After the midday meal, which we ate backstage, the girls gathered to stretch and talk. I sat across from them on the floor, pretending to be focused on pulling my chest close to my knees but really listening in on their conversations. As much as they annoyed me with their scatterbrained antics and giggling natures, I found myself sometimes drawn to their inane gossip. A girl seeing another girl's former lover, how the grocer's boy always flirted with only the married women, and other such frippery. It felt like sneaking a spoonful of sugar.
At the moment, the girls were full of talk about the male servants. Being an all-female company made them snatch onto any sort of attention from a boy. One of the redheads flipped her curls over one shoulder and smiled coyly. "One kissed me when I went to get a new pitcher of water during lunch."
The other girls gasped and a few slapped her playfully on the arm. "He did not!" one said.
The redhead shrugged, adjusting her stocking and lifting her nose as if she were above it all. "Well, I still have the taste of mint on my lips, but if you don't want to believe me than that's just your choice."
"Wait, you kissed the mint-chewer?" the other girl squealed, suddenly now on the side of the redhead. "He's so dreamy!"
The other girls all joined in on the virtues of the "mint-chewer" and his supposed charms. Casually kissing a girl who didn't even know your name didn't seem like something to be lauded, but I wouldn't upset their swooning and adulation.
They prattled on and on, changing from one servant to the next, taunting each other over which they found most handsome and which they thought tried too hard or not hard enough. I eventually lost interest and began to focus in earnest on my stretching, when a name caught my attention. 'Ferdinand'. Unfortunately, I did not catch the context his name was mentioned in, though I glanced up in time to see the girls all gripping each other and bouncing up and down. A small girl with light brown hair stood in their center, glowing with the attention.
"He was absolutely divine," she said, fanning her face with one hand and widening her eyes.
"What was his carriage like?" someone demanded.
I hadn't even noticed the girl was not present before this, though I barely ever registered she was there at all. Her dancing was barely adequate, and her face and personality both were more inclined to blending than to standing out.
"Oh, nothing fancy. Just a public one," the girl said. "But he was dressed like just anyone you could pass on the street!"
"I can't believe he's here," one girl sighed. "He was the youngest dancer to ever perform a solo for the king's birthday. And now he's going to be dancing for us!"
"I don't see why he'd want to dance with us. We're literally no one when it comes to the dance world. Why in the world would he break from his Rumonin National contract? If he stayed on there, he could become as famous as Lionel Frome, and have a mansion and carriages and everything."
"Sometimes your stupidity amazes me, Gertrude." Rachel, one of our newest members, stood on the outskirts of the group, lazily practicing her footwork and suppressing a yawn. Gertrude narrowed her eyes.
"We didn't ask you to join in, Rachel," she snipped. "You can just go back to scowling in the corner, thanks."
"My opinion may not matter to you, but I'd be careful about uttering it where someone important might hear," Rachel said. "The Lennox Company may not have the acclaim that the Rumonin National has, but that won't last for very long. Mr. Lennox is a genius, and I don't use that word lightly. Frankly, Ferdinand Popov would have to be a complete dolt to not want to join now so that he can be billed as one of the original dancers when the Lennox Company finally comes into its own."
Gertrude rolled her eyes and turned her back on Rachel, who didn't look the least put off by this cold treatment. She merely shrugged and walked off, eyeing her arm extension in a mirror as she went.
"Anyway, if he wants to dance with us, then he can be my guest."
"Oh, I wish he would be in one of the corps dances," one girl said. The others nodded in agreement.
"Of course only the favorite gets to dance with him," Gertrude muttered, and I felt their eyes boring into me even though I had averted my own to stare at the floor.
After a few seconds of silence, one girl chirped up in excitement. "But where is he now? I've never seen him up close!" A general eruption of enthusiasm ensued and suddenly the girls all began to pour toward the door. Before they could exit, however, Mr. Lennox halted their progression by walking through the door and pausing on the threshold. They came to an abrupt stop.
"Ferdinand Popov is being introduced to General Masha and his family, and he will stay with them until the performance," he said. "I'd suggest you stop thinking of boys and start concentrating on correcting your sloppy lines and lackluster turnout." His cane snapped against the doorframe, driving the girls back. They resumed their practice, but their muttering became a constant drone in the background.
Mr. Lennox approached me and I looked up with a smile. "I think they're going to tear him apart when he finally shows his face," I said.
Mr. Lennox shook his head, staring at the girls as they whispered back and forth. "I wish we didn't need his fame," he said. "If General Masha would have noticed us without him, I would have a thousand times preferred it. Having Ferdinand around is more trouble than its worth with these girls. None of them are concentrating."
"Rachel is," I said, nodding to where she calmly dipped into plies. "I think she's more interested in awing him with her dancing."
"At least she's thinking about the dance," Mr. Lennox said.
I got to my feet and he took my arm. "We should practice once more on The Funeral Dance. There's only a few more hours until you're on stage."
"Wouldn't it be easier with Ferdinand?" I asked. It was not a new question, or one that I didn't know the answer to already.
"You'll dance with him when the time comes. There's no need to have you together for the practice when I can just as easily take his place."
I bit my lip. "He'll know the steps?"
"Of course he'll know the steps. He may not be as good as you are, but he's a talented dancer from a respected company. He'll be prepared."
As we practiced, I pushed my questions about my partner from my mind in order to concentrate on the difficult footwork and arm placement. What he looked like, how he danced, if he was nice or not, and a thousand other such things wanted to fill my brain, but I made sure to clear it as Mr. Lennox barked corrections. Thinking of anything but the choreography would result in mistakes and departures from the careful mood that Mr. Lennox infused in each step.
An hour before our performance, Mr. Lennox left me to rest and get ready. I sat on my trunk, staring into a small mirror someone had brought in for me to check my appearance in. Right now I was simply Nadia. My hair in a low bun, tendrils sticking almost exactly sideways away from my face, and a sheen of sweat covering my neck and wetting my hairline. A mess. I grabbed a cloth to wipe down before leaning in to apply the white powder, rogue, and colored eye creams that exaggerated my features until everyone in the audience would be able to see them. My eyes became charred and feathered, and my cheeks and lips saturated in pure red. My hair needed only to be slicked back into my bun, and I smeared a dose of grease over it to make sure it stayed put.
My costume consisted of a black dress with long skirt and matching slippers. And of course the black veil that made this dance unique. I did not wear it until the final pas de deux, which meant that it sat behind stage until the costume change. I sat it on my costume trunk, ready to be grabbed in the five minute break that the music afforded.
The corps lined up behind the curtain that lead onto the stage, and for once they were silent. Energy crackled between all of us, feeding and leeching at the same time. The girls shivered in their white and gray dresses, their faces painted white except for their eyes and lips which stood out in sharp black. We waited as Mr. Lennox climbed the stairs and walked to the front of the stage, parting the curtains and stepping beyond our vision. The audience clapped politely, but they didn't know Mr. Lennox yet. To them, he was merely a strange man about to introduce them to something that might be quaint or might be boring. The Lennox Company had not yet earned their attention.
Just two more minutes and it would.
Mr. Lennox introduced the ballet, and thanked General Masha, who shouted something that we couldn't hear but made the audience roar in overloud laughter. Mr. Lennox bid them an enjoyable evening, and ducked back behind the curtain. As he came down the steps, the girls went up, and he patted me on the back.
"Forget all but the dance," he hissed.
The curtains lifted on the corps de ballet arranged pleasantly across the entire stage. They launched into their number, and I waited for my cue. The audience watched with vague interest.
For not the first time, I wondered if this was the right ballet for the occasion. I'd never, ever say it out loud to Mr. Lennox, of course, but I couldn't help but question if a ballet about time destroying a woman's life was quite the thing for a party celebrating the birth of a well-to-do general. Even now the corps was writhing on the stage, depicting Time as it killed all living things. There was not a splash of color to be seen on the stage or the girls, until I ran out with my red lips and cheeks. The young maiden, still a friend of Time and anxiously waiting until she is old enough to marry. I mixed with the girls, and they lifted me and supported me through plunging lunges and drops. I smiled, twirling like a princess.
The audience smiled, perhaps not understanding the story of the ballet, and thinking it a quaint modern dance. They began to chat with one another, clicking their fingers for the waiters to bring over refreshments. General Masha, a man with a white beard and decked in full dress uniform, played with the hand of the duchess to his right. Frowning, I threw myself more into the dance, knowing that my skill should be enough to capture their attention. Instead, they only blandly clapped when I completed a difficult move, or widened their eyes at my perfect turns.
Through the rest of the dance, I did all I could. The girls even sensed the attention slipping and tried their hardest to be perfect. By the time it came for me to run off stage while they dance a hectic and flurried rendition of Time passing, I gasped for breath and dripped sweat on the flooring. Mr. Lennox stood nearby with a glass of water which he handed to me, and I breathed more than drank it.
"Change quickly. They only have to move the tombstone onto the stage before the pas de deux," he whispered.
I nodded, too winded to reply, and dashed through the door and to my trunk where I retrieved the veil. Thank goodness that from now on no one would see my face, because when I caught a glimpse of it in the mirror I could see the makeup smeared and melted with my sweat. I sighed and pulled the veil over my head. It floated to my knees, covering my face and blocking most of my vision.
With the black gauze making everything seem only a shadow, I felt my way to the stage steps. Essentially blind, I had to rely on my memory of the dance to not fall off the stage or stumble over my own feet. Mr. Lennox adjusted the veil, and then his hands rested firmly on either side of my face.
"No errors," he said. "Perfection only."
"Of course," I said, but my heart skipped a beat. During rehearsals I had never quite managed to complete this dance without a single mistake. Sometimes they were as small as a line not fully realized, yet other times they were as big as getting my leg caught in the veil. Today, I could not even breathe wrong. No room for being Nadia. Only room for the dance.
The girls exited the stage, stumbling past me as they sucked in air and collapsed in little piles on the ground. The music shifted from the piano and violin centric, to a more discordant and abrupt tone with drums and the crashing of symbols. I felt my way to the stage, heart pounding against my ribs, and counted my steps to where my mark was. Through the veil I saw the dim shape of the grave that represented the man the girl of the ballet loved. I bent over, my arms crossed and my head down. A wilted flower on his grave.
The dance began. I performed alone for the first minute, sagging across the stage, never quite straightening. A girl in mourning. I could not see the audience, but from their silence I knew that they were finally paying more attention. Dropping to my knees, I lifted my hands to my face, and then bent backward. As I began to rise back to my feet, nerves burst through my concentration. Here was the part that, if any, could make the whole ballet a failure. A jump into the air, hoping that Ferdinand was on the other side, ready to catch me. I could not see him at all and could not see where I directed my jump. Too far and I would crash into him, too short and he wouldn't be able to catch me. Either way, it would end in injury and embarrassment.
Taking a deep breath, I began the run that evolved into the jump. When my feet left the stage, all I could do was trust in the partner I'd never seen.
My body cut through the air, a perfect arc, and as I descended from the apex, I suddenly felt a pair of hands catch my waist and pluck me down. I curled into his body as I was supposed to, my head rest on his shoulder and my legs pointed to one side.
The strangeness of it jarred me. I felt his bare skin against my cheek and his muscles moved against my torso as he shifted to lift me to his other side. This was not the strained effort of Mr. Lennox as he struggled to lift my weight after hours of rehearsal. This was not one of the girls holding my waist as I practiced my turns. This was something entirely different. A shiver ran through me as he released me and I tipped onto one toe, my arms reaching toward the grave that he now stood in front of.
His hand caught mine, spinning me once, twice, thrice, before I wrenched away. In the ballet, he was the final face of Time. The one that took the girl's lover, the one that always brought the end. The girl struggled against him, only to realize that by giving in to Time, she would be reunited with her lover. I, however, shrunk from his hands because the shudder that ran through me at their touch jolted my mind from the dance and into the present.
I lifted onto my toes to complete an unassisted set of turns. The veil swished around me like water, and I could feel every eye in the ballroom trained on me. Including his. And then I wobbled.
My balance destroyed, I began to tilt to my right. In vain I tried to tighten up to correct myself, but my ankle bent under my awkwardly placed weight, and I cringed as pain shot up my leg. With dawning horror, I realized that I was headed for a fall. The ballet was about to be ruined, all from one mistake.
———
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading this far! I am so happy that you've come back! We finally have a little glimpse of Ferdinand! Mr. Lennox has kept him such a mystery! Are you excited to really meet him next chapter? How do you think Mr. Lennox will react to Nadia messing up his perfect dance?