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.