The Door in the Hedge Read Online Free PDF Page B

not.”
    â€œThey will not care for that: she is too beautiful.”
    â€œBut she is the only one.”
    â€œThey will not care.”
    And the plans for the birthday grew more and more elaborate under the pressure of too much wild energy, from the love her people had for their only princess.
    It was no secret among the royal three that a royal birthday party was for the pleasure of the people, and a nuisance to its subject. Alora and Gilvan had always arranged Linadel’s for her, even after she was old enough to take some reluctant interest in it, so that she need be harassed by no more than the day itself, and not by thinking about it for six months previous. But this year she took an active part in the plotting and planning, and took fewer long solitary walks than had been her habit for the last several years. Alora thought, rather sadly, with the front of her mind what she had often thought before: that Linadel was growing up too quickly, whether her parents would or nay; and was not aware that in the back of her mind she was relieved to have her only daughter readily under her eye so much of the time. But Gilvan understood, and thanked his daughter silently for it; and Linadel acknowledged his understanding by not meeting her father’s eyes.
    The summer months passed, and the preoccupation with the coming birthday bode fair to turn it into a day the like of which nobody who had ever lived in any country could have recalled. There were almost no judicial cases to be considered, because everyone was too preoccupied either to get into mischief or to complain about their neighbors. Even the court counselors, ministers, and sundry assistants stumbled over their florid phrases and seemed to be thinking about something else; normally endless discussions of precedence and rule between those of opposite persuasions trailed off into vague nods and indefinite adjournments. The scrutiny that Princess Linadel was under spread to include her parents.
    King Gilvan, who should have been well into middle age, was still tall and straight and handsome (as befitted Linadel’s father); and his devotion to his people was strong enough to force him into a vast and apparently stolid patience, which had not been in his nature at all to begin with; and yet in spite of this he was never bitter, and had retained the tendency of his young manhood to be humorous whenever he thought he could get away with it. Queen Alora was quick and kind, as she had been since she was a child, and grew only a little more finedrawn and fragile with age, and no less beautiful (as befitted Linadel’s mother), but much harder to read; because as she understood more and more about her people, she did not wish to distress them by allowing them to see how much she understood.
    And Linadel was hourly more beautiful till even those who had seen her daily since she was a baby were struck by it as if they had never seen her before; although it seemed in latter days that only her father could make her laugh.
    The week before the birthday was stretched, minute by minute, as tight as a girth on a straining horse. Even the marketplace was subdued, though usually the echoes of argument and abuse, conversation, flattery, and general cheerfulness flew over the entire town like a flock of birds. Usually it was noisier before a holiday, as everyone made last-minute adjustments in their fancy dress. The Queen had no sleep at all, for whenever she closed her eyes she saw nothing but blue flowers; saw them growing in across the palace windowsills, out of jars on her dressing table, in urns at the high table where they ate their formal meals; and once she saw the scarlet carpet that lay before the thrones in the audience room turn into a field of little blue flowers on stems so tall that they reached the knees of the King and Queen and Princess who sat high above the floor on a carnelian dais.
    Gilvan wasn’t sleeping too well either, although dreams of blue