She was staring at the back side of her eyelids. Her mind wouldn’t quiet, and whatever part of her was in charge of “falling asleep” was falling down on the job. By 11:04 PM she’d grown tired of trying to find different (and more comfortable) sleeping positions. At midnight, she lay bolt awake, heart pounding, terrified lest the sirens didn’t mind coming out of the river on Sundays after all.
Was Katya, even now, lying comatose in the bunk above her while her ghost danced with the sirens beside the river? As quietly as she could, considering the thunderous pounding in her chest, Giselle slipped from her bed and stood to check if Katya was still breathing.
She was.
Of course, even patients in comas had to breathe, didn’t they? Giselle’s fingers played an uncertain rhythm on her lips. Should she awaken her sister? No. Of course not. Katya needed sleep.
It was eight minutes past midnight.
Her sister stirred. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? The comatose didn’t stir, did they?
“Zelya.”
Giselle startled. “Just checking,” she whispered to Katya.
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I promise they don’t dance on Sundays. It’s 12:09 in the morning. That makes it Sunday. Go to sleep.”
A pause. “I can’t sleep.”
A sigh. “Yeah. I noticed you thrashing around down there like a python with indigestion.” A giggle.
“I was trying to be quiet,” murmured Giselle, her brows drawing together.
“I’m teasing. You were quiet. As quiet as a python with indigestion could be, anyway.”
Katya was giggling again. Giselle felt somewhat indignant.
“I don’t see how you can laugh at a time like this,” Giselle said.
Katya sat up, scooted to the edge of her bunk, and leaned over to hug her sister. “I’m sorry. It’s how I’m coping, I guess. Why don’t you try reading? That usually helps me get sleepy.”
Giselle nodded, kissed her sister’s mussy brown hair, and grabbed her copy of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reading it from the beginning by the light of her cell phone. Rather than making her sleepy, the story began to engage her mind. She even found herself reading a few of the notes for passages that had confused her in rehearsal. Going on the theory that checking the time would only make her more anxious, Giselle didn’t look at the hour until she’d finished the play. It was 3:34 AM.
Sighing heavily, she turned over and kneaded her pillow into a less contrary shape. The church bells tolled 4:00, and then the quarter hour, then the half hour. At last, Giselle promised herself that if she was still awake at 5:00, she would go downstairs and run through a barre in the kitchen, but sometime between the bells marking the three-quarters hour and those chiming five, Giselle drifted to sleep. She slept a full hour, awakening when something set the chickens clucking. Turning her face to her pillow, she groaned into it so as to muffle the noise lest Katya wake as well.
It was a few minutes past six. The pillow-muffled groan had made something tickle in her throat, and because the tickle was threatening to become a cough, Giselle stumbled out of bed and groped her way to the bathroom for some water. The water stopped the cough, but her throat was pleading for a cup of hot tea with honey and lemon.
Downstairs, Giselle found Babushka returning from having fed and quieted the hens. Her mother stood at the sink, removing tea bags from the concentrated brew pot that belonged atop the samovar. Giselle tried to think of some way to wave the white flag, but she was afraid that even a simple good morning might invite another rant concerning her behavior at Carbs on Friday.
No, it was simpler to ignore one another.
Her grandmother kissed her, Russian style on both cheeks.
“Your chickens are well,” said Babushka, “And Babushka is well and your mother is well. How is little Katyusha?”
“She’s sleeping in,” croaked Giselle.
Hearing the condition of Giselle’s voice, her grandmother stared at her sternly and declared she would have tea. Now.
“Perfect,” said Giselle, sinking into her chair. She accepted the cup of tea, plunking one of yesterday’s lemon slices in the cup along with a spoonful of honey.
“Are you sick?” asked her mother, placing a hand on Giselle’s forehead.
It was their first physical contact in two weeks.
“Well?” asked Ruslana.
Giselle shrugged in answer.
“Maybe you should sleep downstairs tonight,” murmured her mother. “We don’t need Katya coming down with something and giving it to the whole studio.”
It was an ordinary remark, one her mother had made a hundred times before, but today the murmured words seemed like a promise of the cessation of hostilities. The three women sat in peaceful silence over their cups of tea, watching day creep along the walls. And as the sky grew lighter, so did Giselle’s heart.
~ ~ ~
Later, after Katya, her mother, and Babushka left for their afternoon rehearsal, Giselle tried to nap. Her throat tickled and scratched, waking her every time she managed to drift off. Giving up at last, Giselle rose and read each of her grandmother’s books of fairytales. After this, she spent two hours scouring the Internet for anything that might offer insight as to how fey creatures interacted with mortals. She was struck primarily by how little regard such creatures had for mortal life.
She’d noted in the Russian tales, however, those humans who displayed kindness or humility fared better than those acting from greed or with arrogance when dealing with magical beings.
Humility and kindness seemed of somewhat less aid to humans in stories from other traditions, although one thing came up again and again: it was important to choose your words and promises very carefully when speaking to the Fey. Humans who came out ahead with fairy creatures were often those who practiced the fine art of avoiding direct answers to questions. Giselle concluded it couldn’t hurt to display kindness and humility while being careful as to what was said or promised.
In all her study, however, she had found no instructions regarding how to force a fey queen to release someone from service voluntarily given and accepted. Worry crept around Giselle like a circling predator. Katya had been so weak, so vulnerable. It began to look as if offering to dance in her sister’s place was the only solution. Perhaps she could word things in such a way that the queen would have to release them both after tonight. Her brow furrowed; she felt no great confidence in her ability to outwit a siren.
By the time her family returned from the studio, Giselle knew she was sick, but she downplayed her condition. She’d danced through plenty of colds, and she didn’t want Katya using this to keep her home tonight.
“You don’t look good, Zelya,” murmured her sister as the two finished brushing their teeth before bed.
Giselle shrugged in response, a sort of practice run at the fine art of not answering a question directly. She glanced to her sister and caught the accusing tilt of Katya’s head.
“Fine,” said Giselle. “I don’t look good. I’m crazy tired.” She was so exhausted she worried she might sleep through the alarm she’d set. “Wake me when it’s time?” she asked her sister.
Katya made a vague “hmm …” sort of noise, tapping on her cell phone screen.
It did not occur to Giselle that her sister, researcher of fairy lore, might also have been studying the fine art of not answering a question directly.
35
NEITHER YES NOR NO
Giselle awoke with a start and sat up, recognizing at once it was late. A book slid off her bed and onto the floor making a soft thunk.
“Katya?” whispered Giselle. She felt under her pillow for her phone and managed to knock it off the bed too, but even without checking the hour Giselle knew the truth: Katya had left without her. The room was empty.
Derrmo!
It was nearly four—Katya had been dancing without her for four hours! Cursing, Giselle hurried down the stairs. She was already dressed in the warm, snug-
fitting running clothes she’d chosen before bed.
Outside, autumn had decked Foulweather in a splendor of white fog and dripping trees. The foggy air created a pre-dawn stillness that was eerie enough without the thought of what awaited her by the river. As Giselle ran, the church bell struck four times.
Katya had fooled her with such ease. Of course she had. Katya would have noticed Giselle’s patently sick state and decided not to promise the wake up call. Giselle clutched tightly to her indignation as she ran; it kept fear at bay.
A stitch wormed its way deep into her side, needling, then aching, then throbbing. She pushed through it. Dancers were forged and refined in the fire of pain, and even with perfect toes, to dance on pointe was to embrace this pain. But both pain and indignation were instantly subsumed by the agony of seeing her sister stumbling and exhausted once more among the cold maidens.
As Katya missed a step, an angry siren jerked her cruelly upright.
“Is she broken?” called the queen, imperious as she admired her visage in a large mirror.
The sirens hissed in response.
“Perhaps the river will revive her,” said the queen. “Throw her in.”
“No!” cried Giselle. “No … fair ones!” It was a form of address borrowed from her grandmother’s books.
“You again?” demanded the queen, drawing a comb through her long hair. “Why have you returned?”
Giselle’s immersion in Shakespeare’s Dream rushed to her aid, suggesting the speech and body language of reverence. She bowed deeply.
“Gracious majesty,” she said, her eyes to the ground. “I have come to … to dance for you.”
“Indeed?” asked the queen. She leaned forward. “Will you join us, then? Do you thirst to exact revenge for the wrongs done you, mortal?”
Giselle felt something pass over her, warm like the summer sun; it was the desire burning in the queen’s fierce heart, and it awoke in Giselle the desire to make them pay, make them all pay, for what they had done: what James had done, what her mother had done, and her father, and even her dance friends who ought to have refused their roles rather than see Giselle humiliated in the role of Berthe.
Even Katya might have spoken up for you, whispered a voice borne on that redolent breeze. Had the queen spoken? Giselle’s brow furrowed.
No, the queen had not spoken. The words emanated from her own heart, rising from her bitterest thoughts. Giselle glanced at her sister, at her fading eyes, her cracked lips, her faltering steps, and all desire for vengeance fell away.
How could she join creatures capable of this?
Her sister swung past.
“Zelya,” murmured Katya.
The dancing maidens released Katya and Giselle caught her as she fell.
“I’m so tired,” Katya whispered, her eyes drooping.
Giselle placed her arms under her sister’s, offering more support. In her mind, she ran through the “lines” she’d composed, a request phrased in such a way as to bind neither her nor her sister to further obligation.
“Will you allow my sister a reprieve?” Giselle asked the queen. “Shall I dance now? I can dance the story of Giselle and the Veela, a story told in dance to honor you.” Giselle observed the hunger in the lean face of the siren queen. “To honor your suffering,” she added.
The sirens hissed at her.
The queen regarded her coolly. “You know something of our suffering, do you not, mortal?”
“Only a little,” replied Giselle, casting her eyes down as the queen addressed her. All was silent, and for a moment Giselle feared the queen would command Katya to dance again, uninterested in Giselle’s offering.
But Giselle had underestimated the vanity of the siren queen.
“Show us,” commanded the queen.
Giselle bowed. “Without music, your majesty, I fear the dance may not please as well as it might with music.”
Giselle reached for her phone, anticipating a demand for music, but the queen waved her hand impatiently. “There is no need. The river sings sweetly; listen and you may hear it as well.”
While Katya sank to the ground, Giselle began with the Variation from Giselle, a piece she knew as well as she knew her sister. It was more demanding than partnering Katya two nights ago had been, and she was out of practice, out of shape. Twenty minutes passed and Giselle’s arms began to weary. Another ten and they were sagging to a degree neither Miss Ruslana nor Miss Chekhov would have allowed. Katya, who at first gazed with encouragement at Giselle’s performance, slowly drifted to sleep on the cold ground.
Dancing on the grass in bare feet was nothing like dancing on a sprung floor in pointe shoes, but Giselle was dancing again, dancing the role for which she’d prepared her entire life. She felt the pulse of the queen’s dark magic, pulling, calling, claiming, and she realized she was no longer dancing alone. A host of sirens had joined her, imitating her leaps and penchés.
Giselle danced on and on through the heroine’s death dance and into the ghostly variations of the second act. She found her weariness had fled; it was as if the queen’s powerful magic was flowing through her veins, energizing her so that she could dance forever.
She felt another breath, summer-warm, and recognized the siren queen’s call, burning like a thousand suns, fueled by the desire for vengeance. The queen was reaching for her, offering to sustain her with power forged in the crucible of unending rage and grief and the lust for retribution.
It was as though Giselle had entered a world where ballet was real—where dancing was inseparable from life. It was this world for which Giselle had hungered even before her mother had cruelly forced her to quit, thrusting her outside everything that had made life worth living. What use was life without dance? Her anger burned and it, too, sustained her, mingling with the hatred that burned bright and fierce in the siren’s call.
She was no longer praying for dawn. She was praying that night would never end. Her eyes closed and she whirled in wild abandon, a new dance sprung from feelings she now warmed to, the vengeful thoughts of the maidens dancing alongside her. She reveled in her newfound connection to these sisters, these fellow sufferers. They understood her. They pitied her. They would never forsake her or betray her.
And then, gradually, she became aware of something else. A name. Someone was calling, repeating a name. Giselle. She knew that name. Giselle, Giselle, Zelya! Her eyes flew open.
Katya was trying to reach her, pressing through the whirling sirens. “Zelya!”
Giselle gasped, inhaling as though she’d been holding her breath while underwater, but when she glanced at her garments, she was dry.
“Katya,” she murmured.
Her sister struggled forward until she was grasping Giselle’s hand. Katya’s hand was warm and Giselle realized her own was icy. It was ice and not fire that burned in her heart.
“Katya,” she said again. Katya’s hand felt so like their mother’s hand, when Giselle had woken from a bad dream, her mother at her side, and in that moment the spell of the siren queen was broken. Giselle recognized a truth so simple, so basic: how had she never stumbled into it before? Her mother had not been the one who exiled her from ballet; Giselle had made that choice. Giselle had chosen to quit.
A tear trailed down one cheek, hot on her cool skin. She looked around. The queen’s gaze was to the east. At least half the sirens had already returned to the river.
Sighing, the queen drifted to Giselle’s side and drew a cold finger under Giselle’s chin. “I can offer you so much.”
No, whispered Giselle’s heart.
And in that no was her rejection of the bitterness and self-pity that had knotted and folded in upon itself until it was heavy as iron, heavy as hatred, shriveling her heart to something no more substantial than a pebble.
The queen’s pupil-less eyes were deeply shadowed as she gazed upon Giselle, and Giselle thought she looked less fierce than before. Giselle pitied her as she’d pitied the weeping creature years ago.
> The siren’s path was no way forward. Not for her.
“Well?” asked the siren queen.
Giselle’s pulse picked up speed. How could she refuse without offending the queen?
“You give no answer?” said the queen, a hint of impatience in her voice.
Inclining her head in a small obeisance, Giselle replied. “Your majesty is most gracious in her, um, offer.”
“You say neither yes nor no,” said the queen, making a soft noise in her throat that Giselle thought might be the memory of laughter. Was she excusing Giselle from giving an answer?
The siren queen sighed and turned again to the East just as the clock began to strike five times. The remaining sirens drifted to the river, entering it silently. In ones and twos, they departed until, as the church bell struck the final note, only the queen lingered.
“Come again tomorrow,” said the queen.
This was her chance. Her moment. Giselle’s heart pounded in rapid frappés.
“Do you release my sister from further obligation?” asked Giselle. She sounded much bolder than she felt.
The queen’s sharp teeth flashed. “Are you certain that is best for your sister? She, too, can take her place among us.”
The queen had deflected Giselle’s question with another question. Imitating her cunning, Giselle again asked, “Is my sister released?”
“Perhaps you would like to take her place, pretty? To dance with us through the tireless nights?”
Again, the queen had evaded the query. Giselle chose her own words with great care. “I will come tomorrow.” As her fingers closed over the cell phone in her pocket, she had an idea. “Tomorrow, I shall bring a mighty company of dancers. I have captured them in … a narrow box. They never weary. And they will tell the whole of the story I danced in part tonight to honor you, your majesty.”
“Indeed?” asked the queen. Her blank eyes seemed to strain as if to search out the approach of the company Giselle promised.
“Will you not see and judge for yourself?” asked Giselle.
The queen smiled. “Bring them tomorrow. We will judge.”
“This I will do,” replied Giselle, “But only if you release my sister.”
Siren Spell Page 24
