The Door In The Hedge Part 2

Gilvan nodded.

"You think so too, then?"

"Not exactly. I feel as though I could tell if it was the wrong one. But I wish I knew where our right way was leading us."

"So do I." Alora sounded so young and woebegone that Gilvan told her almost sharply to finish up her tea and go to sleep. They both lay down and each regulated his or her breathing to make the other one think he or she was asleep; but each lay awake for a long time.

It was Gilvan who woke first, in the first thin and hesitant light of dawn; he started another fire with only a very little mumbling under his breath, by which time a sleepy courtier had stumbled up to fetch the water-boiling pot and gone off to the stream to fill it.

Alora was still asleep. Gilvan looked down at her for a moment, then looked up to watch the only-slightly-more-awake-now courtier set up the pot full of water in a fas.h.i.+on that would give it a fair chance of coming to a boil. He succeeded at last, and sat back on his heels to watch that it didn't change its mind and topple over on him. It would take three potfuls to make tea for everybody; he sighed. He had rubbed his face and eyes with the cold water of the stream, but it only made his skin tingle. His brain was still asleep.

Gilvan turned away and for no particular reason made his way to the little brook and began walking downstream. He thought he might waste a little time till the water would be hot, and it was easier not to think about Linadel if he kept moving. His eyes were on his feet, and his hands in fists, dug into his pockets, and jingling anything he might find there-an absent-minded habit he had had all his life, which ruined the cut of his trousers and reduced the royal tailors to despair. They had finally stopped making pockets for those trousers where the royal dignity could not bear bulges. Gilvan, in his woodcutter's rig, was dimly aware of the luxury of having pockets, but even these thoughts he kept carefully suppressed.

The stream widened as he walked. He paused at last, thinking he should turn around and go back; and he looked up.

There was a tiny clearing, no more than the s.p.a.ce two or three trees would need, beside the stream just ahead of him; and there he saw his daughter, smiling in her sleep, with her head in the lap of a young man. He was looking down at her when Gilvan first saw them; but something caused him to look up: and their eyes met.

Gilvan knew at once what sort of creature it was whose eyes met his. For a moment he stopped breathing, and he felt that his pulse paused in his veins, his hair stopped growing, and he had no sense of the ground pressing against the bottom of his feet, or the sunlight on his shoulders. This was nothing like the sensation he had had once out hunting, when his horse put its foot in a hole and threw him; and he, dazed and full-length on the ground, found that the boar they were chasing had turned and was grinning at him, the foam dripping from its mouth. It was nothing like the feeling he'd had when Alora smiled at him the first time, either; or when he had been alone with his daughter and seen her take her first steps without a.s.sistance; or when he was sixteen years old and his favorite G.o.dfather died. What he felt now was nothing like any of these, and yet it was those things that he remembered.

He came back from wherever he was and looked again at this young man; only this time he looked beyond the stillness, the pause of time that Gilvan had felt within himself, that had told him what he knew: and he saw the love and tenderness this young man felt for Linadel that he, Gilvan, had interrupted with his presence. And beyond that he saw a flicker of something else, something Gilvan saw was utterly new and strange to this young man: fear. This fear was the oldest fear of mankind, that the present does not last; and with that flicker of fear the stillness wavered too, and a little sense of time, of the pa.s.sage of days and years, slipped into the gap, and settled on the young man's face; and Gilvan found himself thinking, "This boy is only a few years older than Linadel." Then Gilvan understood what this meant; and his awful sympathy for someone first learning of time started his breath again, and his heart, and once again he knew the sunlight was warm. The young man, still deep in his new knowledge, saw the sympathy, though he did not yet understand it; and he made his beloved's father a shaky smile; and Gilvan took a step forward.

That step made no sound, yet Linadel was awake at once and flew to her father, and they hugged each other till they could hardly breathe. When Gilvan looked up again, the young man stood a few steps away, hesitating; and Gilvan gave him a real smile, and letting his daughter just a little bit loose from the grip in which he still held her, offered his hand. "This is Donathor," said Linadel to her father's rough s.h.i.+rt front, and Donathor took the hand; and Gilvan truly meant the welcome, for Linadel's heart beat as it always had, and yet a little more warmly; and her voice was as clear as it had always been, but there was a new undercurrent of joy in every word. Gilvan her father relaxed and was happy in this present moment that had found him his lost daughter; Gilvan the lover remembered Alora's first smile to him, and heard its echo in Linadel's p.r.o.nouncing the name Donathor, as he had seen it in the young man's eyes just a little while before; and for this too he was glad for the present, a trembling, precarious, yet peaceful bit of time, because it had saddened him no less than Alora that Linadel should face her life alone, and be resigned to it.

"Linadel," breathed a voice; and she flung herself from her father's arms only to turn to her mother's.

Alora smiled at Donathor, and there was understanding in her eyes, but no constraint; and Gilvan thought ruefully that if she had found them first, she would have felt no difficulty at all. "How easily we welcome her back," he thought, watching his wife's and daughter's faces and thinking how much they were alike, and how little; "we hadn't lived with our grief long enough to believe in it. We were sure we could find her and bring her back...." He looked again at Donathor and found him watching Alora with a slightly puzzled expression on his face, as if he groped for a recollection he could not quite grasp. "Puzzled?" thought Gilvan, puzzled in his turn.

"There will be tea by the time we go back," said Alora, as if the four of them had been for a quiet walk before breakfast and were returning to the palace. "And there are plenty of sandwiches left." Linadel thought of the fruit tree that had provided them their supper the night before, and she looked around for it; but it was not there. The rocks that parted the water of the stream lay in different places than she remembered them from the evening before; and the trees around her ... were not the same trees.

She s.h.i.+vered a little, and knew that she had come home. Then she remembered that it was no longer home, and she hung her head, pretending to gaze at a squirrel that was sitting at the foot of a tree very near them, debating within itself if it dared dash by them. But her parents saw the change of mood in her, and their happiness faltered without their knowing why; and then, before she opened her mouth to begin to explain, they did know why, and their sigh was the sigh of the people who had held the golden ribbons. Donathor stood a little apart from them, the parents and their only child, but she felt his awareness of her, and the strength he tried to offer her through the soft sweet air of that small clearing; and her courage returned, although her sorrow was not lessened by it.

She raised her head and looked at her father and mother in turn, and she knew that they knew already what she was about to say; but that still they waited for her to say it. "I cannot stay here," she said. "Donathor and I are going away-as far away as we can, till we find a country like neither of those we are leaving; and We know we may not find such a land, but we are doomed to the search. We cannot stay here, as we could not stay in his-his parents' land." As she spoke she looked beyond those she spoke to, at the strange tree that stood where the fruit-laden tree had been; and she wondered again how such things as boundaries were arranged, and she heard her own words: we cannot stay, and even as she said them she cringed away from them, although she knew she had no choice but to do as she had said they must. And she saw little glints of sunlight through the green leaves of that tree, and she seemed to see the branches bend a little lower, and phantom yellow globes of fruit hanging from them. The trees murmured together as friends will as they make room for one another, and are joined by those who have been absent; and through this s.h.i.+fting, swaying, half-seen wood she glimpsed something else: a tall hedge pierced with arches, arches so tall that the tallest king in his stateliest crown could pa.s.s through any without bending his head; and the arches were outlined with flowers. She was not sure of the hedge because she was not sure of the impossible trees and the transparent fruit; but then she noticed one arch in particular, and was certain that the flowers around it were violet, with stems of lapis lazuli; and she saw people approaching that arch, and pa.s.sing through it, coming toward herself and Donathor and her parents; and of them she was sure beyond doubt. She and Donathor had left them only yesterday.

Alora and Gilvan saw them too. Gilvan took his hands out of his pockets. The royal tailors needn't really have worried, except for their own pride of craft; Gilvan looked like a king even when he should have looked like a woodcutter with baggy pants, as Alora could only be a queen, even in a partridge-colored dress and heavy boots. "Wait," said the King who approached them, for he was no less obviously a king than Gilvan. "Wait. We shall not lose our children so-and you will help us." His Queen had suddenly stopped, and stood staring, as humble and innocent as a lost child. Gilvan felt rather than saw Alora take a step forward, and he almost did not recognize her voice as she said: "Ellian."

And the Faerie Queen burst into tears and ran to put her arms around her long-lost sister.

Those whom Alora and Gilvan had left behind at the palace spent a long, grim day, pecking at their work and at each other, and trying not to think about anything. The royal party had left quietly, winding its way through the palace gardens-which could go on forever if you did not know how to find your way-slipping out at last through a small ivy-rusted side door; and no one was conscious of having mentioned their departure to anyone else. It was as though the ban on speaking of their elusive neighbors had reached out and instantly engulfed those who dared not only to admit their existence openly but to go in search of them, apparently expecting to find them.

But while the countrymen the King and Queen pa.s.sed on their way to the Queen's remembered meadow asked no question, and while those in the palace sent no messages, somehow by the time the sun set, there were few in that land who did not know that the King and Queen had followed their daughter into the unknown. It was a very quiet evening; no one could think of anything worth discussing, and everyone went to bed early. Even the retired King and Queen felt in their forest that something was not right, although they spoke to no one but each other; and the flowers in their garden drooped, and the shadows that the petals cast were dusty grey instead of black.

The next morning was dull with heavy clouds, and the farmers went grudgingly to tend dull grey fields, and the craftsman unshuttered their dull grey shops; and the wives in their kitchens were cross, because the dough they had set out the night before had failed to rise.

But the sun broke through as the morning lengthened, and the clouds lost their stranglehold on the sky, and even the people's hearts lightened, although they would have been ashamed to admit it; and they watched the clouds break into pieces and drift across the sky till they were mere wisps. People blinked and smiled at one another again, tentatively, because they still preferred not to think about anything too closely.

Then the first and fleetest of the children from the outlying villages came breathless to the palace, but no one believed them at first; even the brightness of their eyes, the irrepressible joy that stared out from their rumpled hair and the folds of their clothing did not convince the cautious city-dwellers of the truth of the story they told. Not even the crowns and necklaces of blue and yellow and white and lavender flowers they wore were convincing. But their parents came soon behind them, jogging on foot or riding on s.h.a.ggy plough horses with flowers tangled in their thick manes; and these horses seemed to have forgotten their ploughs, for they lifted their feet like the daintiest of carriage ponies and flicked their tails like foals. The road to the palace was soon crowded with laughing shouting people, and the white dust hung so thick in the air that flower petals tossed overhead hung suspended in it; and it smelled as sweet as the fruit-seller's stall the morning of market day.

The news these flower-mad mortals carried was lost in the tumult; but all those people who had heard nothing the night before, and had gone to bed early and grudged the morning, all of them found themselves was.h.i.+ng their hands and changing their s.h.i.+rts, putting on their hats, and making their way to the palace, where something was happening, something splendid; and they went, and they were caught up in the sudden holiday. Not a store could boast its proprietor still within doors; not only the schoolchildren crawled through the windows to join the throng, but their teachers tucked up their skirts and their trouser-cuffs and followed them, not remembering the existence of doors at all.

The old King and Queen found all their flowers nodding firmly in the same direction; and they sighed, but not very much, for something had crept into their hearts too that made them eager to go; and so they began the long walk back to the palace where they had spent so much of their lives, for the second time since their retirement.

And at last into the city came its King and Queen, and its Princess; but the Queen held by the hand another Queen, who smiled a smile brighter than the flowers that hung in the air, and a smile that many found strangely familiar, but they could not pause long enough to wonder at it. Alora held Gilvan's hand on her other side, and the dark Queen held the hand of her King. When the people waiting for them saw them, a shout went up even louder than before, and no one felt the least hoa.r.s.e, although they had already been shouting most of the morning. How handsome the four of them looked, walking side by side, their own beloved King and Queen, and the strange pair too: you need only look into the eyes of the dark Queen and know at once that she was to be trusted, as the eyes and the mouth of the strange King told the same story of him.

Only Gilvan waved; Alora's hands were full, and the other King, who also had a hand free, felt that some introduction was necessary before he acknowledged the cheers of a people who didn't know yet what they were cheering at. There was no one in that crowd who had the least inclination to find fault with anybody just then, and they loved him for his smiles, and thought nothing of his not waving, just as no one thought of Gilvan as dressed like a woodcutter, with flints and bits of twigs making lumps in his pockets, or of Alora's scuffed boots.

Behind them came the twenty who had accompanied Alora and Gilvan on their fools' quest only the day before; and with them a hundred more, strangers, who carried flowers, yellow, white, blue, and violet, and wove them in chains and tossed them to the crowd. They felt no shyness about their anonymity; they waved and smiled and called back to the people who called to them, although no one knew what words were exchanged. The twenty of the court were the most flower-bedecked of anyone, and they linked arms and walked four abreast like an honor guard, except their grins gave them away.

Then at the end of this train was a s.p.a.ce that none of the crowd seemed inclined to fill; and you could see underfoot a carpet of flowers and white dust, and green leaves and sifted pollen. Then, behind this, came Linadel and a strange young man whose beauty and presence were perhaps even equal to that of the Princess; and the crowd gasped and for a moment was silent, and then a new shout went up, but this time, for the first time, there was no question what the people cried: "Long live the new Queen and her King!"

Even triumphal marches end, and the dust settles and becomes gritty between the teeth, and down the back of the neck, and inside the shoes, where it is discovered to have produced blisters.

Gilvan and Alora led their new-found friends and relatives, and their reclaimed daughter and her young man, and the now-exhausted escort of twenty, dripping flowers, and those from beyond the border who had followed their King and Queen, into the palace gardens, and shut the door firmly behind them. The people outside still cheered, but it was observed that the crowds broke up fairly quickly, and rushed around to the front of the palace, where they might expect a speech from the Balcony of Public Appearances and Addresses that would explain everything to them. They did not have to wait long; Gilvan motioned aside the ladies-and-gentlemen-in-waiting-and all the fascinated onlookers who had arranged themselves in the halls and courtyards-and said, "It's hardly fair to make them out there wait for their wash and brush-up while we have ours-but for heaven's sake go stir up the kitchen, we're as hungry as bears."

It was Alora who did the introducing, as the six of them stood on the balcony and strained their eyes to see the end of the crowd, and as the members of the crowd jostled for position and strained their eyes to see the six on the balcony. "This is my sister, Ellian, whom we have not seen for so many long years; she is now Queen Ellian, consort of King Thold, and they rule together that country next to ours"-here there was a pause, but it could be explained that Alora was shouting as loudly as she could and at this point needed a deep breath-"the Land Beyond the Trees."

Everybody cheered, and n.o.body minded, even those who knew what was going on, and those too far away to hear, who tried to wait patiently till they could tackle someone who had secured a better position and could tell them what had been said.

Then Linadel and Donathor were brought forward, and Gilvan announced, "And this is Prince Donathor, eldest son of King Thold and Queen Ellian, and the betrothed of our daughter, the Princess Linadel: and the wedding will be celebrated in a fortnight's time." Everybody cheered again, but hushed very quickly as Queen Ellian stepped forward: and some of those who recognized her from her youth found their eyes growing dim as they saw how much lovelier she had become.

"And we have all agreed that we are proud and happy that our children should reign jointly over our two kingdoms after we retire, and the celebration of this wedding will also be a celebration of the unity of our two countries in a new understanding and fellows.h.i.+p. For too long our two countries have turned their faces from each other, as if they were separate planets and the air each breathed was inimical to the other. Henceforward we shall be neighbors, good neighbors and friends, in all things." And this time the cheering went on for so very long that people did begin to feel hoa.r.s.e, and then everybody went home for dinner, and Alora, Gilvan, Ellian, Thold, Linadel, and Donathor were very glad to descend from the balcony to the baths and dinner awaiting them.

Epilogue.

THE TWO WEEKS pa.s.sed, and the wedding was performed, and everyone from both sides of the border came to Alora's and Gilvan's palace for the ceremony, and stayed for the week's feasting after; and all were happy. But, of course, it did not end there.

The door in the hedge had remained open for those two weeks of preparation; for Ellian, having recovered her sister, would not let her go; nor would Alora think of parting with her. And then too the parents of the betrothed pair had many things to plan and discuss together; and they found not only that they could work cheerfully together, but that they were friends almost at once; not only the two sisters, but also the two Kings. Within a few days so many old wounds had healed over that Gilvan remembered how Ellian had teased him, long ago, about being besotted with her sister, while Ellian herself had managed to remain free of such entanglements. Gilvan reminded her of it, and she laughed, and teased him all over again, saying that the years hadn't changed him in the least, and that furthermore she was glad of it.

Perhaps they did not think of what that open door in the hedge would bring about, or perhaps they put it deliberately out of their minds, or perhaps they recognized that the time of choice had pa.s.sed with the end of that first meeting in the strange forest, where briefly they had stood on ground that existed as two places at once; and so they resigned themselves to the inevitable. If any of the mortals had any consciousness of what was happening, beyond anyone's power now to halt, it was Gilvan; for Alora was too caught up in the tumultuous delight of having not only a daughter, but an excellent husband for that daughter, and a sister besides.

It was Gilvan who woke up one night and found himself thinking before he was awake enough to realize where his thoughts were taking him and deflect them in time. And his thoughts said to him: "When was the time of choice? When did you stand at the crossroads and say this way-not that? Could any of us, in that uncanny wood, have said, *No-I condemn my child to eternal wandering-I know for certain what will come of it else, and know for certain that it would be evil'?" He lay staring at the starlight, turning his life, and his wife's, and his daughter's, over in his mind as best he could; and then, because he was a king, he considered the lives of his country and his people; and at the end he could still only reply, "I don't know."

He turned to look at Alora and, as if even in her sleep she sensed some anxiety in her husband, she crept nearer him and laid her head on his shoulder. Perhaps it was the rosy smile on her lips that cured him, but eventually he fell asleep again.

For while the door in the hedge remained open, any could pa.s.s through, again and again if they chose, and for any reason; for the door was now always there, near the tree with the yellow fruit, and the thin stream broken by rocks that no longer moved in their places. And the mothers and fathers of long-lost infants, and the forlorn sweethearts of young ladies who had disappeared behind that hedge, went through that door: and many found what they sought. No mortal can remain unchanged after meeting again with a loved one who has been touched by the faeries; and the change is all the more profound for its being little realized. There were some, too, from the far side of the border who came to the near side, to seek what they had lost: for it is only purblind mortals who suppose that they have a monopoly on bereavement. But it was a lesson to the immortals that creatures of so short a life span can sincerely grieve: for only immortals can disregard time.

And so families met again, faerie as well as human; and too much knowledge exchanged hands, though little of it was spoken aloud. No mortal should understand why the babies stolen are always boys, while the girls who are taken have first gained some number of years; no faerie should comprehend what can call a fellow immortal back over the border, once crossed by one originally human, who became a grandmother or grandfather of immortals, and yet pa.s.sed on some almost mortal restlessness to their descendants. None should: but some ties are too strong for such division, and the families spoke blood to blood, and the lovers heart to heart, and understanding came, and with it, change.

So it was that even after the first fortnight, during the wedding, and the brilliant, giddy, overfed week that followed it, Gilvan could smell a change in the air, a tone in the pitch of the people's cheers that was different from that which had first rung over the heads of the returning Linadel and her Donathor. If he had been willing to face this sense of change squarely, he could have argued with himself that this was because there were as many faeries present for the celebration as there were of his own people, and they had perhaps different-sounding lungs. But since he did not face it squarely, he did not have to argue speciously with himself, and he was left with the accurate if unspecific sense that something-something-had s.h.i.+fted.

Later he caught that same knowledge looking out of Alora's eyes; but as soon as each recognized it in the other, each swiftly drew a curtain over it, and they smiled at one another, and raised their wine goblets in a toast that neither uttered but both most sincerely meant.

As Alora and Gilvan knew it quickly, it being their own country, and they as sensitive to everything that moved within it as young birds are to the changing seasons, so Thold and at last Ellian-for she knew both countries too well and neither well enough-knew it too. At first, for them, it was but a suspicion, guarded and held by the same knowledge behind that meeting in the wood that woke Gilvan up, at night; but they knew it themselves beyond doubt when the wedding party came back to the Land Beyond the Trees for a second celebration, and for friends to see how each other lived.

The change was never discussed. There was no need and no purpose for it. Linadel and Donathor learned it in their turn, not as their parents had, by a change in their two peoples, but by the growing apprehension, as they traveled back and forth from the land of Linadel's birth to that of Donathor's, that the two peoples they had thought they were to rule were not any more to be differentiated. They had become one, as their next King and Queen had before them.

The first faerie-to-mortal marriage that came from the door in the hedge was that of one of the girls who had held the golden ribbons for Linadel. She had dropped the s.h.i.+ning ribbon when the beautiful mortal Princess had turned away, and she had wept with her Queen when Donathor and Linadel chose to lose everything rather than each other; and she had followed Ellian and Thold when they followed their son and his bride. And during that meeting in the woods, this golden girl had met one of the courtiers who for love of his own King and Queen had followed them on their despairing journey in search of their daughter. And when these two were married, they asked that the royal blessing that every marriage on either side of the border had always been granted be given by Linadel and Donathor; for they were the living symbol of all that had happened and was happening. And that first marriage was a symbol too: of the love the new changed people had for their new King and Queen.

To her considerable embarra.s.sment, and the great delight of everybody else (especially Gilvan), ten months after her daughter's wedding, Alora gave birth to a son; and they named him Senan. He grew up green-eyed and musical, and cared very little that he was a prince, for he preferred to tie his harp to his back and wander far over the hills and through the forests of all the lands within reach of his tireless walking; and there were none that were not within reach. Each time he returned to the land of his birth, he sang songs to his family and his people of the wonders he had seen; but no one was ever sure if he had seen them as other people saw, or if it was the music that did the seeing; for no one doubted that he and his harp could speak to each other as one friend to another; and all had heard his laughing claim that there were no bones in his body, only tunes, and no blood, but poetry.

The door in the hedge became many doors, and Alora's and Gilvan's kingdom became almost one more vast meadow within the wide pattern of the hedges and trees of Faerieland;, for as the border dissolved on one side, a new border began to grow up opposite. Fewer people came from outside to settle in that last mortal kingdom as it became less and less a last mortal kingdom; and even fewer left it to seek their fortunes elsewhere, because the look that Gilvan had first seen in Donathor's eyes had soon settled in his own, and in those of his people. There it rooted deep.

In the end the new border grew up, wild and thick and full of thorns; for one thing that the once-mortals and the immortals had learned of each other was the heartbreak they had once each caused the other; and when their ignorance had pa.s.sed, it seemed that their restlessness pa.s.sed too, and from this they concluded that they could venture no further with neighbors beyond the new border.

But none knew either where Senan went, for he went wherever he chose; the borders were nothing to him.

When it came time for Gilvan and Alora to retire-they having remained long enough to gloat over two granddaughters and two grandsons-Thold and Ellian decided to retire at the same time, and the four of them went together into the mountains Ellian had spoken to Linadel about at their first meeting; and where the sisters' parents-who were no longer stout or stuffy, and looked like the finest blooms in their own garden-and much faerie majesty were there and waiting for them.

Linadel and Donathor ruled over a happy land, a wiser one than it is the fortune of most sovereigns to rule, and one of a breadth and scope that none could quite measure; and they had several more children, and convinced their respective parents to visit them somewhat more often than had been the tradition for retired majesty. Everyone was contented and some restless few were great, and tales were told of their deeds; but, except for Senan's music, by the time that Linadel and Donathor had in their turn retired, there was no more communication with the rest of the world.

So it has been now for many long generations, more than anyone can name, for the tale has been pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth too often. But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded with thorns it may be.

The Princess and the Frog.

Part One.

SHE HELD the pale necklace in her hand and stared at it as she walked. Her feet evidently knew where they were going, for they did not stumble although her eyes gave them no guidance. Her eyes remained fixed on the glowing round stones in her hand.

These stones were as smooth as pearls, and their color, at first sight, seemed as pure. But they were much larger than any pearls she had ever seen; as large as the dark sweet cherries she plucked in the palace gardens. And their pale creamy color did not lie quiet and reflect the sunlight, but s.h.i.+mmered and s.h.i.+fted, and seemed to offer her glimpses of something mysterious in their hearts, something she waited to see, almost with dread, which was always at the last minute hidden from her. And they seemed to have a heat of their own that owed nothing to her hand as she held them; rather they burned against her cold fingers. Her hand trembled, and their cloudy swirling seemed to s.h.i.+ver in response; the swiftness of their ebb and flow seemed to mock the pounding of her heart.

Prince Aliyander had just given her the necklace, with one of the dark-eyed smiles she had learned to fear so much; for while he had done nothing to her yet-but then, he had done nothing-to any of them-she knew that her own brother was under his invisible spell. This spell he called "friends.h.i.+p" with his flas.h.i.+ng smile and another look, from his black eyes; and her own father, the King, was afraid of him.

She also knew he meant to marry her, and knew her strength could not hold out against him long, once he set himself to win her. His "friends.h.i.+p" had already subdued the Crown Prince, only a few months ago a merry and mischievous lad, into a dog to follow at his heels and go where he was told.

This morning, as they stood together in the Great Hall, herself, and her father, and Prince Aliyander, with the young Crown Prince a half-step behind Aliyander's right shoulder, and their courtiers around them, Aliyander had reached into a pocket and brought out the necklace. It gleamed and seemed to s.h.i.+ver with life as he held it up, and all the courtiers murmured with awe. "For you, Lady Princess," said Aliyander, with a graceful bow and his smile; and he moved to fasten it around her neck: "a small gift, to tell you of just the smallest portion of my esteem for Your Highness." She started back with a suddenness that surprised even her; and her heart flew up in her throat and beat there wildly as the great jewels danced before her eyes. And she felt rather than saw the flicker in Aliyander's eyes when she moved away from him.

"Forgive me," she stammered; "they are so lovely, you must let me look at them a little first." Her voice felt thick; it was hard to speak. "I shan't be able to admire them as they deserve, when they lie beneath my chin."

"Of course," said Aliyander, but she could not look at his smile. "All pretty ladies love to look at pretty things;" and the edge in his voice was such that only she felt it; and she had to look away from the Crown Prince, whose eyes were s.h.i.+ning with the delight of his friend's generosity.

"May I-may I take your-gracious gift outside, and look at it in the sunlight?" she faltered. The high vaulted ceiling and mullioned windows seemed suddenly narrow and stifling, with the great glowing stones only inches from her face. The touch of sunlight would be healing. She reached out blindly, and tried not to wince as Aliyander laid the necklace across her hand.

"I hope you will return wearing my poor gift," he said, with the same edge to his words, "so that it may flatter itself in the light of Your Highness's beauty, and bring joy to the heart of your unworthy admirer."

"Yes-yes, I will," she said, and turned, and only her Princess's training prevented her from fleeing, picking up her skirts with her free hand and running the long length of the Hall to the arched doors, and outside to the gardens. Or perhaps it was the imponderable weight in her hand that held her down.

But outside, at least the sky did not shut down on her as the walls and groined ceiling of the Hall had; and the sun seemed to lie gently and sympathetically across her shoulders even if it could not help itself against Aliyander's jewels, and dripped and ran across them until her eyes were dazzled.

Her feet stopped at last, and she blinked and looked up. Near the edge of the garden, near the great outer wall of the palace, was a quiet pool with a few trees close around it, so that much of the water stood in shadow wherever the sun stood in the sky. There was a small white marble bench under one of the trees, pushed close enough that a sitter might lean comfortably against the broad bole behind him.

Aside from the bench there was no other ornament; as the palace gardens went, it was almost wild, for the gra.s.s was allowed to grow a little s.h.a.ggy before it was cut back, and wildflowers grew here occasionally, and were undisturbed. The Princess had discovered this spot-for no one else seemed to come here but the occasional gardener and his clippers-about a year ago; a little before Prince Aliyander had ridden into their lives. Since that riding, their lives had changed, and she had come here more and more often, to be quiet and alone, if only for a little time.

Now she stood at the brink of the pond, the strange necklace clutched in her unwilling fingers, and closed her eyes. She took a few long breaths, hoping that the cool peacefulness of this place would somehow help even this trouble. She did not want to wear this necklace, to place it around her throat; she felt that the strange jewels would ... strangle her, stop her breath ... till she breathed in the same rhythm as Aliyander, and as her poor brother.

Her trembling stopped; the hand with the necklace dropped a few inches. She felt better. But as soon as she opened her eyes, she would see those terrible cloudy stones again. She raised her chin. At least the first thing she would see was the quiet water. She began to open her eyes: and then a great croak bellowed from, it seemed, a place just beside her feet; and her overtaxed nerves broke out in a sharp "Oh," and she leaped away from the sound. As she leaped, her fingers opened, and the necklace dropped with the softest splash, a lingering and caressing sound, and disappeared under the water.

Her first thought was relief that the stones no longer held and threatened her; and then she remembered Aliyander, and her heart shrank within her. She remembered his look when she had refused his gift; and the sound of his voice when he hoped she would wear it upon her return to the Hall-where he was even now awaiting her. She dared not face him without it round her neck; and he would never believe in this accident. And, indeed, if she had cared for the thing, she would have pulled it to her instead of loosing it in her alarm.

She knelt at the edge of the pool and looked in; but while the water seemed clear, and the sunlight penetrated a long way, still she could not see the bottom, but only a misty grayness that drowned at last to utter black. "Oh dear," she whispered. "I must get it back. But how?"

"Well," said a voice diffidently, "I think I could probably fetch it for you." She had forgotten the noise that had startled her. The voice came from very low down; she was kneeling with her hands so near the pool's edge that her fingertips were lightly brushed by the water's smallest ripples. She turned her head and looked down still farther; and sitting on the bank at her side she saw one of the largest frogs she had ever seen. She did not even think to be startled. "It was rather my fault anyway," added the frog.

"Oh-could you?" she said. She hardly thought of the phenomenon of a frog that talked; her mind was taken up with wis.h.i.+ng to have the necklace back, and reluctance to see and touch it again. Here, was one part of her problem solved; the medium of the solution did not matter to her.

The frog said no more, but dived into the water with scarcely more noise than the necklace had made in falling; in what seemed only a moment its green head emerged again, with two of the round stones in its wide mouth. It clambered back onto the bank, getting entangled in the trailing necklace as it did so. A frog is a silly creature, and this one looked absurd, with a king's ransom of smooth heavy jewels twisted round its squat figure; but she did not think of this. She reached out to help, and it wasn't till she had Aliyander's gift in her hands again that she noticed the change.

The stones were as large and round and perfect as they had been before; but the weird creamy light of them was gone. They lay dim and grey and quiet against her palm, as cool as the water of the pond, and strengthless.

Such was her relief and pleasure that she sprang to her feet, spreading the necklace to its fullest extent and turning it this way and that in the sunlight, to be certain of what she saw; and she forgot even to thank the frog, still sitting patiently on the bank where she had rescued it from the binding necklace.

"Excuse me," it said at last, and then she remembered it, and looked down and said, "Oh, thank you," with such a bright and glowing look that it might move even a frog's cold heart.

"You're quite welcome, I'm sure," said the frog mechanically. "But I wonder if I might ask you a favor."

"Certainly. Anything." Even facing Aliyander seemed less dreadful, now the necklace was quenched: she felt that perhaps he could be resisted. Her joy made her silly; it was the first time anything of Aliyander's making had missed its mark, and for a moment she had no thoughts for the struggle ahead, but only for the present victory. Perhaps even the Crown Prince could be saved....

"Would you let me live with you at the palace for a little time?" Her wild thoughts halted for a moment, and she looked down bewildered at the frog. What would a frog want with a palace? For that matter-as if she had only just noticed it-why did this frog talk?

"I find this pool rather dull," said the frog fastidiously, as if this were an explanation.

She hesitated, dropping her hands again, but this time the stones hung limply, hiding in a fold of her wide skirts. She had told the frog, "Certainly, anything"; and her father had brought her up to understand that she must always keep her word, the more so because as Princess there was no one who could force her to. "Very well," she said at last. "If you wish it." And she realized after she spoke that part of her hesitation was reluctance that anything, even a frog, should see her palace, her family, now; it would hurt her. But she had given her word, and there could be no harm in a frog.

"Thank you," said the frog gravely, and with surprising dignity for a small green thing with long thin flipper-footed legs and popping eyes.: There was a pause, and then she said, "I-er-I think I should go back now. Will you be along later or-?"

"I'll be along later," replied the frog at once, as if he recognized her embarra.s.sment; as if he were a poor relation who yet had a sense of his own worth.

She hesitated a moment longer, wondering to how many people she would have to explain her talking frog, and added, "I dine alone with my father at eight." Prince Inthur never took his meals with his father and sister any more; he ate with Aliyander or alone, miserably, in his room, if Aliyander chose to overlook him. Then she raised the grey necklace to clasp it round her throat, and remembered that it was, after all, her talking frog's pool that had put out the ill light of Aliyander's work. She smiled once more at the frog, a little guiltily, for she believed one should be kind to one's poor relations; and she said, "You'll be my talisman."

She turned and walked quickly away, back toward the palace, and the Hall, and Aliyander.

Part Two.