The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories Read online

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 reassuring 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 reassuring himself, Alora and Linadel, wandering far from the royal gardens, discovered a little meadow whose bright grass 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 grass 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 passed 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.

  Alora was correct in thinking that her daughter was anticipating being a queen without a king to argue official questions and complain of the humorlessness of ministers with. The Princess found being a princess a heavy task, since—as her parents had long recognized—she couldn’t help taking her royal responsibilities seriously. She was the only one there was. She had often thought, wistfully, that it would be a very nice thing to have brothers and sisters—as all her cousins did—since being eldest, and heir apparent, couldn’t be nearly as bad as being the only one at all. Two years before, when the question of Antin was being discussed, she had also had her first real glimpse of how it was to be where she was as seen from another point of view. This glimpse had left a lasting impression. She had known at once that he wanted no part of her—and known too that his feeling had nothing personal to her in it: it was focused on the position she occupied. And it had come as something of a shock.

  She still knew, as she had always known, that she was an ordinary girl; after Antin she also knew that it didn’t matter. The princess mattered. And the queen who would eventually reign mattered. And so she took more walks alone, and spent more afternoons—when her political lessons allowed it—in dusty disused towers and forgotten wings of the castle, where she could play hopscotch if she felt like it, and sing silly songs that had hundreds of verses to the resident barn swallows, who didn’t mind her in the least. Even this amusement her conscience frequently denied her, or at any rate it took its revenge later by keeping her up late at night studying her country’s history, and geography, and biographies of its great men and women; which she found very interesting, but not very relaxing.

  In the meanwhile Lirrah married a nice young earl who had earnestness enough for two, at least, if not necessarily brains; and a year later they produced a daughter. Linadel thought to herself: “I’ll have to bring her to court when she gets a little older; she may be Queen after me.” The royal family attended the christening, of course; and little Silera became Linadel’s first godchild. Shortly after that, Antin declared his engagement with the Viscount of Leed’s daughter, Colly.

  Linadel’s seventeenth birthday was going to be a holiday the like of which none had ever seen before—not even the day of her christening would be able to compare with it, and those fortunate enough to remember that occasion were still talking about it. Royal birthdays were always splendid fun anyway; and since the royal family only celebrated two a year, no one ever got bored with them. Gilvan’s and Alora’s birthdays were only ten days apart, and the celebration was held on the Queen’s birthday. “I can wait,” Gilvan always said during the annual token argument about it. “I’m twelve years older than you are, what do I care about ten days?”

  Linadel’s birthday came in early autumn, in that breath of time between harvest and the break in the weather that means winter is only weeks away. The King and Queen began planning for it as soon as their own birthday—which came about the time of the first real thaw in the spring, so that the celebrations were occasionally enlivened by the Nerel River, which ran near the palace and through the town, choosing to overflow its banks, usually over the parade route—was safely past. But the plans for the year that Linadel would be seventeen had a certain desperation to them that no one admitted but everyone felt. Everyone knew—Linadel herself included, though she could not remember having been told, and her mother certainly had never mentioned it to her—that the Queen’s only sister had disappeared the morning of their seventeenth birthday; and no one thought it surprising that Alora looked paler than she otherwise ought, that summer before her daughter turned seventeen. She, poor lady, assumed that she hid her fears well enough that none noticed, since none spoke to her of being a little off her looks
, and was anything troubling her? And for this kindly conspiracy she was so grateful that she wasn’t quite as pale as she might have been.

  But far from the palace, far enough away that even a wind-borne whisper could not make the journey, people spoke to each other more openly than they had ever dared when it was merely their own or their neighbors’ children that were threatened. “She is our princess—they—they could not.”

  “They will not care for that: she is too beautiful.”

  “But she is the only one.”

  “They will not care.”

  And the plans for the birthday grew more and more elaborate under the pressure of too much wild energy, from the love her people had for their only princess.

  It was no secret among the royal three that a royal birthday party was for the pleasure of the people, and a nuisance to its subject. Alora and Gilvan had always arranged Linadel’s for her, even after she was old enough to take some reluctant interest in it, so that she need be harassed by no more than the day itself, and not by thinking about it for six months previous. But this year she took an active part in the plotting and planning, and took fewer long solitary walks than had been her habit for the last several years. Alora thought, rather sadly, with the front of her mind what she had often thought before: that Linadel was growing up too quickly, whether her parents would or nay; and was not aware that in the back of her mind she was relieved to have her only daughter readily under her eye so much of the time. But Gilvan understood, and thanked his daughter silently for it; and Linadel acknowledged his understanding by not meeting her father’s eyes.

  The summer months passed, and the preoccupation with the coming birthday bode fair to turn it into a day the like of which nobody who had ever lived in any country could have recalled. There were almost no judicial cases to be considered, because everyone was too preoccupied either to get into mischief or to complain about their neighbors. Even the court counselors, ministers, and sundry assistants stumbled over their florid phrases and seemed to be thinking about something else; normally endless discussions of precedence and rule between those of opposite persuasions trailed off into vague nods and indefinite adjournments. The scrutiny that Princess Linadel was under spread to include her parents.

  King Gilvan, who should have been well into middle age, was still tall and straight and handsome (as befitted Linadel’s father); and his devotion to his people was strong enough to force him into a vast and apparently stolid patience, which had not been in his nature at all to begin with; and yet in spite of this he was never bitter, and had retained the tendency of his young manhood to be humorous whenever he thought he could get away with it. Queen Alora was quick and kind, as she had been since she was a child, and grew only a little more finedrawn and fragile with age, and no less beautiful (as befitted Linadel’s mother), but much harder to read; because as she understood more and more about her people, she did not wish to distress them by allowing them to see how much she understood.

  And Linadel was hourly more beautiful till even those who had seen her daily since she was a baby were struck by it as if they had never seen her before; although it seemed in latter days that only her father could make her laugh.

  The week before the birthday was stretched, minute by minute, as tight as a girth on a straining horse. Even the marketplace was subdued, though usually the echoes of argument and abuse, conversation, flattery, and general cheerfulness flew over the entire town like a flock of birds. Usually it was noisier before a holiday, as everyone made last-minute adjustments in their fancy dress. The Queen had no sleep at all, for whenever she closed her eyes she saw nothing but blue flowers; saw them growing in across the palace windowsills, out of jars on her dressing table, in urns at the high table where they ate their formal meals; and once she saw the scarlet carpet that lay before the thrones in the audience room turn into a field of little blue flowers on stems so tall that they reached the knees of the King and Queen and Princess who sat high above the floor on a carnelian dais.

  Gilvan wasn’t sleeping too well either, although dreams of blue flowers were not a part of his portion; but when he woke up and looked around, in starlight or moonlight, he could see the glint of the Queen’s open eyes as she lay motionless on the bed beside him. Sometimes if he spoke to her she would close her eyes to please him, and try to think of yellow chrysanthemums and white horses and crimson maple leaves until his breathing told her he was asleep again and she could open her eyes.

  Linadel, who had originally thought that she was comforting everybody else and especially her mother, found that tension was contagious, and began spending many night hours kneeling on the windowseat and peering out over the broad sill of her bedroom window. It looked out over the vast palace gardens, and the river beyond, and the town beyond that, and behind it the forested hills; and there was a great deal of uninterrupted sky over them all. She looked up, mostly, because she did not want to be reminded of the life she led in those gardens, along that river, and with the people of the town—her people; so she picked out the constellations she had learned when she was a small child, and thought of the stories that went with them. But she was careful to be in bed, and at least apparently asleep, when a lady-in-waiting—whoever was due for the privilege this fortnight—came to wake her in the morning.

  The day before the Princess’s Day was clear and fine, with a sky of that hard and infinite blue that guarantees good weather for a week following. The town houses were already draped in bouquets of flowers and bright-colored ribbons, and the parade route marked with banners worked with the royal crest, and with great baskets of flower petals—presently covered with tight-fitting lids—that the people who tomorrow would line the way could scatter in their Princess’s path. The last sign of preparation would be the royal bodyguards, already dressed in their finest uniforms and glittering with gold braid and the topazes of their office, coming round in pairs to unstrap the baskets.

  Alora often went to her daughter’s room just before bedtime, and stayed to talk for a few minutes after the current lady-in-waiting in charge of evening preparations had been dismissed and Linadel was brushing and braiding her long smoky hair herself; but this night her mother lingered to tuck her in—which she hadn’t done since the eight-year-old Linadel had become sensitive about her dignity—and to sit on the foot of the bed. Neither of them said anything. The sky was blocked from Linadel’s sight as she lay back on her pillows, but she watched her mother looking out the window and wondered which Alora’s favorite stars were, and if they were the same as her own.

  The Queen sighed and stirred, and bent over Linadel to kiss her good night once more. “Sleep well, dear heart. It will be a long day tomorrow, and longest for you.” She turned away and left her daughter’s room at just the proper pace, and without looking back; as she passed the threshold she cocked her head just a little to one side to suggest casualness, and Linadel’s heart went out to her.

  Dawn was hardly grey in the sky when Linadel’s favorite lady-in-waiting hurried into the Princess’s grand bedroom to awaken her young mistress. The parade would begin shortly after the sun was well up, and there was breakfast to be coaxed into her—she didn’t like to eat much on these very early mornings, but had learned the hard way that she’d be exhausted by noontime if she did not—and a great deal of dressing and over-dressing and pinning, draping, combing, and last-minute rearranging to be done. The lady was almost as young as her mistress, and hadn’t paid too much attention to the fears of her elders about princesses and seventeenth birthdays—which was one reason why Linadel had found her so restful to have around recently. But she was hardly across the threshold when she noticed that Linadel’s bed was empty.

  She looked around, trying to feel only surprised, trying to think that the Princess had merely awakened already and was waiting for her; but she saw no one. She took the few dreadful steps between her and the bed and stared down at the small blue flowers scattered across the pillow: and then she screamed, screamed again,
and wrapped her arms around her body, for it felt as though her heart would burst out; and she turned and hurled herself out of that haunted room.

  The Queen could not have heard the waiting-woman’s scream, for their room was several corridors away. But a shiver ran through her at that moment nonetheless, and she stood up blindly from where she had been sitting near the window, and went to the Princess’s room. Gilvan, who had been awake nearly as long as she, and staring moodily with her at the perfect sky, and the soft sunrise coloring it, with no word exchanged between them, rose up and followed her.

  Alora crossed the threshold to her daughter’s room first. After the lady-in-waiting had fled, a strange implacable silence, thick as water, had flowed into that room and spread out into the corridor beyond. Alora stood like a statue with her face turned to the Princess’s empty bed for just a few moments, long enough for Gilvan to reach her when she put her hands over her face and fainted.

  PART TWO

  LINADEL HAD NO idea where she was when she woke up; but when she opened her eyes and turned her head, expecting to shrug off the dream that held her, the dream continued. She had thought that it should be the morning of her seventeenth birthday, but … even as she thought this the truth of it eluded her. Her mother had sat on the foot of her bed last night … hadn’t she? She must remember her mother.

  The pillowslip under her cheek was silk—if it were cloth at all—so soft that it was unimaginable that it had ever been woven: it must have just grown, like a flower. The lace that edged it was a fragile beautiful pattern totally unfamiliar to her: she was sure her fingers had never worked it, nor her mother’s nor any of the court ladies’. She did remember with utter certainty that she was a princess: and no royal cheek ever touched a pillowslip of less than aristocratic origins. Her thoughts wavered again. She wished terribly that she could remember her mother’s face: not remembering made her feel far more forlorn than any strangeness of her surroundings could do.