a bear performing a trick he has learned but does not understand, like a bear performing in fear of a yank on the chain if he does not perform adequately. He moved as if his clothing chafed him; there was none of the careless grace of easy strength and purpose that he had in the fields with his hounds, or on horseback. Here he was bulky, awkward, overweight, his eyes too small and his chin too large; he looked dazed and stupid.
For a moment her own ghosts dissolved absolutely in the heat of her sympathy; she was but a young woman watching a friend in trouble. Almost she forgot where she was and called out to him. She did not speak aloud, but she moved restlessly out of the shadowed niche between column and curtain; and the prince's eyes, sweeping the crowd, saw her movement, identified her; and his face lightened-as if it had been she he was looking for-for a moment he looked like the man she saw every day in the kennels, as if his real nature came out of hiding and inhabited his face for a moment.
She did not know what to do; he was about to offer his hand to Trivelda, his future wife, and a hundred people stood between him and Lissar, her back to a pillar.
She could not speak, say, 'I am with you.' She could not rub the back of his neck as she had done once or twice during the longest of the puppy nights, when four o'clock in the morning went on for years and dawn never came; she could do nothing.
And so she curtseyed: her deepest, most royal curtsey, the curtsey a princess would give a prince, for when she had remembered who she was, with that knowledge came the memory of her court manners. She had not known that those memories had returned to her, nor, if she had, would she have guessed they would be of any use to her; had she known she might have wished to banish them, as one rejects tainted food once one has been sick. She curtseyed, had she known it, as beautifully as her mother might once have curtseyed, for all that Lissar had learned her court manners mostly as a mouse might, watching her glamorous mother and splendid father from her corner. And as she curtseyed she moved farther out into the room, fully away from the shadowing curtain; and the tiny gems on her dress and in her hair caught the light from the hundreds of candles set in the huge chandeliers, and she blazed up in that crowd as if she were the queen of them all.
Trivelda's back was to her, and so she did not know what had happened; but she felt that something had, felt the attention of the crowd falter and shift away from her: saw the prince look over her head and suddenly straighten and smile and look, for a moment, like a prince, instead of like an oaf in fancy dress. She was not pleased; more, she was jealous, that Ossin should look well for someone else. She stiffened, and drew herself up to her full, if diminutive, height, and prepared to turn around and see what or who was ruining her grand moment-and to do battle.
Ossin, who was well drilled in courtliness, for all that he had no gift for it, saw Trivelda stiffen, knew what it meant, and snapped his attention back to her at once.
Lissar rose from her curtsey in time to see what was happening between him and Trivelda; and so by the time Trivelda had graciously accepted his proffered hand, and moved surreptitiously forward and to one side so that she could see in the direction that the prince's defection had occurred, there was nothing to see. Lissar had resubmerged herself into the shadow of the crowd.
She had meant to return to her pillar, but the prince had not been the only person who noticed her curtsey; and she found that there were abruptly a number of persons who wished to speak to her, and several young men (and one or two old ones) who wished to invite her to dance with them.
She glanced down at her jewel-strewn skirts, rubbed one softgloved hand over them; no one need guess her current profession by her work-roughened hands tonight. 'Thank you,' she said to the smallest and shyest of the young men, who flushed scarlet in delight, and drew her forward to join the line that the prince and Trivelda led. The young man proved to be a very neat and precise dancer, but an utterly tongue-tied conversationalist, which suited Lissar perfectly. She had not danced since her old life; and the memories her body held, in order to use the knowledge of how to dance, how to curtsey, brought too much of the rest with it.
Her heart beat faster than the quick steps of the dance could explain, for she was fit enough to run for hours with her dogs; here she had to open her lips a little, to pant, like a dog in summer. But the young man held her delicately, politely at arm's length; and when she caught his eye he blushed again, and looked at her as adoringly as a fortnight-old puppy to whom she meant milk. She smiled at him, and he jerked his gaze down. To her gloved hands he muttered something.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I asked, what is your name?'
'Lissar,' she said, without thinking; but she had spoken as softly as he had uttered his first question, and the musicians were playing vigorously, to be heard over any amount of foot-tapping, dress-rustling, and conversation, including the stifled grunts of those trodden on by inept partners. In his turn he now said: 'I beg your pardon?'
'Deerskin,' she said, firmly.
'Deerskin,' he murmured. 'Deerskin-it was a Deerskin who found the little boy from Willowwood.'
'Yes,' she said.
'Yes-you were she?' he said, flushing again.
'Yes,' she said again.
They danced a few more measures in silence, and his voice sounded like a small boy's when he said: 'My cousin is a friend of Pansy, whose son it was was lost.
Pansy believes this Deerskin is really the Moonwoman, come to earth again.'
'I do not dance like a goddess, do I?' said Lissar gently. She took her hand out of his for a moment, and pulled her glove down her forearm. There were a series of eight small deep scratches, just above her wrist, in two sets of four. 'One of the puppies from the litter I raised taught himself, when he was still small enough not to knock me down, to jump into my arms when I held them out and called his name.
Once he missed. I do not think Moonwoman's dogs would miss; nor would she willingly wear scars from so foolish a misadventure.'
The young man was smiling over her shoulder, dreamily; but he said no more.
The dance came to an end; they parted, bowing to each other. As she rose from her curtsey he, obviously daring greatly, said, 'Sh-she might, you know. To look ordinary. Human, you know.' Then he bowed a second time, quickly, almost jerkily, the first graceless gesture she had seen from him, and walked quickly away.
