A month after the Prince rode home from his Hunting of the Hind he was declared to be dying.
The King rarely left his son’s room, and his cheeks were almost as pale as the Prince’s; the ministers might have run the country as they liked, for all the attention the King paid them; but perhaps almost against their wills they found they loved the bold young Prince too, and their political schemes held no savor.
It might have been that now the little Princess, hitherto neglected for her glamorous elder brother, would come into her own; but this did not happen. Everyone forgot about her completely, except as a small quiet presence forever at the Prince’s bedside. Everyone, perhaps, but the Prince himself; for when he asked for anyone, it was most often her name on his lips, and she was always there to answer his call; and she it was who could most often persuade him to take a little food, although even her success was infrequent and insufficient. Again and again he would seize her hand and say to her as he had done on the first night: “I have seen her. At last I have seen her.” And his cloudy eyes would be too wide and too brilliant with something she did not recognize and could not help but fear.
The day after the murmur of the Prince dying had passed through the castle and out into the city, the Princess quitted her brother’s bedside, where she spent her nights and dozed as she could, just at dawn. She went down to the stable and saddled her favorite horse with her own hands; and when the Hunt gathered, she rode out to join them on her long-legged chestnut mare.
PART TWO
THE HUNT had been quiet enough the last weeks while the Prince lay on his bed and raved; but on the day that the Princess joined them no word at all was spoken, and everyone averted his eyes as if afraid to look upon her, and even the horn-calls to the dogs were subdued. The Princess left no message behind her; but the stablemen would notice the empty stall of the Princess’s favorite, as the watchers at her brother’s bedside would notice her empty chair.
Morning had barely broken, and the first sunlight had only begun to find its way through the leaves of the forest when the Hunt were brought to a standstill by the long-drawn-out wail of the lead dog. Into a tiny green clearing before them stepped the Golden Hind.
She was a color to make wealthy men weep, and misers drown themselves for very heartsickness. New-minted gold could not express the least shadow of her loveliness; each single hair of her magnificent coat shone with lucent glory. Her delicate hoofs touched the earth without a sound; she turned her small graceful head toward the little group of hunters, seemingly unconscious of the miserable dog that had flattened itself almost at her feet. Her eyes were brown, and for a moment the Princess’s eyes met those of this creature of wonder; and it was as though they were only inches from each other in that moment, looking into the depths of each other’s souls; for the Princess knew at once that the Hind had a soul, and hope stirred within her. The brown eyes she looked into somewhere held a glint of green, and somewhere else, almost too subtle for even the Princess’s lonely wisdom, a glint of sorrow.
Then the Hind turned away, and the Princess touched her unspurred heels to her fleet young mare’s sides, and followed silently. The Princess had a brief vision, though she did not stay to see, of the Hunt turning to make their sad and weary way homeward before they had even begun.
The Princess had no idea how long the chase lasted. The Hind wove swiftly through the close trees, and followed paths so narrow that the young mare’s light feet could hardly find width enough to hold them; but while branches lashed at her and bushes held out twisted thorny hands to grab at her, the Princess found that she suffered little hurt; for some reason the forest let her pass, although the men who had ridden as she rode now had been less fortunate. The mare’s neck and shoulders grew streaked with sweat and then with foam, but she still followed the Hind flashing through the green leaves before her, with all the heart and spirit that was in her; for the love she bore her young mistress.
The sunlight began to cast different sorts of shadows than it had in the morning; and the mare began to stumble, and her breathing was painful to hear. The Princess drew her up in pity, though her own spirit was mad for the following and she knew her horse would run till she fell dead if she were so asked. But the Hind paused too, and seemed to wait for them to catch her up; though her golden coat was unmarred, and her flanks moved easily with her light breathing.
All through that night they followed her; and there was moonlight enough to show those gilded flanks whenever they looked for their guide; the Princess had dismounted, and she and her horse faltered wearily on, and found each other’s bleak and hungry company a comfort.
Just at dawn they staggered out from the edge of the forest—an edge they had not realized lay so near ahead, for the shadows of night had hidden it. But as the first blush of dawn aroused them, they stood blinking at the beginning of a land the Princess had never seen. There was grass before them, and scattered rocks, and a stream that ran babbling off into a distance they could not discern; and then looming up like a castle at the end of a field stood a mountain of bare grey rock. From where the Princess and her mare stood, they could see the green plain stretching out before them and to their right, up to the verge of the forest they had just crossed; but to the left, and standing against the last trees of the forest on that side, was this great hump of stone.
Before this mountain, only a few arm’s-lengths away, stood the Hind. She waited till she caught the Princess’s eye, and held her gaze for another moment while again they drank of each other’s spirit; and then the Golden Hind, who blazed up with a glory that could be hardly mortal as the morning sunlight found her, turned and disappeared into the rockface as if through a door.
The Princess dropped the bridle, and took a few steps after her; and then darkness came over her and she fell to the ground.
When she stirred again and turned her head to look around her, for a moment she had no idea where she was; the rough grass she lay on, the wild landscape around her were utterly unfamiliar; and then her mind began to clear and she sat up. The sun was near noon, and perhaps her faint had turned to sleep, for she felt a little rested, although still dizzy and uncertain; and she looked around first for her mare.
The mare had seen her sit up, and came toward her, holding her head delicately to one side so that she would not tread on the dragging reins, and her nostrils quivered in a little whicker of greeting. The Princess contrived to stand up by holding on to one of the long chestnut legs; and she stood for a moment with her head resting on the horse’s shoulder. The sweat had dried, leaving the hair rough, but when the Princess raised her head and saw the mare with her own head turned to look back at her, she saw that the mare’s eye was clear, and her bits were green and sticky with her grazing; and her breathing was untroubled.
“You’re stronger than I am, my Lady,” she said, “but then you have been standing in the stable and getting fat comfortably this last month …” and at that the Princess’s mind cleared completely; and she remembered why she had come so far, and with what strange guide; and her head snapped around, and she stared at the grim grey pile before her, and she thought of the Hind, and her deep eyes and treacherous ways.
First she washed her face and hands in the running stream, and drank some of the sharp cold water, and when she stood up again she felt alert and well. Then she unsaddled and unbridled her horse and flung the harness indifferently on the ground; and paused to stroke the mare’s forehead. “I’d be sorry to lose you, my Lady,” she said, “but you know best; I can’t say when … I can come back for you.”
The mare nodded solemnly, and then stretched out a foreleg and lowered her head to rub her ears against it. The Princess turned to the steep stark mountain.
She remembered where the Hind had stood, and there she went, and examined the stone carefully; but she saw nothing that resembled a hidden door, and the hard grey surface appeared unbroken. She ran her hands over all till the fingertips were rough and sore; and still she found nothing. Th
e mare had returned to her grazing, but occasionally she raised her head to watch the Princess curiously.
The sun set, and still the Princess knew not how next to seek her chosen adventure of the Hunting of the Hind; and as the shadows lengthened, rage rose in her, and despair; and she turned to see the half-moon floating up above the horizon. She looked at it for long enough that it rose several degrees of its are; and then she closed her eyes and crossed her arms on her breast, turned, and walked straight into the rockface.
She had been standing less than an arm’s-length away from the side of the mountain as she stared at the moon; but now she walked forward—half a dozen steps, a dozen—but she feared to open her eyes to find herself caught by some magic a bodily part of the rock itself. So she continued forward, step by step, her eyes closed fast and her hands at her breast; and then she realized that her footsteps had begun to fall with an echo, as if she walked in a great cavern; and she opened her eyes.
It was a great cavern indeed; torches that gave off a fair and smokeless light were thrust in gold and ivory rings all around the walls, but the ceiling was lost in darkness at some immeasurable height. The walls, which from the clear light of the torches she could see to the height of cathedral walls, were of smooth stone, but that stone bore all the colors of the rainbow in its most peaceful and yet most joyful tints: yellows, greens, blues, and rosy reds; all were represented and all were glorious, and even the ever sharp thought of her dying brother was soothed a little as she looked.
The floor on which she walked was mirror smooth, and held a gleam of its own; but here was the shining of the sky before a storm, thunderheads of majestic white and heavy grey; and her booted feet struck out a noise like the ringing of a bell with every step.
Then she saw, still far away from her, a low wall, she thought perhaps in the center of this great place, for it was far away from the walls she could see. And on the wall, with its head bowed, sat a figure draped in white.
As the Princess approached, she realized that the shining golden head of the figure was no crown nor work of man’s hands, but the fabulous masses of heavy golden hair. When she grew near, the figure looked up: and her eyes met deep brown eyes with a glint of green in their depths, and a glint that the Princess saw more clearly now, of sorrow. And as the Princess saw the pale perfect face that held those eyes, she remembered her brother’s words, “I have seen her”; and her legs folded under her, and she knelt at the feet of a woman whose beauty could send a man mad, or blind, but grateful in his blindness, or even comfortable in his madness.
“Please, you must not kneel; it is not fit,” said the woman. “Indeed, I know I am very beautiful, for I cannot help knowing; nor can I help the beauty, which is not even rightfully mine.”
The Princess rose slowly, and looked bewildered at the woman who had made such a curious speech; and, at her gesture, sat on the wall near her. “Do not fear me,” the woman went on gently, as she read the puzzlement in the face before her; “you have looked into my eyes, and seen that I am—I am like you, whatever my face may say; and I thank you—I thank you exceedingly for that favor.” She paused. “He who keeps me here … lent my own, my human beauty, a touch of horror and dread, that I should fill the hearts of those who look on me with a wildness of delight that would destroy them.”
“Why?” said the Princess; and her whisper seemed to run out to the sheer walls, and even through them, carrying her question she could not guess where.
“Because I refused him,” said the woman, but her reply went only into the Princess’s ears, and to nothing that might wait beyond the walls. “And so he decided that none should have me; and that the face that had caught him would grow hateful to its owner for what it did to others …” and the woman covered her glorious, terrible face with her hands, and tears like diamonds slid through her fingers.
“What may I do for you?” said the Princess. “I am here to help you, for my brother’s sake.” But her voice trembled; for while no dread had touched her heart, because she had seen past this woman’s beauty into the deeps of her spirit in the green flickers of her wide eyes, still there was a fearfulness to the magnificence of the cavern, and she felt the weight of the woman’s cursed beauty as a soldier might feel a weight on his sword arm.
“Tell me what to do, and I will try, as best I may.” And the Princess realized as she spoke that while it was love for her brother that had brought her to dare as she did, still she was moved with sympathy for this strange woman, and would wish to help her if she could.
“For your brother’s sake,” said the woman, and a half-smile touched her sadness. “I have a brother too. Come.” She stood up, and the Princess stood too; but reeled in her place, and the woman reached out an exquisite white hand and caught her. “Come. You shall meet my brother, and you shall have something to eat, for I see you are faint with hunger, and I know too well the cause of it. Then perhaps we can tell you how you may save us all—” and the Princess heard the desperate anxiety in that sweet voice, and realized how sharply the woman had to catch herself up when she spoke of that hope.
They walked, the Princess leaning on the woman’s arm, toward one of the gorgeous colored walls; and as they approached, there was a plain simple doorway in the rock that the Princess could see and touch and understand, and she sighed as they passed through it.
They found themselves in a small room, and a golden smokeless fire like the fire of the torches glowed in a hollow at one end of it, and a man sat at a table at the center of it; and on that table were bread and cheese and fruit, and pitchers and cups and plates. The man stood up to welcome them, and the Princess saw that he was lame; he came no more than two steps toward them, and that only by leaning heavily on the table.
“Welcome, Princess,” he said, and his eyes were brown and green like his sister’s, and held the same imprisoned sorrow. He stretched out his hands and took the Princess’s between them for a moment, and for that little moment she thought a little less about her brother, as she had when she first looked at the rainbow walls of the cavern. “First you must eat,” said this man.
And so the Princess sat down, and ate white bread and yellow cheese, and fruits of green and red and deep blue-purple, and the woman of the terrible beauty ate with her, as did that woman’s brother, although the Princess noticed that they ate very little.
When they had finished, and the Princess stared into her cup without drinking, the man said gently: “My name is Darin, and my sister is Sellena. This place is a place of much magic, and little of that good, but you may trust us with your name without fear. Will you give it us?”
The Princess looked up and answered at once: “My name is Korah.”
There was silence a moment, and Sellena reached across the table to touch the Princess’s hand. “Thank you. We have not heard another name beyond our own in this place for many a long year.”
“You are welcome to it,” said the Princess, and smiled; and she thought, as something that was almost an answering smile hovered like a shadow over Sellena’s mouth, that it was the first time in many a long year that a smile had been seen in this place either.
“Now that I have eaten,” said the Princess, “and we hold each other’s names, will you not tell me something of your durance here?” and her hands tightened involuntarily around the cup she held.
“I am sent out as the Hind again and again whether I will or nay,” Sellena burst out; and in her voice was anger and helplessness and pleading mixed, “for he who holds us here loves to prove his power again and again with each new victim I bring him. And yet there is no other hope of our ever winning free but to go out as he wills, in the guise of a brute beast, and lure those who will come. And every failure weighs on my heart, for it is I who lead each to his destruction, however little I wish it to fall out so.”
“I tried once to free her,” said Darin in a low voice. “Even I: indeed, I was the first. I do not know if perhaps the wizard had not yet fully formed his plans, for I esca
ped with my mind, and only he lamed my leg; so I may think, but may not walk. And I am permitted to keep my sister company in her exile, and no further harm has he tried to do me. But perhaps it amuses him best so, to see the two or us clinging to each other in our powerlessness to resist him; and I do not know if it is a blessing to be spared, spared to watch all the brave hunters going to their doom.”
“It is a blessing to me, brother,” said Sellena softly; and Darin bowed his head.
Then the Princess said to them both as she had said to Sellena alone: “What may I do for you? For I will take my turn, and seek to free you, if I may.”
Darin answered soberly, “You must go to him who keeps us here and ask him to let us go.”
The Princess looked at him, and his eyes were grave. “It sounds an easy task, does it not? And yet there have been hundreds who followed the Golden Hind to this mountain. Some few of those, and of them we have no counting, have lost all but their lives in just the sight of the Golden Hind, and they go home tired and dreaming, and so spend the years remaining to them without strength or will. Some of those who track the Hind to the walls of this mountain do find their way inside. Some few of these cannot bear the sight of Sellena as you see her, for the dread wizard did lay upon her beauty; and even those who bear it are dazzled by it, so they cannot hold their spirits still within them when they go to face the enchanter. Of those six-and-thirty who have passed through the wizard’s chamber, eleven have died, and so completely did the wizard destroy them that not even their bodies remained to be given burial; and the other five-and-twenty returned to their lives and homes mad.”
“All but the last,” Sellena said, in a voice so low that it was scarcely audible; and the Princess stiffened in her chair.
“All but the last,” repeated Darin; “but I fear that the wound he received will still prove mortal.”
Sellena covered her beautiful face with her hands and moaned.
The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories Page 10