Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Viaka remembered one occasion vividly, when a very pretty young woman had collapsed, sobbing, at the queen’s feet, and Viaka had taken her breath in in a little jerk of fear when the queen bent down to the girl. She had been surprised, and then wondered at the strength of that surprise, both at the gentleness of the queen’s touch and at the look of passionate adoration on the girl’s face as she permitted herself to be lifted up.
    All these thoughts went confusedly and fragmentarily through Viaka’s head; they produced no useful possibilities for soothing remarks. “Your—your hair is a little like,” stammered poor Viaka at last, quailing under the princess’s eyes. “It is only old Hurra, you know, and she is easily confused.”
    “My hair is brown!” cried Lissar. “The queen’s hair was black!” Viaka said nothing, but the spell had been broken, and Lissar felt a little relieved; she dropped her hands from her friend’s shoulders and charged off down the hall, her skirts whipping around her, making Ash half-invisible amid them and, from the weight of her grandly arranged and decorated hair, holding her chin much higher than usual. Viaka had to look up at her, as she hurried beside her; Viaka had been the taller a year ago, but Lissar had grown.
    Perhaps it was the unusual angle, or the unusual expression on Lissar’s face—unlike the very grand lady, Viaka knew Lissar’s face often bore high color and animation; but the very grand lady had never seen the princess playing with her dog. This was nothing like the beaming face she daily turned to Ash—and to Viaka; this was an obsessed intensity that—Viaka thought suddenly—made her indeed resemble the queen.
    Lissar parted her lips a little and flared her nostrils, and Viaka remembered something her parents had said of the queen: “When she lets her lower lip drop a little, and her chin comes up and her nostrils flare—get out of the way! If she notices you, you’ll be sorry.”
    “Lissar—” Viaka began, hesitatingly.
    Lissar stopped. Viaka stumbled several more steps before she caught her balance to stop and turn; her friend was still staring straight ahead with that queer glassy fierce look. But then Ash, re-emerging from the quieting froth of petticoats, put her nose under her mistress’s hand, and Lissar’s gaze came back into ordinary focus. Her chin dropped, and as it did so her headdress overbalanced her, and she put her free hand up to it with a little grimace of irritation. With that grimace Lissar was herself again. She looked at Viaka and smiled, if a little wryly.
    “Well, I am not my mother, of course,” she said. “Even if I am wearing too much hair and too many petticoats today. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” She ran a thoughtful finger down the delicate ridge in the center of Ash’s skull. “You know they’ve rehung the—the portrait”—Viaka did not have to ask what portrait—“in the ballroom, don’t you?” Viaka nodded. Lissar tried to laugh, and failed. “That should stop everyone from thinking I look like my mother. I’ll try to be grateful. Come, help me dress, will you?”
    “Oh yes,” said Viaka, whose own toilette would be much simpler. “Yes, I would like to.”
    “Thank you. You can protect me from Lady Undgersim,” Lissar said; Lady Undgersim was the very grand lady. “Shall we go to your rooms first, and get you in your dress: it will be practice for all the buttons and laces and nonsense on mine.”
    Viaka laughed, for her own dress was very pretty, and both of them knew that Viaka did not envy Lissar her splendid dress nor the position that went with it. “Yes, let’s.”

S EVEN
    THE PRINCESS ’ S FIRST BALL WAS AS GRAND AS ANY PROUD AND domineering lady could want. Lissar, watching from the corner of her eye, could see Lady Undgersim swell with gratified vanity at the immediate attention, the reverberent bustle involving many servants and lesser notables, that their