Perhaps, Mika thought. But the dance came first. Always.
Mika stiffened and pulled herself taller as the duchess finished speaking with Yuri and Anzhelika. The duchess then strode toward the line in which Mika stood with a dozen others, chatting easily with Klara. She spoke briefly with each dancer, but she never failed to introduce her granddaughter, who smiled prettily, shaking each dancer’s hand and curtsying in a perfectly practiced way. When she came to Mika, the duchess held her granddaughter in front of her with her hands on the young girl’s shoulders. The duchess was in her sunset years, but she was still strikingly beautiful. She commanded attention, not leastwise from the cold calculation in her deep, brown eyes.
Mika wondered how much that had to do with her abilities. The duchess was a gifted Matri, a woman who submerged herself in the drowning basins of the palotza to drift among the aether in order to protect Vostroma and the Grand Duchy. They had strange powers, the Matri. They could communicate with one another from great distances. They could assume rooks to speak with those not submerged in the aether as they were. Some even said they had deeper and darker powers.
The duchess did not at first speak. Instead she regarded Mika as if weighing her, and it was in those uncomfortable moments that Mika felt something very strange, something deep inside her, like the feeling one gets after forgetting something terribly important. She had the undeniable feeling that someone was watching her. She knew not who, but she had a powerful urge to look over her shoulder. Such a thing would mark her as a fool, though, so she stood and waited, smiling as well as her nerves would allow.
“Klara speaks very highly of you,” the duchess said.
Mika looked past the duchess to Klara, who was standing some paces away. “I’m sure she’s been too kind, My Lady Duchess.”
“She has not.” The duchess leaned in conspiratorially. “I asked Klara not to tell the company but I watched from the royal box yesterday—it wouldn’t do to let one of our most important performances to chance—and let me tell you, dear child, you are exquisite. Believe me when I say I do not use the word lightly. My sisters and I were all taught when we were young. I dare say we even became good at it.”
“I—I hadn’t heard.”
The duchess laughed. “And why would you have? In any case, I believe opening night is well in hand.” She motioned back to the other royals. “But it is time we share the wealth a bit, don’t you think?”
She was speaking of the celebration that would begin in ten days—the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Restoration. On opening night, the night before the Council of dukes and duchesses would begin, this theater would be filled with the highest royalty Anuskaya had to offer.
Seeing the look on Mika’s face, the duchess laughed again. “You don’t agree with my methods?”
Mika didn’t wish to offend, but she also didn’t wish to lie. “I only think we should be as prepared as we can before sharing outside the ballet.”
“A fair opinion, and you can take heart in the knowledge that I will keep those who come to a minimum, so as not to disrupt. But there is another reason I wished to speak with you, Mikaella. As I said, I admire your form greatly, enough to wonder”—she set her granddaughter one step forward with her arms—“if you might consider teaching my granddaughter, Sirina.”
Mika was sure she looked the mooncalf, her eyes wide as saucers, but it wasn’t the duchess’s words—at least, not entirely. Again she felt the feeling of being watched, and this time it was so strong she did look over her shoulder.
The duchess smiled, but her tone was not so kind. “I am, in fact, speaking to you, Miss Markova.”
“Of course, My Lady Duchess. Of course.” She struggled for words. “It’s only…” She wanted to dance. She wanted to step foot as prima upon the theater floor. One student wouldn’t be the end of the world, but that wasn’t the way it would go. If she taught young Sirina even passably well, more of the royals would want her to teach their children, and soon enough she’d be off the stage, standing in the practice halls, clapping time for children that had no business pulling on a pair of ballet slippers. “I don’t know that I’m ready to teach.”
“You’re twenty, are you not?”
“I am.”
“And unless I’m mistaken, you’re a student of sixteen years.”
“That’s right.”
“Then it seems to me you could teach anyone you wished.”
The feeling strengthened until Mika began to feel lightheaded. She wondered in a bemused sort of way whether she would collapse right there before the duchess. That should put to rest any wish of hers to have me teach.
But soon the feeling ebbed, and Mika was able to nod. “Of course, My Lady Duchess.” She looked down to Sirina and smiled as warmly as she could. “I would be honored.”
Duchess Mileva nodded. “Well and good,” and then moved on.
As the feelings passed altogether, Klara stared into Mika’s eyes. Klara was not pleased, but she could say nothing—not until they were alone.
Instead of retiring to their boxes high above the stage, the royals moved to the rayok, the wooden benches near the stage meant for men and women of lesser means. Four streltsi stood at attention at the rear doors behind the last row of benches, cherkesska coats wide, hands clasped behind their backs. Mika heard the royals laughing as they took their seats, pretending, Mika supposed, that they came from the back alleys of Evochka, not the halls of Palotza Galostina.
When practice began, Mika could already tell the day wouldn’t go well. It wasn’t simply that Klara was nervous—which everyone but the royals, who’d never heard her call orders for any length of time, could hear—it was that the dancers were nervous. It was foolish, she knew. None of them should be. They had all danced in front of crowds for a decade or more. But this celebration had been in the planning for years. Council had been called here on Vostroma so that the other duchies could come to visit the sites of the old battles between Anuskaya and Yrstanla. They would visit the new spire, and the additions to the grand eyrie as well.
And they would come to the ballet.
The first five shows had been set aside for the royals and all their families who would be coming from all nine duchies. It was big—bigger by far than anything Mika had ever been a part of, than any of them had, including even Klara.
Their anxiety showed in the way they moved. The way they leapt and landed. The way they turned in one another’s arms. Klara should have stopped practice. She should have made her apologies to the duchess and scheduled this for another day. But she didn’t, and despite all her fears, Mika kept her voice silent as well.
It happened about twenty minutes into practice. Anzhelika was leaping high into Yuri’s arms. He swung her up, her legs pointing gracefully to the ceiling, and when she landed, Mika heard an audible pop, and she crumpled to the floor.
Amid Anzhelika’s cries of pain, Klara confirmed the injury. She had ruptured her Achilles.
Which meant Mika was prima now.
“I don’t know,” Mika said to Istvan over a glass of plum-red wine. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the memory—Anzhelika crumpling to the floor, her anguished cries, that look of childlike fear as she gripped her ankle. “She just fell.”
Istvan shook his head ruefully. “Oh, the poor dear.”
“Istvan, she’s hurt. Badly.”
“I know, and I’m sorry for her”—he reached out and tugged her ear, something she usually found affectionate but today found crass—“but you know what they say.”
“Nyet.” She pushed his hand away. “What do they say?”
“Cruelty begets cruelty.”
Mika knew what he meant. She’d told him enough of the stories. How Anzhelika had refused to teach her when Mika had been raised to second. How she’d accidentally mention to Klara when Mika came in late. How she’d privately demand smaller roles for any dancers that threatened her standing. “That only makes it worse.”
“Worse
?” Istvan smiled, white teeth shining, accentuating his thin blond mustache and beard. “How can pointing out that woman’s cruelty make it worse?”
“She was a petty woman, Istvan. That’s all. Not cruel. Petty.”
“Have you forgotten the stories you told me?” Istvan raised his lanky form from the pillow upon which he’d been sitting and returned to the nearby table to refill his wine glass. “How she practically drowned her cousin to become prima?”
“We were little more than children, and I told you, it was an accident.”
“She was old enough to know better, and that’s not how you described it to me when we first met.”
He leaned the wine bottle toward her, offering to refill her glass, but she raised her hand. “I’m feeling ill.”
He knelt by her side, and leaned in to kiss her. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”
She put her hand over his face and pushed him away. “I mean it.”
He tried to come in again and again, each time biting at her fingers until he could get in to kiss her neck. She returned one long kiss, but then got up and wove her way between Istvan’s half-finished sculptures—always half-finished, it seemed—and went to the unmade bed on the far side of the studio space that doubled as his living quarters. His palotza, he liked to call it. A poor excuse for one, she’d always reply.
She set aside several charcoal sketches he’d been using for reference and slipped beneath the covers. As Istvan began gathering working clay for a new sculpture, she began drifting asleep. It was then that it returned. The feeling, once more, like she was being watched. She turned over and stared at the red door to Istvan’s studio. She grew dizzy.
But her mind felt alive. So alive it scared her.
Her skin prickled, especially her fingers and toes. Her mouth went dry. But more than anything was a sensation of dreaming—dreaming a hundred dreams all at once.
She closed her eyes when the sensations became too great.
And when she opened them again, she was in a different place.
Her skin was cold as winter’s kiss, but she wasn’t shivering. She was standing stock still, mind and body numb, in the center of Emerald Square, the largest open space in old Evochka. Her eyes were fixed on the grand building ahead of her. Evochka’s opera house, the place where she and the ballet would soon be performing for the Restoration festivities.
If she thought that some answer was forthcoming, some reason for finding herself here, she was left wanting, for there was no one near. There was hardly a sound at all—only the rattling of ice being windswept off the nearby roofs and dropping to the street around her.
The cold began to set in at last. And the confusion.
She hugged herself and ran toward Istvan’s home. She had no shoes, only socks that had long since gone damp from melted snow. The wind tore at her. Istvan lived not so far away, but it was a cruel march back through winter in Vostroma.
Nearly completely numb, she found herself back inside the door to his fourth-story loft. She sat on the floor, hugging her frozen feet in a vain attempt at warming them. By all that was good, what was happening to her? First the strange feelings with the duchess, then later with Istvan, and now this.
She found no answers sitting there on the rough woolen rug, so she slipped into bed with Istvan. He groaned, half-awake, at how cold she was, but made no further mention of it.
And for that she was glad, for she would have no answers to any of his questions.
The following day was a blur. Istvan was gone by the time she woke, but he left her a note—
I am a fool
Yet a fool who loves thee
I saw not where you fled
But was glad you came back to me
—and fresh bread and cheese and salmon-filled kulebyaka he’d grabbed at the corner bakery before leaving. She folded the note carefully, smiling, and then ate the simple breakfast that smelled of cream and hay and green grasses.
She returned to practice and they spent the morning trying to pick up the pieces from the sudden loss of Anzhelika. There would be an adjustment, but everyone knew two or three parts. They would recover. The only question was how long it would take. The most important performance was the very first one, the one reserved for the visiting dukes and duchesses, the princes and princesses. The boxes would be filled with them, but this time, so would the rayok. The benches would be replaced with chairs and couches and the men and women who ruled this land would sit and watch them dance.
After they had eaten a quick lunch on the theater floor, Duchess Mileva returned. She had no train of courtiers, however. She had no servants. The door at the back of the theater simply opened and she glided in, sitting near the center of the rayok, silent until Klara sat by her side and began a hushed conversation.
As they talked, Yuri began taking the company through the steps of the opening. Mika had danced with Yuri many times before, but today there was something different about him. He was looking at her differently. More … fervently, somehow. He was only doing what Klara had told him to do, she decided. Klara wished for them to believe their parts, to fall into them more deeply, and Yuri, at least, was taking her direction seriously, whereas Mika couldn’t. She was tired. And too preoccupied with her strange walk early that morning, the strange sensations she’d experienced, and now the presence of the duchess.
When they finished and Mika and Inga were leaving the theater, Yuri called from the theater’s back entrance, “Mika, wait,” while running to catch up to them.
Snow was falling, landing on Yuri’s fine coat and black leather boots. It fell among his dark blond hair, melting from the excessive heat still trapped inside him, leaving tiny droplets to twinkle like a crown of the smallest diamonds.
After a warm smile and a click of his heels for Inga, he turned to Mika. “Headed home so soon?”
“Where should I be headed?”
“I…” He glanced to Inga again. “The close was a bit rough, don’t you think? I was hoping we could go over it.”
“I’m exhausted, Yuri. Tomorrow.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t mean the dance. I mean their feelings, Nikandr and Atiana.”
Their roles in the ballet were of two of the most prominent players in the Restoration. Duke Nikandr of Khalakovo and his wife, Atiana, Duchess Mileva’s sister.
Mika squeezed Inga’s hand and nodded at her to go. After sending a knowing smile toward Yuri, she swept in and kissed Mika’s cheek, and then was off, running up the snow-filled street, weaving between a crowd of laughing children led by an old crone with a woolen shawl pulled over her head.
“Come,” Yuri said, taking her hand and pulling her into a walk in the other direction. “Let’s get a bite, then come to my home. You’ve still not been, and—”
“Yuri, I’m with Istvan.”
Yuri’s eyes widened, but so did his smile. “You wound me, Mikaella. This is for the ballet!”
Mika wanted to pull her hand away. She would have, but just then it didn’t seem so important as it once had. She also felt … alone, in a way she hadn’t in a long, long while, since before Istvan. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, not so different from the strange feelings from the day before, but it was much less pronounced, and she found herself wanting to go with Yuri. She found herself holding his hand in hers, stroking his arm, making jokes she never would have made to him weeks ago, or even yesterday.
Suddenly everything about him made her feel alive in a way she’d not experienced since meeting Istvan at an intimate gathering of up-and-coming artists. Her skin tingled as Yuri slipped his arm around her shoulders, when he leaned in and nuzzled her neck. A part of her was as confused as she’d been when she’d woken up in Emerald Square, but that part of her felt muffled, like the screams of a drowning child, while the other part of her, the part she had no control over, found herself intensely curious about Yuri. As they ate a meal of bread and melted cheese and pickled vegetables, as they downed caraf
e after carafe of white wine, she found herself wanting nothing less than to flee from this restaurant, to find herself in Yuri’s arms, to feel the touch of his skin, to run her fingers down his back.
She blinked, and these things became a memory. When she returned to herself fully she was lying in Yuri’s bed, a wide affair with lush sheets and thick blankets, wondering how time had passed so quickly and how she could have made the decisions she had. Why did Yuri suddenly fascinate her so? Yuri was sated, snoring softly, his arms and legs splayed wide, while Mika ran her fingertips over his naked frame.
Then she snatched her hand back.
For the first time since leaving the theater, she felt her hands were her own, her body, her thoughts and memories.
She stared at Yuri, wanting to rage at him for what he’d done. But what had he done, really? Nothing she hadn’t allowed him to do. But by the ancients who preserve, why had she done so?
She stood from the bed. Pulled her clothes back on. Tiptoed from his home and into the bitterly cold streets of Evochka.
What was happening to her? As she ran through a city limned in silver by a nearly full moon, tears of frustration fell from her eyes. In the distance, among the buildings of Old Evochka, she could see the dome of the Opera House. The smile the duchess had given her the other day… The feelings of being watched…
For some reason it drummed up memories of the duchess watching her from her seat in the rayok. The Matri could assume birds and other simple beasts, but it was said they could do so to men and women as well. Such things were done only at great need—it was a terrible offense to do so—but they could. They could take another’s mind, doing with them what they would, like a marionette with her puppet.
Bile began to rise in her throat. Was she now a mere puppet?
At last, she reached her apartment, quickly entered, and shut the door. Ahead of her, across the entryway, was a mirror. She saw her own silhouette, but could not yet see her face. The skin along her arms went prickly. Her mouth was suddenly dry. As she stepped forward, moonlight coming through the windows of the sitting room and lighting her features, she stared into the hollows of her own eyes.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 8
