Deerskin - Robin McKinley

She had looked out over the clipped and regulated expanse and thought that this was not a great deal better than the four flights of stain she was seeking to escape.

And, standing on the wide shallow marble steps, she had wondered what the high wall to the left was, with ivy and clematis creeping up it so prettily; but she had not cared much, for she was already rejecting the minister's exotic suite in her mind.

When she had gone back indoors through the receiving-room, past the statue, she had begun, between the sixth and seventh rooms, to arrange what she would need to say to the minister to get what she wanted. That was before she found the tower room, and the wild garden.

But now she was changing her decision, standing on the other side of the high mysterious wall. Great ragged leaves on thick stalks stood shoulder-high on that side; yellow sunbursts of flowers erupted from them, and shorter spikes of pink and lavender flowers spilled out in front of them. A small graceful tree stood against the wall, over which rioted the ivy and clematis so tidily cut back on the other side. In the center she could see where paths had once been laid out, to demarcate, she thought, an herb garden; she could smell some of the herbs growing still, green and gentle or spicy and vivid, though she could not give names to them. One path looked as if it led to the small tree; perhaps there was a door in the wall there, buried under the tiny grasping hands of ivy and the small curling stems of clematis seeking purchase. The garden was walled all around; against the wall opposite the one she had seen from the other side a tangle of roses stood, leggy as fleethound puppies, sadly in need of some knowledgeable pruning.

Perhaps this was something she could learn: to prune roses, to recognize herbs from weeds and cultivate the one and pull up the other. Between the herb garden and the flower beds there was plenty of room for rolling and leaping and the chasing of balls, even for a dog as large and quick as Ash was becoming; Lissar wondered why such a lovely garden had been neglected for so long. But it did not matter.

For the moment she looked at the high wall around her garden with satisfaction; Ash was no more than half grown and already she could leap higher than Lissar's head. The little round room, for her, and the big walled garden, for Ash, made her new chambers perfect. The other rooms mattered little, but ... it would probably be wise not to ask that the statue be removed; she could learn to ignore it. And perhaps a few pillows could stun the purple of that couch.

The minister had been trying to break into her reflections for several minutes; she'd heard a grunt of suppressed protest when her hand had first touched the plain door next to the extravagant sofa. She turned to him gravely as Ash disappeared into the undergrowth, waving stems marking her passage. She was now willing to hear, and to pretend to listen, to what he might have to say, now that she had found what she was looking for.

"I am terribly sorry, princess," said the minister. "I wished you to see your new rooms at once, and so the work of preparation was not complete; the door to this place was to have been closed off."

"I am very glad it was not," said Lissar. "I will want the little round chamber set up as my bedroom, and this garden is perfect for Ash. It is for Ash that I wished to move to the ground floor, you understand," she explained, kindly, as he had obviously not taken this in the first time she spoke to him. "Ash is only a puppy, and it will make her training much easier."

The minister's jaw dropped. He looked toward Ash, who had re-emerged from the shrubbery, and was defecating politely by the side of one of the overgrown paths, flagged with the same rough-surfaced stone as the three small stairs down to the base of the tower. He jerked his eyes away from this edifying sight, and worked his lips once or twice before any words emerged.

"But-princess-" he said, or gabbled, "the tower chamber will-it is very small, and it will be damp, and there is only the one window, and the ceiling is so very low, and the walls are not smooth, and enormously thick, they will be very oppressive, and surely one of your waiting-women can-er-attend your dog out-of-doors?"

Lissar refrained from laughing. She had, it was true, acquired waiting-women with her new rooms, or so it-or rather they-appeared; and the minister wished delicately to claim their assignment also. But Lissar knew that he had not been the only one looking her over, and knew also that he would not have been able to arrange for her new rooms entirely by himself and in secret. Some of the waiting-women were ladies, and had assigned themselves; some had been maneuvered into position by other ministers. Since the presence, and hypothetical usefulness, of waiting-women appealed to Lissar about as strongly as did the statue in the hall, it was not a point she felt compelled to dwell on.

"The bed-chamber you so beautifully set up for me is too large," said Lissar firmly, "and while I thank you very much," here she dropped a tiny curtsey-"the round room will suit me much better. I want a bed only so wide that my hands can touch either side simultaneously. And the rough walls can be hung over with rugs and drapes, pink, I think, because I like pink, which will also brighten it despite the one window and thick walls. These, with the fire that will be in the grate, will take care of the dampness. My waiting-women, perhaps, can make use of the bed-chamber."

The minister swallowed hard. He had little experience of dealing with anyone so apparently unmotivated by greed. He could not think what to do in this instance, and so in confusion and dismay he acquiesced, assuming he could regain lost ground-for he felt sure that somehow he had lost ground-later. He was too good a player to withdraw; this was but a pause to recoup.

In this he was mistaken, for in awakening to the fact that she had a mind to use, Lissar was discovering the pleasure of using it. And by using it, she came to know it.

Had Ash not come to her, she might have discovered greed instead, for her world as she understood it had ended with her mother's death; and what she had learned by that death was that she was alone, and had always been alone, and had grown accustomed to it without knowing what she was accustoming herself to.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came the rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing. She was fortunate, for Ash happened to her before the minister or his kind did. She understood that she was fortunate, but not for years would she understand how fortunate; she did not see, because she already had Ash, the threat that the minister really was, behind the machinations she saw quite well enough to wish to avoid.

The little tower room was furnished as she wished; and she herself began the work of reclaiming the garden, although she was frustrated in this for some time, since she could only guess at how to do what needed to be done. There was no one to ask; her muddy fingers and green-stained skirt-knees and hems horrified the waiting-women, whose ideas of gardening began and ended with baskets full of cut flowers and graceful pairs of shears specially made for a lady's soft delicate hands.

Lissar, indeed, proved so odd in so many ways that one or two of the waiting-women decided at once that the game was not worth the candle, and disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. Some of the others stayed for the pleasure of a turn in the bed-chamber that had been outfitted for a princess.

A few of the waiting-women and one or two of the ministers (not including the one whose statue continued to grace the princess's receiving-room) had enough common sense to recognize what was under their noses, and cultivated relationships with Ash. Lissar, who was learning many things, rapidly formed a working definition of expediency, but could nonetheless not quite harden her heart against anyone who smiled at her dog. Ash, who thought that people existed to be playmates for puppies, was only too happy to be cultivated.

Lissar became friends with one of her ladies, not a great many years older than herself, who obviously was not pretending her affection for Ash, nor her admiration for a fleethound's beauty. It was novel and interesting to have a human friend, Lissar found, although a little alarming; she was never quite sure what she could say to Viaka. Viaka laughed, sometimes, at the things Lissar said, and although her laughter was never unkind, Lissar was puzzled that she had laughed at all, and thought it was perhaps because she, Lissar, had had so comparatively little practice talking to other people. But when she suggested this to Viaka, Viaka became so distressed that Lissar stopped in the middle of what she was saying. There was an unhappy little pause, and then Viaka patted Lissar's cheek and said, "You mustn't mind my laughing; I am a very frivolous person. Everyone knows that." But her eyes were sad as she said it, and not frivolous at all.

Viaka was kind and good-natured, and pleasant to have around, and Lissar began to rely on her without, at first, intending to, or even realizing what she was doing. It became Viaka who went with Lissar once a week to visit her old nursemaid, who now lived in a little comfortable room not far from where the old nursery was. The nursery itself had become something of a boxroom, and was mostly shut up, but the room Hurra now occupied was brighter and cosier than the nursery had ever been, and when Lissar suggested, quite gently, that the last flight of stairs might be carpeted, it was done.

Hurra sat rocking in her favorite chair, knitting, sometimes, her yarns almost always some shade of blue, which had been the queen's favorite color. Sometimes she only sat and rocked and stared at her hands. Often she talked to herself. The most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, she murmured. The most beautiful.... She would seize the hands of anyone who came too near her, and tell stories of the dead queen, of her beauty and charm, of how the king loved her, how neither he nor his kingdom would ever be the same again.

Lissar sat and stared out the window that Hurra never seemed to notice, and endured the stories of her mother; but it was Viaka's hands that Hurra held, Viaka's eyes she fixed her bright mad gaze on. Lissar tucked her own hands under Ash's ears, as if to protect her dog from the tales; she wished she could protect herself.

Ash sat with her head in Lissar's lap (which was all that would fit any more), and waited till it was time to leave. Lissar did not realize how much Viaka learned of what Lissar's life had been by listening to Hurra's stories.

Lissar could not stop the visits to her old nursemaid; she was the only visitor the old woman had, barring the maid who opened and closed the curtains, and made up the bed, and brought food and clean water and linen and took away what was dirty and discarded. Only Lissar and Viaka and an under-maid cared that the last flight of stairs was now carpeted. But Lissar could not forget that Hurra had been all that she had had for all the years of her life till the death of her mother. She understood, now, what Hurra had really been to her, all those years, and she to Hurra; but that did not change the fact that it was Hurra who had fed and dressed and looked after her. And Lissar listened to the low stumbling intense syllables of Hurra~s endless, repetitive tales, and felt herself ground like wheat between stones.

But there were many things that even her now unshackled mind could not tell her, for it had no knowledge to work with; and Viaka could tell her some of these, gently, as if it were not surprising that Lissar did not know them. And Viaka was wise enough to know that it was indeed not surprising. Viaka knew about family; and it was from this knowledge, and not merely because of her own mad Aunt Rcho, that she could visit Hurra, and hold the old hands, and let the stories wash over her.

It was near Ash's first birthday that the Moon woke Lissar's body to its womanhood for the first time; Viaka, suppressing her misgivings that Lissar had come to it so late, told her what the blood meant, and that it was no wound-or that it was a wound without cure. Lissar grew in stature as well, as if catching up for the years pent in the nursery, when she should have been learning to be a young woman; and then came the first days when some of the grand visitors to her father's hall brought gifts to curry the princess's favor as well.

FIVE

LISSAR SAW LITTLE OF HER FATHER DURING THIS TIME; LITTLE

because she wished it so and he did not require otherwise. By the time of the first anniversary of his wife's death, the king was going out among his people again and his ministers no longer ruled the country alone. One or two of them who were inclined to resist this change found themselves rewarded for their deep devotion to their land and their king by the gift of country estates that urgently needed setting in order, which happened to lie at some considerable remove from the king's court.

The king was thinner than he had been, and at first, when his people saw him, he walked a little stooped, like an old man. But as the months passed he began to take on his old strength, though the deep lines on his face remained, and he wore few colors, even for festivals appearing in black and grey and white.

By the time Lissar was almost seventeen and her mother had been dead for two years, the kingdom was speaking more and more openly of the hope that their king would marry again, a strong man in his prime as he was, and with, many said, a new, ethereal beauty from the great grief he had suffered and survived.

Lissar began to be obliged occasionally to attend royal dinners, when either some visiting dignitary wished to see her, or some of her father's ministers wished such a dignitary to see her. The summons never seemed to come from the king himself, or so the phrasing led her to guess, and wonder: "the greetings and deep respects of Lord Someone Important, who wishes the princess Lissla Lissar to understand that her father the King requests and commands her attendance upon him for the occasion of the dinner to honor the arrival of Significant Personage Someone, from the county or country of Wherever."