Five Poisoned Apples

by Skye Hoffert et al.

  “Nah.” He looked at the floor, feeling his friends’ eyes on him. Why couldn’t they just leave without him? “I’m just not a bad man, really.”

  “You’re good,” she said firmly. In one quick motion she closed the distance between them. Her fingers found his jaw, and a jolt of energy shot through him as her lips pressed into his. All coherent thought deserted him as he slipped his hand to her waist and kissed her back.

  It was warm and soft and wonderful. And then it was over.

  Minoa stepped back, hastily brushing at her eyes, her face flushed. “I wish you all the best of luck. I expect to see you again soon.” She turned her back, busying herself with a loose stack of papers on the desk.

  Zaig felt as if his feet had been nailed to the floor, but he forced himself to follow the others out, though his mind was screaming at him to go back and finish that kiss.

  Later.

  Maybe Boots’s advice applied to more than hunting down men. Everything he wanted was behind him in that room, but patience was key. There was something special there for him. It needed to be protected and nurtured, not rushed. He’d set his affairs in order and then he’d come back.

  Out in the hallway, Jathis turned to Zaig, a bewildered smile on his face. “It ain’t us she’s expecting to see. That’s fer certain.”

  Zaig shrugged even though his heart was racing and his lips still tingled. He didn’t know what to tell them, except maybe to shut up and let him enjoy his moment.

  “How on earth did you manage that?” Brax shook his head.

  Zaig cast him a rakish grin. “Haven’t you heard? I’m the best.”

  Maddie Morrow grew up with her Mom reading to her, and Dad telling stories of cowboys hunting Bigfoot. The combination sparked her love of writing early, and she’s been lost in her notebooks ever since. Aside from writing she enjoys loud music, good horses, and hardcover books. She lives on a farm in Nebraska with her husband and son.

  You can find her at www.maddie-morrow.blogspot.com

  Dearest Katrina - I miss you like my favorite round sung solo.

  Chapter One

  Jeong Hayan closed her eyes. Sitting cross-legged on the chill metal grating, she was hidden in the shadows of the third-floor fire escape. Head tilted back, she stuck out her tongue, discovering that New York City’s snowflakes tasted the same as winter back home in Seoul. They both left behind the bitter taste of road salt and the slick oily coating of car exhaust.

  The steady growl and sudden roar of congested inner-city traffic surrounded her, all so familiar. Below her perch, the pedestrians could have been transported directly from urban Korean streets, their form and features hidden by heavy coats and hoods. The fairy lights and storefront decorations of the holiday season colored the snowdrifts and threw sparks of light across the commuters’ faces.

  There was a comfort in the familiar, in the knowledge that she could travel so far on her own and still understand this world.

  Opening her eyes again, she peered down through the cold bars at the street below. She saw a woman’s collar flick up to protect her from a sudden icy gust. She saw a child’s snow boots aid him in dancing a complicated hornpipe even on the slick pavement. Scenes she might have glimpsed back home, but all rendered with foreign details. The traffic sounded different—the American buildings were formed with brick and cut stone rather than glass and slabbed concrete.

  Fragments of conversation drifted up to her. The accents spoken were familiar after hours of watching streamed online shows with the subtitles on, but she struggled to understand them, just as she had struggled through her formal and intense English lessons as she attempted to catch up to her South Korean peers.

  From farther along the narrow street came a sudden, startled yelp. Hayan peered down between the railings of her steel perch in time to see a young businessman backpedal away from a rack of woollen coats outside a made-to-measure clothing store. His hand-tooled leather shoes pulled him back more quickly than he would have managed on his own and held him securely when he would have slipped on the slushy ice. He wore no winter jacket, and the outermost coat on the rack had stretched out its sleeves to clutch his sharply tailored sport coat.

  Hayan smiled slightly, watching the shop owner hasten out of the shop, laughing as he apologized and disentangled the man from the coat. As the businessman hurried on his way, the shop owner paused to give the coat on the rack a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. The coat slumped on its hanger, looking dejected as its prospective new owner shuffled on his way, shivering.

  An odd little scene—but familiar to Hayan. While others may have dismissed the actions of the coat, may have told themselves they hadn’t seen what played out before their eyes, she knew better. She knew that garments handmade by a talented craftsperson tended to express the emotion put into them. Those made with care and kind intentions were prone to offer extraordinary comfort and even seemed to manifest independent actions to the benefit of the wearer.

  Her mother had taught her the secret. A secret which had allowed Hayan and her seamstress mother to earn an income, even to save enough to pay the bribes needed to make their escape from North Korea. To find a new home, first in Liaoyang and finally Seoul.

  The neon sign above the clothing shop blurred unexpectedly to Hayan’s vision. She blinked, angry that the sight of that coat reaching out for an owner should make her tears come when she had restrained them so many other times. She was just tired, that was all. Between flights and time differences and the bustle of the streets at this late hour, she was worn out.

  Wiping her face on a glove that would never grow damp, knitted as it was with love and pride especially for Hayan, she forced her tears back down. But the effort was incredible. All in a great rush, she missed her mother. They had spent hours together working on English, had sewn late into the night completing made-to-measure clothing to help pay for her shoes and ballet fees. They had been each other’s closest companions and secret-keepers since their defection almost fifteen years ago.

  “Hey, Hayan?” The window behind her eased open, letting out the scent of a peppery soup and the backlit face of her roommate. “I know it’s pretty and a good place to air your shoes, but don’t feel that you have to stay out there.” Debra Austin backed away from the window, limping slightly as she moved back to the couch.

  “Coming,” Hayan promised. Her roommate was an apprentice with New York Central Ballet, off work with a knee injury and happy to host another dancer. Nevertheless, Hayan lingered a little longer, taking a deep breath of the cold night air and closing her eyes again.

  In her mind she could see her mother back home, leaning on the large window ledge that served them as a balcony. She would be taking a break to drink her morning tea before returning to her machine.

  Jeong Hayan, scholarship dancer, daughter of a seamstress, and defector from North Korea, was a long way from home.

  Once upon a time . . .

  Students in the dormitories of the Three Great Schools of Ballet would whisper to each other, bunk to bunk and cot to cot, as they lay in the dark with muscles too sore to sleep.

  Once upon a time there was a talented student, the most brilliant her school had ever trained, chosen to debut a new solo to newly composed music.

  The students of the three greatest schools each told a different variation of the story, but at its heart it remained constant. The “Little Rats” of the Paris Opera agreed she had been a student of the Royal Ballet School. After all, it made sense that English castles and mist-mired moors would be the backdrop for another gothic tale. But the Royal Ballet students insisted that the story must have first been told at the Vaganova Academy in St Petersburg, for who but a Russian dancer would have the opportunity to hear a previously unknown piece by Tchaikovsky? Particularly one inspired by his favourite of Russian fairy tales: The Snow Maiden.

  The pupils of Agrippina Vaganova were likely the first to tell the story. They also taught each other to cross themselves and pray to the few
saints that the revolutionaries of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had spared. And, if they were the last to leave the Academy’s practice rooms in the long dark hours, to never stop and never look behind them. No matter what distant music they heard or what light threw their shadow on the floor before them.

  Regardless of its setting, les petites rats de l'opéra found the story comforting. Curled up in their attic rooms, bellies gnawing with hunger, fearing expulsion should they surpass their record at the twice-weekly weighing, shins throbbing in synchronicity with the beat of the day’s jumping exercise, they gloried at the idea of a dancer more terrifying than their professeurs.

  Once upon a time there was a talented student, the most brilliant her school had ever trained, chosen to debut a solo to recently discovered music by the late composer. The choreography was novel, the combinations were intricate, and the steps so complicated that she was required to spend many long nights in practice even after an exhausting day of classes. The dim flicker of the studio lamps and stray notes from the worn phonograph permeated her classmates’ dreams.

  Then one day, in the grey haze of a winter morning, an instructor woke to the halting repeat and skip of the phonograph and entered to find the needle butting against a length of frayed red ribbon. The girl’s worn-though pointe shoes, blood-stained in spots through the satin, lay in a large drift of pale dust.

  They broke the record, burnt the shoes, and threw away the unravelling ribbon. They lied to her family and refused to answer the other students.

  So her story began—the Snow Maiden, and the secret dancer in the dark.

  Chapter Two

  This was home. Her floors—the wood flexing under her leaps, dusted with rosin and sticky with sweat. Her walls—the severely honest mirrors and the barre, her first pas de deux partner. Her language—the argot of French and gesture, of precise body language, continually pushing her body to more closely match what her instructor demanded.

  Hayan knew exactly which part of the class was taking place by the music seeping between each set of closed studio doors as she made her way down the hallway to join the small group of warmup-clad dancers outside a quiet studio. She pulled herself taller as she approached, but she was still the shortest of the group by at least a full head. Conversations and eye-contact crossed back and forth above her.

  Beside her, a blonde girl with pale-blue legwarmers over legs that seemed to go on forever talked animatedly to another dancer with a deep tan, who seemed focused on lacquering her hair into a flawless knot. A powerfully built male dancer, his black tank top almost blending into his skin, moved to sit on the bench on the other side of the corridor, wrapping a wide elastic around one ankle and starting a well-practiced limbering routine.

  Before Hayan could find a way to casually turn and inspect the final two, the studio doors opened. More dancers filed in, following the habits of training to stand next to the barre, left shoulder to the wall, and face toward the piano and presumably the pianist hidden behind its upright shape. They were few enough to all fit along one wall, even with enough space for full extension.

  “Welcome to this year’s New York Central School of Ballet trainee program.” A sandy-haired man who had been leaning on the top of the piano looked over as they positioned themselves. “In other words: Welcome to the salt mines.” He sauntered toward them, panther-like with his dancer’s ingrained grace, steps soundless in his dance sneakers. “Welcome to the corps de ballet’s nightmare, Nutcracker season. I know many of you have danced roles in this ballet before, but I imagine you have never danced all the variations in a single season.”

  The class inhaled as one, so restrained it almost whistled in the empty room.

  He smiled. “By the time the season starts, I will be able to snap my fingers, and you will step into any corps role. Seamlessly, as far as the audiences are aware, as though you had trained with the company. Perhaps, if we have a truly sickly season, there might be a temporary place for you among the soloists. Welcome, and let us see if you live up to the excellence you claimed.”

  He spun, a natural half turn rising onto the ball of one foot. “So then. I am Eli Soaper, your ballet master for the next three months. Miss Anna here will normally accompany us. Now, from the front, introduce yourselves to the rest of this class.”

  The olive-skinned girl turned out to be Geena Estefan, her hair now immaculate, her woollen warmups hanging as though pressed. Geena shivered for dramatic effect as she described her training in Tampa, ending with the dire prediction that her shoe stipend would be entirely spent to keep her studio apartment up to an acceptable Floridian temperature.

  The dancer in the black tank top introduced himself next. “Josiah, and by my own choice a dance major from DC.” The studio’s faux daylight cast harsh white highlights over his obsidian skin as he completed a deep classical bow, coming up with a dimpled grin and one hand lightly touching the small camera he wore on a chest-harness. “Thanks for letting me use the GoPro. Videoing this is counting toward my honours project.”

  Ashlee, blushing a rose that complemented her blue sweater and warmed her ice-pale skin, was beginning to describe her previous Nutcracker experiences when Hayan turned her head in response to a whisper from behind.

  “What’s your name?” The boy asked again, eyebrows drawing down and epicanthic folds crinkling in irritation.

  “Jeong Hayan, oppa.”

  He accepted the term of social respect, younger girl to older boy, without confusion. It confirmed her first impression that despite his height and American accent, he too came from a Korean family. He nodded decisively. “You should change it to something more American.” At her scowl, he added, “Trust me. They’ll try a few times, and then Eli or someone else will come up with a cutesy nickname that’s easier for them to remember. And you’ll be stuck with it. Think about it. At least you’ll choose it yourself.”

  Hayan turned back, half tuning Eli out as he welcomed Ashlee, then whipped her head back in sudden concern. “Oppa, how do I say gyeoul sae?”

  He huffed. “Ah . . . I normally only speak Korean with my halmeoni.” He hummed. “Hang on . . . I think it’s winter . . . bird? Yeah that sounds right.”

  “Gamsahamnida, oppa.” Hayan turned back to find the girl ahead of her at the barre glaring at her.

  “You’re welcome.” He whispered at the back of her head. “Maybe skip the oppa here, hey? They just call me Ken.”

  The girl between Ashlee and Hayan cleared her throat deliberately. “I am Moira Speare, a native of Boston, and recently returned to the States after a year at the Vaganova Academy in Moscow.”

  “Our fabulous Prix de Lausanne winner.” Eli grinned, and she returned him a cool nod. “I doubt you’ll have any trouble in this program, Moira.”

  “As do I.” Moira Speare was beautiful and strongly muscled; the extra inches all the American dancers had over Hayan raised her from compact to willowy. Her auburn hair was tied in a wisp-free chignon with a blood-red ribbon twisted through it. The severe black woollen warmups she wore opened wide at the neckline, revealing milky skin and a scattering of pale freckles like gold flakes.

  “We’re lucky to have two Vaganova-trained students this year,” Eli continued, “with the other being our International Scholarship recipient, Jeong Hayan.” He tried—he really did—and it was close to correct. “Miss Jeong comes from South Korea, where they prefer the Vaganova method. Back home she was also in a program for providing North Korea-born students with opportunities they wouldn’t have had in their home country.”

  North Korea. Those two words were enough to chill the room. Hayan had read about the American opinion on her birth country; she had also discussed it during sessions with the New York scholarship team both by Skype and after her arrival in New York. After much thought, she had essentially decided not to mention that part of her heritage at all.

  Hayan dropped her chin. She still felt their stares.

  “Tell us a little about that award and wh
at it’s like training in Korea,” Eli prompted.

  Staring down at the pale polished floor until her eyes unfocused, for a moment Hayan found herself back in that big room with hundreds of other refugee daughters, twelve years ago. Some had been in Seoul a while and were taller and heavier. Some were like her and had only arrived from temporary refuges and waypoints in the preceding months—still waiflike with sunken eyes and hasty smiles.

  She had known only the few steps she had learned at school and the traditional Korean dances she and the other little girls had performed for special occasions and important people. So Hayan had watched and listened carefully, and followed exactly the steps she had been shown, and smiled and told them how much she wanted to dance.

  They had chosen her. Representatives from Saejowi—the Organization for One Korea, and the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, and the Artistic Directors of the Korean National Ballet—had looked at literally hundreds of North Korean girls and decided that she was the one they deemed worthy to receive the funding and support required to even strive for a future as a professional ballerina.

  Not for another six years after that day had her mind grasped—halfway through an endless spiral of pirouettes, losing her balance, and having to ask her teacher if she could take a moment away from the classroom—that because she had gotten the scholarship, all those other little girls had not. When she realized that most of them would never have gotten to dance, she felt her breathing grow choppy and out of control. She alone had been given the gift, this freedom of both expression and discipline. She alone had trained her feet and shoes like puppies, to carry out every tiny movement with joy and precision. She alone was given the opportunity to feed on art without having to make time to eke out sustenance.