The Door In The Hedge Part 1

The Door In The Hedge.

Robin McKinley.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfathers:.

Albert Turrell, who told me stories even more wonderful than those I could find in Andrew Lang, and Thomas McKinley, who was a soldier and fought for a Queen.

Contents.

The Stolen Princess.

The Princess and the Frog.

The Hunting of the Hind.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses.

The Stolen Princess.

Prologue.

THE LAST mortal kingdom before the unmeasured sweep of Faerieland begins has at best held an uneasy truce with its unpredictable neighbor. There is nothing to show a boundary, at least on the mortal side of it; and if any ordinary human creature ever saw a faerie-or at any rate recognized one-it was never mentioned; but the existence of the boundary and of faeries beyond it is never in doubt either.

The people who live in those last lands are a little special themselves, and either they breed true or the children grow up and leave for less suspenseful countryside. Those who do leave are rarely heard from again, and then only in stiff or hasty letters written to a.s.sure friends and family of their well-being; they never return in person. But some of those who leave remember what they have left; and the memories are not all taken up with things that go b.u.mp in the night (which are never faeries, who know better than to make noise) or the feeling of being watched while standing at the center of a wide, sunny, sweet-smelling meadow and spinning helplessly in your tracks seeking for the shadow that is always behind you. For much of that watchfulness is friendly: if you lie down by the side of a brook and fall asleep, the murmuring water sends pleasant dreams of love and courage; and if a child loses its way in a forest, it finds its way out again before it is anything more than tired and scratched and cross and hungry.

And there are years when no babies at all are stolen from their cradles, and new mothers laugh, and grandparents gloat, and new fathers spin fabulous dreams of future greatness and trip over their own feet.

But there are also years when expectant mothers go about with white faces and dread the arrival of what they most want, and the fathers listen anxiously for a child's first cry, but are not soothed when finally they hear it. And the father's first question, as is the way of fathers everywhere, is "A boy or a girl?" But his reasons, in this last country, are a little different. The faeries always choose boy babies.

The story is still told that once, perhaps a century ago, or perhaps two, a five-weeks girl was s.n.a.t.c.hed away through a window her parents knew only too well that they had bolted carefully from the inside. But after two days-or rather, nights, for all immortal thievery occurs in the dark hours-the baby was returned.

There was never any question of a changeling. The whole silly idea of changelings was invented by lazy parents too far inland for any faintest whiff of faerie sh.o.r.es to have reached them; parents who cannot think of any other reason why their youngest, or middle, or eldest, or next-to-somethingest child should be so regrettable; they know they aren't to blame.

So there was no shadow in these parents' overjoyed minds. But they were good people, and thoughtful, and after telling everyone they knew just once about the miraculous return, they never mentioned it again. Except once to the girl herself when she was almost grown; and she nodded, and looked thoughtful, but said nothing; and the uneasy dreams she had had for as long as she could remember, about impossible things that insisted that they were to be believed, stopped abruptly. She never mentioned the dreams to anyone either. Loose talk about faeries, dreams, and impossible things was not encouraged. It might be dangerous.

Six weeks after the little girl's marvelous adventure a family that lived only two streets over from her family lost its baby-a boy. He was the third child: he had two older sisters. He was not returned; nothing was ever heard of him again.

That was always the way of it. Nothing was ever again heard of the lost children; that was what, in the end, made it so terrible. The little girl who was returned seemed none the worse for wear; but then she had only been gone two days, and since she had been brought back she must have been a mistake.

There was some thought, rarely mentioned aloud, that the fact that the faeries treated their mistakes kindly, or at least had been generous enough to bring this particular one back, was a good omen for the treatment of those they kept. It was this idea, persisting in the backs of people's minds, that made the retelling of the story of the baby that was returned so common. It was all the comfort they had. What happened to all the other ones, the ones that disappeared forever?

But the parents of girls are not to be envied either. A boy, if he survives his first year, is safe. It is the girls who at last have the harder time of it, because it is when they reach their early blush of womanly beauty, between the ages, say, of sixteen and nineteen-it is then that they are in danger. And as it is the strong, handsome, happy boys that are taken, so it is the wisest and most beautiful girls-the girls who come home early from the parties they most enjoy, and leave their friends desolate behind them, because they know their parents are worrying at their being out so late; the same girls who never themselves think about being stolen because they have far too much else to do with their time and talents.

If a girl reaches twenty, she may breathe easier and think about marrying. But she has arrived safely at the cost of the cheerful carelessness of her youth; and it is too late for her to regain it now.

But the land was a good land, and its true people could not desert it, for they loved it; and it seemed that the land loved them in return; even if there were those who found the land's curious awareness of the people who stood or walked upon it disquieting. And sometimes even those who had been born and raised there left to find some country that would not keep them awake at night with its silence. Perhaps, bordering Faerieland, as it did, the touch of immortality made this land richer, more beautiful even than it might otherwise have been; arid perhaps that touch lay gently on the people themselves. But for whatever reason, the land had been lived in for hundreds of years, and the people built their houses and barns and shops, and tilled their fields, and worked at their crafts, and married and ... had children.

There was some commerce between them and less enchanted countries, and it was often observed that if you dared buy anything from that land, it lasted longer or tasted better or was more beautiful than its like from other origins; but the market for these things was limited because the commoner sort of mortal often found that things from that last land were a little hard to live with. They preyed on your mind; you had the feeling that they were breathing if you turned your back on them. Even a loaf of bread from that strange wheat could give you uncanny dreams-or insights into your neighbor all the more unnerving because they were accurate.

But its true people didn't care; and as some left it, others came, having tasted its wine, perhaps, or worn a cloak woven from its flax, and felt themselves somehow transformed, if only a little bit-just enough to make them restless, enough to make them come and see the strange living land themselves.

And some of these looked long, and settled; and it, whatever it was, crept into the eyes of those who stayed, and into their blood, so they could not bear the thought of leaving, whatever dooms might hang over them if they remained.

There was something else, never discussed, and shunned even in the farthest secret reaches of the mind, but still present. No family was ever ended by the faeries' attentions. The first-born were rarely taken; usually they were the second-or third-or fourth-born. And never more than one child from a family disappeared, even if the entire family was spectacular in its beauty and charm and general desirability. This meant that the worst never quite happened; the spirit and will were never quite broken.

And in that uncommonly beautiful land, living under that particular sky, it was difficult if not impossible not to recover from almost anything but death itself.

But this narrow boon, this last hope not quite betrayed, was not talked about-not because of the simple dreadfulness of being grateful that only one child is forfeit. No, there was something else which cut even deeper: the omniscience indicated by the faeries' choice. First children were, in fact, sometimes taken, and how could the invisible thieves know in advance that more children would be born? Or that some sudden sickness would not take away the one or two that remained? But these things never happened; the faeries always knew. It wasn't something that those who had to live with it found themselves capable of thinking about. There were always the other things to think about, the good things.

Perhaps it came out even in the end; perhaps even a little better than even. The land was peaceful, and evidently always had been; even the history books could recount no wars. When there were storms at harvest time or sullen wet springs when the seeds died underground, somehow there was always just enough left to get everyone through the winter. And childless couples who desperately wanted children did eventually have one-or perhaps two; and if the faeries s.n.a.t.c.hed one, they were still one better off than they had once feared they would remain. And so the years pa.s.sed, and one generation gave way to the next, and the oldest trees in the oldest forests grew a little taller and a little thicker still; and the fireside tales of a family became the legends of a country.

But that same time that changed a quiet story into a far-striding legend changed also the people who told and retold it. The world turned, and new stories rose up, and the legends of the old days faltered a little, or turned themselves in their course to keep up with the lives of their people, and the lives of great-grandchildren of those they had first known. Perhaps even the immortal ones beyond the borders of this last land felt the change in some fas.h.i.+on: for that they ventured at all, and for whatever reason, into mortal realms risked them to some sense of mortal lives and cares. Perhaps.

Part One.

THE FAERIES had never been much noted for stealing members of the royal family of that last kingdom, perhaps because that family was more noted for its political ac.u.men and a rather ponderous awareness of its own importance than for lightness of foot and spirit or beauty of face and form. But the current Queen's own sister, her twin sister, on the eve of their seventeenth birthday, had been stolen; and the Queen herself had never quite gotten over it. Or so everyone else thought: the Queen tried not to think of it at all.

The twins had been their royal parents' only children, and they were as beautiful as dawn, as spring, as your favorite poem and your first love: as beautiful as the rest of their family-aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins-several-times-removed-were kind and stuffy and inclined to stoutness. The twins were kind, too, probably as kind as they were beautiful, which could not have been said of their worthy but plump parents.

Alora was the eldest by about half an hour, and so it was understood that she would eventually be Queen; but this cast no shadow between her and Ellian her sister, as you knew at once when you saw them together. And they were always together. Alora was fair and Ellian dark; it was easy to tell them apart with your eyes open. But with your eyes shut, it was impossible: they both had the same husky, slightly breathless voice, and they thought so much alike that you could expect the same comment from either of them. The people loved them; loved them so much that no one felt the desire to indulge in a preference for one sister over the other.

Not that they were stupidly interchangeable. They understood that the sympathy between them was so great that it left them quite free: and so Alora played the flute, and Ellian the harp; Ellian preferred horseback riding and Alora bathing in the lake, where she could outswim many of the fish, while Ellian paddled and floated and got her hair in her eyes and laughed. Alora could sing and Ellian could not. And each wore clothes that suited her individual coloring best; they made no mistakes here. But while they each rode a white mare on state occasions, Ellian's had fire in its eye and a curl to its lip, while Alora had to wear spurs to keep hers from falling asleep.

They slept in the same room, their tall canopied princesses' beds each pushed under a tall mullioned window. The room was large enough for both of them and their ladies-in-waiting and their royal robes not to get too severely in one another's way when they were dressing for a high court dinner, but not so large that they could not whisper to each other when they should have been asleep, and not lose the whispers into the high carved ceiling and the deep rugs and curtains. And so it was that when Alora opened her eyes on her seventeenth birthday and saw the sun s.h.i.+ning as though he were convinced that this was the finest day he had ever seen and he must make the most of it, she looked across the room to her sister's bed and found it empty. She knew at once what had happened, although neither of them had ever thought of it before. If Ellian had gone out early, she would have awakened her sister first, in case she would like to accompany her-as Alora would have. They always accompanied each other. The little blue flowers called faeries'-eyes scattered across the coverlet were not more dreadful to her now than the fact of the empty bed itself.

A few minutes later when they found her, Alora was curled up on her sister's bed, weeping silently and hopelessly into her sister's pillow. When they lifted her up, they were surprised by a faint mysterious smell from the bruised flowers she had lain upon. The ladies bundled the coverlet up, flowers and all, and took it away, and burnt it.

The Queen and the ladies-in-waiting cried and wailed till the whole palace was infected, and the people who were gathered in the palace courtyard ready to cheer the opening festivities of the Princesses' birthday groaned aloud when they heard the news, given by the King himself with tears running down his face; and many wept as bitterly as Alora herself as they went their sorry ways homeward.

But while everyone else was sorry, they also at last shook themselves out of it and went on with their lives. Alora did not. She felt that she had only half a life left, and that a pale and quiet one. Her worried parents decided that perhaps the best thing to do for her was to marry her off quickly and let her begin housekeeping; it might also remind her of her responsibilities. She would be Queen someday, and her current listlessness would not do at all in a monarch. Her betrothed was willing-it was no state marriage of convenience for him: he had been desperately in love with her for three years, since she had first smiled at him, and was even unhappier than her parents that she smiled no more-and she was, well, she was fond of him and supposed she didn't mind. He was a cousin, but so many times removed that while he was indisputably kind, he was neither stout nor pompous; and in her weaker moments she thought he was quite handsome; and in her official moments she thought he would make a good king. They were married on her eighteenth birthday-it helped to cover up what had happened just a year ago-and he had just turned thirty.

She did pick up a bit after she was married. She never became exactly lively again, but then she was also getting older. Her smiles came more easily, and to her own surprise, she fell in love with her earnest young husband. He had known full well when his marriage proposal had been officially offered and officially accepted that Alora thought of him vaguely as a nice man and she did have to marry someone suitable. He also realized without false modesty that as available royalty went, he was a bargain. Not only did he not wear a corset nor have a red nose, he did have a sense of humor.

So, after he married her, he set out not really to woo her, which he thought would be cheating when affairs of state had almost forced them to get married in the first place, but to be as unflaggingly nice to her as he thought he could get away with. Their delight in each other after they became the sort of lovers that minstrels make ballads about (although it was certainly unpoetic of them to be married to each other) was so apparent that it spilled over into their dealings with their people; and the court became a more joyful place than it had been for many a long royal generation. And minstrels did make ballads about them, even though they were married to each other.

It was the tradition in this country that when the King and Queen reached a certain age-n.o.body knew precisely when that age was, but the country was lucky in its monarchs as it was lucky in so much else, and somehow they always had enough sense to know when they had reached it-they retired, and the next King and Queen took over. The older ones always went off to live somewhere as far away and as obscure as possible so they would not be tempted to meddle; and the new pair could settle in and start off without the grief of their parents' death hanging over them-or the feeling, on the other hand, that the parents were just in the next room, grumbling about the muddle those youngsters were making.

But usually the old King and Queen did not step down until the young ones had a child or two, and it half-raised and at least potentially capable of looking after itself to some extent. But Alora bore no children. And at last her parents shrugged and said that they had waited long enough. The Queen dreamed every night about that little cottage in the woods, with the brook beside it, and a flower garden that she could keep with her own hands-sometimes she dreamed of it two or three times in a night.

Children weren't strictly necessary, even for monarchs; there was always somebody available to pa.s.s a crown to. And so at last came a day full of boxes and wagons and shouts, and last-minute directions on ruling ("Don't forget that the Duke of Murn expects to be served fresh aradel at every dinner he's invited to: I don't care what season it is, he will make your life miserable with hunting stories if you don't"). It all ended eventually with "Well, don't worry, you won't make too big a mess of it; we have faith in you; and come and visit us sometimes when the garden is blooming-and, well, goodbye." While the people lined the roads and cheered, the new Queen Alora and King Gilvan stood silently on their balcony, the Royal Balcony of Public Appearances and Addresses, and watched the wagons roll away.

When the wagons were quite out of sight, and only a dusty blur on the horizon remained, hanging over the road they took and graying the trees that lined it, the pair on their balcony turned and went down into the palace, into their private rooms.

Gilvan was the first to break the silence; he sighed and said: "I wish my parents would take it upon themselves to retire. There're more than enough rising generations to take over for them-in fact you'd think the pressure from below would rise up and sweep them away ... but dukes and d.u.c.h.esses never seem to feel the compulsion to be reasonable that kings and queens do." Gilvan had felt rather than seen the unhappy look Alora had given him when he spoke of rising generations, and he knew what she was thinking before she opened her mouth. "Don't worry about it," he said simply. "You needn't."

"But-"

"I alone have half a dozen brothers and sisters, and they're all married and all have half a dozen children apiece. As your father said-"

"He didn't exactly say it," said Alora hastily.

"No; his range of hems is wide and most expressive. But the crown won't go begging; that's all." Gilvan paused and looked thoughtful. "There's rather a glut on the market in royal offspring in our day, really. We don't have to add to it. In fact, it may be wiser that we don't. There isn't all that much for all of us to do. There are too many local festivals and celebrations of this and that already, and even more dukes and earls to do the presiding."

Alora almost laughed. "Yes, but as King and Queen we really ought to have an heir. Of our own." Gilvan shrugged. "Noisy little beasts, children-or at any rate our family's are all tiresomely loud-we can do without them. There are too many that have to visit us already. And if you mean that direct-line stuff, well, the crown has done more dancing around over the last several hundred years than a cat on a hot stove. A small leap to a nephew-is it Antin that's the oldest? We aren't due for Queen What's-her-name, are we?"

"No, Antin, fortunately. Lirrah is the next oldest."

"And hasn't a brain in her pretty head." Gilvan looked relieved. "I thought it was Antin-as long as he doesn't break his neck out hunting someday. Anyway, a small leap to a nephew won't discomfit it any. And you know I don't mind."

Alora looked at him and nodded: he was only speaking the truth. He didn't mind; but she did not know how much that decision had cost him, and she couldn't help wondering. And she did mind, somehow; and she rather thought that their people, even if only wistfully, did too. Antin was a nice boy (and let nothing happen to him! One could only hope Lirrah's parents could find someone with sense enough for two to marry her), but ... she didn't mean to think of Ellian, but still she often did; and she knew the rumor that was whispered about her, Queen Alora: that she bore her husband and her kingdom no children because she had never quite recovered from the loss of her sister years ago. She wasn't sure that this wasn't correct.

But then, shortly after she became Queen, and after a dozen quiet years of marriage, Alora began to have dizzy spells in the mornings when she first stepped out of bed. She didn't like being sick, so she ignored them, a.s.suming that if they didn't get any attention they would go away; and every day they did, but most mornings they came back. Then other things happened, and she knew for sure: but she was afraid to tell anyone, because perhaps it still wasn't true, maybe she read the signs wrong because she wanted so much that it be true. And then one day Gilvan went looking for his wife and couldn't find her anywhere that he thought she should be; and at last when he was beginning to feel a little worried, he ran her to earth in their big bedroom. The bed itself was a monster, up three velvet-carpeted steps to a dais almost as large as the dais that held the royal table in the banqueting hall. The four carved bedposts stood eight feet above the mattress, broad as masts, and were almost black in color, yielding only a very little brown warmth if the sun shone full upon them; the bed-curtains were as elaborate as a hundred of the finest needlewomen could make them, working all day for six months before the royal wedding, a dozen years ago.

Alora looked very small, sitting at the great bed's foot, her arms around one of the posts, her face pressed against the curtains. She sat very still, as if she were afraid she might overflow if she moved; but with joy or sorrow he could not tell.

"What is it?" he said, and realized his heart was thumping much louder than it ought to be.

She opened her eyes and saw him, and a smile overflowed her quietness. She let go the bedpost and held out her arms to him. "Our heir," she said. "Six months more, I think, if I have been keeping proper count. I've been afraid to tell you before, but it's true, after all these years...." Gilvan, who had never cared before, discovered suddenly and shatteringly that he was about to care very much indeed.

Alora had been keeping proper count; five months and twenty-seven days later she gave birth to a daughter, while Gilvan paced up and down a long stone corridor somewhere in the palace-later, he was never quite sure where it was-and thought about all sorts of things, not a one of which he could remember afterward. They named her Linadel, and her christening party was the most magnificent occasion anyone could remember. The young sprigs and dandies of the court-even the best-regulated court has a few of them who are above having a good time-had a good time; the great-grandmothers who spent all their time complaining how much handsomer and finer and generally superior things had been when they were young unbent enough to smile and admit that this was really a rather nice party, now they came to think of it. And the old King and Queen dusted themselves off, and left their precious flower garden long enough to return to the capital, and meet their new granddaughter, and borrow some fancy dress, and go to the party; and they even thought their granddaughter was worth it.

Linadel herself was rosy and smiling throughout, and didn't seem to mind being kept awake so long and pa.s.sed from one set of strange arms to another, and breathed on by all sorts (all the better sorts, at least) of strange people. She continued to smile and to make small gurgles and squeaks, and to look fresh and contented. It was her parents who wore out first and called an end to the festivities.

Linadel grew up, as princesses are expected to do, more beautiful every day; and with charms of mind and manner that kept pace. She didn't speak at all till she was three years old, and then on her third birthday she astonished everyone by saying, quite distinctly, as she sat surrounded by gifts and fancy sweets, and G.o.dmothers and G.o.dfathers (she had almost two dozen of them), and specially favored subjects and servants, "This is a very nice party. Thank you very much." Everyone thought this was a very auspicious beginning; and they were right. Linadel never lisped her r's or took refuge in smiling and looking as pretty as a picture (which she could have done easily) when she tackled a comment too large for her. On her fourth birthday she presented everyone with what amounted to a small speech. "And a better one than some I've heard her granddaddy give," said a G.o.dfather out of the corner of his mouth to a G.o.dmother, who giggled.

She never looked back, whatever she did. In any other kingdom her parents and friends-and everyone was her friend-would have said that the faeries had blessed her. Here, they said only, "Isn't she wonderful, isn't she beautiful, isn't it splendid that she's ours?" She was beautiful. Her hair was dark, velvet brown by candlelight and almost chestnut in the sun; and it fell in long slow curls past her shoulders. When she was thoughtful, she would wind a loose curl-her thick hair invariably escaped from its ribbons-around one hand and pull gently till it slid through her fingers and sprang back to its place. This habit, as she grew older, made young men breathe hard.

Her eyes were grey. Or at least mostly grey. They had lights and glimmers in them that some people thought were blue, or green, or perhaps gold; but for everyday purposes (and even a princess has need for a few everyday facts) they were grey. Her skin was pale and pure, with three or four coppery freckles across her small nose to keep her from being perfect. Her hands were long and slim and quiet, and a touch from them would still a barking dog or soothe a fever.

But the strongest thing about her, and perhaps the finest too, was her will. It was her will that prevented her from being hopelessly spoiled, when without it-in spite of the intelligence and cheerfulness that were as much a part of her as her dark hair and pale eyes-it would have been inevitable. Her will told her that she was a princess and would someday become a queen, and had responsibilities (many of them tiresome) therefore; but beyond that she was an ordinary human being like any other. It was her position as a princess which explained the extravagant respect and praise she received from everyone (except her parents, whom she could talk to as two other ordinary human beings caught in the same trap); and it was this belief in her essential ordinariness that prevented her head from being turned by the other. She did very well this way; and the strength of her willful innocence meant that she did not realize that the respect and admiration was by it that much increased.

It is all very well to say that all princesses are good and beautiful and charming; but this is usually a determined optimism on everybody's part rather than the truth. After all, if a girl is a princess, she is undeniably a princess, and the best must be made of it; and how much pleasanter it would be if she were good and beautiful. There's always the hope that if enough people behave as though she is, a little of it will rub off.

But Linadel really was good and beautiful and charming, and kind and thoughtful and wise, and while at the very end you must add "and wonderfully obstinate," well, for a girl in her position to support all her other virtues, she had to be.

But how to find such a paragon a suitable husband? When she was fifteen her parents began reluctantly to discuss the necessity of finding her a husband. They should have done this long ago, but had put it off again and again. The obvious choice was Antin, who was a nice boy, and who, if Linadel had not been born, would have worn the crown anyway; and the thought that he would not disgrace it had comforted Gilvan and Alora through their childless years. But that comfort was fifteen years old now, and Antin was a man grown-and still, really, a rather nice boy. It was not that he was lazy, for as a duke, and one still in line for the throne although now-once removed, he had duties to perform and dignity to maintain, and he performed and maintained suitably. He was also a splendid horseman (a king needs to look good on horseback for the morale of his people) and no physical coward. It wasn't even that he was stupid-although he did have a slight tendency toward royal corpulence. But-somehow-there was something a little bit missing. This was perhaps most visible in the fact that he, while very polite about the honor of it, et cetera, wasn't the least enthusiastic himself about marrying his young and beautiful cousin. Both Alora and Gilvan, trying to see behind his eyes, felt that his att.i.tude toward kings.h.i.+p was one of well-suppressed dislike.

The rumor was that he was in love with a mere viscount's daughter, who was pretty enough and nice enough, but not anything in particular herself, and that the only enthusiasm Antin did feel on the subject of Linadel's marriage was that it should happen soon and to someone else; so that he would be free to marry his little Colly. Gilvan and Alora became aware of the rumor, and by that time they were inclined to hope it was true, as the best for everybody concerned.

But it was delicate ground nonetheless, and if Antin were to be discarded as an eligible king, a better reason than his indifference to the post must be found. This proved more difficult than it looked. It was managed finally, after a lot of hemming and hawing on all sides, with an agreement that since everybody in Gilvan's and Alora's families was already related to everybody else, usually in several different degrees, to add further to the confusion by marrying Linadel to Antin was beyond the point of sense.

Everyone involved breathed a sigh of relief. It can be a.s.sumed that this included Colly, although no one asked her.

It was true that the royal family of this kingdom, like those of many other kingdoms, had mostly the same blood running through all of its veins; but if Antin himself had not been a specific problem, the subject probably would not have come up. As it was, it meant that Linadel's husband could not be any other member of the family either. It was a relief to have found a way to reject Antin without losing too much face (and the people talked about it anyway: the true purpose of a royal family, as Gilvan rather often observed, is to be a topic of gossip common to all, and thus engender in its subjects a feeling of unity and shared interests); but one still was left to play by the rules one had made, however inconvenient those rules were.

And, as Gilvan and Alora understood in advance and soon proved in fact, the last mortal kingdom before Faerieland had some difficulty in luring an outsider of suitable rank, parts, and heritage to be its king; even with Linadel as bait-or perhaps partly because of it. The ones who were willing were willing because they were fascinated by the thought of all that stealthy and inscrutable magic, sending out who knew what impalpable influences across its borders which lay so near although no one could say precisely where-an att.i.tude which Alora and Gilvan and their people didn't like at all. Such candidates as there were were almost automatically poets or prophets or madmen, or all three combined; and the first were foolish, the second strident, and the third disconcerting; and none of them would have made a good king.

The rest were afraid, afraid to come any nearer than they already were-which, if they were near enough to receive state visits from that last kingdom, was probably too near.

"I'll marry her to a commoner first!" said Gilvan violently after a particularly unfortunate interview with the fifth son of a petty kingdom who fancied his artistic temperament.

"I've only just noticed something," Alora said wearily; "the only immigrants we ever get-the ones that stay, and seem to love it here as we do-they're never aristocrats. We haven't had any new blue blood in generations. I'd never thought of it before. I wonder if it means anything."

"That aristocratic blood runs thinner than the usual sort," said Gilvan shortly. He drummed his fingers on his purple velvet knee. "Besides, there's no room for them. Why should they come? We have more earls per square foot than any other country I've ever heard of....."

"And we're related to every last one of them," said Alora, and sighed.

It was a problem, and it remained a problem, and two years pa.s.sed without any promise of solution.

Linadel didn't mind because she had never been in love; the idea of a husband was a rational curiosity only, like how to get through state occasions without treading on one's great heavy robes-and how, in those same robes, heavy and c.u.mbersome as full armor, one could hold one's arms out straight and steady for the Royal Blessing of the People, which took forever, because there were always lots of special mentions by personal request of a subject to his sovereign. She had asked Alora, whose arms never trembled, and Alora had smiled grimly and said, "Practice." So Linadel practiced being a princess-it wouldn't occur to her that it came to her naturally-and became wiser and more beautiful, and even more loving and lovable; and she wasn't perfect, but she wasn't ordinary either.

There was a hidden advantage to this preoccupation with finding Linadel a suitable husband; it took her parents' minds off the ever present fear all parents of beautiful daughters in that last kingdom felt.

Gilvan doted on his daughter and realized furthermore that she really was almost as wonderful as he thought she was; and with a similar sort of double-think he put out of his mind any thought of losing her to Faerieland. He had occasionally to deal with other parents' losses-even a king is occasionally touched by the thing his people keep the most forcefully to themselves-but he refused to apply the same standard to himself. Once he wandered so far as to think, "Besides, an only child is never taken" and recoiled, appalled that he should come to rea.s.suring himself on a subject by definition unthinkable. And that had been when Linadel was a child of only a few years.

In the same summer that Gilvan avoided rea.s.suring himself, Alora and Linadel, wandering far from the royal gardens, discovered a little meadow whose bright gra.s.s was thick with the mysterious blue flowers that the people of that country would never gather, that they called faeries'-eyes. The stems were long and graceful, each bearing several long slender leaves and a single small flower at its tip, nodding in breezes that human beings did not feel, and glowing in the sunlight with a color that could not quite be believed. It was undeniably blue, that color, but a blue that no one had ever seen elsewhere.

Linadel ran forward with a cry of pleasure and plucked one of the flowers before her stunned mother could stop her: and she ran back at once when Alora failed to follow her and held the flower up and said, "Isn't it lovely, Mother? May we take some home?"

Alora, looking down, saw with a terrible pang that deep ethereal blue reflected in her own daughter's eyes. But she said only, very quietly, "No, my dear, these are wildflowers, and they do not like to sit in houses; we will leave them here." She took the small blue thing Linadel held and laid it in the gra.s.s near its fellows, and they turned away from that meadow and walked elsewhere.

Alora dreamed of that meadow, and the blue in Linadel's wide grey eyes, for years after that; but she never remembered the dream when she awoke-only a vague feeling of fear, and of things forbidden; and she did not recall the incident that had begun the dreams.

What she did still recall was her sister's face; and sometimes the young Linadel reminded her of what Ellian had been at the same age. Linadel's coloring was similar to her aunt's, but there the resemblance ended, beyond a chance fleeting expression such as young princesses everywhere may occasionally be caught at. The thing that Alora noticed more and more as the years pa.s.sed was how much more solemn Linadel was than she and Ellian had been; but Linadel had no sister to help bear the oppressive weight of royalty.

By the time Linadel's seventeenth birthday was the next occasion on the state calendar, she had practiced princessing so successfully that her royal robes never got under her feet any more, nor did her arms tremble; and her mother suddenly realized: "She is preparing to be a queen alone." She thought of Gilvan and how little her life would have been without him, and her heart failed her. And then a new juggler's trick would make the Princess laugh, or a new ballad make her look as young and lovely as she really was-if less like a queen-to-be-and Alora would think, "She's only a girl. It's not fair that she should have to understand so much so soon." And Linadel's smile, and sidelong look to her parents to join the fun, would remind Alora of Ellian again.

The poor Queen's thoughts went round and round, and Linadel's birthday came nearer and nearer; and the possible husbands had petered out to what looked to be the final end. Then one night Alora dreamed of Linadel and the blue flower, and she remembered her dream when she woke up: and she also remembered what she had dreamed after: Linadel had grown up in a few graceful moments as her mother watched, still holding a fresh blue flower, till she was almost seventeen; but then she laughed and opened her arms to embrace Alora, and the Queen realized that it was not Linadel standing before her, but Ellian. She woke sobbing, to find herself in Gilvan's arms, and he smoothed her hair and said, "It's only a dream" till she fell asleep again; but she would not tell him what her dream had shown her. When he asked her, the next morning, she did not meet his eyes as she answered that she could not remember.