Deerskin - Robin McKinley

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 before 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.