Deerskin by Robin McKinley Page A

entrance produced.
    Lady Undgersim, indeed, had visible difficulty not pushing herself forward into the center of events; Lissar, on the other hand, would have been delighted to permit her to do so, and wished it were possible. She, Lissar, would be overlooked in Lady Undgersim’s large shadow—or, better yet, her invisibility could have been such that she could have remained quietly in her little round room, keeping Ash company. Ash, who hated to be parted from her princess, was capable on such occasions (said the maids, and there were the shredded bedding and seat covers as proof) of actual, incontrovertible bad temper. Lissar guessed there would be some marks of chaos when she got back. She wished she could shred a blanket herself, or rip a pillow apart, and throw the feathers into all these staring eyes.
    Without warning, her father, resplendent in sapphire blue, was at her side, offering her his arm. Too suddenly: for she did not have time to compose herself, to prevent her body’s automatic recoil from his nearness; and she knew by the tiny ripple of stillness around her that her involuntary step back had not been unnoticed. She swallowed, laid a suddenly cold, reluctant hand on his arm, and said, in a voice she did not recognize, “Forgive me my surprise. My eyes are dazzled by the lights, and I did not at once understand the great blue shadow that stooped over me.” She thought that the courtiers would accept this—for how else to explain an only daughter, especially one so richly taken care of, cringing away from the touch of her father’s hand? How indeed?
    She looked briefly into his face and saw there the look she had spent the last two years eluding; the look she found treacherous but with no word for the treachery. She had the sudden thought that these last two years of her life had been pointless, that she had learned nothing that was of any use to her, if she still could not escape that look in her father’s eyes. It was all she could do not to snatch her hand away again, and the palm felt damp against the hot blue velvet.
    The crowd parted as the king led the princess down the length of the huge hall; at the far end hung the painting of the dead queen. Lissar felt that she watched them come, but she dared not look into the queen’s blazing face for fear of what she would find there: not treachery but understanding of treachery, and from that understanding, hatred. She kept her eyes fixed on the bottom of the frame, upon the small plaque, too small to read at a distance, that stated the queen’s name and the artist’s. “How beautiful she is!” Lissar heard, and her first thought was that they spoke of the queen.
    “How beautiful she has grown!”
    “How handsome he is!”
    “What a beautiful couple they make!”
    No, no! Lissar wanted to cry out; we do not make a beautiful couple! He is my father!
    “It is almost like seeing the king and queen when he first brought her home! She looks so like her mother! And see how proud he is of her! He is young again in his pride; he might not be a day over twenty himself, with the queen at his side!”
    There was a wide clear space in front of the painting of the queen, for this was where the dancing was to be held. To one side the musicians sat, and she felt their eyes piercing her; their gaze felt like nails, and she felt dizzy, as if from loss of blood.
    Her father swept her around, to face back the way they had come; her full white skirts whirled as she turned, and twinkled in the light. She raised her chin to look out steadily over the heads of her father’s people, and she heard a collective sigh as they stared at her. Then she felt her father’s big heavy hand clamp down over the fingers that rested so gingerly on his sleeve, and she felt as if his hand were a gaoler’s bracelet of iron, and as she caught her breath in a gasp she heard, like a chorus with an echo, “How like her mother she is!” “She is the perfect image of her