Free The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley Page A

that the petals cast were dusty grey instead of black.
    The next morning was dull with heavy clouds, and the farmers went grudgingly to tend dull grey fields, and the craftsman unshuttered their dull grey shops; and the wives in their kitchens were cross, because the dough they had set out the night before had failed to rise.
    But the sun broke through as the morning lengthened, and the clouds lost their stranglehold on the sky, and even the people’s hearts lightened, although they would have been ashamed to admit it; and they watched the clouds break into pieces and drift across the sky till they were mere wisps. People blinked and smiled at one another again, tentatively, because they still preferred not to think about anything too closely.
    Then the first and fleetest of the children from the outlying villages came breathless to the palace, but no one believed them at first; even the brightness of their eyes, the irrepressible joy that stared out from their rumpled hair and the folds of their clothing did not convince the cautious city-dwellers of the truth of the story they told. Not even the crowns and necklaces of blue and yellow and white and lavender flowers they wore were convincing. But their parents came soon behind them, jogging on foot or riding on shaggy plough horses with flowers tangled in their thick manes; and these horses seemed to have forgotten their ploughs, for they lifted their feet like the daintiest of carriage ponies and flicked their tails like foals. The road to the palace was soon crowded with laughing shouting people, and the white dust hung so thick in the air that flower petals tossed overhead hung suspended in it; and it smelled as sweet as the fruit-seller’s stall the morning of market day.
    The news these flower-mad mortals carried was lost in the tumult; but all those people who had heard nothing the night before, and had gone to bed early and grudged the morning, all of them found themselves washing their hands and changing their shirts, putting on their hats, and making their way to the palace, where something was happening, something splendid; and they went, and they were caught up in the sudden holiday. Not a store could boast its proprietor still within doors; not only the schoolchildren crawled through the windows to join the throng, but their teachers tucked up their skirts and their trouser-cuffs and followed them, not remembering the existence of doors at all.
    The old King and Queen found all their flowers nodding firmly in the same direction; and they sighed, but not very much, for something had crept into their hearts too that made them eager to go; and so they began the long walk back to the palace where they had spent so much of their lives, for the second time since their retirement.
    And at last into the city came its King and Queen, and its Princess; but the Queen held by the hand another Queen, who smiled a smile brighter than the flowers that hung in the air, and a smile that many found strangely familiar, but they could not pause long enough to wonder at it. Alora held Gilvan’s hand on her other side, and the dark Queen held the hand of her King. When the people waiting for them saw them, a shout went up even louder than before, and no one felt the least hoarse, although they had already been shouting most of the morning. How handsome the four of them looked, walking side by side, their own beloved King and Queen, and the strange pair too: you need only look into the eyes of the dark Queen and know at once that she was to be trusted, as the eyes and the mouth of the strange King told the same story of him.
    Only Gilvan waved; Alora’s hands were full, and the other King, who also had a hand free, felt that some introduction was necessary before he acknowledged the cheers of a people who didn’t know yet what they were cheering at. There was no one in that crowd who had the least inclination to find fault with anybody just then, and they loved him