Deerskin - Robin McKinley

"Thank you," she said.

"My name is Stronghand," he said. "If you find yourself in need of a friend, my wife and I are very fond of young girls; come find us. We live just outside the city, on the road from the Bluevine Gate. The innkeeper at the Golden Orchid can tell you just where."

The dance ended then, and as she rose from her curtsey, he kissed her hand.

"Remember," he said, and then turned and left her.

She was standing looking after him when Lilac came up to her. "Come away quickly, before someone else grabs you-you've been on your feet all evening, I've been watching you. You're one of the brightest stars of the ball. Trivelda is going to send someone to spill something on you soon, to get you out of the way. But don't any of these great louts ever think you might want something to eat?"

She smiled at her friend. "Several of them have asked, but I preferred dancing to having to sit down and make conversation."

"If that isn't like you. Conversation is much easier than dancing-I think," she said, a little ruefully.

"Don't try and tell me you don't dance beautifully; I've been watching you too."

Lilac wrinkled her nose. "It depends completely on who I'm with. Ladoc, my friend's cousin, is fun; some of these fellows, well, one or two, my feet may never recover. Come and see the lovely food. I'm starving. And you don't have to make conversation with me if you don't want to."

" `Don't any of these great louts ever think you might want something to eat?' "

"This is the third time I've been down to the tables," said Lilac, handing her a plate. "The servers are beginning to recognize me. Here, this is particularly good,"

she said, thrusting her empty plate under the appropriate server's nose, and seizing Lissar's plate away from her again to proffer it too. "And this."

A little later they looked up when a pair of messenger-clad legs paused in front of them as they sat at a tiny table tucked in with other tiny tables behind the grand display of food. The messenger bowed first to Lilac and then, more deeply, to Lissar.

"The prince's compliments, and if my lady would permit this humble messenger to guide her to him for a brief moment of her time?"

Lissar rose at once. "I'll see you back on the dance floor," said Lilac, licking her fingers and trying not to look unduly curious. The messenger took her back across the long length of the dance floor, toward the far end, where the dais stood, bearing tall chairs for the king, queen, prince and princess of this country as well as the king, queen and princess who were their guests; the fact that this was a ball, and that none of them would sit in the chairs all evening, was beside the point. The latter king and queen were dowdy in comparison to their vivid daughter, but the king looked as if the court he found himself in did not live up to his opinion of his own dignity. He kept scowling at the chairs set out for his family, although they were quite as fine as the others. The queen looked like a frightened chambermaid expecting to be caught out wearing her mistress's clothes, which did not quite fit. She was small, like her daughter, but Trivelda's hauteur came obviously from her father.

Courtiers stood near the dais in groups so carefully posed Lissar found herself wondering if they had been set out that way, like flower arrangements. Perhaps there were marks on the floors, telling them where to put their feet. Trivelda's courtiers all seemed to be carrying-one each-a long-stemmed ariola in a vivid blue-green that set off, or collided with, the shade of the princess's dress. Cofta's courtiers, with the exception of the Curn of Dorl, seemed a poor lot by contrast, and they wandered about in an unmistakably individual fashion.

Trivelda, surrounded by her parents and courtiers, was delicately nibbling at various small dainties offered her from plates held by kneeling courtiers, whose other hands were occupied in grasping long-stemmed ariolas. The prince-my prince, Lissar found, to her dismay, herself thinking of him as-was standing with his back to this edifying spectacle, and his mother was whispering something, it looked rather forcefully, in his ear, which Lissar assumed was the cause of his looking increasingly sullen and stupid. Lissar wished the messenger would walk more slowly.

As the messenger stepped aside, the prince stepped forward. His mother, obviously caught mid-sentence, shut her lips together tightly, but Lissar thought she looked unhappy rather than angry, and the glance she turned on Lissar had no malice in it. Ossin bowed, and Lissar's knees bent in a curtsey before her brain told them to. She had barely straightened up when the prince snatched at her hands and danced away with her.

He was not a good dancer, but after a few turns through the figure he steadied, or relaxed, and Lissar began to think she had been initially mistaken, for he danced very ably, catching and turning her deftly, and she surprised herself by leaning into his hands trustingly instead of holding herself constantly alert as she had done with her other partners. She saw him smiling and smiled back.

"I am smiling in relief," he said, and he sounded just as he did when they had been scraping puppy dung off the floor together. "You have the knack for making your partner feel that he knows what he is doing. Which makes him rather more able to do it. Thank you. It has not been a good night thus far."

"You do yourself too little credit," said Lissar in what she realized was a courtly phrase; she knew exactly what he meant and was flattered but found herself shy of admitting it.

"Stop it," he said. "This is me, remember? We've been thrown up on by the same puppies."

She laughed. "I was thinking of cleaning up diarrhea, myself. Balls and sick puppies don't belong in the same world, somehow."

"Ah, you've noticed that, have you? I couldn't agree more, and I prefer the puppies."

"You have looked a bit like you'd be happier pulling a plough when I've seen you long enough to notice, this evening."

He sighed. "I swear, I was thinking about turning tail and running like a rabbit before hounds when I saw Trivelda advancing on me tonight. Your appearance saved me, I think."

Lissar saw a courtier carrying an ariola in one hand hurrying down the long hall again, toward the banquet tables. Another was returning, laden plate in one hand, flower in the other. She wondered if they were allowed to lay their flowers down long enough to make handling plates a little more feasible-or perhaps they held the stems between their teeth as they served? She wanted to say something to Ossin, but could think of nothing.

She became aware that the prince was dancing them firmly away from the central knot of the figure. "Come," he said suddenly, and seized her by the hand. They left the hall almost at a run, down a corridor, and then the prince checked and swerved, like a hound on a scent, threw open a door, and ushered her out onto a small balcony.

It was a beautiful night; after three days of clouds the weather had broken, and now the stars looked nearer than her sparkling skirts, and the Moon was near full.

The prince dropped her hand, leaned on the balustrade, and heaved a great sigh through his open mouth. "I feel like howling like a dog," he said, and then turned and sat on the railing, bracing his hands beside him, looking up at her.

Lissar felt a tiny tremor begin, very deep inside her, deep in her blood and brain, nothing to do with the chill in the air. "Deerskin-" he began.

"No," she whispered. Louder, she said, "We should go back to your party." The tremor grew; she began to feel it in her knees, her hands, she twisted her hands in her glittering skirts.

"Not just yet," said the prince. "Trivelda will feel that my absence is more than paid for by your absence-she likes being the center of attention, you know, and you haven't even got a lot of courtiers dressed up like unicorns or vases of flowers or something for a competition she can understand." He stood up;, stepped toward her, loomed over her. The Moon was behind him, and he looked huge; and for the moment she forgot the many hours they had spent together with the puppies, when he had never looked like he filled the sky.... She stepped back. Her trembling must be visible now, but it was dark, and he would not notice. If she spoke he would hear it in her voice. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt frozen, and she was sick at her stomach, sick with her own knowledge of her own life, sick at standing on the balcony with Ossin when the Moon shone on them.

"Will you marry me?"

There was thunder in her ears, and before her eyes were the walls of a small round room hung in a dark stained pink that had once been rose-colored, and the dull brutal red was mirrored in a gleaming red pool on the floor where a silver-fawn dog lay motionless; and there was a terrible weight against her own body, blocking her vision, looming over her, blotting out the stars through the open door, and then a pain, pain pain pain pain-Some things grew no less with time. Some things were absolutes. Some things could not be gotten over, gotten round, forgotten, forgiven, made peace with, released.

-she did not quite scream. "No!" she said. "No! I cannot."

The prince put his hand to his face for a moment, and dropped it. He was deep in his own fears; he did not see, in the darkness, either her trembling or the shadows in her black eyes; he heard the anguish in her voice, but misread it utterly. It did not surprise him that she could not love him.

She remained where she was, unable to move, unable with what felt like the same paralysis of the limbs and the will that had left her helpless on the night that her father had opened the garden door. But Ossin did not know this; and when she remained where she was, he let himself hope that this meant that she was willing to listen to him.

"I love you, you know," he said conversationally, after a little pause. Through her own fear she thought she heard a tremor in his voice, but she scorned it, telling herself it was her own ears' failure. "Trivelda would be ... in some ways the easier choice; even my poor mother, I think, would not say 'better,' she merely wants me to make up my mind to marry someone. I might, a few months ago, have let myself be talked into Trivelda; I have always known that I would marry some day, and I would like to have children.

"I was beginning to think perhaps there was something wrong with me, that I could not fall in love with any real woman, any woman other than the woman of the Moon, whom I had dreamed of when I was a child. I know what they call you behind your back, but I do not believe it. Moonwoman would not raise puppies the hard way, staying up all night, night after night, till she's grey and snarly with exhaustion, and being puked on, and cleaning up six puppies' worth of vile yellow diarrhea. I believe you're as human as I am, and I'm glad of that, because I love you, and if you really were Moonwoman I wouldn't have the nerve. I have found out that I can love-and I won't marry anyone else now that I know."

Lissar heard this as if from a great distance, though she felt the sweet breath of the prince's words kiss her cheek; but they and he were not enough, and her own heart broke, for she loved him too, and could not bear this with that other, terrible knowledge of what had happened to her, what made her forever unfit for human love. Her heart broke open with a cry she heard herself give voice to, and the tears poured down her face as hot as the river of hell. "Oh, I cannot, I cannot!" She turned her face up to take one long last look at him, and the Moonlight fell full on her. Wonderingly Ossin raised a hand to touch her wet face; but she turned and fled from him.