Mika licked her lips.
Took a deep breath.
She was just tensing her muscles to draw the edge of the blade across her skin when her own mouth tsk-tsked. “Now that wouldn’t do at all,” Ishkyna said to her.
Mika tried to make the knife move, but her arm refused. She raged, releasing a pent-up cry. “Leave me be,” Mika cried desperately. “You’ve had your fun.”
“Leave you be? On your big night?” Ishkyna laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“This is my life,” Mika said without an ounce of verve.
“Nyet. Not any longer.”
And with that Mika lost control.
The hours that followed flowed like a dream, Ishkyna leading her on a long walk around Evochka before heading to the theater for the final walkthrough. They prepared in earnest in the afternoon. Costumes pulled on, bright makeup applied. A final talk from the Duchess Mileva before the guests began to arrive.
Soon Mika was standing backstage, waiting for the curtains to open. And at last they did. Their performance began. As prima and premier, she and Yuri had each been given one seat to assign to whomever they chose. Though it had brought great shame upon her for what she’d done with Yuri, she’d chosen Istvan. She saw him as the curtains parted, sitting in one of the balcony seats while the royals sat in their couches and padded seats from the rayok. He smiled at her, but she was already in her first pose, waiting for the music to begin.
As ominous notes from the cellos and violins and bassoons and tympani filled the hall, Mika noticed how closely Ishkyna was watching the Duchess Mileva at the center of the hall. It wasn’t until her first steps were behind her, however, that she realized that it wasn’t the duchess herself that Ishkyna was watching, but the two empty seats next to her.
Mika wondered who might have been assigned those seats, but the dreamlike quality of the performance soon swept her up. They were well into the second act when Ishkyna’s attention slipped once more to Mileva. A couple was being led to the empty seats. Much of the hall turned to watch, but hardly a sound was made in doing so. The man she’d seen in a painting once. He was older now, but it was easy to recognize him as the Grand Duke, Nikandr Khalakovo. The woman, then, was the Grand Duchess, Atiana Khalakovo, the very woman Mika was portraying in the ballet.
It was here that Ishkyna’s control dipped at last.
And Mika was ready.
Ishkyna had been learning from Mika, but Mika had been learning from Ishkyna as well. She understood what it felt like to suppress another, to control them, and she did this now to Ishkyna. And it was working. She was in control of her body once more. She was in the middle of a dance with the other ballerinas, all of them swirling in an interpretation of what Atiana had done at the Straits of Galahesh when the war with Yrstanla had begun.
Mika knew this control was fleeting, however. She could not keep Ishkyna suppressed for long.
Until the moment had come, she had no idea what she might do with complete freedom, but she knew this much: she wouldn’t allow Ishkyna to have what she wanted.
She would not.
She often said that the dance came first, always. But not like this. Not when the dance wasn’t even her own. She would give up much for ballet, but not her very soul.
To the confused looks of the other ballerinas, she ran to the edge of the stage. A ladder was there, painted black, that led to the uppermost reaches of the stage. To the murmurs and then the growing alarm of the crowd, she took to this, climbing up and up. Ishkyna realized what was happening, and she struggled to regain control, but Mika had sensed Ishkyna’s feelings of inferiority. She was still cowed by her sister, Atiana, and in some ways by Mileva as well, and the shock of coming face-to-face with them once more after long years of absence allowed Mika to retain control as she reached the uppermost rung. To her right was a narrow metal walkway with a railing. She ignored this, however, and turned to face the stage.
Someone in the audience screamed.
“Leave me,” Mika said, ignoring the cries of Inga to come down.
The entire audience rose, and several men rushed to the base of the ladder. As one of them began to climb, Mika repeated, “Leave me!”
Mika’s eyes, through Ishkyna’s will, not her own, looked to Duchess Atiana. “Not until I’m good and ready,” Ishkyna said through Mika’s lips.
Mika wanted to plead with her, wanted to force Ishkyna from her, but she knew there was only one way to rid herself of this lost soul.
So she leapt.
She plummeted down.
Heard a sickening crunch. Felt pain as deep and wide as she’d ever felt. As deep and wide as the seas.
Her cries filled the hall with misery.
And yet she was ever-so-thankful, for she could tell she was alone now.
Utterly, blessedly alone.
Using her canes to support her, Mika limped along the streets of Evochka as the summer sun beat down upon her. A brighter day she couldn’t remember, not in these last few years, in any case.
Two children chased a barrel ring across Mika’s path, the ring tinging along the cobbles as the children whacked it with sticks. Soon they had passed and she reached the short flight of stone steps leading up to her first-floor studio. There were two children waiting for her. One, a promising young boy named Romanko, came down and took the keys she removed from her belt and opened the door for her. The second, a girl with a bright heart but, sadly, leaden feet, smiled and helped Mika to navigate the steps.
Soon Mika was inside, and more children were entering with their parents, each of them being left for the two hours the morning lesson would take. They were interrupted, however, when a matron wearing a fine summer dress and a jeweled headdress entered with a girl wearing an impeccably white uniform in tow.
Mika’s heart leapt into her throat. It was the Duchess Mileva.
She forced herself to calm, though. Years ago she might have wanted to run, but not any longer. She had grown hard in the months since the night of the Restoration celebration. She shooed the children away, and the girl Duchess Mileva had brought with her, the young Sirina, stayed back as well, giving the two women some small amount of privacy.
Mika pulled herself as tall as her crippled legs would allow her and stared into Mileva’s eyes. “What is it you want?”
The duchess didn’t speak for a time. She looked about the studio, looking at the barre, the mirrors, the dance floor itself. Then she held Mika’s gaze, the two of them unlikely equals in this one awkward moment.
“I’ve heard tell there’s a teacher of ballet that’s moved into this space.”
Without a word being spoken, Sirina had begun to stretch.
“I’ll not teach her,” Mika said simply.
Mileva ignored her, watching Sirina and the other children prepare.
“Take her and begone,” Mika said, louder.
“Has she returned?” Mileva asked in response.
It took Mika a long time to answer. She wanted nothing more than to throw Mileva from the studio, but the truth of the matter was her anger had been burned out of her. She had cried more days than she could count, but she’d gotten past it, and she didn’t wish to return to those days any longer, so she said, “I’ve been free of her since that night.”
Mileva nodded, her hands behind her back as she watched Sirina. “I should have tried,” she said, perhaps to herself more than Mika. “I owed you that, at least. I don’t know that it would have changed Ishkyna’s mind, but perhaps it could have.”
It was an admission that probably shouldn’t have made Mika feel any better, but somehow it did. “And you? Mika asked. “Has she visited you since?”
“Nyet. And somehow I doubt she ever will again. But that isn’t why I’ve come.”
“I’m not taking on any more students,” Mika said.
But Mileva raised her hand and turned to face Mika. “Watch her. That is all I ask. If you don’t wish to teach her when she’s done, send her away with t
he woman waiting outside.”
A roil of emotions swept over Mika, and yet she found herself nodding to the duchess. At this, Mileva smiled, only for a moment, and then she left, leaving Sirina alone with the other students. Mika waved them to the edges of the room, and then motioned for Sirina to begin.
After a few moments, Sirina did.
At first, Mika was hard. She was prepared to hate this child. To throw her out and be done with this tale once and for all.
But then Sirina danced.
She danced, and by the ancients who live beyond, it was like nothing Mika had seen in one so young. Her lines. Her extension. But more than this, the emotion that played out, not only on her face but in her every movement. Tears slipped warmly down Mika’s face. Such beauty she’d never thought to feel again, and here it was given her by a child, through her dance.
When Sirina finished, she held her arms above her head, motionless, and then returned to first position.
Mika swallowed the lump that had settled in her throat, wiped the tears that had gathered ’round her eyes.
She smiled to Sirina, who smiled back.
And then Mika clapped, bringing her class to order.
Sweet as Honey
All was silent as I lay in the rooftop garden above my home. I could remember neither the reason I’d come nor the duration of my stay. I couldn’t, in fact, remember anything. My mind was so caught in the fugue of slumber that it seemed determined to hide the answers from me, and my body was so leaden it refused all calls to action.
I did after some effort manage to flutter my eyes open. Spread above me was a cloudy, cream-colored sky. The sigh of the Inland Sea returned soon after, and with it, the drone of my honey bees.
What a welcome sound. What a welcome sound, indeed.
Footsteps thudded toward me. A moment later Joseph Winslow was staring down at me, his woolen hat crumpled in one fist, his ragged face concerned. “You all right, Susanna?”
I wanted to answer him. I did. But I was helpless. My mind seemed unable to focus on anything but the world around me: the air, which smelled of brine and seaweed and smoking fish; the breeze, which chilled my skin; the ground, which rocked to and fro as if I were lying on the deck of a creaky old galley. Then, like an approaching storm, flesh and bone demanded their due consideration. My head ached, perhaps from the fall. My thumb was sore, and it seemed to be growing worse by the moment. My breathing, shallow only moments ago, was beginning to deepen, bringing with it a feeling of suffocation.
Joseph’s voice became insistent. “Susanna, are you all right?”
I sat up, coughing. Joseph helped me to my feet, but it wasn’t until I had removed my hat and pulled the bee keeper’s veil from around my head and neck that my breathing came easier.
Everything around me seemed new. There was a partially filled beehive sitting on the ground nearby. Several of its frames already held bees; the rest were empty. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was doing there. I wasn’t planning to work on the new colony until tomorrow—
I frowned at the painful red welt that glowered on the meat of my thumb. A tiny black stinger rested in the center of it. One of my bees...
Yes. The venom would have robbed me of a day’s memory, perhaps more, but my mind had bridged the distance so completely it was hard to believe I’d been stung. There was no gap, as one feels upon waking, no sense of the passage of time. There were only yesterday’s memories followed immediately by today’s. I remembered my ankles hurting something terrible in the morning—which would have been yesterday morning. I had gone to prayers and vaguely recalled coming home again—yes, Giles Billington had rowed me home himself—but that was all before waking up here with the bees.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked Joseph.
He nodded. “You reached into your smock, then you pulled your hand to your mouth and tipped over, quick as you please.”
In the front pocket of my smock I found a recipe for cod in pastry shell.
“I don’t know if you remember,” Joseph said. “I was going to make that for you tonight. Well, I was going to try, anyway.”
I smiled to hide my embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
He paused awkwardly and then motioned to his home. “Why don’t you come on over? I still have that ointment you gave me a few years back.”
“Now why would I use yours when I have a perfectly good supply of my own?”
“For the company, Sue. Purely for the company.” Joseph’s smile seemed forced, and I had to wonder why. Joseph wasn’t the sort of man to overreact.
“I’ll be fine.” The bees were becoming animated in the rising heat. “Just watch yourself. They might want more now that they’ve feasted on these old bones.”
I shooed him off to his own garden on the houseboat next to mine and returned to my hive. It was important to find the ointment, but I didn’t feel right leaving the hives open to the elements with the work half-done, so I replaced my hat and veil and took out several empty frames from the new colony. Then I stood before the other hive—my main, the one filled with thousands of bees moving slowly over the tops of the exposed frames. A loud buzzing came from deep inside the hive—the piping of the unborn queen, still inside her cell. Swarming season was nearly here, and I would have to act quickly when the virgin queen emerged. She was needed in the new colony, and any delay might force a battle to the death with the old, mated queen.
I rested my hands above the moving mass, allowing them to dance over the bare skin of my hands and the tight cuffs of my white shirt. A wise woman might be afraid of another sting, which, so close after the first, would rob me of much more than one day's memory, but I had always found comfort in my bees, in their selfless will to work for the good of the hive.
I shivered, realizing I’d been staring at the bees for quite some time. It was a trick the venom sometimes played.
The ointment, I told myself. I’ve got to find the ointment.
I carefully moved several more frames to the nuc and replaced them with empties. Then I took the stairs down to the boardwalk that connected my shop with the village’s inner and outer rings. Beyond the boardwalk’s railing was the sea itself, channeled by the network of canals that neatly segmented the village. My rowboat, lashed nearby, knocked hollowly against the boardwalk in time with the waves licking their way along the canal.
I headed in through the side door and rummaged through my desk until I’d found a pair of tweezers. The stinger was buried deep, but I took extra care given the nature of the sting and eventually managed to remove it intact. Then I set to finding my ointment.
I dug through the bottom drawer of the pine desk, through several wooden bins my husband had left behind when he’d died. There were still nails and twine and miscellaneous tools among my spools of thread and scissors and needlepoint. I checked my writing desk, the kitchen cupboards, my basket of yarn. I even considered taking a fresh tin from the shelves, but that had never been my way, so I chewed on the problem until I remembered my old hope chest beneath my bed. I pulled it out and rummaged underneath the baby blanket I’d knitted when I was sixteen, and there it was: the first tin of royal jelly ointment I’d ever created, dented, rusted on the outside, and still only half used.
I was just about to close the lid when a lock of hair tied with faded purple ribbon caught my eye. The hair was long—several years’ growth easily—and strawberry blond, nearly the same color as my own. I had no recollection of it—none at all—but then again, I hadn’t remembered putting the ointment in the chest, either.
I sat on my bed, on the quilt my mother had made as my wedding present, and applied the ointment. It hurt something awful as I rubbed it into my swollen skin, but moments later, the pain dulled.
The motion of rubbing the ointment, though... It brought a sense of déjà vu so strong I was sure I’d been in this exact situation before, rubbing the ointment, wondering about the lock of hair. Yet in the way of these things, the more
I tried to pin down the memory, the more slippery it became.
I left the bedroom, taking the ointment with me. I would need it, for if I didn’t continue its use, I would forget the simplest of things at the most inconvenient of times.
Fresh and Smoked Fish, Whale Meat
Spermaceti Lamp Oil, Whalebone Stays
Many more products of the sea.
Hook and Net, Outer Ring, Docks Central
That night I dreamed I was in my nightgown, standing before a door in an empty room filling with frigid water. The water rose to my ankles before I realized the key that would open the door hung from a leather cord around my neck. As the numbing water licked my ankles and the tops of my feet, I removed the key, only to find that the key didn’t open the lock. Nearby sat a heavy, ironbound chest. I quickly tried the key as the water tickled my shins—dear God, it was cold—and inside was another key. My fingers shook so badly I could hardly fit the new key into the door. This didn’t work either. Behind me, another ironbound chest had appeared. I worked frantically, opening chest after chest, each of the keys failing to open the door; all the while the water crept up my thighs and hips and stomach, until I was forced to duck my head under water in order to try the door or open the new chests.
I woke with a gasp and a body-heaving jerk.
The sun had yet to rise. I was cold and sweaty despite the warmth of the blankets.
Close enough to dawn, I thought, while shivering at the memory of the dream.
I swept the shop and dusted the honey jars. Joseph ducked in shortly after dawn to let me know that two ships had come early to trade. He remained in the doorway, looking at me as if I were a cracked china doll ready to fall to pieces. I shooed him out and fussed over the shop one last time.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 10