The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories Read online

  She was covered by a long soft fur which was the elusive blue-grey of a storm cloud; and it belonged to no animal she knew. Stroking aside the long fine hairs, she touched the downy fur underneath and knew also that no dyer ever born could mix such a tint.

  She looked up. There were trees overhead—or at least she thought they were real trees; their branches met and intertwined so gracefully as to look deliberate, the bright bits of sky scattered more credibly by a painter’s inspired brush than by the cheerful haphazard hand of Nature.

  It seemed she was in a small meadow, and she lay on the ground on a white sheet spread over an improbably smooth and comfortable piece of greensward; but when she put her hand out and hesitantly touched the blades that sprang out from under the edge of the white cloth upon which she lay, they felt like real grass; and she snapped one off, and rubbed it between her fingers, and the smell was the good green smell she had always known. She closed her eyes and for a moment she almost remembered what her past life had been. She frowned, and her fingers closed down on the grass blades till their sap ran onto her hand; but the memory was gone before she found it. She opened her eyes, and her hand. At least the grass was the same here and wherever she had come from. She was obscurely comforted and looked around her with better heart. She did not realize that with any lifting of spirits in this land her hold on her previous life diminished; already there was only a thread left. That thread was her royalty, for nothing but death could make her forget that. But she did not know, and there was much here to catch her attention.

  The trees that surrounded her meadow and met over her head grew to a great height, with the proud arch of branches that reminded her of elms; but the luminous quality of the bark was like no elm she had seen. They stood in a ring around her, although she lay near one edge, the nearest tree being only a child’s somersault away, while the one opposite was several bounds distant for the fleetest deer; and she wondered if deer ever came to this graceful tended meadow. Beyond the ring of trees was a hedge: perhaps she was in a kind of ornamental garden; a very grand and ancient garden indeed, that had trees laid out as lesser gardens had flowerbeds, and had been watched over and cared for during so many years that the trees had grown to such a size and breadth. The hedge grew higher than her head, although no more than half the height of the trees; and it was starred with flowers, yellow, ivory, and white; and she thought perhaps they were responsible for the gentle sweet smell that pervaded the air.

  There were arches cut through the hedge, each of them tall enough for the tallest king with the highest crown to pass through without bending his head: four arches, as if indicating the four points of the compass. She looked at each of them slowly, and through them saw more close-trimmed grass, and flowers; through the third a fountain stood in the middle of what looked like a rock garden of subtle greys and chestnuts; and through the fourth she saw—people.

  She stood up, and the fur coverlet slipped away from her and fell in a noiseless heap at her feet. She found that her heart had risen in her throat and was beating so hard that she raised her hands as if to force it back down into her breast where it belonged. Her hands were shaking, and she dropped them; and her heart eventually subsided of its own accord. She stood looking at the people for a moment; their clothing was bright as jewelry in the green glen, and while they were too far away for her to distinguish faces, they seemed oblivious to her. She could not see what they were doing, as they moved back and forth in front of her open door; but there was something so lucid and precise about them that she was caught by the fancy of their being stones in some great necklace, the fastening of which with her dull eyes she could not quite make out.

  Then she looked calmly around her, wondering that since she was here in her nightgown, perhaps her robe and slippers were here too. She did not really relish introducing herself to these people she saw brief glorious bits of through the leaves of the hedge, with her hair down her back and her feet bare; but she would if she had to, for join them she must. How she came to be here, wherever here was, and why, and what she had been before—this was a thought that still made her unhappy when she stumbled over it, though the reasons got vaguer and vaguer—she would deal with later. At the moment, such thoughts would only make her heart thunder and her hands tremble again, which was unprincesslike.

  She did not find anything that seemed like the robe and slippers that had belonged to her—she was pretty sure they were blue and silver—but near where her feet had lain was something magnificently red, dark heart’s-blood red, now tangled negligently with the pale fur. When she picked it up it shook itself out into a long gown with a waterfall of a skirt and narrow sleeves edged with gold; and under it had been hidden small gold shoes with soles as tender as the soft grass. She put the dress on with great care, and laced the golden laces at waist and wrists; and put her feet in the golden shoes. She pulled her hair free of its braid, and shook it out, combing it with her fingers till it fell, she thought, more or less as it usually did; but she had nothing to put it up with. She shrugged, and it rippled down her back and mixed with the folds of her skirt.

  Then she walked, slowly, still half in her dream and half somewhere else that she could not remember, toward that arch in the hedge through which she saw the people. Just as she reached it she paused to pluck a flower, a white one, to give herself something to do with her hands besides hiding them in her skirt. She twirled it by the stem and its perfume fanned her face. She took a deep breath and stepped through the door of the hedge.

  The people turned their faces toward her at once: and yet there was nothing abrupt about their gesture, nothing of a group startled by a stranger, nothing suspicious or hostile in their wide and serene gaze. Several of the women curtsied; some were standing already, others rose to do so; and some of the men bowed. And again there was so much grace in their movements, and their greeting was so spontaneous, that Linadel no longer felt alone, or even uncertain: she was a member of this kind and courteous group. She did not know these people, and yet there had never been a time when she was not a part of them.

  She smiled back to their smiles, and then looked around her, as she was perfectly free to do because she belonged here. She had stepped through the opening in the hedge to find herself in a clearing surrounded by another hedge; and this hedge too was pierced with doorways into more meadows, green with grass and trees and bright with flowers and fountains and warm sleek rocks. In the meadow in which she now stood there was a ring of trees even taller than that which she had just left; and again their branches met and mingled high overhead so she could not see the sky except as scattered bits of blue, irregular as stars in a green heaven.

  This meadow was several times larger than the one which she had left; so while there were a number of people in it, and all of them well dressed and proud, and each of them an individual to recognize and respect, the effect was still of peace and quiet and space.

  She had walked a few steps forward as she looked, and she realized that more people were entering this ring of trees through the several arches in the hedge; no one was either oppressively still nor visibly restless, but as the minutes passed, Linadel felt that they were waiting for something; and that she was waiting too. Unconsciously she tucked the flower she held into her bodice; and her hands fell peacefully to her sides.

  No one had spoken a word, to her or to each other; but the silence was so easy she had thought nothing of its remaining unbroken, despite the slowly increasing numbers of these handsome clear-eyed people. But now a group of musicians had collected at one edge of the clearing and begun to play a high thin tune on flutes and pipes and strings, a tune that seemed somehow woven of the silence that had preceded it. The tune wandered over a wide and many-colored countryside, as the long-eyed bard who must first have played it wandered. Linadel could almost see him—almost—in his grey tunic and high soft leather boots wound round and crossed with long leather laces. Even more clearly she could see the country he traveled: it was a broad, rolling
, welcoming country; and every dip of meadow, every small grassy hollow held small blue flowers that nodded and tossed their heads from the tops of their long slender stems.

  As she listened, what the music showed her lost her for a moment from the ring of trees and the people she stood among; and so he was only a few steps away from her when she shook herself free of the green-eyed bard and saw him.

  “Welcome,” he said, and smiled: it was a smile he had never offered to anyone before, a smile he had saved only for her, knowing that someday he would find her; and he held out his hand.

  Linadel understood that smile at once, and put her hand in his; and the music changed so that the trees became pillars of sea-colored nephrite, white jade, and cloudy jasper; and the grass and flowers were a shining floor of pale agate and marble and chalcedony; and they were dancing, and all the other people turned each to another, and all were dancing with them.

  He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; and if her feet had not known what they were doing themselves, she must have tripped and stumbled. He was half a head taller than she, so that she had to tip her head back to look at him; and the strong golden line of his chin almost prevented her from raising her eyes any farther.

  His hair was black, so black that any light that fell upon it hid itself at once within the fine heavy waves and was never seen again. It was just long enough to touch the nape of his neck, to tumble over the tops of his ears, to brush his forehead; a tall broad forehead above eyes so blue that nothing else ever again could claim that color’s kinship. And those blue eyes were staring down into the upturned face of the most beautiful creature they had ever seen; and their owner was thinking that if his feet were not capable of looking after themselves, surely he would have tripped and stumbled.

  Linadel had no idea how long they continued thus, with the glimmering floor beneath them and the glowing pillars around them weaving rainbows in each other’s hair. Her ears heard nothing but the elegant warp and tender weft of the music; but still they spoke to each other about everything that mattered. When the music stopped at last, their understanding was complete.

  The sudden silence was as gentle and sympathetic as the music had been. Linadel noticed that once again she was standing in a circle of tall trees, and her feet pressed grass and small spangled flowers. It was not like waking from a dream as she stopped and turned and looked around her, but as if she stepped from one dream to the next; and he was still with her, standing beside her, holding her hand.

  They faced an arch in the hedge that, now she looked at it, was taller and broader than the others, and outlined in large flowers with long drooping petals of a subtle violet; their stems were almost turquoise. Linadel was sure the arches had all been the same size when she first looked at them, just as she was certain that the surrounding trees had formed a ring, whereas now it was obviously an oval, with the violet arch at one narrow edge.

  Two people stepped through that arch: a man and a woman. The man looked very much like him Linadel had just danced with, although his face was graver and the straightness of his shoulders suggested the strength to carry burdens rather than the careless strength of youth. Linadel was also sure that his eyes were less blue than her partner’s; they could not possibly be as blue.

  The woman was tall and slender; her face was so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at her. It was not the beauty that gave pain, but the serenity that rested within it, like a raindrop in a flower. Her hair was dark, her eyes the color of woodsmoke; and Linadel loved her at once.

  A long train of people followed these two, who paused, it seemed, just inside the threshold of the flowered hedge; but however many people came in and spilled to each side in vivid silken and jeweled waves, the grassy clearing was still uncrowded. At last all were inside, and for a moment all was motionless; and then the beautiful dark woman swept forward, and the falling shadows of the brocade she wore were as rich and lovely as any cloth Linadel had ever seen. She caught Linadel’s free hand in both hers and smiled, and she said: “Welcome. We are so happy to have you here.”

  Then the man who stood at Linadel’s side and held her hand raised it and kissed it, and said: “I am named Donathor; and these are my father and mother, the King of this land, and the Queen.”

  The King smiled almost as sweetly as his son; and he too kissed her hand and said, “Welcome.”

  “Donathor is our eldest son,” said the dark Queen, “and so he will be King after his father; when we leave you to cross the mountains and grow flowers in a quiet garden. You will be Queen, and we will come back at least once, for the christening of your first child, and bring you armsful of flowers, flowers that only our mountain air and water can produce.

  “You will meet Donathor’s brothers soon; but we have no daughters, much to our sorrow, and so our welcome to you is even greater than it would be to our eldest son’s chosen wife.” She caught her breath and opened her big eyes wide and for a moment she looked as young as Linadel; yet this woman’s beauty had no age, and it was hard to imagine her being able to count her life in years. But her eyes were as soft as a child’s as she said, “I am so pleased to have a girl to talk to again.” And her smile was a girl’s, and Linadel smiled back, and opened her mouth and heard herself saying something at last; and that something was just, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  But as she spoke she turned back to Donathor, who stood looking down at her as if he had never looked away since he had first taken her hand to dance with her; and perhaps he had not.

  Two more people approached: young girls, perhaps Linadel’s age. It was hard to assign anybody an age, Linadel thought, looking around her again. The King looked older than Donathor, yes, she could say that, but it seemed more a state of mind than anything she could see. The King’s skin was as golden as his son’s, and his black hair had no grey in it.

  So these young girls, if they were young girls, approached; and they were carrying a golden veil between them, a veil so light that it was hard to see until they were quite near. They threw it over Linadel, and it settled around her like a fine mesh of fire, and as a delicate gold veining on her white skin. When she shook her head to toss her hair back it ran over her shoulders like water, and Donathor had to squeeze his free hand close to his side to keep it from burying itself in those dark gold-flecked waves.

  “Hail,” said the two girls, their eyes shining like the golden veil. “Hail to Donathor and his bride, the next King and Queen! Hail Donathor and hail Linadel!”

  And the rest of the people in that glen took it up, and the shout swung through them like music, and they tossed it over their heads like a ball.

  Two more girls appeared; carrying long golden ribbons, and handed the two ends to the girls who had carried the veil, who now stood on either side of the little royal group of four: and then the ribbon was unwound, and the happy crowd stepped forward, and many white hands reached out to hold it; and soon a gold-edged path lay before them, stretching straight through the arch where the King and Queen had entered, and on and on, till Linadel could only see the people as blurs of color with two bits of thin gold unwinding swiftly before them, a strip of green between the gold, and greenness behind them. The ribbon stretched so far that she could no longer recognize it as golden; it was a sparkle of light and a boundary, the end of which she could not see. “Hail!” The cry still went near them, and then it was taken up by more and more people who stepped forward to seize the swift narrow gold. “Hail to the next King and Queen!”

  Then a silence swept back to them again, from where the gold ribbons must finally have halted, and it was a silence of waiting. The faces turned back toward the royal four, smiling and joyous faces, waiting for Donathor and Linadel to take the first step, so that the cry could be taken up again and thrown before them to where the end of the golden ribbons awaited them. They waited, smiling and expectant, and the King and Queen turned and bowed to their son and their new daughter, and stepped back for the young pair to precede them
.

  But Linadel turned a troubled face to her love, and she opened her mouth to speak, but could not think what she must say, and took instead several panting breaths that hurt her. “My parents,” she said at last, as if her lips could hardly form the words. “My parents, and my—my people. They are not here.” She could not help a rising inflection at the last, and she looked around at the people before her, not sure that they were not after all whom she meant—her people. They were her people—she knew it; and yet … again she tried to conjure up a picture of her mother’s face, and again she could not; and even that, now, told her what she did not want to know. “My parents,” she said at last, again, dully. “They must be here, and—I do not see them.” In the silence that soft mournful sentence walked as straight down the goldedged path as any foot might step; and as the people heard it as it passed them their hands dropped, and the golden ribbon drooped. An almost inaudible sigh rose up and pursued the sentence, and caught it, and wrapped it round.

  But only silence answered Linadel, and she shook herself free of Donathor’s blue eyes and tried to look at him as if his were only a face like other faces and she said: “Where are my parents?” and it was a last appeal. Then suddenly she found herself free of something that had held her till now, although she had not known she was held; and in her new freedom she trembled where she stood. She remembered her mother, and her father, and she remembered herself, and her people, her own people, whom she had known and loved for seventeen years; and she knew they were not the people who held the golden ribbons.

  It was the dark Queen who answered her at last: “Child, they are not here.”

  Linadel stared at that serene and lovely countenance and saw the serenity flicker, like the shadow of a butterfly’s wings over a still lake. Then she asked the question to which she now, terribly, knew the answer, and as she spoke she knew she was pronouncing her own doom: “Where am I?” she said.