to her, for her throat was dry with fear; but she thought little of what she drank, for her father stood near her, and she could think of nothing else. When he offered to share a plate of food with her, she refused, and averted her eyes as he lifted a tiny biscuit ornamented with pate in the shape of a fish, and set it between his red lips.

  There was an enormous mahogany and gilt clock, its face starred with rubies, that crouched on a silver table near the door Lissar had entered by, a clock grand and glorious enough to overlook a royal ball. From a distance she could not always read the hands against the jewelled and enamelled face, but she could make out the dancing figures that moved around its circumference as the hours passed; she looked at it as often as she could without noticeably turning her head. As she was harried through the figures of the dance she raised her eyes when she faced the door, to let her gaze sweep across the clock, and lowered them again bef
ore she must face her mother's face. The tiny dancing figures did not seem to her to dance, but to creep.

  At midnight she begged to be excused; but the king said that the party had barely begun, and did her feet hurt so soon? Her other dancing-partners must be careless boors, and had tread on her; he would have to keep her all to himself. The ministers, hovering around, agreed with the king's initial sentiments, for they wanted the princess on public view for as long as possible, but were twittering in alarm and frustration by the end of their master's short speech.

  "But the princess must meet-"

  "But the duke is very taken with-"

  "But the baron came specially to-"

  "Nonsense!" said the king, throwing out his chest, and tossing back his heavy hair, still as yellow and as thick as it had been in his youth. Many female eyes were fixed upon him, and not merely for his rank. "This is her birthday-party, and she is here to enjoy herself. She does not wish to meet all your old men."

  "They are not all old!" protested one minister, misunderstanding, for he was young himself, and had not held his position long. The king looked at him with a look that said he would not keep his post much longer.

  "Who would make her happier than her own father?" he said, looking down from his magnificent height upon the unfortunate young minister, who was small and slender.

  "But-" began the minister whose statue stood in Lissar's antechamber, silently cursing the young minister's bluntness. "And," said the king, fixing this minister with his brilliant eyes, "she is my daughter, and I can do with her as I please. As I please tonight is to dance with her!" He seized the princess's shrinking hand once more, and they joined the dance.

  It was not Lissar's feet merely that hurt; it was her whole body. She felt that her spirit had come loose from its webbing deep within her bones and muscles, had slid from beneath its center behind her heart, and was being tossed about inside her fragile skin, lost in the dark. It was hard to keep herself in her body, conscious of the need to keep it upright, its feet moving in specific patterns, its arms raised, a faint stiff smile on its face; conscious of the thick male arm crushing her ever nearer to the immense male breast opposite her. She smelled warm clean velvet, and perfume; and she smelled him. She thought he stank.

  Panic whispered to her; he would smash her against him soon; it grew harder and harder to see over his high broad shoulder; he would hold her so tightly that she would smother, her face in warm velvet, her lips and forehead cut by medals and gems. She thought that if she could not see over his shoulder, see that there was more of the world than his encircling arm, she would yet go mad.

  At one o'clock, all but weeping, she insisted that she was exhausted, and must go to her ... she stumbled over the word "bed" and altered it to chamber. To rest, she said. She was used to going to ... sleep early, and rising early; the people, the music, the myriad flickering lights, all were overwhelming her; she was very sorry, but she was at the end of her strength. She sank down in a chair as she said this, leaving her arm in her father's grip like a hostage. She blinked her eyes, and the heavy headdress remorselessly bent her head forward.

  The ministers re-formed around them, as they did any time the king paused. One of them, the oldest, the one who seemed the least inclined to press the duke's or the prince's or the baron's suit, said, "Of course, my dear, your splendor, such an evening is a great strain on one's resources when one is not-er-accustomed to it."

  Lissar could feel the ministers' eyes withdraw from her and refocus on the king, who stood beside them, tall and handsome and strong and unwearied. The king laughed, a rich full sound, and when he spoke to the princess, his tone was caressing.

  "Go back to your soft narrow bed, then, my lovely, and rest well, that beauty may blossom again on the morrow. Sleep sweetly," he said, and he raised her hand to his lips, "in your white child's bed, with your lace pillows and your smooth cool sheets." After he kissed her hand he kissed her cheek; she closed her eyes.

  When he released her it was only her own weariness that prevented her from fleeing him headlong; slowly instead, and with the half-helpless grace of someone near the point of collapse, she stood, and tipped her chin up; and found herself on the arm of the old minister-the first arm in the whole long evening she had been glad to lean on.

  He escorted her to the door she had entered so many centuries ago, murmuring small nothings that neither of them paid attention to; but she recognized that he was attempting to be kind to her, not only preventing the princess, the king's daughter, from making an awkward exit. At the door she dropped her hand and turned to face the old man, to thank him. He bowed to her and, upon straightening, looked into her face as if looking for a sign. He opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again, bowed a second time and turned away silently.

  Viaka had been watching, and was waiting for her at the door. She looked into her friend's face and then put an arm around her waist, expecting to have to support her; but as soon as Lissar was free of the ballroom and walking down the hall full of none but ordinary serving folk and occasional lords and ladies-no kings, no painted queens-her strength began to return, and soon they were walking so quickly that Viaka, with her shorter legs, had to half trot to keep up.

  Lissar paused once to pull off her shoes-"Oh, don't run," pleaded Viaka, recognizing what this meant; "I am much too tired." Lissar laughed, not a light-hearted sound, but one not devoid of humor either, and they went in a somewhat more leisurely fashion the rest of the way to Lissar's round tower room.

  Her bed had, as it turned out, to be remade, down through to the top mattress, for when Ash had finished flinging the blankets all over the room (including one into the fireplace, where the banked fire scorched it beyond recovery, and, as Lissar said severely to Ash, who knew she was in disgrace but did not care, it was fortunate she had not set the palace on fire or at least the room and herself) she began digging a hole, causing a considerable rain of feathers.

  Lissar, although she attempted to give Ash the scolding she deserved, at heart cared for this as little as Ash cared for the burnt blanket. She tore off her ball-gown, to the dismay of the other ladies who had appeared to assist and, as they hoped, to hear from the princess's own lips how she had enjoyed her ball. They were all of them envious that the king had danced with none but his daughter; but Lissar would not speak, and she dropped her hall-gown on the floor as if it were no more than a rag. Her high-heeled shoes, embedded with diamond chips, had been left in the receiving-room, like an offering at the feet of the statue. Her stockings followed her dress, and then she wrapped herself in an old woolen dressing-gown and began tearing at her hair. Viaka took her hands away and began to take it down herself, gently.

  The other ladies were dismissed, somewhat abruptly, but since the princess would not play the game with them of what a lovely ball it had been, how beautiful she (and they) had looked, and how splendid her father was, they were not all that unwilling to go, and talk among themselves about how unsatisfactory a princess Lissar was, even on an occasion like this one. They had thought that her very own ball would have had an effect, even on her.

  Lissar and Viaka and Ash went to sit in the cold garden; Lissar loaned Viaka another dressing-gown, so that she would not harm her own ball-gown.

  After Ash's initial transports, including suitable but absentminded grovellings when she was scolded, were over, followed by racing around the perimeter of the garden at a speed that made her only a vague fawn-grey blur in the starlight, she came and wrapped as much of her long leggy self as would fit around and over Lissar's lap. Autumn was passing and winter would be there soon; the three of them huddled together for warmth. Viaka kept looking into her friend's face, a narrow line of worry between her own brows; but for once she had nothing to say, and they sat in silence, Lissar combing her released hair through her fingers as if reassuring herself it was her own.

  Rinnol's niece came out in a little while to tell Lissar that the bath she had ordered was ready. Even in Fichit's voice was
some consternation that Lissar should wish instantly to divest herself by washing of so delicious an event as the evening's ball.

  But Lissar at once disentangled herself from Ash's legs and tail and came indoors.

  Viaka, who was happy to keep her fancy clothes on a little longer, for the only shadow cast on her evening was by watching her friend, came indoors too. She carefully took the protective dressing-gown off, so that she might float around the little round room, humming gently to herself, pretending still to be in the arms of young Rantnir, son of her parents' friends. She was anxious about Lissar, but willing to set that anxiety aside; being a princess, she thought, was doubtless a difficult business in ways she had no guess of.

  She recollected herself enough from the sweet dream of Rantnir's eyes, when Fichit emerged from the bath-room to ask if Viaka had any orders for her, to ask if Lissar had ordered dinner; and upon the negative, commanded some herself. She had eaten with Rantnir, but she could guess that Lissar had eaten nothing, and perhaps after her bath she would be relaxed enough to be ravenous-which Viaka felt that by rights she should be. Viaka herself, who did not chase a fleethound around a garden on a daily basis, nor go for long plant-gathering walks with the indefatigable Rinnol, was often astonished at the amount of food Lissar could eat.

  One of life other maids was still creeping about the round edges of the tower room in search of escaped feathers.

  Lissar rubbed herself all over with the soap, and washed her hair vigorously. Over and over again she scrubbed at her cheek, as if her father's kiss had left an indelible mark. The bath was so hot as almost to be scalding, for she had added even more hot water from the ewer after Fichit had left and yet beneath the soap and hot water she still smelled warm velvet.... She stayed in the water till it cooled, and when she came out, rubbing at her hair, she found Viaka asleep in a chair by the fire, her face in her hand, smiling happily in her sleep, with a tray of covered dishes next to her on the round table.