Free Deerskin by Robin McKinley Page B

took Viaka and went up the long stairs and down the long halls to visit Hurra, for Hurra liked to hear of grand doings at the palace, which would remind her of the grander doings in the queen’s day, which would then be her opportunity, eagerly seized, to retell these at length. Lissar could sit at her usual place next to the (closed) window, and not get herself or her hair into any impetuous draughts.
    Hurra told the story of the first ball that the old king had given to honor his son’s new bride, and how lovely the bride had been; Hurra herself had been there, in one of the trains of one of the grand ladies. She lost herself in the telling, as she always did; but on some days her mad gaze softened and looked inward, and even Lissar could sit near her and be untroubled. When Hurra’s voice fell into silence, Lissar stood up and came to stand behind Viaka’s chair. Some shadow of her movement disturbed Hurra’s reverie, and she looked up, blinking through tears, at Lissar’s face.
    A look of puzzlement passed over her face, and with it a look Lissar had not seen in two years: recognition. “Why, Lissla Lissar, child, is that you? You’re all grown up. How can I not have noticed? I almost didn’t recognize you, you have such a look of your mother. My dear, how much you do look like your mother!”
    Lissar’s hands clamped down on the back of Viaka’s chair. “Thank you, Hurra,” she said in a voice she could barely hear through the ringing in her ears, “but you do me too much honor. It is the headdress merely.”
    But Hurra shook her old head stubbornly, staring with bright, curiously fierce eyes at the young woman who had once been her charge. As Viaka stood up to join the princess in leave-taking, Hurra took a firmer grip on the young hands she held. “She looks like the queen! She does . Can’t you see it?” She gave Viaka’s hands a shake. “Look! Don’t you see it?”
    Viaka turned awkwardly, her hands still imprisoned, to look over her shoulder at the princess; what she saw was the princess, looking white and frightened. Because she was the princess’s friend she said: “I see Lissar in a splendid headdress for her first ball.”
    Hurra dropped her hands, and the bright fierce look faded from her face, and she began to work her empty hands in her lap, and to rock, and murmur, “the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms.”
    Lissar, without another word, turned and fled, Ash, her ears flat with worry, crowding into her side. Viaka paused only long enough to pat the old woman’s hand and say, with the distinctness she reserved for her own old and wits’-wandering relatives, “Good-bye, Hurra, we’ll tell you all about the ball when we come next,” and then hurried after her friend.
    “I don’t look like my mother,” said Lissar, as Viaka caught up with her. She stopped, whirled around, seized Viaka by the shoulders. “Do I?”
    Viaka shook her head, not knowing what to say, for Hurra was right. But Lissar had none of the manner of her mother, as the very grand lady had already noted, none of the regal graciousness, the consciousness of her own perfection, which was why Viaka herself had not observed the growing resemblance; that, and the fact that the queen had been dead for two years and the memory of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms begins over time to adapt somewhat to the rememberer’s personal preferences in beauty.
    Viaka went into the receiving-hall no oftener than Lissar did and so did not have her memory—or her awe—freshened by the scintillant example of the master painter’s art. She did remember that when she was younger, and her parents had a few times taken their flock of children to some grand event where the king and queen were present, Viaka had been more frightened than drawn by the king’s grandeur and the queen’s exquisiteness, which qualities seemed to stand out around them like a mist that it would be dangerous for more ordinary mortals to breathe.