Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was good that they were quiet at first, since the flute and the piano were so quiet. Gluck, not “Glook,” was the name of the fellow who had written this pretty piece. “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” it was called. The lads made a very good thing of it, all things considered. Katie was quite proud of them.

  Now, Katie had changed her routine from the warm-up she had first showed Charlie to something that looked better from the house. She waited, remaining perfectly still, for four bars of the music. Then, before anyone could start to get restless, she slowly, agonizingly, brought her right leg up, gliding her heel against her left leg, until she caught it in her right hand. Then she slowly straightened the leg, bringing her foot up right over her head and holding it there.

  Still holding her foot over her head, with her back arched, she inched herself around so that she presented herself sideways to the audience. She let go of her foot, dropped it back down to the platform, and slowly began to bend over backward.

  Now, as she had first envisioned this act, it was going to be one seamless piece of contortion work. But Charlie—who knew his audiences better than he knew the whims of his own wife—persuaded her to put pauses in there.

  And now she understood why he was right to do so.

  The first time she did one of her pauses—at the end point of the first of her extreme contortions, where she was balancing herself on her hands with both of her feet resting on the top of her head—there was an actual whoop! from someone at a table very near her, and the applause that erupted gladdened her heart.

  Before she was half done with the act, she knew it was going to be a success. There was enough “pepper” in it to make men enjoy it, but not so much that their wives would be angry with them for looking so hard at her, and not so much that anyone would be afraid for their children to see it. The act was difficult enough that it impressed people and would make them talk about it. And it was different enough even from circus contortion that people would not be disappointed.

  When the curtain closed on her, she knew two things for certain. Charlie was not going to regret taking a chance on her, and by the time the fall season was upon them, she would have enough money to be rid of Dick forever.

  She had to change immediately; two of her three numbers were in the first half of the show, so that there was time for her and Lionel to perform the magic act before her final piece. She ran back to the dressing room as the chorus dancers streamed onto the stage for the first of the musical numbers they did. It was the usual can-can; you couldn’t have a music hall show without a can-can. Coming right after her quieter act, it would liven everyone up again, and even though the chorus girls were a pretty average lot, they were lively enough, and people were disposed to like them.

  So, first came the high-kick number, then the Drunken Gent, then the Breeches Girl singing a sentimental ballad, and then it was time for Katie to do the Fairy Dance, the one with the ribbon.

  She squeezed past the comedian and reached her door, which even had her name on it—her name, not the name of the faux Russian she was supposed to be. She and Lionel had been very, very firm on this: there would be no dressing-room visitors for her. Katie could no more counterfeit a Russian than she could convincingly pretend to be a countess. The best way to continue the illusion was to absolutely forbid dressing-room visitors. Jack could, and would, keep them out. There was no bribe big enough to make him allow anyone back to the dressing room to see her.

  That edict had made Charlie happy, since there was always the chance she might become too popular, and some clever booking agent might lure her away to another hall. It had made Katie happy, because she was quite well aware that the gents in the audience often reckoned that a gal who’d show skin on the stage wouldn’t put up more than a token bit of resistance—easily overcome by money or presents—to allowing that skin to be handled.

  The thought had nearly put Katie into a panic, until Lionel insisted she must keep up the mystery. She trusted Lionel . . . she trusted Jack . . . she trusted that Mrs. Charlie would be down on Charlie like the Archangel Michael if he interfered with a girl . . . but she didn’t trust any other man.

  She opened the narrow door and whisked herself inside; she might be at the top of the bill, and at least she was getting her own dressing room, but she still didn’t have the sort of advantages that someone like Pretty Peggy did. No dresser of her own, no little servant that could manage things in the dressing room. No one waiting in the wings to help her get things on and off, or even to carry any of her props. The only reason she had a stagehand to lift her up onto the posing stand was because he had to carry it out there in the first place.

  She could have someone like that, of course, if she cared to pay for the help. But every penny she spent on having a servant was a penny she couldn’t put toward being rid of Dick. It made her feel sick, to think that he could, at any time, turn up and take her away, and she would have no choice but to go with him. That he could do anything he cared to with her, and to her, and she had no recourse but to suffer it.

  The past few weeks had been like heaven. The thought of going back to hell—

  I’d rather die, she told herself, as she closed and locked the door of her room behind her.

  At least having her own dressing room—tiny as it was—meant she could keep all her costumes hung up and tidy, and not have to worry about the other girls moving them or putting them in disorder. For the Fire Dance dress . . . that was critically important.

  She popped the white wig onto the wig stand, stripped out of the white costume and hung it up. She didn’t bother washing the white powder off her face; she used it as the foundation for the half-face makeup for the Fairy Dance—just a pair of rosebud lips and a little pink on the cheeks. On went the familiar gauze skirt of her old circus ballet dress, on went the tight basque, over the tights she was already wearing. There was a hook in the doorframe she used to tighten the laces of the basque; for someone as used to contortion as she was, tying up her own laces was no harder than doing up her own shoes. She pinned the spangled pink scarf to one shoulder, draped it across the front of the basque, pinned it again, and arranged it over the folds of the skirt. She tied on the toe shoes . . . made sure there was some new cotton wool padding the toes. She was very, very glad she didn’t actually have to get up on her toes more than a couple of times in this routine. She knew that real ballerinas spent most of their onstage time up on the tips of their feet, and she could not imagine putting herself through that sort of torture for longer than a few moments. It might look beautiful . . . but it hurt.

  She checked her makeup, and listened for a moment for the musical cues of the orchestra. Her timing was good; they were right in the middle of the Drunk Gent. There was plenty of time to shake out the green spangled scarf and arrange it over the rest of the skirt, then put on her butterfly headdress and make sure it was pinned securely in place so that she could see.

  She could hear the Sentimental Ballad starting as she finished with the headdress. That gave her enough time to gather up her wings in one hand and her wand and ribbon in the other, and make her way without hurrying to the wings, where Mrs. Littleton was waiting to help her put the wings on.

  And then, the Breeches Girl came off, the curtain came down, the backdrop changed to the Garden Scene, the curtain pulled back completely and the music began.

  Up on her toes she went, and took a run of tiny, fast steps backward diagonally across the stage while tiddly tiddly tiddly she went with the ribbon making spirals in the air behind her. She was supposed to be a ballet dancer, and people would expect to see the toe-work—

  Then turn and whirl and big circles with the ribbon, then leap and circle with the ribbon overhead, then back across the stage tiddly tiddly tiddly—

  It was all fast, done to Fairy Music from a play that Lionel said was very famous, and with a lot of misdirection with the ribbon-work
. The ribbon made her dancing look ever so much harder and more complicated than it actually was. She only had to go up on her toes three times in the whole thing, twice to dance backward, and only once to pose with her leg held up in an arabesque. Not that it wasn’t hard work! She was essentially running at full speed the entire time; she had to keep moving to keep the ribbon moving. But it wasn’t any more complicated in the way of dancing than her work with the chorus. Less so, really . . . if she made a mistake or left something out, no one would know except her, and she could make something up to fill in until the next cue.

  One last backward tiddly tiddly tiddly to give herself room to run, and then run and leap out into the wings again, and it was over!

  Well, from the sound of the applause, this was exactly what the audience had hoped to get out of a Russian Dancer. As the chorus girls pushed past her to get in place to back the Ballroom Number, she rushed back to the dressing room to get ready for the magic act.

  Her dressing room was opposite Lionel’s, and he was waiting to unhook her wings for her before she dashed inside to change. She smiled her gratitude at him; it had been his idea to get the wings off her rather than wait for Mrs. Littleton to get finished making sure none of the chorus dancers were going to come apart in mid-kick.

  The Djinni costume—and the act—actually felt old and comfortable and familiar after all the heart-in-mouth of the new dancing numbers. She was actually able to relax, even add some little bits of business to throw more misdirection out there at key moments. The eyes were on Lionel, not on her, except when she was the centerpiece of an illusion. Her salamanders were only needed to ignite a couple of flashpots, which they did beautifully, and the whole act came off as smooth as the nicest, freshest cream.

  Then while the stagehands stowed away their gear, she ran ahead of Lionel, back to her dressing room, to get into the Fire Dance dress.

  It was a measure of Charlie’s desperation that he had paid Mrs. Littleton for the gown—which had never been paid for by the original girl, and as a consequence was Mrs. Littleton’s property. But since it wasn’t hers, and since it was horribly, hideously expensive, Katie was absolutely fanatical about her care for it. It hung up on the wall against a clean dust sheet, and was covered by another when she wasn’t actually in it. There were three layers of the gown, and if she hadn’t worked out a way to get into and out of it by herself it would have been a nightmare to get into alone.

  First, she stripped off all the makeup from the magic act. She had to be absolutely clean to get into the gown; the white silk showed the slightest smudge. She pulled off the dust sheet, knelt and lifted up the three layers of the front, then climbed inside the gown while it was still on the hanger. Only when she was safely inside did she pull the hanger out and put it aside, twisting and turning to make certain all the layers of the dress were hanging properly.

  She draped herself in the dust sheet to protect the gown, did her makeup, then donned her mask, a form-fitting domino of red leather with three red-dyed feathers sprouting from the middle and arching over her head. Then she gathered up the dress in both arms and made her way back out to the wings.

  As the Comic Singer left the stage, she took her place in the middle of it. “Break a leg,” he whispered with a wink as they passed each other. She took the wands in her hands, gave herself a shake to settle the folds of the dress, and took a long, deep breath.

  Of all three parts of the act, this was actually the one she was least nervous about. There wasn’t all that much talent involved in this routine. It wasn’t really Katie who was doing the dancing, after all, it was the dress. All Katie had to do was make sure she didn’t trip, tangle herself up, or get herself into some other disaster.

  Once again the backdrop was black, but this time when the curtain parted, it parted all the way. The dress needed a lot of room.

  The band crashed into the music with wild enthusiasm and a lot of cymbal- and drum-work. Katie began turning and gyrating, working the fabric of the dress as the two magic lanterns switched from red to orange to yellow and back again. She didn’t so much see the sylphs that were helping her as feel them, lifting the folds at the right time, getting just the right amount of air into the layers, adding some height to the tosses of the wands. Katie turned the yards of fabric into flames, into wings, into storm clouds, and back into flames again. She tossed the wands high with every cymbal crash. She spun in place while she made the fabric form into peaks and valleys. Lionel had a cynical phrase for this sort of thing—“chewing the scenery”—but there was no doubt that the audience thought this dance was the best of the three. Loud as the band was, the crowd was louder, until she built up to the final crescendo, gave her wands one last toss into the air, and collapsed on the stage in a pool of fabric as the curtains snapped shut.

  The crowd was roaring on the other side of the curtain. Katie was utterly exhausted, but managed to pick herself up off the floor and join the rest for the curtain calls. They took three, which was all that Charlie would allow—he insisted on having plenty of time to clear out the audience, restock the bar, and get all the apparatus set up for the second show.

  “Cor! That looked even better than in rehearsal!” the Breeches Girl said in admiration. “How’d you get them little lights to run up and down the dress? I know you ain’t got any spangles on it, so it wasn’t that—”

  Thinking quickly, Katie replied, “It’s the silk, it reflects light ever so. Mrs. Littleton is brilliant.”

  That was all the young woman needed. She nodded wisely. “Ain’t every music hall this size has a wardrobe mistress, much less one as good as she is.”

  Katie nodded, and the young woman gave her a kiss of congratulations, then ran off for her own dressing room. But before Katie could follow, Lionel grabbed her elbow.

  “Once you’ve changed, meet me and Jack in my workroom,” he whispered urgently. “We need to talk about what just happened onstage.”

  10

  KATIE would really rather have gone straight to her dressing room, given herself a good wash, and had a bit of a laydown on her little sofa. Perhaps she could ask one of the other girls to bring back some cucumber sandwiches from a tea shop, but if not, she had some bread and butter and a bottle of lemonade. As exhilarating as her first star turn had been, it had also been exhausting. But she knew from Lionel’s tone that whatever it was that he needed to discuss, it needed to be talked over now, and she had the feeling it had to do with the “lights” the Breeches Girl had seen running up and down her costume.

  She hadn’t noticed any such thing, but then again, she had been rather busy, and the billowing folds of the gown had rather effectively obscured her vision a great deal of the time. With the scarlet and gold lights from the magic lanterns playing on the fabric, it had been very like being inside a furnace.

  She took great care cleaning off her makeup; if she wasn’t going to get the chance for a wash between shows, she wanted to be as clean as she could.

  And she hoped that they would remember that she only had so long before she would have to get her costume back on for the evening show.

  When she made her way down the spiral stairs into the ground floor, Mrs. Littleton’s room was quite dark, but Lionel’s workshop was heavily illuminated. She ventured in to find Lionel waiting with open lemonade bottles and some newspaper-wrapped parcels.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind some fish and chips,” he said gesturing. “I sent one of the lads for them.”

  Well, ordinarily it wasn’t what she would have preferred; it was hideously hot on stage, and she had just put on the most difficult performance of her life. But it was much cooler down in this room, and she discovered she was starving. She sat down with Lionel and proceeded to devour hot fried fish and chips with all the enthusiasm of any of the pleasure-seekers on the Boardwalk.

  “Jack will join us after he has gotten someone to watch the door
for an hour or so,” Lionel said, after taking a long pull from his bottle. “He is the expert on Fire magic, not I. But, this is why we urgently needed to speak with you. I presume that you didn’t notice anything . . . odd . . . during that last dance?”

  “I didn’t,” she admitted, “But the Breeches Girl—ah, I think her name is Victoria Sanderston?—she said there were little lights running through it. I told her it was the special fabric.”

  “Swift thinking. Yes, there were. I believe, although I do not know for certain, that those were Fire sprites. I have personally never seen them, only heard them described.” He frowned. “This is what is troubling. They came by themselves. You aren’t a Master, and yet they came by themselves.”

  She paused with a chip halfway to her mouth. “Is this bad?”

  “Well . . .” he shrugged. “I don’t know, you see. Jack might. The problem is that you are Fire, and Fire creatures are notoriously emotional. The Elementals, I mean, not necessarily you, personally. They respond strongly to the emotions of Elemental mages—and more than that I don’t know. That is why we are waiting for Jack.”

  Many hungry days had taught her there was no point in letting worry cause her to waste good food. She finished eating the chip and reached for another.

  Jack arrived sooner than she had expected, and sat down and reached hungrily for the third packet of fish and chips without saying anything. Lionel simply forestalled any need to ask questions by describing what he had seen during the Fire Dance.

  Jack nodded. “I see your concerns,” he said. “and they’re real.” He turned to Katie. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said apologetically. “I know you are already overburdened with things you must do already, but you and I are going to have to make time for lessons in magic.”

  She sighed. After what Lionel had said, she had been afraid of something like this.