by Faye, Audrey
I took a bite out of the tiny apple I’d claimed from the bowl on Greta’s counter and considered whether I felt adequately armed for this next step. Somewhere in the restless sleep that had followed my nighttime epiphanies, I had apparently decided to go visit the lion in her den. Which was a fair amount more confrontational that I usually was, and that required some mental girding.
I sat down on a stump that had clearly been placed for just this purpose, and watched the colorful snapshots of humanity pass by Greta’s front gate. I smiled, feeling the momentary urge for a paintbrush. My dancing bears would have fun rendering this on a canvas. I’d put the ladies in duck yellow right in the middle—they’d been catching my eye all weekend.
That was part of what I wanted to say to Elena. There was more than flowers out her hazy windows.
I wasn’t sure why I’d picked Elena as my lion of choice. Painting wasn’t my strength, and she’d stomped on something delicate when she’d tried to prune my happy, orange-wielding self. It made more sense for lots of reasons to go find the blonde, clapping woman who herded dancers in all kinds of ways that bothered me and that I could articulate a lot more clearly, with hands and words and my whole body if necessary. I was far less eloquent with a paintbrush.
The compass in my gut didn’t budge.
I rolled my eyes and nibbled on my apple. Elena was a reasonable choice. She’d been here practically forever and she was one of the guardians of what worked here and what didn’t, even if she claimed neither as her role.
I took a couple more bites and finished the juicy delicacy I’d walked out with, pitching the core into a compost tube discreetly tucked in behind the gate. The juices were so good that I licked my fingers too. Probably not the way most diplomats prepared for battle, but fruit had always been one of my best kinds of fuel, and I was a very temporary diplomat.
If my next assignment was observation only, I was going to prostrate myself on Yesenia’s carpet and beg for another tour in the Etruscan sector.
I rose to my feet, touching the wisdom of the night that I’d tucked deep inside me. Time to go flow with humanity a little while longer, and maybe find a small girl who needed to twirl or a toddler who wanted a few raspberries for his basket. I’d let the weekend wind down, let the travelers leave, let Thess exhale.
And then I’d go have a chat with a fellow artist.
-o0o-
It was almost skydusk by the time I judged myself fortified enough on Greta’s baking to brave the now-quiet streets one more time. A tentative plan to meditate in the back garden for a while had turned into a long nap in a very comfortable hammock, followed by more berry picking and fresh shortcake for tea. Assignments often had odd pockets of down time, but they generally didn’t extend to half-days of gently swaying oasis.
I felt replete, filled up with the very best of Thess as I went to talk to one of its guardians. About intangibles—about things that could be, moments that could happen, energies that could flow less impeded through what was already a beautiful stream.
Holding to that appreciation, I meandered down the street to Persephone. My hostess had been quite certain that was where I would find Elena at this time of day. I shot a look up at the balcony where I’d seen Nate watching the street performances, but there was no sign of small boys or red trucks. Perhaps I would come find him after my visit to Elena and see if he wanted to run down the street and be fire engines racing our way to bed. I’d learned early on in my time with littles that most parents in the galaxy were profoundly grateful if you helped blow off some of the high-octane energy kids seemed to be born with—and it gave me an excuse to be wild and rambunctious too.
Even grown-up dancers have bodies that constantly want to be on the move.
I made small fire-engine sounds as I passed under Nate’s balcony. A promise, or at least as close as I could come to one while I was on assignment.
The painting studio was only a few buildings farther down the street, and I could hear quiet music streaming out the open door. Something haunting and enchanting, and it pulled me in on a stream of notes that had me yearning before I even made it across the threshold.
I looked over in the corner and spied Gerhart sitting on a stool, eyes closed, saxophone in his hands. Making magic.
My feet headed his direction on autopilot, Talent and fingers rising to meet the story he was blowing. He belonged in a smoky bar somewhere, with sexy ladies in red dresses and the air full of sultry mystery. I looked around, wanting someone to share my newfound treasure with—and blinked. There were three people in the studio, and all of them were busy painting.
Gerhart seemed surprised when I pulled up a stool, leaned into the wall, and just listened. I could hear the stutter in his playing too. Professional musician he might be, but he wasn’t used to an audience. Not for this. I had no idea why not. I didn’t know a whole lot about music beyond what I liked, but he could have filled a bar on any planet I’d ever been on in about five seconds flat.
Except this one, apparently.
He finished on a flutter of notes that had my heart aching and sighing all at the same time, and then smiled at me, looking slightly embarrassed. “Sorry—I’m still working on that one. It’s a little rough yet.”
I stared. “You wrote that?”
He shrugged. “It’s a hobby.”
I’d heard him play the bassoon. It hadn’t made my heart sing. “I was walking by on the street and I heard you. The emotion in that—it was stunning.”
He looked down at his knees, flushed and embarrassed and pleased. “Jazz isn’t everyone’s thing. I’m glad you liked it.”
More writing on the same wall that had already pissed me off several times on this trip. “There are lots of musicians here—no jazz groups or smoky bars or playing into the night on your back porch?”
He shrugged and smiled. “There’s more of that on Devios. It doesn’t really fit the musical traditions here. We’re well regarded for our woodwinds and classical string arrangements.”
“Gerhart is the finest bassoonist in the quadrant.” Elena joined us, a wary look in her eyes. “We’re very fortunate to have him here with us on Thess.”
One lion, into the fray. I took a breath, suddenly not sure how to play this. “I was trained as a classical ballerina. Old-school Russian lineage—Madame Tsarnova.” She was a big name, if you liked your art served up the traditional way.
Elena raised an eyebrow. “I’ve heard of her school. You must have been very good.”
“I was.” I smiled. “But I remember one day when I snuck out with a couple of friends to see some performers from Elyos. They were doing a four-elements dance, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman who was fire.” She’d crackled with passion even before she started moving—and once she had, my nine-year-old self had been utterly mesmerized. “I came home and pretended to be fire in my dorm room every night for three months.”
Gerhart was smiling. “When I was on tour with my first orchestra, I saw a guy playing sax in a hole-in-the-wall bar on Corinthian spaceport. Missed my shuttle and the two after that, too.”
We were nearly touching it—the thing I wanted them to see. “So much of art and inspiration and joy is unpredictable. We don’t know what will speak to us until we find it.” I touched Gerhart’s sax with reverent fingers. “This doesn’t sound like your hobby.”
He watched me silently, with yearning in his eyes—and a request not to shake up his well-ordered life.
I turned to Elena and tried to speak to both. “You’re afraid I’m here to change the village you love, and you couldn’t be more wrong. There is beauty and harmony and rightness here, and all of that is so very important. But the way to protect that best isn’t to limit it.”
She raised polite, frigid eyebrows. “You’ve only been here a few days.”
Most people might let her play that trump card, but a Fixer wasn’t one of them. “Sometimes an outside perspective is a valuable thing. I was sent here to be that pair of
eyes.”
Worry layered in behind the cold politeness. “Is something bad going to happen to Thess?”
“Nothing that I’m aware of.” I let my fingers flutter softly, but kept my Talent in check. Observation only. “You love this place.”
“I’ve been here a long time.”
“You feel very protective of what’s been built here.”
“Yes.” She nodded, willing to own that much. “We have thousands of satisfied visitors every year. I don’t understand why you can’t see that.”
“I can.” I didn’t look at Gerhart, unwilling to put him in the limelight when he so obviously didn’t want to be there. “But I also saw a woman standing behind you as you were painting yesterday. She had her hands up, holding an imaginary brush, tracing your strokes.”
Elena looked a little confused. “I’m flattered.”
Subtlety was getting me nowhere. “Have you ever considered having some easels set up beside you—a place where people could try their hand at a little painting?”
“Painting requires skill and dedication, just like dance or music.” Elena had gone from cold to flammable in two seconds flat. “You’d never ask Gerhart to leave instruments lying about, or invite people from the audience to tie on toe shoes and dance a ballet.”
She was oozing fury slicked with ice, and it was all I could do not to shiver. “I’m not suggesting anything that would damage people or valuable property. But there are ways to create opportunity and keep everyone safe. Encouraging dancing in the streets yesterday, for example. Or a drop-in session where people got to experiment with some beginner instruments.” I could feel her ears clanging shut, but somehow I couldn’t stop talking. “People don’t all want to watch art—some of them want to be art. To feel their bodies, their hearts creating something, even if it isn’t any good. A chance to be touched by the same magic that you feel when you create your beautiful paintings or Gerhart plays his jazz.”
He squirmed on the stool beside me, clearly unhappy at being within earshot of this conversation.
“We aren’t summer camp.” Elena shook her head sharply. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I won’t stand for you interfering with the way we choose to live. Our right to do that is well protected by our charter. Even KarmaCorp isn’t entirely above the law.”
Yesenia was going to kill me dead, and then she was going to resurrect me and do it again. Completely alienating local power structures was sometimes inevitable, but I’d pretty much engineered this disaster from the ground up, on an assignment where I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything. I breathed into my chakras, yanking my temperamental artist under control. This mission needed damage control, and it needed it right now. “This isn’t a professional opinion, and I’m sorry if it came out that way. It was just my personal observation after being here for a few days.”
Elena sniffed, but the angry energy rippling off her calmed a little.
I kept trying. “KarmaCorp treasures beauty. We honor it. They sent you someone who loves to dance and paint and laze in hammocks on a warm afternoon, and I’m sorry if my ideas came across as an attack on those things.” It was an attack on something entirely different, but I was belatedly getting control of my mouth.
Elena nodded, doing a better job of reining herself in than I was. “It’s been a long weekend for everyone. I trust you’ll enjoy the rest of your stay here.”
She turned and walked back to her easel, tightly controlled dismissal in every step.
Gerhart let his breath go in a whoosh. “You’ve got guts.”
Maybe, but I hadn’t aimed them very well. “Your music deserves a place to live in the world.”
He met my gaze for a moment and then looked down, tucking his feet under the rung of his stool. “It has a place.”
Not one that was big enough.
My fingers yearned to flutter some of the walls of his cage farther back, to see if he’d fill the space if he got given just a little more. But that was the kind of choice that got Fixers on observation-only assignments busted back to shoelace-tying duty.
Especially given all the rules I’d just finished shredding—and all I’d managed to do was make things worse.
I sighed. I had so many of the threads that felt like they mattered in my fingers now, but I had no idea what to do with them, and I needed to figure that out before I snarled things up any tighter. I looked over at the man still holding his sax and looking a little sad. “Is there a private dance space somewhere that I could use for a bit?”
Gerhart shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if there is any such thing.”
That made no sense. Some dancers I knew were innately communal, but most needed a crucible of solitude at least some of the time, a place where the only thing present were the heart and feet that needed to dance. “Is there a nice clearing in the forest, then? One that’s a bit of a walk to get to?”
He nodded. “A couple I know of, but I don’t recommend traipsing around in the dark.”
Nobody ever did, but that didn’t usually stop me. However, it might tonight. I was a Fixer who knew the value of sleep, of letting things percolate, snarls and all.
And then I would let my feet greet the morning.
16
I could feel myself exhaling deeply as I walked through the forest, soaking in shadows and the occasional ray of early morning sun. Fifteen years of hanging out with the Lightbody clan had taught the inner-planet girl in me just how much healing, how much peace, could be found in the company of green, growing things. The forests of Thess were beautiful and smelled of something that no air recycler has ever managed to duplicate.
I stretched out my stride, enjoying the springy energy under my feet, and tried to get a morning read on the tangles inside me.
The path I was on looked to be aiming at a break in the trees, one where the light made it through the canopy all the way to the ground. Hopefully, one of the clearings Gerhart had spoken of, although given my sense of direction, that was only a hypothesis. It didn’t really matter—all I was out here seeking was a place to dance in the sunshine and move as a tiny, flexibly rooted tree in the forest.
It always made Tee laugh when I insisted that even trees needed to move their feet, but it had always felt that way to me, and I’d made it my mission to convince all small Lightbodies of that fact too. There was no such thing as too many dancing gardeners in the galaxy.
Tee wasn’t the only one who would enjoy this walk. Kish would pretend to tolerate it, with a look on her face that said she still thought the trees might eat her, but we all knew she’d stopped meaning that a decade ago. These days she spoke of the grasslands of Devan’s home planet with a longing that said something green and growing had finally completely won her over.
But of all of us, it was Raven who loved the forests most. This one was pretty tame for her tastes, but my roommate needed wilds like the rest of us needed oxygen. It had taken Kish and me years to grow into the wide-open spaces of Stardust Prime, but the gorgeous, pragmatic Shaman who was my heart sister had always had to fight to stay as big as she needed to be without the jungles of home to help keep her that way.
I wrapped my arms around my ribs and smiled, knowing why I was thinking of the three of them now. They were my touchstones, my marks on the stage, the places my feet and my soul went when they needed to feel comfort.
I stopped beside a tree just short of the clearing, dropped my small bag at the base of its trunk, and slid off my shoes. My toes crinkled into the compost-in-progress that was the forest floor, and I closed my eyes a moment, letting it speak to me of cycles and becoming and the richness that comes when some things move on to die and other things rise up to live.
I snorted and opened my eyes—my toes weren’t usually so melodramatic, at least not while they were still. I kicked into a snarling cat leap that would have had Madame Tsarnova rushing me to the Psychs, and landed in the clearing in a crouch, a wild kitty ready to play with the sunlight.
I looked at my fingers, which were doing a damn good impression of tiger claws, and reeled them in. “Sorry—I didn’t realize anyone was here.”
A hint of amusement flashed in his eyes. “Yeah, I got that. I’m Baron, by the way. I don’t think we actually got to that part the last time we met.”
Dancers tended to have an odd sense of social priorities. “I’m Iggy.”
He studied me for a minute. “People think KarmaCorp sent you here for a vacation.”
People weren’t usually so willing to believe our cover stories. “Maybe they don’t want to consider the other possibilities.” Thess, collectively taking the easy way—a story that went to the very heart of why I was out in this clearing.
Baron shrugged and started moving around me in a way that said we were still having a conversation, but his body needed to move. “You tried to tell us something different in your dance when you first got here.”
I traveled with him, my feet quite happy to do this on the move. “I did, but I’m pretty sure the only people who caught that message were the ones who didn’t need it.” Which was the problem I was still having.
How to communicate with those who didn’t want to hear. Without my Talent to back me up.
I kicked up some of the dirt as I traveled. This being a regular-human-being thing was annoying.
Baron watched my feet, and then spun into a series of tight, frustrated turns that had both my artistic appreciation and my Talent buzzing. He spoke as he passed closer to me. “I think Euphoria is going to leave soon.”
That wasn’t exactly shocking—but it struck me as sad, for Thess and for her. It would be hard for her to find a place that would take proper care of both her wild genius and her soft, shy heart. “Is she talking to you about it?”
He shrugged. “Not with her words.”
Dancers had plenty of other ways to have a conversation.
