Deerskin - Robin McKinley

The king, his head hanging, and his knees drawn up like a little boy's who is being scolded, said nothing. "Promise!" hissed the queen.

The king laughed a little wildly. "I promise! I will marry no one less beautiful than you, I swear it."

And the queen sighed, a long, deep, satisfied sigh, and gestured for the servants to display the painting. They slowly, respectfully unwrapped the long folds, but the silk was thin, so while there were still several turns of cloth over it, the splendor of the painting burned through its swaddling. When its final, perfect glory was revealed the queen stared at it-or so everyone thought, as her face-veil was turned unmoving toward it. Then she turned her head away on her pillow and gave another great sigh, a sigh so vast and profound that it seemed impossible that a figure so slight and wasted as the queen's could have made it; and with that sigh she died.

The king remained with his back to the painting, crouched over his queen's hand; and for a long time the servants dared not disturb him, dared not try to discover whether he knew that he was holding the hand of a corpse.

The funeral was three days later, as she had wished it; and as she had wished it, her body was not washed and dressed and laid out for burial. Still in her veil, her long gown, gloves and slippers, she was wrapped in layers and layers of silk and brocade, and thus laid in her satin-lined coffin. And the first stuff which they lay over her, set next to her still-warm figure, was the thin white bolt that had wrapped her portrait.

But the mourning went on for weeks after that. The whole country dressed in black, and many people dyed their horses' harness black, painted their oxen's horns black, the doors of their houses, their wagon wheels, even their own hair, though their blackened hair never fired red in the sunlight the way the queen's had. The king was quiet and polite, but his eyes were blank, and his ministers steered him through his days.

Expressions of grief and condolences came from far around; the receiving-hall grew crowded with gifts bearing black ribbons, and ministers' aides hired aides of their own to do the list-making and write the acknowledgements, which the king himself never signed, his hands limply on his lap and his eyes turned to empty space.

One king, their nearest neighbor, sent four matched black horses, without a white hair on them; another king sent a black carriage that gleamed like a mirror. The third king sent a heavy rope of black opals, and the fourth sent a cape of the feathers of the ebony bird, the cost of one of. whose feathers would feed a peasant family half a year. The fifth king, who had been twelve years old when the dead queen had married her true love, sent the same lord as had attended the wedding, older now, and the casket he bore this time contained black pearls.

One day two heralds and three horses arrived, all bearing black stripes on their gear (although some noticed that the stripes were of the sort that could be taken off again), and this was an embassy from the sixth king of the queen's seven suitors.

Their own black-robed king was in his receiving-hall that day, for his ministers had determined that it would be good for him to go through the motions of governing, even though each motion had to be prompted by the ministers themselves. He could not even be trusted to feed himself, these days, but someone must sit next to him and tell him to put food in his mouth for every bite. But he was docile now, unlike the first weeks of the queen's illness; and the harassed ministers wished to believe this an improvement. And so it was the king who welcomed the heralds from the sixth king, or, more accurately, it was his ministers who welcomed them and, when prodded, not very subtly, the king who nodded slowly in an acknowledgement he did not feel.

The heralds noticed that his eyes were steady, if dazed, and they thought that if the rumors heard in their kingdom of his madness had been true, they were true no longer; for here was a man made weak and simple by his grief. So they made the correct obeyances, and were graciously granted leave (by the ministers) to demonstrate what gifts they had brought; and so they opened their baskets, displaying sparkling jars of preserves that the queen and her ladies had put up themselves; and some meltingly supple leather from a deer that the king and his huntsmen had themselves shot, dressed out, skinned and tanned, and dyed a flawless black. And, last, there was a small woven basket-pannier, and the herald who handled it touched it with particular gentleness, and when he set it down, and knelt beside it to lift the loop from the pin that held it closed, it seemed to move of itself, to stir where it sat.

When he opened it he reached in to lift something out: and there was a small silver-fawn-colored fleethound puppy who trembled, and struggled to be set down, and as soon as the herald had done so tried to climb into his kneeling lap, and hide her small slender face under his arm.

"The prince's favorite bitch whelped two months ago," said the herald, while the fleethound presented her rear parts to the court and dug her head farther under his arm. "When he heard of your loss, he begged his parents to let him send the princess one of the puppies."

It was the first time anyone of the court had thought of the princess since the queen fell ill.

Her nursemaid had seen to it that they watched the long days in and out of the queen's long decline; and the nursemaid sank deeper and deeper into her grief, and the girl herself grew more and more silent and withdrawn, for her nursemaid had been her only lasting companion for as long as she could remember. And when the queen died, the nursemaid saw to it that the princess had a black dress to wear to her mother's funeral, and a black scarf to tie up her dark soft hair, and black boots for her feet, black stockings for her legs, and black gloves for her hands; and a black cap, gloves, and overskirt for herself. For even in her grief she knew what was required, just as she had seen to it that both she and the princess bathed every day, and had enough to eat, and proper clothing as the season changed. But it did not seem to her strange that the court forgot the princess in its preoccupation with the queen, for she would have forgotten the princess herself, had it not been her job to take care of her. There was no hauteur in her when she made sure of the necessities for herself and the princess.

The two of them had gone to the funeral, quietly, like any other mourners from the vast royal household; and if any recognized them as perhaps having a special place in the affair, no mention was made nor notice taken. The king and queen had absorbed all their people's attention for as long as they had been king and queen; there had never been anything left for the princess. That there might be something odd about this, even wrong, occurred to no one; their king, their queen, were too glorious, too luminous, too superb, for there to be anything wrong with them. That they forgot their child themselves, and distracted their people into forgetting her also, was merely a natural result of their perfections, as was the fact that the princess had no place and no purpose. No one of their people could imagine the country without this king and this queen. The idea that this child of theirs was their heir was incomprehensible; as if someone had suggested that a tadpole might inherit the sea upon the death of water. At the queen's funeral no one was capable of thinking beyond the fact that this was the end of their world.

The nursemaid and the princess stood with the two housemaids who most often attended to their simple needs, and who had helped in making up the princess's mourning clothes. The princess looked around quietly into the faces of her parents'

people, last of all looking in her nursemaid's face, who was as dazed as anyone else in the kingdom-as the king himself. She had worshipped the queen with every breath she took, and had sought the position of caring for her daughter because she was her daughter.