by There was, for a short time, uproar. The other three glaistigs re-materialised, hissing something at me that I couldn’t catch. This was partly because my own team were raising vociferous protests at the same time.
‘Ves, did you just challenge a quartet of murderous ghosts to a dance-off?’ Jay was saying, sounding really very surprised, which was unreasonable of him; hadn’t he met me already?
‘A brilliant plan,’ Emellana was saying, and I think she meant it, ‘but with one grave flaw: I have no talent for dancing. At all.’
Zareen was losing it altogether. This took the form of wordless cackling, which, emanating as it did from her death’s head of a face, enhanced nobody’s comfort at all.
Indira just stared at me, silent and pale. When I caught her eye, she simply said: ‘I can’t dance.’
I smiled encouragement at my four trusty colleagues. ‘I know we haven’t exactly rehearsed anything, but you can trust me. Please. Will you?’
Jay knew me well enough to smell a rat. I could tell from the way his eyes narrowed when he looked at me, and then he folded his arms and I knew I was in trouble. ‘Trust you,’ he repeated.
‘I won’t hurt you.’
He sighed. He knew I was asking a lot more than I seemed to be. He knew, or he guessed, what I was proposing to do.
I knew he wouldn’t like it.
But it was still better than an actual battle, and it was also better than fleeing the scene, defeated (supposing we were permitted to do so without further torment). I knew it. Jay knew it.
He inclined his head in a nod.
‘Thank you,’ I said in relief. For a moment, I’d been afraid he wouldn’t back me up.
Emellana raised her brows at me. Her lips curved in a faint, wryly amused smile. ‘I trust you know what you’re doing,’ said she.
‘As usual,’ I replied, ‘I haven’t a clue.’
She saluted me, with more than a hint of irony about it, but she was still smirking, so I decided I’d take it.
‘All with me?’ I asked of my team.
Zareen had stopped cackling in favour of an utterly terrifying grin. ‘I get so bored when I’m not on assignment with you,’ she said, which was a yes more than it wasn’t.
That just left Indira. She still resembled a frightened doe more than the competent, powerful woman I knew her to be, and that worried me a little. But she took her cues from Jay, especially when it came to me, and if he was choosing to go with the crazy, Ves-flavoured flow… I watched her eyes stray from my face to his, and back again. He’d given her a reassuring smile.
‘I can’t dance,’ she said again.
‘It’s okay. Doesn’t matter.’
She nodded.
All right, then.
I turned back to the glaistigs. ‘Out of interest,’ I said, addressing their apparent leader. ‘Are you Silvessen?’
‘I am.’ Her ghostly visage flickered for a moment, and I saw again the Yllanfalen woman underneath. The woman she’d been in life.
‘I’m sorry for what happened to your people,’ I said. ‘When we’re done, we would like permission to carry all those left to a place of rest, employing any rites or practices you’d prefer.’
‘We accept,’ said Silvessen. Instantly, without so much as a moment’s thought.
Had she and her companions lingered here all these years merely in want of someone to bury their remains?
How had it taken so long?
‘Do you also accept our challenge?’ I said.
She gave no answer, at least in words. Instead, she and her three companions joined hands and began to sway. A ripple of music began, haunting and sad, quiet at first. The violin was back on the balcony, and a pipe had joined it, though the strains I heard were complex and layered; the work of many instruments, though we saw only two. The song was palpably sad, a heartbreaking lament that tore at my soul. My face dampened with tears.
The music swelled, rising in volume until it was a blast of sound, almost physically painful. A freezing wind tore around the ballroom, centred around the four glaistigs; the whirling currents tore at my clothes, shoving me backwards.
My back hit the wall. My team were similarly afflicted; we were pinned there like a row of butterflies, flapping weakly against the insurmountable forces of the elements ranged against us. I could hear nothing over the tumult of wind and music, so whatever Jay was helpfully shouting at me was lost forever.
It wasn’t a true dance-off, of course. For that we’d need rules and judges and an audience and costumes and there was no chance of any of that.
This was a contest of magick, expressed through music. And dance. That being so, it might be considered unwise of me to challenge a group of angry Yllanfalen; proposing to compete with them in a contest of musical magick is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Oops.
That said, we had Jay. And Indira.
And me.
‘I’m going to do my brilliant and incredibly effective music-thing,’ is what I guessed Jay was trying to yell at me. Because he straightened after that, and began walking directly into that fell wind with all the controlled power of an action hero. He stretched out a hand to Indira, and she took it in a white-knuckled grip.
The two siblings advanced on our foes like an unstoppable tide.
The glaistigs might have opened with music, but they were dancing, too. Sort of. The swaying had turned into a fluid, free-form, interpretive-dance situation; very Kate Bush in ‘Wuthering Heights’. More graceful than it sounds, despite the flailing arms and flying hair.
The roar of music began, blessedly, to diminish. Soon I could hear Jay. He was shouting something.
‘Your turn, Ves.’
Right.
There are two main advantages to long attendance at boarding school, and those are: boredom, and extracurricular activities. There isn’t much to do during evenings and weekends. It’s homework or dance classes, and what kind of a person chooses homework?
Ballet was Mondays, tap on Tuesdays, jazz on Thursdays and ballroom on the weekends. I had range. And, okay, I hadn’t done any of those things for some time, but my body remembered the moves.
I crossed the floor in a series of piqué turns (passable), ending with an arabesque. Pirouette en dedans, messed up my fouetté but never mind, onto a series of chaînés, bourrée—
‘Ves,’ Jay was yelling. ‘You’re supposed to have shoes for that.’
Yes, yes I was. Pointe shoes, with wooden blocks to protect the toes (or mince them, whichever happened first).
‘It may surprise you to learn that pointe shoes are not typically included in my emergency travel kit.’ I was a little out of breath, being more than a little out of practice, but my toes were fine, because where I lacked suitable shoes I didn’t lack for suitable magick. If I could manipulate the air around me to open a bunch of doors, I could sure as hell use it to waft myself along like a dandelion seed on the wind.
The effect was charming, if I do say so myself.
My routine set, I caught Zareen up and drew her along with me. Piqué, arabesque, pirouette en dedans, fouetté — and Indira made three, and we were a flurry of leaves floating on the wind, Indira a being of perfect grace, Zareen a sweeping figure of intense, concentrated motion—
Jay shook his head, but resistance was futile, and he knew it.
***
And that’s how we ended up at saut de basque sodecha, by way of a solid series of jetés, pirouettes à la seconde and a pretty spectacular cabriole.
Maintaining sole control over a five-person dance troupe without messing it (or them) up or shredding my own sanity? No picnic. If I wasn’t Merlin there’s no way I could have pulled it off. And I’m pretty sure this is not what Ophelia had in mind when she handed over the keys to an ancient and indescribably powerful magickal archetype, but what can I say? Nobody died. A few pulled muscles were sustained and a bruise or two, but there was no bloodshed whatsoever and everybody walked away sane. Who can say fairer than that?
Half an hour later, we were winded and sweating and aching in more than a few places.
‘Double tour en l’air, Ves,’ Jay insisted, so I obliged, and I regretted it, but fair’s fair.
Then it was Emellana’s turn. She isn’t built for ballet, but let me tell you, she’s spectacular at flamenco.
Jay and I closed with a dazzling waltz.
‘Wonderful job, everyone,’ I applauded, gasping for air and smiling from ear to ear.
‘Fantastic,’ Zareen panted. ‘Just one problem.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’ve lost our opponents.’
I turned around, searching the ballroom. No glaistigs visible to the eye. No glaistigs visible to my other senses, either.
They’d gone.
