Deerskin by Robin McKinley
Lissar found it incomprehensibly odd that a kennel-girl should pull the straw out of her hair and dust the puppy fur off her backside and put on a fancy dress and go to a ball. It was not how her father’s court had been run.… “Not a hunting master with a rather large house,” Ossin had said. Beech, the first huntswoman, was going to the ball. Beech, who, at the height of hunting season, stopped taking her leaders to her room, and unrolled a mattress in the pack’s stall. During the winter, when everyone relaxed (and recuperated), she would go back upstairs again. All of the kennel folk slept with a few special dogs bestowed around them on their ordinary human beds; it seemed, upon reflection, that since Lissar had seven dogs special to her it was more efficient for her to sleep with them instead of the other way around. She wondered if the story of her sleeping most nights out-of-doors with her seven special dogs had travelled beyond the confines of the kennels.
The satin dress was very beautiful, a dark bright red with ribbons and cascades of lace around the neckline; but she did not want to wear it, with her rough hands going shh ssshhh every time her fingers brushed the skirts.
The second dress was blue, light as cobwebs, with insets of paler blue and lavender; but it was a dress for a young girl, whose worst nightmares contained fantastic creatures and undefined fears never met in waking life, and whose dreams were full of hope.
The third dress was golden, vivid as fire, with gold brocade, a dress for a princess to stand and have her portrait taken in, not for a kennel-girl to wear, even if she has combed her hair and washed her hands. Even if she had once been such a princess, with her soft uncallused hand resting on her dog’s neck. Especially because she had once been such a princess.
The fourth was the one she would wear. It was silver-grey, a few shades darker than Ash’s fur, and it shimmered like Moonlight in a mist. The skirt was very full, and soft; her hands stroked it soundlessly. The bodice was cut simply; no ribbons or brocade. It was, however, sewn all over with tiny, twinkling stones, colorless, almost invisible, but radiant as soon as the light touched them. This was the dress she would wear, although her hands shook as she held it up.
The queen’s messenger was back in the morning, bowing as he accepted three dress-sacks, and with a roll of brown paper under his arm, upon which he took tracings of Lissar’s feet and hands, “that my lady’s shoes and gloves may be made to fit.”
The prince might decry balls in general and a ball for Trivelda in particular, but the atmosphere through and around the yellow city over the next sennight took on a distinctive, festive cast, which Lissar now knew why she recognized.
Lilac, whose parents, it turned out, were not such small farmers after all, nor quite so angry with her for running off to the king’s city, would be attending the ball in a gown not begged from queen or princess but bought with money they sent her, to purchase the work of a local seamstress. “Fortunately Marigold is a friend of mine,” Lilac said; “all the seamstresses are swamped, and my gown isn’t nearly as grand a piece of work as the court women’s. Indeed, you know,” she added, showing an uncharacteristic hesitancy in her speech, “I’ll have money left over, if there’s anything you need and don’t want, you know, to ask for; I don’t need it, but if I send money home my parents will be disappointed.”
Lissar told her, equally hesitatingly, about the gloves and shoes. There was a barely noticeable pause before Lilac said, in her usual tone, “You are lucky. I’ve known one or two people who’ve shown up barefoot. Usually there’s this terrific run on plain slippers just before a ball, for everyone who has borrowed or been given a dress from someone at the court, it’s pretty simple to make a dress that doesn’t quite fit do well enough, but shoes are much harder, especially if you are going to dance in them.”
“What happens at a grand ball when someone comes barefoot?” said Lissar, fascinated, remembering the courtiers of her childhood.
“What happens?” said Lilac, puzzled. “I don’t know, really, this is my first ball here too; I’ve just heard the stories. Their feet get sore, I suppose, and perhaps they’re very careful to choose graceful dancing-partners. Ask Redthorn; his wife is one of them, though I don’t see Redthorn as being that light on his feet.”
Lilac, as usual, seemed to know everything that was happening in the city, as well as all the details about the ball itself. Lissar longed to ask her … why the queen might have sent four ball-gowns to a kennel-girl; but she did not. Surely the queen had better sense than to believe that Moonwoman might take a job in a kennel, even a royal kennel. Ossin had never said what his mother had felt about the whole tale of the Moonwoman; only that she noticed it had no strong queens in it. The king rode out in the hunting-parties occasionally, the princess too; the queen stayed mostly at home, on the ground. Lilac had said once, kindly but pityingly, that the queen found horses a bit alarming.
Lilac offered to dress Lissar’s hair for the ball; Lissar remembered, suddenly, a neck-wearying headdress she had once worn, so heavy and ornate she had felt it would slowly crush her down, till she lay on the ground to rest her head. And yet it was far simpler than some she had seen on the other ladies’ heads, structures pinioned to the crown of the skull, the hair scraped over them, with hairpieces attached, adding bulk and weight, if the hair growing on the head proved insufficient, as it inevitably did.
As Lissar thought of this, Lilac had untwisted the braid Lissar commonly kept her hair contained in, and was stroking a shining handful with a brush, saying, “I’ve wanted an excuse to do something with your hair, Deerskin, it’s such an extraordinary color.”
“White,” said Lissar. “Nothing extraordinary about white.”
“Old people’s hair isn’t like this,” said Lilac, thoughtfully. “Yours is almost iridescent. It breaks light like a prism.”
Lissar tipped her head up to look at her friend. “You’re imagining things,” she said.
Lilac took a fresh grip, gently moving Lissar’s head till she faced front, away from her, again. “We call it—imagining things—following the Moon,” she said. “Children are natural Moon-followers. Some of us grow out of it more than others. I’m not known for it, myself,” she added.
There was a little pause. Lissar, with a small effort of will, relaxed against Lilac’s hands and deliberately closed her eyes. “Just keep it simple, please,” she said. “I want to know it’s still my hair when you’re done.”
Lilac laughed. “You needn’t worry! You’d need a real hairdresser for the kind of thing you mean. Trivelda was wearing a menagerie, the last time she was here—birds and deer and gods know what all—these little statues, worked into this net thing she was wearing on her head. It was quite extraordinary. It’s become a sort of legend. The joke was that it was as near as she ever got to real animals … you can’t count her lap-dogs. No one has ever seen one walk on its own, and she has them bathed every day, and they wear her perfume.
“Veeery simple,” she said after a moment. “All I have to do is decide what color ribbons.” She opened the little bag she’d arrived wearing round her neck; a visual cacophony of ribbons poured out: ribbons thin as a thread, as wide as the thickness of three fingers, ribbons of all colors, ribbons woven of other ribbons, ribbons of silk and velvet, ribbons with tiny embroidered figures and patterns, ribbons with straight edges, ribbons with scalloped edges, ribbons of lace.
“Mercy!” said Lissar, sitting up.
“Oh, Marigold let me borrow these. I’ll take back what we don’t want. Now, your dress is silver, is it not? Burgundy in your hair, then, and black like your eyes, and … let’s see … maybe the palest pink, to set off your complexion. The palest pink. If it weren’t for your hair I’d say your skin was white. … Now hold still.” Her hands began braiding. “Everyone thinks this is it, you see. That’s why everyone is so excited about this particular ball. I don’t think anyone will come barefoot to this one.”
“This is it?” said Lissar, finding herself enjoying having her hair brushed, like one of the dog
“Oh, that Ossin will offer for Trivelda. It’s no secret that the king and queen are impatient to marry him off; he’s gone twenty-five, you know, and they want the ordinary sort of grandchildren, not the kind that bark and have four legs, and besides, there’s Camilla, who will turn seventeen in the spring, and there’s this very tiresome tradition that the royal heir is supposed to marry first.
“There’s an even more tiresome tradition that all noble families are supposed to marry off their children in chronological order, but it’s really only the heirs that anyone pays much attention to. Ossin knows this of course—so does Camilla. Cofta and Clem are afraid she’s getting too fond of that pretty count, he knows so well how to be charming and she’s so young, and if they sent him away it might just make it all worse. But they can’t really do much about pushing her elsewhere till Ossin is officially done with. And Ossin’s fond of his sister, and likes Dorl even less than his parents do.”
Lissar found herself strangely dismayed by this news, and the long gentle strokes of the hairbrush, and smaller busyness of fingers plaiting, suddenly annoyed her. “But he doesn’t like Trivelda.”
Lilac chuckled. “How much do you think that has to do with it?”
“They don’t want Camilla to marry Dorl.”
“That’s different. Dorl really isn’t much except charm—and old blood—and neither of those, even, is laid very thick. There are very few real princesses around, or even wealthy farmers’ daughters, and most of them have gotten married while the prince has been out hunting his dogs.”
“Chasing the Moonwoman,” murmured Lissar.
“Eh?”
“Nothing.”
“It won’t be so bad because they’ll have nothing to do with one another. It would be much worse if she wanted to ride and hunt; she’s an appalling rider, hates horses, and her idea of a dog … well, those things of hers look like breakfast-rolls with hair. And they all bark, if you want to call it barking. Anyway, she’ll stay out of the barns—and kennels—and he’ll stay out of the drawing-rooms. Knowing Ossin, he’ll be glad of the excuse, come to that.”
“It doesn’t sound … very satisfying,” said Lissar.
Lilac laughed. Ash pricked her ears. “Deerskin, I’ve caught you out at last; you’re a romantic. I would never have guessed. Do you know, I think I want a shade a little rosier than the palest pink after all. I have a brooch, I’ll loan it to you, it will look perfect right here,” and she stabbed a finger at the side of Lissar’s head.
“You’re a wealthy farmer’s daughter,” said Lissar, still distressed that Ossin should be thrown away on a princess with hairy breakfast-rolls for dogs.
“Hmm? What?” said Lilac, fingers busy. “Who, me? Marry Ossin? In the first place, he wouldn’t have me. In the second place his parents wouldn’t have me. My parents aren’t that wealthy, and I’m still a stable-girl. And third, I wouldn’t have him. I know he’s admirable in every way and the country is lucky to have him to look forward to as their next king. But he’s so admirable he’s boring. I don’t think he’s ever been drunk in his life, or broken a window when he was a boy playing hurlfast, or spoken an unmerited harsh word. He’s so responsible. Ugly, too.”
Lissar, stung, said, “He’s not ugly.”
Lilac, now working from the front, paused and looked into Lissar’s face. There was a tight little pause, while Lissar remembered the nights together in the puppies’ pen, guessing that that story would have been heard in the stables. Had she ever told Lilac herself? She couldn’t remember.
Lilac, irrepressible, started to smile. “You marry him,” she said.
TWENTY-NINE
NOT ONLY SHOES AND GLOVES ARRIVED IN THE FINAL PACKAGE FROM the queen, but a cloak as well; and on the evening as Lissar was bundling everything up to meet Lilac in the room of the Gold House they had been assigned for their final toilettes (to keep the dog- and horse-hair down to a minimum, one short hall’s rooms had been given over to those of the animal staff who wished to come to the ball), something else arrived: a small package, wrapped in a white cloth, left on the common-room table again, with only a slip of paper with her name, Deerskin, on it.
“This must be for you,” said Hela, catching her as she came downstairs, explaining to Ash that she would be back soon and meanwhile wouldn’t she prefer to stay with the puppies, nearly full-grown now and not puppies except by the glints in their eyes and their tendency to forget their training for no reason beyond sunshine, or rain, or the shadow of a bird’s wing, or the fascination of their own tails, and of being alive and frisky. Ash was not convinced. Her back was humped and her tail between her legs as Lissar put her hand on her rump and pushed her through the half-door. The puppies were delighted to see their leader, and fawned at her feet, waiting to see if she would stoop to playing with them, or if she would demand they leave her alone. Lissar left them to it.
“I think this is probably yours,” Hela said again, emerging from the common-room, and held out the parcel. The flowing hand that had written Deerskin was both graceful and legible. “Yes,” said Lissar; “that is my name on it.”
“Ah,” said Hela. “We guessed. The rest of us can’t read, you know.”
Lissar looked up, startled.
“What cause for us to learn?” said Hela, smiling at Lissar’s expression, and returned to the common-room.
“We’ll want to hear all about it,” Berry called, as she went hastily past the door.
Lilac was already dressed when Lissar arrived. “Anyone would think you didn’t want to come,” she said, almost cross. “The rest have gone before us. We’ll be late, and I want to see Trivelda come in. I want to see what she has thought up, after the menagerie last time.… What’s that?”—as the bundle Hela had given her dropped from under Lissar’s arm.
“I don’t know. It was left for me this evening. Open it while I get my dress on.”
“Ribbons,” said Lilac. “Look.” And she held up two handsful of ribbons: pink, blood-red, black, dark green, silver-grey. “Who sent them?”
“I have no idea.” There was one significant difference between these ribbons and the ones provided by Lilac; these were sewn with the same tiny bright stones as the dress Lissar was wearing.
“Hmm,” said Lilac, staring at the card with Lissar’s name and nothing else on it. “It was Ossin who invited you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Lissar shortly, not wishing to remember the end of their last conversation about the prince. “But his mother supplied the dress. Help me—ugh,” she said, tugging futilely at her hair, which was caught on the tiny hooks that fastened the tight bodice together.
“Hold still. Stop pulling; I want all your hair still in your head for this evening. Now sit down. I may use one or two of my ribbons just for contrast. And I brought that brooch.”
They were, as it happened, in plenty of time; for the princess Trivelda was very late. Whether she was late on account of the time it took her to finish dressing—her entourage had only arrived the day before, and much had been made of how tired she and her breakfast-food dogs were as a result of the journey—or because she wished to make a grand entrance, Lissar did not know; but make an entrance she did.
Her gown was green, and her hair, much redder than in the painting Lissar had seen, was dressed both high on her head and permitted to fall, in a questionable profusion of curls, down her back. She was both short and plump, and the hair already made her look a trifle ridiculous, for there seemed to be more hair than person; and to make her waist look small, her skirts were tremendous, flaring out as though she and they would empty the ballroom of everyone else. Her skirts were worked in some dizzying pattern, also, that shimmered as the light caught it, and made it difficult to look at for any length of time, with the result that watching her small arroga
Lissar had established herself near a long curtain hanging from a pillar projecting from the wall; she recognized several other people from the king’s house similarly clinging to the scenery, looking awkward in their fine clothes but at the same time glancing around with interest, and too absorbed in the spectacle to be uncomfortably self-conscious. Lissar stood absently rubbing her fingers together. Her hands felt as imprisoned by gloves as her feet did by shoes; simultaneously both were a comfort: costume, not clothing, stage set for the evening’s performance.
The prince’s friends were not the courtier sort, so there were enough of them (us, thought Lissar, for she was Deerskin here, Deerskin in costume) that no one need feel lonesome or truly out of place. She looked around for the Curn of Dorl, whom she had seen the first time the day Ossin had offered her six puppies to raise; he was easily spotted among all the people not trying to be visible, for he was wearing yellow as bright as a bonfire at harvest festival; he seemed to glitter as he turned. He bowed with a grace that might almost match one of Ossin’s dogs, and it was as if the entire ballroomful of people paused a moment to watch him.
Certainly the princess Trivelda paused, and offered him a curtsey rather more profound than a mere Curn required, but Dorl often had that effect on people, particularly women: Lissar saw Camilla watching him, with an anxious, wistful little smile on her face, as if she wished she did not care, wished that she did not wish to watch him, though she was as poised as she had been on the day Lissar had first seen them both.