'Then you've remembered!' he said, and her eyes were on him as he said it, and she saw the dreaded ball disappear from his face. 'You've remembered!'
She had told him, those long nights with the puppies when she was too tired to remember what she could or couldn't say, should or shouldn't, that she had been ill, and lost much of her memory. She was both frightened and heartened by his interest now, and she said, smiling a little, 'I don't know how much I've remembered'-this was true; the fire still burned, reflecting off surfaces she did not yet recognize-'but your portrait room, I'm not sure, it shook something loose.'
'Looking at Trivelda makes me feel a trifle unsettled myself,' said the prince. 'I did think you were looking a bit green there; you should have said something to me earlier. But see, then you must come to the ball.'
'I do not see at all.'
Ossin waved a hand at her. 'Do not ruin the connection by analyzing it. Come meet Trivelda, and rescue me.' Impulsively he seized her hands, standing close to her. He was shorter than her father, she noticed dispassionately, but bulkier, broader in both shoulders and belly.
'Very well,' she said. 'The kennel-girl will scrub up for one night, and present herself at the front door. Wearing shoes will be the worst, you know.'
'Thank you,' he said, and she noticed that he meant it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE NEXT DAY WHEN SHE RETURNED FROM TAKING THE PUPPIES
FOR a long romp through the meadows, despite a thick drizzly fog and mud underfoot, there were a series of long slender bundles waiting for her, hung over the common-room table. She dried her hands carefully, and loosened the neck of one, and realized, just before her fingers touched satin, what these must be: dresses for the ball. A choice of dresses: a wardrobe just for one night, like a princess. Even her fingertips were so callused from kennel work that she could not run them smoothly over the slippery cloth; there was slight friction, the barest suggestion of a snag. Not satin, she thought.
She dropped the bag, whistled to the puppies, and put them in their pen. They looked at her reproachfully when she closed the door on them. 'Have I ever missed feeding you on time?' she said. One or two, convinced that she was going to go off and have interesting adventures without them, turned their backs and hunched their shoulders; the others merely flung themselves down in attitudes of heartbreak and resignation.
Ash, of course, accompanied her back to the common-room; Hela was there this time. 'Queen's own messenger,' she said, nodding toward the bundles on the table.
'Oh,' said Lissar, a little startled; she had not taken Ossin's suggestion seriously that his mother would be willing, let alone prompt, to provide the kennel-girl with a ball-gown, and with a choice of ball-gown at that. The further thought intruded: anyone can go who wishes to: but they will not all be wearing satin.
'Better you than me,' said Hela.
'Have you ever been to a ball?' said Lissar.
Hela shook her head. 'I was a maid-servant up there when I first came to the yellow city, till Jobe rescued me. I waited on a few balls. I like dogs better.'
'So do I,' said Lissar feelingly, but she took her armful up to her room, and spread the dresses out on the seldom-used bed. After teaching the puppies to climb stairs she found she was more comfortable on the ground floor after all, unrolling a mattress in their pen which, now that they were old enough to understand about such things, always smelled clean and sweet with the dry meadowgrass the scrubbers bedded it with. From the ground floor also it was easier to creep out-of-doors in the middle of the night, seven soft-footed dogs at her heels, and sleep under the sky. It was late enough in the season that even the night air was warm; Lissar began to keep a blanket tucked in a convenient tree-crotch, and she and the puppies returned to the kennels at dawn, as if they had been out merely for an early walk. She did not know how many of the staff knew the truth of it. On the nights it rained she most often lay awake, listening to the fall of water against the roof, grateful to be dry but wishing to be away from walls and ceilings nonetheless.
The last time they had all slept in Lissar's room was the day after they had found the little boy. She had stayed awake long enough that morning to walk down the hillside to the village, where a royal waggon, much slower than the prince's riding party, lumbered up to them, and where Lissar was made intensely uncomfortable by the gratitude of the boy's mother-the woman who had found her in the meadow the evening before. The woman had ridden home in her husband's market-cart, having managed not to tell him where she had gone and who she had seen during her long absence from their stall; and when she got home again she had kept vigil all night.
She had known the Moonwoman would find her Aric.
Lissar had not liked the longing, hopeful, measuring, cautious looks the other villagers, attracted by the commotion and the royal crest on waggon and saddle-skirt, had sent her when they heard the story, and it was a relief in more ways than one when she could climb into the waggon, well bedded with straw and blankets, and collapse. Ossin had offered her a ride behind him on his big handsome horse, when they had met upon the hillside; but she had preferred to walk to the village-though she found herself clutching his stirrup, for she was so tired she staggered, and could not keep a straight line. He, at last, dismounted too, but she would not let him touch her; and so the party had come slowly down to the village, everyone mounted but Ossin and Lissar and ten fleethounds; the boy lay cradled in the arms of one of Ossin's men, and the sbort-legged scent-hounds the prince's party had brought rode at their ease across saddle-bows and cantles.
She remembered the scene as if through a fever; the euphoria of the night before, that queer, humming sense of knowing where she was to go, had departed, leaving her more tired and empty than she could ever remember being; so empty that the gaps in her memory did not show. She had stayed awake just long enough to tell the prince how to find the thing in the tree; and then even the jerking of the (admittedly well sprung) waggon over village roads could not keep her awake.
She thought of all that now as she shook the dresses free of their sacks, thinking that the queen had sent the kennel-girl four dresses to choose from, dresses of silk and satin and lace. She had slept through the bringing-home of the thing in the tree; she had slept through the first conversations, first responses, to her adventure. She had been glad to sleep through them. But she wondered, now, with four ball-gowns fit for a queen spread out before her in the plain little room of a member of the royal kennel staff, what version of the story might even have penetrated to the heart of the court: wondered and did not want to wonder.
