What a terrible thing this is!"
"Go now," said the king to his daughter. "Go, and begin your preparations; and remember that in three days we shall be wed, with all rejoicing. Remember!" In his mouth, remember was a word that had nothing to do with joy.
Lissar stumbled down from the dais, still leaning on her dog, who pressed against her side; pressed against her as the people pressed away. Once she raised her eyes, despairingly, pleadingly, seeking any eyes that might meet hers; but none did. And so she made her slow way to the door, her dog placing one steady foot after the other, that her person might walk safely; and when the princess went through the doors of the receiving-hall the doorkeeper shied away from her as from a curse, or contamination by disease; and as soon as she was fairly through, he hastened to the other side of the doors, and slammed them shut behind her.
The sound reverberated through the hall, through Lissar's body and the soles of her feet; she shuddered. The receiving-hall doors were never closed; it was the purpose of the king's attendance in that room, that by making himself thus available, anyone who wished to address the king might approach through the open door, and lay the matter before him. Even when he was not there, the doors remained open, and a secretary awaited any who might come with a message. The doors were never closed.
Ash took a step forward, suggesting that they go on; Lissar had stopped when the doors were closed, and stood staring at them as if at the end of her world, as if at the appearance of a fabulous beast, something out of a storybook. Lissar felt Ash's movement, and a bolt of courage or despair shot through her, and she picked up her skirts and fled, Ash bounding at her side.
They ran till they reached the princess's rooms, and through all the great, solemn, over-furnished chambers, to the little round rose-colored room that Lissar felt was the one room that was truly hers; and she buried her face in her pillow, tearing her fingernails with the strength of her grasp upon the bedframe; and she moaned. The horror was too deep for tears or cries; even to think of it-to try to think of it-only-made her numb, made her feel as if some portion of herself were being split off from the rest, some portion of herself must move to some distance away from the rest even to contemplate something so alien, so abominable, as marriage to her father.
It could not be so. It was the worst, utterly the worst, of all nightmares; the nightmare that had lived with her, hiding in the shadows, since that day the heralds had brought her a puppy from a kind young prince from far away, and she had looked up, her arms full of Ash and met her father's eyes. She had feared him since then. without naming her fear; and last night, last night at the ball, when he would not yield her to any of the lordly suitors who had attended the ball for her sake, the nightmare had begun to take shape, but a shape then still made of shadow....
Had there been a ball last night, or was that a part of this nightmare?
Had she a father? Who was she?
She moved slightly, raised her head. She knew who she was, for there was Ash, and she knew who Ash was, Ash was her dog and her best friend.
It occurred to her to notice that there was no one else around, and that this was odd. There were always the waiting-women, the latest court ladies, murmuring and rustling in the outer rooms, occasionally breaching the princess's small sanctum, speaking of ribbons and satin, pearls and lace, and of balls, and lovers, and ...
weddings.
But word of the king's announcement had penetrated the entire palace as if instantly, as his voice had penetrated the ears of the audience in the receiving-hall, and the court ladies had responded as everyone else had responded.
Lissar guessed this, dully, without putting it to words; dully she wondered if she would ever see Viaka again; and if she did not, if Viaka had been kept away, or had stayed away voluntarily. Dully she wondered who would be assigned to see to her wedding-dress.
She thought that the king's people would not dare defy him openly; shun her they might-and would-but if he declared that she was to be adorned for her wedding, then adorned, bedecked and bedighted, she would be.
Ash was sitting by the side of the bed, looking at her gravely. Her person did not lie on the bed in the middle of the day; whatever was wrong, whatever she had tried to protect her from just now, was going on being wrong.... She leaned toward Lissar, and licked her face. Lissar began to weep then, the stunned, uncomprehending tears of hopelessness: of a truth too appalling to be contained by nightmare breaking into reality, that the body one inhabits is about to be used in a way one would rather die than undergo.
But it was part of the horror that Lissar knew she had not even the strength to kill herself, that the unspeakable might be avoided at the last. That kind of courage required that all the parts of her, body and mind, flesh and spirit, be united enough to take decisive action; and instead she was a handful of dead leaves in a high wind.
She could not even sit up, or stop crying.
"Oh, Ash," she groaned, and cupped her hands under her dog's silky, whiskery chin. Ash delicately climbed up on the bed and curled up next to her; she rested her long sleek head on her person's neck, and Lissar clasped her hands around Ash's shoulders, and so they spent the day.
NINE
LISSAR DRIFTED IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. SHE COULD NOT
have said what she dreamed and what she saw with open eyes in the physical world.
At some point, near twilight, she rose, and let Ash out into the garden to relieve herself; and while she was alone, she went to a small drawer in the desk that stood in one cornerless corner of the round room, and from it she took a key. With the key she locked the door that led into the palace, into the chambers for a princess. When Ash returned, she tried to fit the key into the lock of the garden door, but it would not go.
She looked at it, at first in dismay, and then in rising panic; and she had to sit down abruptly, and press her hands to the back of her head. As she sat thus-with Ash's nose anxiously inquiring over the backs of both hands-she thought, It does not matter. The other garden door, the one to the rest of the out-of-doors, has a hundred years of ivy growing over it; the key to it must no longer rxist. From the outside, from the other side, one cannot see that there is a door at all; I only know from this side because of the old path.... I have looked, from the other side. I know the door cannot be found. It does not matter.
She stood up, and brushed herself off, and fed Ash some of the cold cooked eggs from her breakfast, which had never been cleared away; and she drank a little of the water that had been left in the big pitcher, which had been hot twelve hours ago, for her washing, before the summons had come, before her world had wavered; and she gave Ash water as well.