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.