Deerskin - Robin McKinley

The last time they had all slept in Lissar's room was the day after they had found the little boy. She had stayed awake long enough that morning to walk down the hillside to the village, where a royal waggon, much slower than the prince's riding party, lumbered up to them, and where Lissar was made intensely uncomfortable by the gratitude of the boy's mother-the woman who had found her in the meadow the evening before. The woman had ridden home in her husband's market-cart, having managed not to tell him where she had gone and who she had seen during her long absence from their stall; and when she got home again she had kept vigil all night.

She had known the Moonwoman would find her Aric.

Lissar had not liked the longing, hopeful, measuring, cautious looks the other villagers, attracted by the commotion and the royal crest on waggon and saddle-skirt, had sent her when they heard the story, and it was a relief in more ways than one when she could climb into the waggon, well bedded with straw and blankets, and collapse. Ossin had offered her a ride behind him on his big handsome horse, when they had met upon the hillside; but she had preferred to walk to the village-though she found herself clutching his stirrup, for she was so tired she staggered, and could not keep a straight line. He, at last, dismounted too, but she would not let him touch her; and so the party had come slowly down to the village, everyone mounted but Ossin and Lissar and ten fleethounds; the boy lay cradled in the arms of one of Ossin's men, and the sbort-legged scent-hounds the prince's party had brought rode at their ease across saddle-bows and cantles.

She remembered the scene as if through a fever; the euphoria of the night before, that queer, humming sense of knowing where she was to go, had departed, leaving her more tired and empty than she could ever remember being; so empty that the gaps in her memory did not show. She had stayed awake just long enough to tell the prince how to find the thing in the tree; and then even the jerking of the (admittedly well sprung) waggon over village roads could not keep her awake.

She thought of all that now as she shook the dresses free of their sacks, thinking that the queen had sent the kennel-girl four dresses to choose from, dresses of silk and satin and lace. She had slept through the bringing-home of the thing in the tree; she had slept through the first conversations, first responses, to her adventure. She had been glad to sleep through them. But she wondered, now, with four ball-gowns fit for a queen spread out before her in the plain little room of a member of the royal kennel staff, what version of the story might even have penetrated to the heart of the court: wondered and did not want to wonder. Wondered what version of the story of the six doomed puppies might have been told. Wondered what the version of the kennel-girl's friendship with the prince might be.

Lissar found it incomprehensibly odd that a kennel-girl should pull the straw out of her hair and dust the puppy fur off her backside and put on a fancy dress and go to a ball. It was not how her father's court had been run...... "Not a hunting master with a rather large house," Ossin had said. Beech, the first huntswoman, was going to the ball. Beech, who, at the height of hunting season, stopped taking her leaders to her room, and unrolled a mattress in the pack's stall. During the winter, when everyone relaxed (and recuperated), she would go back upstairs again. All of the kennel folk slept with a few special dogs bestowed around them on their ordinary human beds; it seemed, upon reflection, that since Lissar had seven dogs special to her it was more efficient for her to sleep with them instead of the other way around.

She wondered if the story of her sleeping most nights out-of-doors with her seven special dogs had travelled beyond the confines of the kennels.

The satin dress was very beautiful, a dark bright red with ribbons and cascades of lace around the neckline; but she did not want to wear it, with her rough hands going shh ssshhh every time her fingers brushed the skirts.

The second dress was blue, light as cobwebs, with insets of paler blue and lavender; but it was a dress for a young girl, whose worst nightmares contained fantastic creatures and undefined fears never met in waking life, and whose dreams were full of hope.

The third dress was golden, vivid as fire, with gold brocade, a dress for a princess to stand and have her portrait taken in, not for a kennel-girl to wear, even if she has combed her hair and washed her hands. Even if she had once been such a princess, with her soft uncallused hand resting on her dog's neck. Especially because she had once been such a princess.

The fourth was the one she would wear. It was silver-grey, a few shades darker than Ash's fur, and it shimmered like Moonlight in a mist. The skirt was very full, and soft; her hands stroked it soundlessly. The bodice was cut simply; no ribbons or brocade. It was, however, sewn all over with tiny, twinkling stones, colorless, almost invisible, but radiant as soon as the light touched them. This was the dress she would wear, although her hands shook as she held it up.

The queen's messenger was back in the morning, bowing as he accepted three dress-sacks, and with a roll of brown paper under his arm, upon which he took tracings of Lissar's feet and hands, "that my lady's shoes and gloves may be made to fit."

The prince might decry balls in general and a ball for Trivelda in particular, but the atmosphere through and around the yellow city over the next sennight took on a distinctive, festive cast, which Lissar now knew why she recognized.

Lilac, whose parents, it turned out, were not such small farmers after all, nor quite so angry with her for running off to the king's city, would be attending the ball in a gown not begged from queen or princess but bought with money they sent her, to purchase the work of a local seamstress.

"Fortunately Marigold is a friend of mine," Lilac said; "all the seamstresses are swamped, and my gown isn't nearly as grand a piece of work as the court women's.

Indeed, you know," she added, showing an uncharacteristic hesitancy in her speech,

"I'll have money left over, if there's anything you need and don't want, you know, to ask for; I don't need it, but if I send money home my parents will be disappointed."

Lissar told her, equally hesitatingly, about the gloves and shoes. There was a barely noticeable pause before Lilac said, in her usual tone, "You are lucky. I've known one or two people who've shown up barefoot. Usually there's this terrific run on plain slippers just before a ball, for everyone who has borrowed or been given a dress from someone at the court, it's pretty simple to make a dress that doesn't quite fit do well enough, but shoes are much harder, especially if you are going to dance in them."

"What happens at a grand ball when someone comes barefoot?" said Lissar, fascinated, remembering the courtiers of her childhood.

"What happens?" said Lilac, puzzled. "I don't know, really, this is my first ball here too; I've just heard the stories. Their feet get sore, I suppose, and perhaps they're very careful to choose graceful dancing-partners. Ask Redthorn; his wife is one of them, though I don't see Redthorn as being that light on his feet."

Lilac, as usual, seemed to know everything that was happening in the city, as well as all the details about the ball itself. Lissar longed to ask her ... why the queen might have sent four ball-gowns to a kennel-girl; but she did not. Surely the queen had better sense than to believe that Moonwoman might take a job in a kennel, even a royal kennel. Ossin had never said what his mother had felt about the whole tale of the Moonwoman; only that she noticed it had no strong queens in it. The king rode out in the hunting-parties occasionally, the princess too; the queen stayed mostly at home, on the ground. Lilac had said once, kindly but pityingly, that the queen found horses a bit alarming.