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.
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.