Adagio

Adagio

    “I can give you something you've never dreamed possible, the true performance of a lifetime...”
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    The night after the fall the girl remained in the studio long after everyone else had gone. The scent of her clean sweat mingled with the lingering perfume of trials and triumphs hidden in the corners of every ballet studio. Her lavender leotard seemed a part of her laboring form; where her pale skin was visible it glistened like oil as she danced. Still she spun faster as if trying to outrace her exhaustion. The gauzy slip of a skirt clung to her as she tried to force her aching limbs into exacting perfection. The grace, the fluidity of form she desired to flow through her and enfold her seamlessly into the music remained just beyond her reach no matter how far she pushed herself towards it. The harder she worked the further that goal seemed to be, like a hallway door set in a nightmare. She danced faster.

    Eventually with a surprised cry she stumbled off pointe and almost fell again. Tears of pain and sheer frustration raged down pale cheeks unnoticed as she limped to one of the chairs opposite the barre. Removing her slippers was hard; her feet were swollen from being overworked and the pressure had knotted the laces. It was difficult to untie them and even harder to slide the toe shoes off her aching feet. Her right foot was easily the worst and the girl sighed in dismay at the small bloom of blood that colored her tights at the toes. The metallic tang of blood mingled with the fragrance of bodies worked to exhaustion. Cloying and sharp it filled her mouth with the bitter flavor of copper, of failure.

    She knew what must have happened. Earlier during rehearsal she had missed a landing, a simple leap she had rehearsed endlessly, yet this once she had stepped slightly wrong and fallen hard on the stage. Unforgivable. She hadn’t needed to look at the Director. His cold eyes bored into her as she regained her feet. She could feel her cheeks flaming as she braced for the rebuke she felt coming. Then with a snort he turned away and dismissed the Company in disgust. That was worse. As the other dancers filed past had she kept her eyes down but still imagined their stares, heard their hissing, and was almost crushed by her own sense of defeat.

    She had waited like a ghost in the wings until with a final boom of the stage door and the sound of a key turning she knew the building was empty. Alone in the dressing room after they left she had taped the toe she feared half broken securely to the one beside it before re-lacing her toe shoes and entering the deserted studio to practice. Now clawing at the foot of the stained tights with her brittle nails until she managed to shred the gummy nylon she saw it was as she had feared, the tape had snapped. Her middle toe was even more misshapen and swollen than earlier. 

    All the frenzied strength left her and the girl drooped, her limbs limp and trembling with exhaustion. She knew she must get up and get ice for her feet and ankles and do something about her toe or else she would not be able to dance tomorrow but dispirited and drenched in failure yet again she simply couldn't find the will to stand. All she could hear was the music playing in her head over and over. She felt nothing, no pain or aching. Unconsciously her fingers wrapped themselves in the practice skirt and twisted the once light fabric mercilessly with wooden faced rage.

    Instead of tending to her battered feet she gazed dismally at her reflection in the floor to ceiling mirrors adorning the opposite wall, their gleaming perfection not broken but enhanced by the barre. The silky smooth birch rail running its length polished to gleaming by years of dancers going through their forms. Her twin self looked forlornly back. A parody of a dancer with her deep set eyes dim with exhaustion and her lithe body slumped limp in the chair like a puppet with its strings cut. The only movement the half conscious wringing of her sodden skirt. Watching the girl in the mirror slump defeated in the chair filled her with helpless fury and sick loathing. All she had ever wanted wasting away into a weak shell of mediocrity. 

    Throwing her slippers hard across the room as they struck that gleaming mirror she stood, refusing to acknowledge the few drops of blood now marring the usually pristine surface. The bleeding really hadn't been very bad but it was another symptom of her body's weakness. She turned and evaluated her long dancers body, lean like a racing dog, kept slight by a lifetime of self denial and strenuous exercise. The girl had not tasted chocolate nor any other sweet since lacing her slippers for the first time at three years of age. All her meals are carefully prepared according to her diet so she will remain an adult with a drawn out child’s body forever. Occasionally she deviates from her strict diet and either her discipline or her body rejects such indulgences soon after the eating knowing she dare not gain an ounce. Turning her bare feet out the girl saw her stance, even weary as she was, was nearly flawless. Her willowy form small breasted and slim hipped could only be the body of a ballerina, yet no matter how she tortured herself she had never achieved the perfection, the magic, she sought.

    Turning to limp for the ice she heard a rustle in the doorway. She whipped around, even that startled gesture one of a grace and unconscious poise, forgetting her misery in sudden fear of the mysterious sound. It was as if someone had combined crepe paper, velvet, and something crisp and dark into a single shimmer of noise. The girl was aware of her heart beating like a bird caught in a cage in a way it never did no matter how hard she overworked herself. Inexplicably she froze in the act of calling out for the intruder to reveal themselves. The studio that felt more like home than her apartment suddenly felt strange and surreal. Violated but she knew not by what. She trembled as her sweat turned to chill and goosebumps suddenly raised on her entire body.

    Out of the darkness of the hall that discordant shimmering noise grew closer and slowly a pair of hands began to clap. Not quickly like an instructor or with gusto like an audience, this was a measured quiet clap that somehow managed to evoke a feeling of sadness. Then a man appeared in the doorway almost out of reach of the studio lights. A scent of burnt wet paper. ash, and talc wrapped around her and filled the studio. A heady mix with the undercurrent of faded roses, totally out of place. It made her head swim. She could only make out the shape of him, an impression with few details. He wore a mask, of that the girl was quite certain, and a cloak of some mysterious fabric that must have been the source of the sound. She could not see his eyes past the mask in the gloom but felt an icy cool her spine. There was no doubt they were staring straight into her own. The girl found herself with no will to look away.

    “You dance with such feeling yet you are dissatisfied.” The man in the mask said quietly. His voice was the deep seductive purr of a panther and quite extraordinary. It was unlike any voice she had ever heard, so rich it made all other voices bare wisps of themselves. Yet somehow the voice and the masked man himself felt familiar, like a dream half forgotten. He seemed to expect some sort of response from her as he stood motionless, waiting. She had never known such stillness. No dust stirred and though the air was as frigid as if the air conditioner was on at an impossible chill not a breath of breeze touched her trembling flesh. All the sounds in the world were stilled and she could hear the seashell echo of her own blood rushing so loud in her ears it was almost deafening. Her mind felt dull with the heady mix of old damp smells and strange sensations and she could barely formulate a response but she could feel him waiting.

    “No matter what I do the dance is flawed.” The girl almost whispered the shame welling up making her feel naked before the unseen eyes of the masked man. Her honestly surprised her. She seldom spoke to anyone of her failure. From her first memories all she had wanted, in fact all she was, was a dancer. The music sang inside her and she dreamed of stages long ago and far away every night. In her dreams she was light as air and delicate as spun gossamer. She flowed like water forever trapped in a dance she knew upon waking her clumsy body would never be able to perform. Every morning tears were on her cheeks and her heart ached with loss.

    “You seek perfection in your grace, eloquence in your movement.” He stated obviously knowing his words to be true. She felt the blush warming her pale cheeks while the rest of her remained locked in ice. Tied more surely by the complex scent the clung to him than if rope had bound her body. She wanted to lower her head, to shrink away but she was a statue before him. 

    “Yes.” She whispered barely breathing. Something inside her feeling fragile. Her fear rose to an even higher pitch. She felt like she was going mad. She felt like she was also waking up in one of her dreams and felt like screaming and crying but also wanted nothing more than to listen to this man forever. Something about his voice was so soothing. Her terror made her like glass.

    “What if I can give you what you desire?” The cloaked figure asked, his fluid voice filling the question with its music. Something was very wrong. That fragile thing tugged inside her as if against her will some part of her wanted this. Had been waiting for this from the beginning quietly biding it’s time. She tried to scream but the sound just ricocheted inside her head uselessly

    “How?” She felt like she was being wound tighter and tighter in the liquid silk of his voice. As if some essential thread of herself was spinning further away.

    “I can give you something you've never dreamed possible, the true performance of a lifetime, if only you will dance it for me.” He promised. His voice was still silk and honey but there was suddenly something broken there too. A tremble she could not identify.

    “Now?” The girl asked confused by his demands, his offers, her conflicting desires, and made giddy by a sudden mad hope. Could his strange man, this eerily almost remembered presence, and this sense of things turning again perhaps be an answer to her wish? Feeling torn the girl just stared at him helplessly.

    “No. Three nights hence.” He answered patiently. “You will come to the Pandora Opera at dusk to be dressed and then dance the Adagio for me and my guests. You know the piece?”

    The girl gasped at this command even as she nodded reflexively. The music flooded into her blood. The Adagio was almost as much a legend as the Opera House itself.  The girl grew up hearing of the tragedy. The doomed last ballet that no one survived. Wild rumors surrounded the cause, a jealous dancer, a lovers quarrel, and even a suicide gone wrong were all popular theories at some point. She had loved those stories. Fantasized of one day setting foot inside. Never mind that the Pandora Opera House had burned years ago in one of the most tragic disasters in the last century. Only its shell now stood; there was no stage to perform on. The Adagio was also lost to that merciless flame as was the legendary ballerina who was said to be dancing the famous piece of music just as the fire was set alight. There was no way to replicate it or try to do what that ballerina had done. None was said to have ever been her equal. She could not dance the Adagio, it was beyond her and she knew it, but as she opened her lips to protest she found herself unable to refuse him. She knew she would be there just as she knew she was drawing breath.

    “As I said, the performance of a lifetime.” His voice came to her as he drew back into the shadows in his rustling cloak. A gift he knew she could not deny. She knew he was gone but never heard the noisy clang of the stage door to mark his exit. It was like her had never existed at all. As if he came from those dreams she had always had but never fully remembered. The scent of char and dust was gone with him and with it reality flooded back.

    The girl looked around the studio as if waking somewhere unfamiliar. Shaken by the exchange she quickly gathered her things leaving the studio by the side door barely noting it was soundly locked. When she looked out at the empty street she tried to convince herself the encounter had been some sort of hallucination brought on by stress and exhaustion but there was a strange smell lingering in the deserted street around the theater, like decaying roses and ashes. She shivered again, even though it was almost warm outside.

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    The next two days were spent in bed with a raging fever. As she writhed on the small bed in her sticky sheets and clammy nightclothes images of her dancing by candlelight, by old stage light, and by moonlight drifted through her fever haze. She wept at beauty she knew she could never attain and envied the satin smooth moves of the Adagio interpreted in seemingly endless ways. Her broken toe throbbed on and off but she didn't have the strength to even re-tape it. As the girl's temperature soared ever higher she lost track of her surroundings and saw masked forms instead, moving silently and sinuously around her bed surrounding her with the subtle tang of smoke and filling her mouth with the taste of long crumbled ash. She thought at one point the cloaked man from the studio gazed down on her from the foot of the bed and simply said, “Remember, tomorrow.” Then he was gone in a swirl of feverish images.

    The third day the fever had broken when she at last woke. She felt well enough but slightly lightheaded and with a peculiar looseness in her joints. Her muscles felt soft as taffy when she climbed out of the shower after washing the stale sweat away. She would have thought such a fever would leave her weak and lethargic but she felt strong and confident as she stepped up to the small barre positioned on a mirrored section of wall. It was her studio in miniature where she could limber up immediately upon waking and showering. As she went through her usual routine of motions and poses she seemed to be able to reach further than before, to rise more elegantly, and to hold more precision in her footwork. 

    Tempted as she was to go to her regularly scheduled rehearsals a small voice in the back of her mind reminded her she had disgraced herself before the Director and then disappeared for two whole days. She might not be needed at Company rehearsals anymore. As with her fever dreams she pushed that unpleasant thought from her mind as she limbered up in a way that proved far more agile than ever before. She would beg for her job back tomorrow she vaguely thought but for now she was too distracted by her forms. Besides, what if the fever returned? 

    Like words written on soft paper rising in a stream she remembered her engagement to dance the Adagio that night. With no direction, in a burned opera house deserted for many years, for a mysteriously clad stranger, the girl knew it was an impossibility. She attributed the demand and the promise floating through her memory as a hallucination precluding the onslaught of the fever and attempted to thrust it from her mind as she worked on warming up her body. Yet no matter what she did the strange man’s words echoed in her mind.

    “I can give you something you've never dreamed possible, the true performance of a lifetime...”

    Feeling a power and flexibility she had never know the girl turned the record over and continued to exercise. She delighted in the lightness of her being and the slow turns of her body. It was an almost flawless warm up and she never wanted the feeling of perfection and oneness with her strong body to cease. She almost wept with joy and an unaccountable sense of loss that she couldn’t understand. Spending extra time in front of her mirror the girl was lost in movement.

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    That night the girl decided to take herself out to dinner. It had been a long time since she had eaten rich restaurant food. As usual she would probably choose to not keep it down but she would still get the taste, if not the calories. A special treat for her flawless morning.

    With her fever dreams still echoing in her mind she walked past her intended destination with an air of abstraction. She didn't notice her wayward feet leading her elsewhere until she came out of her reverie and paused across the narrow street from the old Pandora Opera House. Shocked at her location she stared at the blackened bricks feeling a slow blush heat her face. She realized she was very embarrassed to be there, as if she had subconsciously let herself believe the opera house would magically be whole and waiting for her Adagio. 

    Her eyes darted around quickly but the street was uncommonly deserted for this hour. Relaxing upon realization there would be no witnesses to further foolishness she swiftly crossed the road meaning to take a closer look at the desolation of the formerly grand establishment. The story of the fire that had claimed the opera house was old and oft changed in the retelling. What little remained constant was the fire started during final dress rehearsal before opening a new ballet, more modern thinkers attributed it's start to a flaw in poorly adapted electric lights, but the oldest ones who may have heard about the fire as children claimed the start, while mysterious, must have been from candles before there was electricity on this street. Everyone agreed all present inside the doomed building had perished in the flames. The fire department arrived to late to save the theater but managed to save the buildings on either side before dousing what was left of the opera house in a deluge of water and steam. The story of the opera house and the suppositions of it's tellers always made the girl sad to her very bones. No one ever had a good explanation for the ruin still standing and not being torn down as an eyesore. A conductor she once spoke to said he knew the present owner didn't want to sell or renovate. The whole thing was a mystery losing its savor after so many years. 

    She had heard something curious from her conductor friend, although she suspected this was only said to tease her. He said that every night without fail a single candle would appear upon what remained of the front step and would burn all night no matter what the weather. She had meant to come and see but had never been to this part of the city until today. At once she saw the wan flicker of a single simple votive candle set in a glass. She marveled that someone would keep such a strange vigil all these years.

    The building drew her like a strong current and by the time she was nearing the sidewalk before the building she was almost running with her heart trip hammering in her chest once more. She was helpless to halt her momentum and she gasped in surprise when a wave of icy blackness seemed to pour over her as she mounted the steps to the boarded up doors papered with faded no trespassing and building condemned signs almost illegible in the dim light of one tiny candle. She was close enough to smell wet ash when her sight fled before the frigid darkness.

    When her vision cleared she froze, finally able to halt her headlong rush. Instead of the husk of a building she had seen across the street she stood before a grand structure untouched by flame. It was as if the fire had never happened. The girl had heard tales of the opera house's former grandeur but none of them did this glowing vision justice. This was a building where magic happened and she wanted inside so suddenly it was an almost palatable yearning. Soft music swelled from the great front doors and while she stood there awestruck those glittering portals began to swing wide as if to admit her.

    With a sudden swell of panic she almost ran. The girl felt like a character in one of her dreams, sure to be trapped by this hallucination like a fly in honey if she was caught standing here when those doors were completely open. Engulfed and chewed up whole by beauty. Her highly trained legs trembled beneath her and her feet refused to obey her panic so she stood shuddering like a fawn on weak knees when the warm light poured from the opened doors enveloping her in almost blinding scintillation.

    A tiny figure swept from the light and darted nimbly down the stairs to grasp her hand. The girl looked down at her suddenly numb fingers wrapped in the impossible chill of this child’s hand, encased though it was by a spotless satin glove.  The child was dressed in an old fashioned ushers uniform, expertly tailored for her slight frame. The glimmering light from the doorway was such that no matter how the girl twisted her head she was unable to see the child’s face under the shadow of her long hair and ushers cap. The dazzle of light still pouring forth somehow left her features in shadow.

    “Hurry!” The child gasped in a clear voice filled a similar but lesser depth and rare quality of the masked man she had tried to file away as a dream until now. “It's almost time and we must dress you!”

    Feeling and warmth returned to her hand as the usher let her go to dash ahead and open doors for her, wordlessly directing her through the impossible opera house until they reached a closed door with a simple brass star hanging upon it. Each time she had tried to look around to tell where a sound or fragrance, the sweet and the sour, was coming from the child was there prodding her with icy fingers to keep her moving. Consequently she saw very little of the backstage until the starred door confronted her.

    “They will dress you quickly.” The usher said. “No time for questions, the orchestra is warming up now.” The usher preempted her as if reading her mind and seeing the welter of confusion there. No matter how rapidly they had moved through the backstage of the opera house the girl had still not been able to get so much as a glimpse of the child's face. 

    The tiny usher nudged her toward the dressing room door sending a shock of ice through her before the child turned and dashed away, her quick little steps making no noise upon the worn wooden floor. The girl took a deep breath and wondered what she was even doing there.

    Before she could abandon the entire enterprise, no matter what she had been promised, her hand rose slowly before her as if of it's own volition and turned the large gleaming silver knob and the door swung ponderously inward.

    The scent of old talc and face paint broke over her like a wave, so powdery and fine she could almost taste the timeless scent on her tongue washing all those dismal tastes of ash and rot away. Lulled by the ubiquitous fragrance of all old theaters the girl entered the room. She scarcely noticed the door closing behind her it's ancient lock turning with a sharp snick. She was filled with awe at the sight that met her eyes and drew her into the room like an intricate web to snare her insect self.

    The girl stood before the largest freestanding mirror she had ever seen. It was back lit in such a way as to flood her with the buttery light of many candles while leaving all behind the mirror awash in shadow.  Looking at her reflection in the brilliant yet bewilderingly soft light she felt dizzy. In her street clothes with her hair down she looked nothing like a performer; certainly she looked completely out of place in these plush surroundings. Her mind filled to abstraction with the wonder and mystery of it all. She was struck by a complicated sensation of familiarity as she looked at the grand antique mirror. Everything about the room and this place felt like something she had known intimately before and deep inside her unease was growing. 

    She was still frowning at her incongruous reflection when invisible hands began to tug at her clothes. Startled from her thoughts she tried to turn and see their owners but before she could look away from the gilt mirror a hand covered in what felt like a satin glove firmly grasped her chin and held her face forward wordlessly commanding her stillness. That damp smell of long forgotten things was back.

    She watched her reflection as her clothes were removed by beings that cast neither reflection nor shadow. It was as if her garments were leaving her body of their own accord. The fabric flew from her and landed in a heap upon a velvet settee just barely visible at the edge of the glass until she stood gaping at herself completely naked. Her pale bare skin glowed in the mysterious light from behind the mirror. Caught off guard she wondered how they had managed to get her shoes off without her lifting her feet.

    Before she could marvel at her unexpected nudity in such strange circumstances all the light went out of the room. Blackness poured over her like water and for a few timeless second she felt her lungs burn and her body twisted as if the dark was indeed flowing over and into her with brutal tidal efficiency. The moment of compressing darkness was brief however, barely a minute long yet when the light blossomed from behind the mirror again it dazzled her. Burning her eyes and blinding her as effectively as the darkness had.  

    Her vision cleared revealing her in the mirror once again. She gazed into its depths in awe. Where moments ago she had stood all bare flesh and tousled hair there now was a vision in taffeta staring agog back at her from the mirror. Her hair was swept into a classic bun embellished with intricate braiding and shining white ribbon with sticks holding it up, strands of pearls dangling from their ends. And the costume she wore, for it could only be a ballet costume, was unlike anything she had ever seen; a miracle of billowing white tendrils, silk, lace, pearls, taffeta, and more scraps of other fabrics she could not immediately place were tied to her body in complex twists by more incandescently shimmering ribbon. The whole thing was sturdy yet looked heartrendingly fragile, as if one gently tug upon a trailing ribbon would undo the entire marvel leaving her exposed once more. Her legs were encased in gleaming white tights seeming to extend gracefully forever before ending in toe shoes so sewn with pearls and crystal they appeared to be more decoration than functional but one movement of her toes told her that the fit was perfect as was the flex. Every inch of her bare skin had been turned to porcelain perfection and dusted with shimmering powder. 

    For all the drama of her costume her face had been made up simply. Though powdered like the rest of her only the barest of blush flushed her cheeks, the simplest of eye shadow turning her eyes into pools of opalescence, and the perfect bow of her mouth painted a stunning shade of scarlet that was bright as blood. She looked like nothing human, a doll too magnificent for this world. Such a transformation was impossible yet it was still her in the mirror, perfected in ways almost magical.

    Uncomprehending how all this change could have been wrought in that brief thrashing tide of darkness she felt those invisible hands upon her once more. They grasped her waist and turned her effortlessly, like child, toward a door she had not previously noticed. She somehow knew it must lead to the stage. The way she knew this was her dressing room and her mirror. The alarm bells were ringing louder now but her mind was shuddering into shock with the dreamlike unreality of it all. No matter how magical her costume her toes and fingers went numb with nervousness.

    As the door opened before her the light left the world again. She stepped across the threshold into Stygian depths astonished by her confident tread. It was as if she were two people at war with one another. Body guided by a familiar longing for this place and her mind shrinking back as a new purpose was settling in with a dreamlike clarity that was confusing her. Her heart swelled as she heard the final sounds of the unseen orchestra warming up. She found the box of resin by the edge of a stunningly soft velvet curtain as if by some higher instinct. As she ground her toe shoes into the resin to give them better grip all sound vanished as thoroughly as the light had fled. A chilly breath of air swept over her in this vacuum of space leading her effortlessly to the center of the unseen stage. 

    With a tuneless jingle and winch of rope she heard the great curtains open but still all she saw was perfect darkness. A practiced dancer has a sixth sense about her audience and the girl could feel the unseen theater was full, yet not a sound of breath escaped, nor a cough or rustle of clothing as was usual in any audience. The bone crunching chill intensified as did the smell of char drifting to her like a damp clinging fog. She felt like she was in the deepest void of space and all the air and warmth were being crushed out of her by that profound inky vault of cold before her.

    The silence and the black seemed endless giving the girl just enough time to wonder what she could possibly be doing there standing perfectly center on a bare black stage before the footlights at the perimeter of the stage burst into candlelit glow and from somewhere a rosy spot caught her in it's warm light. As the stage lights went up bringing with them their accustomed warmth she felt the glacial stage losing almost all of its chill. The bitter cold that seemed to emanate not from vents or doorways but from the audience itself. The only sound in the world was the barest hiss of the candles in ancient sconces and her own smooth breathing.

    Then from stage left she heard the crinkly rustle of satin. A tall stately woman in a stiff anachronistic dress stepped upon the stage facing the girl, again awash with shadow due to the light behind her. She stood very still and the girl felt her unseen eyes take her in from top to bottom trapping her in their gaze. With a slight shift of her posture seeming to encompass the audience the spell was temporarily broken.

    “You have agreed to the rules Dancer?” The lady asked her voice sounding like an echo from the bottom of a deep well. She almost choked on the taste of the woman's excessive perfume that did not completely hide a darker stench. The girl was unsure how to answer. She was feeling dizzy one again and off balance. It was akin to being in two places at once. Like there was an echo inside her very bones.

    “I was told to come.” She said haltingly then in a stronger voice, “I was promised to dance the dance of a lifetime.” She almost challenged them. “The Adagio.”

    “You were promised?” The lady asked incredulously her voice drifting into silence as another rose from the top box.

    “She has pledged to dance for me, and here she is before us.” The impossible voice of the masked man from the studio said in soft tones that nevertheless seemed to fill all the empty spaces of the opera house with their vibrancy and power. “You are merely witnesses. For me alone she will dance the dance of her lifetime.” He said placing a strange emphasis on his words. 

    The lady had barely turned to face him and in the small amount of light that reached her the girl saw that she too wore a mask, although there was a difference between her and the cloaked man, something was subtly wrong with her face. Before the girl could puzzle out what it was the lady had turned to regard her once more.

    “You will dance?” Came the lady’s hollow voice. All the nervous girl could manage was a jerky nod. The lady nodded solemnly back and withdrew from the stage as smoothly as she had come, the voluminous curtains of the wings swallowing the crinkle of her gown and leaving no trace of her overwhelmingly repellent perfume behind. 

    The girl turned to face the audience once more, standing alone in the center of the bare stage. Not knowing fully what was expected from her she gracefully folded her long limbs into a kneeling pose on the still cold stage, her bare glistening arms held just so before her and her head bowed until only the confection of braids, ribbon, and pearls showed. As if at some cue too subtle for her to recognize the orchestra began to play. Though she had never practiced, though there was no choreography, even though it was the Adagio the girl began to dance.

    With the first notes and the beginning pose of her frame she suddenly understood the strange emphasis the masked man had put on the words 'dance of her life.' As she lifted her arms and began to effortlessly move en pointe across the stage she knew why no choreography was needed for this dance. No lesson could ever suffice.

    Through each note and chord she danced. Her disappointments of childhood pouring from her elegant movements. The dissatisfaction of youthful dalliances and lovers expressed in a series of effortless leaps and flourishes. As the music swelled to fill her she could feel her past draining from her and onto the stage as if the poignant orchestration had opened a hole in her heart and she was bleeding her past into the music.

    She had never danced with such abandon before, this impossible precision and grace coming to her from no class or practice. This is the unsurpassed skill of living as she had always dreamed, at one with the music and blended into the dance in perfection. Her magnificent costume floated around her, sweeping along with every gesture and movement as if part of her. A glistening vision in white pirouetting across the edge of the stage before her unseen rapt audience.

    Even as she marveled in the sudden perfection of complicated forms she had struggled with just days before she tried remember who she was but it was becoming harder. With each light step she took she could feel herself falling further away from her past. With each sweep of her arm she was tearing something of herself away. An essence of her very self was leaving her. She was giving up everything she had been and something was growing into the absence.

    She held herself in an impossible arabesque one leg stretched behind her toe shoe pointing to the rafters while holding the other knee bent with heartbreaking poise an expression of the lover she was to have met. Tears trickled down her carefully made up cheeks feeling like ice upon her skin as she began to slowly turn still holding the arabesque with not a tremble as she spun with elegance then growing speed arms elegantly outstretched towards the lover she was now never to meet. The with a stunning leap from the revolving pose higher that she could have dreamed she poured out what would have been their wedding night. Her arms fluttered elegantly giving up the child she was to have carried in them.

    As she spun and flexed and bent with impossible precision she gave the masked man what he had asked for, what he required from her. She felt her toe give yet danced on through the birth of a second child, unable or perhaps unwilling to stop what had begun. Landing light as a feather before leaping skyward again her toe shoes left dark imprints of the blood rapidly staining the satin and pearls. 

    Her feet bled, and she danced the tragic beauty of their childhood smiles and growing up. Her arms lifted high as she turned on one toe with shattering slowness to the end of her career and she bent towards the stage describing in perfect arcs the growing old of her husband. With a grand leap carrying her high into airborne splits before landing magically on one en pointe toe she felt far removed from the pain of her ankle snapping like kindling as she began to pirouette with the anguish of her husbands last breath. She fluttered the moment each of her children turned away with families of their own. Swaying and tip toeing rapidly from side to side towards the front of the stage as if lost without them. The hole the music made bleeding the future from her as her left knee dislocates on a perfectly executed extension. 

    The girl both felt and was numb to the slow shattering of her body the dance demanded. The grace in her stately movements resulted in ruptured vertebrae and splintering bone. She felt her neck wrench as she whipped her head around in a spin. No matter how she destroyed her body she kept dancing, a vision of grace a poised elegance with once glimmering white tights stained to the knees with blood. Great pools of which poured across the stage, yet she never slipped or lost her balance, just ruptured and destroyed one knee without noticing at all. She was far from who had come into the theater now.

    As the final strains of the beautiful yet mournful music soared through the air her poise deepened and as graceful as a falling willow she bent in the final pose of the dance, her own death shuddering through her as the music ended. All vitality drained and her life and future spent in this last dance. Her eyes staring toward the top box and meeting the eyes of the masked man at last before the light went out of them forever along with the last of her life force. Her lips were frozen in the barest of exultant smiles. In a triumph beyond mortal knowledge.

    He had promised the performance of a lifetime, and she had given him the performance of her life, what it was, what it could have been. Her past in small tip toe steps, her triumphs and failures in glorious leaps, and her future in blood and a leg lifted in perfection.

    As the girl's now drained and lifeless body slid from her last immaculate pose into a pool of blood and white ribbon on the stage all the masked faces of the audience watched. As one they stood and with charred bone or blistered hands clapped almost silently as both they and the opera house faded into what they were, a memory. The masked man sighed and still trembling with the power of her gift he descended to the stage and her broken body in what was once again the ruin of an opera house.

    A tear slid crystalline down from under his elaborate mask as he tentatively reached to touch her still warm cheek. The warmth would fade soon as the life had fled. She had looked into his eyes, that both broke his heart and yet gave him hope. 

    Reaching his cloaked arms forth as if to lift her lifeless body his spectral hands slid through her form like water. As he pulled his arms out the girl rested within them her eyes slowly opening and blinking up at his face. She smiled gently as he set her on her feet beside him and looked down at her mangled and crumpled form. 

    “I danced my life away for you.” She says low in a transformed voice rich and deep as a bell.

    “You also did it for yourself.” He reminded her.

    “Yes. But I couldn’t live without dancing.” She spoke in tones of mixed regret and triumph. Then her brow crinkled in puzzlement. “That life is over. What is next?” She asked

    “Why, you meet your audience my dear Elise.” Said the masked man.

    “Ah. How I have missed the sound of my name on your lips.” The dead girl says quietly but with confusion for she cannot recall what she was called in life.

    “Here with me you shall always be my beloved Elise. The most perfect partner I could ever have. I have been lost without you.” The masked man said his voice full of longing and the ache of loneliness. Not a command this time but an offer, a spoken hope.

    The girl looked upon his scared and masked face and with a heartbreaking smile said, “I will forever be your Elise then. I have missed you.”

    The masked man brushed this away as if it mattered little but the mask could not entirely conceal the joy and triumph in his eyes. The rapture of found beauty forever willingly yours. He removed his cloak to reveal the long lean form of an accomplished dancer and swiftly gathered the cloak about her shoulders.

    “Together we shall dance, my Darling.” He said. “Now that you are home once more.”

    Taking her arm in his the man pulled her close and as the opera house swelled into full brilliant reality once more the girl looked up again into his face. People were milling about in the orchestra pit below them and chatting gaily in the rows of seats. The whole stage was bathed in light and bubbling laughter rose to meet them as more and more of the audience noticed them standing there. Applause and cries of delight were rising ever higher into the chill that no longer effected her as it once had.

    “I do remember Armand.” Elise said softly. Her voice not carrying beyond his ears. “I saw what happened that night.”

    The man froze. He appeared to have been about to call out to everyone and announce her presence among them once again. Her words had stayed his hand.

    “It was an accident.” He said. His voice ragged and clotted with broken guilt. “I was angry. I didn’t know what would happen. Please Elise. I love you.” 

    “I forgive you.” She said simply. The final traces of who she had been faded away. She smiled gently at her husband, the man who had once killed them all, although none of the others had ever suspected it. She stood on tip toe and kissed his tear stained cheek with her red lips then turned to greet her adoring peers.

-End-

--Inspired by Albinonis Adagio in G Minor