Hurra told the story of the first ball that the old king had given to honor his son's new bride, and how lovely the bride had been; Hurra herself had been there, in one of the trains of one of the grand ladies. She lost herself in the telling, as she always did; but on some days her mad gaze softened and looked inward, and even Lissar could sit near her and be untroubled. When Hurra's voice fell into silence, Lissar stood up and came to stand behind Viaka's chair. Some shadow of her movement disturbed Hurra's reverie, and she looked up, blinking through tears, at Lissar's face.
A look of puzzlement passed over her face, and with it a look Lissar had not seen in two years: recognition. "Why, Lissla Lissar, child, is that you? You're all grown up. How can I not have noticed? I almost didn't recognize you, you have such a look of your mother. My dear, how much you do look like your mother!"
Lissar's hands clamped down on the back of Viaka's chair. "Thank you, Hurra,"
she said in a voice she could barely hear over the ringing in her ears, "but you do me too much honor. It is the headdress merely."
But Hurri shook her old head stubbornly, staring with bright, curiously fierce eyes at the young woman who had once been her charge. As Viaka stood up to join the princess in leave-taking, Hurri look a firmer grip on the young hands she held. "She looks like the queen! She does. Can't you see it?" She gave Viaka's hands a shake.
"Look! Don't you see it?"
Viuku turned awkwardly, her hands still imprisoned, to look over her shoulder at the princess; what she saw was the princess, looking white and frightened. Because she was the princess's friend she said: "I see Lissar in a splendid headdress for her first ball."
Hurra dropped her hands, and the bright fierce look faded from her face, and she began to work her empty hands in her lap, and to rock, and murmur, "The most beautiful woman in seven kingdums,"
Lissar, without another word, turned and fled, Ash, her ears flat with worry, crowding into her side. Viaka paused only long enough to pat the old woman's hand and say, with the distinctness she reserved for her own old and wits'-wandering relatives, "Good-bye, Hurra, we'll tell you all about the ball when we come next,"
and then hurried after her friend.
"I don't look like my mother," said Lissar, as Viaka caught up with her. She stopped, whirled around, seized Viaka by the shoulders. "Do I?"
Viaka shook her head, not knowing what to say, for Hurra was right. But Lissar had none of the manner of her mother, as the very grand lady had already noted, none of the regal graciousness, the consciousness of her own perfection, which was why Viaka herself had not observed the growing resemblance; that, and the fact that the queen had been dead for two years and the memory of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms begins over time to adapt somewhat to the rememberer's personal preferences in beauty.
Viaka went into the receiving-hall no oftener than Lissar did and so did not have her memory-or her awe-freshened by the scintillant example of the master painter's art. She did remember that when she was younger, and her parents had a few times taken their flock of children to some grand event where the king and queen were present, Viaka had been more frightened than drawn by the king's grandeur and the queen's exquisiteness, which qualities seemed to stand out around them like a mist that it would be dangerous for more ordinary mortals to breathe. 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 Ashand 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."
SEVEN
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 entrance produced.