‘They said that Ivanov just copied Pepita’s other ballets,’ sniffed another girl.
‘They said that Antoinetta wasn’t a bit like any kind of a fairy,’ added Anna. ‘They said she was “podgy”!’
‘But she got five curtain calls!’ argued someone else.
Stana put down her fork. She felt sick and she could scarcely touch her lunch. The ballet had not been a success; and as the day drew on, the news grew worse and worse. Some critics said the ballet was confusing, others that it was all spectacle and no substance. Some said it was not even a proper ballet. Even Tchaikovsky’s beautiful music was criticized. Ivanov was said to be inconsolable; Antoinetta to be in floods of tears.
Stana herself was not left out. ‘ “The dance of student Stanislava Belinskaya with the injured nutcracker is quite unsuccessful both in composition and in execution,” ’ Nina read aloud from the newspaper.
‘That’s not fair,’ said Anna indignantly. ‘You danced it well!’ Whether it was her nightmare or the bad reviews, Stana was not quite sure: but somehow in all this, Anna had forgiven her.
As for the ballet mistress, she just shrugged and shook her head. ‘I knew all those children on stage would never work,’ she said.
‘I suppose not every ballet can be a great success,’ sighed Mademoiselle, sounding disappointed. ‘Not even at the Marinsky.’
The fairy tale was over now; the sugarplum tasted bitter, not sweet. Stana’s magic chance to shine had melted away. She felt dazed: she had danced as well as she knew how, and yet somehow it still had not been enough.
That afternoon, a letter arrived from Mama, and Stana ran up to the dormitory to open it. Anna followed behind her, not caring in the least that it was against the rules. Sitting on her bed, Stana tore open the envelope and shook out the note inside with trembling hands. It was only short – Mama wrote that she was sorry she had missed her performance, and that she was sure that Stana had danced beautifully. She could not leave Olga’s bedside, but there was good news. Her sister had taken a turn for the better. There were still the bills to pay, of course, but the doctors said that with careful treatment, Olga would get well.
Stana stared at the words, a lump rising in her throat, and she seemed to hear the final triumphant chords and drumbeats of Tchaikovsky’s music. The Nutcracker had failed; but it did not matter. They would have a happy Christmas after all.
‘What does it say?’ asked Anna, dropping down beside her on the bed.
‘She says that Olga is getting better,’ said Stana, trying to keep her voice from wobbling.
Nina, who was nosy, had run up behind them to see what the fuss was about. Now she pointed to something small, shining on Stana’s pillow. ‘Look – what’s that? Someone has left you a Christmas present!’
Stana put out a hand in surprise, and picked up a little note, folded and tied with a red and gold ribbon like a Christmas bonbon. To her surprise, she saw that in black, spiky handwriting, the label read, For Clara.
‘What can it be?’ asked Anna, leaning forward, eager and curious.
‘A note from an admirer!’ suggested Nina excitedly. ‘Maybe it’s from Vassily!’ she added with a giggle.
Stana unwrapped the crackling paper very slowly. Inside was a note, scribbled on a small slip of music manuscript paper. It was just four words, in the same spiky writing. To help your sister. Beside it was a hundred-rouble note.
‘A hundred roubles!’ exclaimed Anna, her eyes wide.
‘What a Christmas present!’ gasped Nina.
‘But – who is it from? What does it mean?’
Stana’s fingers traced the black, spidery writing. She thought she knew who it had come from – and exactly what it meant.
As the other two bent their heads over the note, speculating eagerly, she gazed out of the dormitory window. She could see the distant lights of Christmas trees in the houses across Theatre Street, and she realized that she would soon be sitting beside her own with Mama and with Olga, eating gingerbread angels, and drinking tea with jam. Fat, feathery snowflakes twirled and pirouetted past the window, and there came a faint jingling of bells outside – as light and dainty as the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy – as the sleighs raced by, through the softly falling snow.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While this story is fictional, it is based on the real history of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, The Nutcracker, which was first performed at the Marinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in December 1892. Just as in this story, the ballet was not at first a success, receiving mixed reviews from critics. Now, of course, it is one of the best-known and best-loved ballets of all time, and is performed all over the world each year at Christmas.
Twelve-year-old Stanislava Belinskaya, a student at the Imperial Ballet School, really was the first person to play the famous role of Clara in this very first production. The real-life Stanislava also really did have a friend and classmate called Anna: if you know about the history of ballet, you might be able to guess what happened to Anna when she grew up . . .
That first production of The Nutcracker had an open ending, leaving the audience wondering what would happen to Clara and the Nutcracker Prince. In later versions of the ballet, and in most productions you will see today, the ballet finishes with Clara waking up in her bedroom, and realizing that her wonderful adventures with the Nutcracker were only a dream after all.
Berlie Doherty
I love the story of the Snow Queen more than anything. My dad used to read it to me when I was little. I used to curl up inside the curve of his arm, warm against the frostiness of the story. He would say things like ‘Can you hear the snow whispering, Orla? Can you hear the ice?’ We would listen for a moment to silence, and imagine the streaking snow and hear the creak of ice in it.
‘Would you like to meet the Snow Queen?’ Dad asked me.
I nodded and shivered. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe you will, one day.’
Dad died last year, and nothing has been the same since. Nothing.
I was always sure that the Snow Queen was a real person, and that I really would meet her one day. I would know her as soon as I saw her. She would be irresistibly beautiful. I imagined she would be tall, with long white hair and eyes as cold as ice. She would try to steal me just as she stole Kay in the story, but I would never go with her. I used to daydream the strange adventure that Kay’s friend Gerda had when she was searching for him, the people she met on her journey: the Robber Girl and the old woman in the igloo, the crow and the reindeer, and there was a part of me that longed for the magic and mystery of it all.
The house was so quiet after Dad died. So cold and unfriendly.
But one Sunday in early December everything began to change. That was the day the magic and mystery started.
For once Mum was home. This was unusual. Usually, she was out, working, walking, doing things, anything not to be in the house that didn’t have Dad in it any more. She left me to look after my little brother. I kept telling her it was against the law, I was only thirteen, but I don’t think she cared. During the week I had to take Flynn to the Infants and collect him again on my way home. I was supposed to stay with him until she got back from work. I didn’t, though. Why should I? I thought. I hated being in the house too. I hated that waiting, awful silence. And Flynn was always too tired by that time to go trailing round with me. Mum said that he mustn’t be left in the house on his own, so I used to leave him standing at the front door, and I carried on walking round the block and through the shopping precinct with my friends, until they’d all dropped off at their houses, and then I would go home and let him in. If it was raining, he waited in the shed. He moaned at me for that, but he was all right. He couldn’t come to any harm there.
But that Sunday, we were all home. It was one of those yellow days when the sky moves from dark to lightish to dark again without any real change of colour. We were almost a family that day. Mum was cooking in the kitchen. I was watching a film on my tablet. I had my e
arphones on because Flynn was making so much noise, scrabbling in his Lego box and talking to himself. At least he wasn’t begging me to ‘play’ with him as he usually does. He never gives me any peace. So I was lost in my film when a sudden rapid sort of cackling sound made me look up. The room turned icy. Flynn stopped and looked up sharply, too, his face suddenly alert. I lowered my tablet and took out one of the earphones.
‘What was that?’ I whispered.
‘No idea.’ He bent down again to his building.
I stood up and went to the window. Maybe I hadn’t heard anything, not really. How could I have done, over the noise of the film? But I had felt something, for sure. I’d felt such a coldness, a stillness. And so had Flynn. I knew he had. It was as if someone had passed by our house and cast a shiver over it. Gran used to say, ‘Someone just walked over my grave.’ She would shudder and pull her knitted cardigan tighter round her bony shoulders.
I went and opened the front door and peered down the street. It was empty. No people, no cars, not even a cat on its loping prowl.
‘Shut that door!’ Mum yelled from the kitchen.
‘I think it’s going to snow,’ I said. I love snow. It always brings a kind of magic with it.
‘I hope not. There’s no snow forecast anyway. Shut the door now. I work my fingers to the bone keeping this house heated, and you go and squander it in thirty seconds.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ I said, half to myself, but Mum heard me and came into the hall with a clutch of cutlery in her hand.
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Work all the time,’ I muttered.
‘Oh, Orla. I have to. You know I do.’
I closed the door and went back to my film, but I couldn’t settle. I was tense and uneasy. Flynn listlessly shovelled his Lego bits into their box and started to play with his Minecraft pieces. But he wasn’t mumbling to himself and whooping and sighing any more. He was completely silent. After a bit, he stood up and gazed out of the window at the darkening street, as if he was listening and watching for something.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked him, uneasy again.
‘Nothing. Leave me alone!’
Mum came in and closed the curtains. ‘Stop bickering, you two,’ she said. ‘This is Home Sweet Home, remember?’
Next morning Flynn and I walked to school together. At the corner of our street, I always meet up with Zania and Kirsty, my best friends, and he trails behind us, but at that moment we were still together. And just like the day before, I had a strange sensation that time had dawdled and strayed away for moment, making the traffic pause, as if there was nowhere for it to go. For a second all sound stopped, all colour faded, and I felt as cold as if I had been gripped in ice. I paused, and so did my brother, but a second later the sensation had passed. I turned to Flynn, and he looked away, lips tight.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Why are you looking like that, then?’ He can be so annoying at times. He knew something strange had happened, so why was he pretending again that it hadn’t?
A woman in a long pale blue coat was walking away from us. She must have walked right past us, yet I hadn’t noticed her. She was very striking, with straight, shimmering hair that was almost white. As if she had felt me looking at her, she stopped and turned her head. Her eyes were icy blue. For a second she reminded me of someone, and I realized that she looked just like my childhood image of the Snow Queen. She smiled at me, a cold, hard, beautiful smile, and then her gaze lingered on Flynn. Again, I turned to look at him. His eyes were shining.
‘Who is she?’ I asked him. He shrugged and pulled away from me. I glanced back. Children were piling off buses and out of cars, mingling and shouting and jostling. There was no sign of the woman in the pale blue coat.
I forgot about her until the end of the school day. I collected Flynn, left him outside our house, and wandered off with Zania and Kirsty. Kirsty asked us in to see her new dress, and we all tried it on and did each other’s hair.
‘Will Flynn be all right?’ Zania asked. ‘It’s really dark outside.’
‘He’s fine,’ I said, annoyed at being reminded about him when I was enjoying myself.
I suppose it was quite a bit later than usual when I arrived home. It didn’t matter. I knew Mum wouldn’t be back from work until after six, so she wouldn’t know, but I was feeling guilty now about leaving Flynn on such a cold night. I saw immediately that there was no light on in the shed. Why wasn’t he in there? I wondered.
‘Flynn,’ I called. ‘Flynn, stop messing.’
I couldn’t find him. I searched behind the bushes in the garden in case he was hiding. I went into the house and switched on the lights. I took off my coat, turned on the TV, tried to be normal. But my heart was beginning to thud. Where was he? Surely, if he was out there in the cold and dark, he’d come running in when he saw the door was open and the lights were on. I called again, searched again. He wasn’t there. Flynn wasn’t there.
For one panicky moment I remembered the strange woman in the long coat. She knew Flynn. They had looked at each other. He had pretended not to see her, but he had. I remembered the ice moments, and her brittle smile, and how Flynn’s eyes shone when he looked at her. What if she actually was the Snow Queen, and she had stolen my little brother, just like she had stolen Kay in the story? No, it was crazy to think like that. But then where was he?
Perhaps he’d followed me earlier; perhaps he’d gone to the shopping precinct for warmth. That would make sense, wouldn’t it? I went racing down the road. I had forgotten to put my coat back on, and the air was beginning to spit, more sleet than rain, with grits of ice in it.
‘Flynn!’ I kept shouting. ‘Flynn!’ But my voice was swallowed in the roar of the rush-hour traffic. I ran along the whole of the shopping precinct and back again, and then I did it again, and at last I stopped for breath in the bright doorway of Tesco. I was shivering with cold and fright. A Big Issue seller was sheltering in the doorway, too, hopping from one foot to the other to keep himself warm. He was wearing frayed jeans and old trainers, and his feet must have been nearly frozen.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here y’are.’
‘No, thanks,’ I muttered, and then I saw that he wasn’t holding out a magazine for me to buy, but a two-pound coin. His hands were red and raw with cold.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘You look half starved. Go and get yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate from the cafe.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve lost my brother,’ I whispered. ‘Have you seen him?’ I hesitated. ‘He might have been with a woman in a long blue coat.’
The man narrowed his eyes. ‘I know that woman.’
‘Do you?’ I was surprised, and quite relieved. Was she just an ordinary woman after all? But what did she have to do with my brother?
‘I’ve seen her often enough, walking round the town. Yes, I saw her not long ago, and she had a little boy with her. About five, he was.’
‘That’s Flynn!’
‘He looked quite happy.’
I remembered the rapt expression on Flynn’s face when we had seen the woman this morning on the way to school. What on earth did he think he was doing, wandering off with her? He could be in terrible danger. ‘Where did they go?’
The man blew on his fingers one by one, as if they were birthday candles that refused to go out. ‘I think they went down Chapel Alley, just over there. But you watch out. That’s where the Alley Gang hangs out. Not for your sort, that lot. Get yourself that hot drink instead.’
‘I have to find him,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’ I rolled the bottom of my school sweatshirt round my hands to try to keep them warm, and made my way through the traffic towards Chapel Alley. I knew about the gang that hung out there. I’d seen them loitering, swigging from cans, girls shrieking and boys loud as lions. Mum called them louts and tarts. ‘And be thankful I’ve given you a decent upbringing. Never have anything to do with rough kids like that.’
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br /> I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I wanted to turn away and run back home, let myself into the warm house, make toast for me and Flynn. Flynn wasn’t there, though. Flynn had been stolen, and it was all my fault. Why had that woman stolen him? The story of the Snow Queen came flooding back to me. I thought about the piece of ice in Kay’s heart. I thought about him being trapped in her frozen palace. No, she isn’t the Snow Queen, I tried to tell myself. But if she wasn’t, who on earth was she? What would happen to him? I would never be able to go home until I’d found my brother, even if I had to walk around all night.
I calmed myself and walked into the black shadow of Chapel Alley, away from the bustle of shoppers and the cheerful Christmas lights of the High Street. I could hear the gang, the snap of their cigarette lighters, the twitter of their voices. I felt tiny and timid, as if I was a mouse venturing into a den of wild cats. A motorbike throbbed. Boys threw their voices against the walls like bouncing balls. Girls screamed with laughter. They all seemed to have to make a noise. I could see that one of the girls was straddling a pushbike, jabbing at the bell again and again in an angry, bored sort of way, and there was something about the way she did it that made me think she was their leader. She was wearing a red woollen scarf, and every so often she whipped the end of it round her neck and glared at everybody.
I shrank against the wall and tried to creep past, but one of the boys saw me and decided I was just right to make a game of.
He twisted his face into a snarl. ‘Who said you could come down our alley?’
‘Yeah, like no one comes down here without our permission,’ another one growled.
They crowded round me, holding out their arms to stop me going any further. The girl with the red scarf just watched them, smirking. A scar-faced boy started tweaking my hair.
‘Eh, it’s Goldilocks!’ he laughed. ‘You won’t find no bears here, kid.’
‘Only you!’ a girl giggled at him. ‘Paddington, your mam should’ve called you.’
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