Dancing Days

by Val St. Crowe

  Chapter Four

  “Tweens and rebels enclave?” Nora asked as she and Maddie climbed a hill a few hundred feet away from Mack’s tent. Catling was small enough to tuck into one of the pockets on Nora’s skirt, and the tiny furball was curled up and asleep there. The area here was wooded, but there were tents pitched between the trees. The shade of the leaves made the air cooler here. “This is like the enclave for preteens?”

  Maddie giggled. “Oh no. I’d forgotten they’ve started using the word in the mundane world like that. In Helicon, tween means anyone from twelve to twenty-four. Actually, someone put it in an inspiration thread and J. R. R. Tolkien used it to mean pretty much the same thing in The Lord of the Rings. Of course, he didn’t have his hobbits come of age until thirty-three, and in Helicon, you can start making inspiration threads at twenty-five.”

  The two crested the hill and passed under an archway constructed of welded scrap metal. A sign, spray painted overhead, said “Tweens and Rebels.” There was a fire pit in the center of the enclave and tents of various shapes and sizes flanking it. Behind the fire pit stood a massive tree house, with at least ten levels. Some had roofs and walls, others were only platforms. They extended all the way up the trunk of the tree, so high that the top levels were obscured by branches and leaves. The levels were navigable by a spiral staircase that wound around the tree, traveling higher into its leafy greenery.

  Nora stared up at it, her mouth open.

  “Cool, huh?” said Maddie. “A group of tweens made it years ago. They all ended up in the architecture enclave as you might expect. They’re the ones who founded the enclave.”

  “Can we go up in it?”

  “Sure,” said Maddie. “But the very top levels are off limits except to the oldest tweens. They get really annoyed if you go up there. They’ll start mumbling about tradition and privilege and all this other crap.” Maddie rolled her eyes. She strode past the fire pit and started up the spiral staircase.

  Nora was right on her heels. She’d never seen a tree house so elaborate. “I would have loved this when I was a kid,” she said.

  “Oh, you should see the tree house in the kiddie playground,” Maddie threw over her shoulder. “It’s seriously like a castle. It has turrets and stuff. And it spans a ton of trees, so you can roam all over on this awesome swinging rope bridge.” Maddie signed wistfully. “I’m too big for it now, though. They made it the perfect kid size, so adults couldn’t fit.”

  They’d gone past two or three platforms already, when Maddie swung off the steps and ducked underneath a roofed platform. They were about halfway up the tree.

  Nora stepped onto it as well. It was very sturdy underneath her feet, but there wasn’t enough room to stand up completely. The roof was too low. The area had obviously been made for sitting. Sure enough, on the platform were three round cushion-y things that resembled beanbag chairs. The chairs, the back wall, the floor, and the ceiling were all completely covered in spray paint. The back wall was a detailed mural of the sunset, but the rest of the place was simply a sort of graffiti mishmash, like the side of a boxcar or the bottom of an underpass.

  Maddie flopped down on a chair. “This room’s neat. I like it.”

  Nora sat down too. The chairs didn’t have the kind of squishy give of a bean bag. Instead, they hugged her body the way a stress ball might, taking the impression of her limbs as she sat in it and holding the shape. Once she settled, Catling woke up, crawling out of Nora’s pocket. She squawked at Nora once and then curled up in Nora’s lap, going back to sleep immediately. “Who did the painting?”

  Maddie shrugged. “Lots of people probably. There are paint cans down in the camp, and you can add to it if you want. Do you like to paint?”

  “I’ve never tried,” said Nora, stroking her sleeping cat-duck. “But I like to draw.”

  “We can go to the visual art enclave later if you want. Of course, between everyone being tired from the Solstice celebration last night and freaked out about the Influence coming through that portal, it’s possible no one’s really doing anything.”

  Nora realized that it was Christmas Day. If she hadn’t come to Helicon, she’d be in the double wide with Laura and Tim, forced to watch Christmas movies and stare at their gaudy, fake tree. Laura always insisted that Christmas was a time for family. Nora had always preferred to be alone, because she could create things without anyone seeing them. “So the...tweens don’t live with their parents anymore? You guys live here, all on your own?”

  Maddie nodded. “I mean, you don’t have to come live in the tweens and rebels enclave if you don’t want. You can still live with your parents. I guess before they founded the enclave, that’s what everyone did. And even though it’s its own enclave, it’s the only one that doesn’t have a voice on the council, because you have to be older than twenty-five to be on the council.” She leaned back in her chair. “I couldn’t wait to move in here, though. I still see my mom and dad whenever I want, but it’s nice to have your own space, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Even though Nora didn’t really know. She’d never really had anything she could call her own space. With Laura and Tim, she shared a bedroom with another of the foster kids they kept, and in most other places she’d stayed the same had been true. Even if she did have a room to herself, it wasn’t Nora’s space. Not really. It belonged to her foster parents. And Nora had always been moving from one place to another, meaning that nothing had ever seemed very permanent. But she guessed that now... “So I can stay here too?”

  “Of course you can,” said Maddie.

  “And Owen? He’s seventeen.”

  “And Owen.”

  “Even though he’s not a muse?”

  Maddie thought about it for a second. “Well, you don’t have to be twenty-five to join the muse police. They take younger recruits. So he might want to stay in their enclave. But there aren’t any rules about it, not really. So he can stay here too.” She smiled mischievously at Nora. “So Owen’s your boyfriend, huh?”

  Nora shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “Maybe he is. I don’t know. We never really talked about it. It’s always been me and him. He’s the only person I’ve ever trusted.”

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend. No boy has ever even looked at me twice. I guess it’s because I’m fat.”

  Nora squinted at Maddie. Maybe she was a little pudgy, but it was a very pleasant amount of pudge. Nora liked the way she looked. “I don’t think you’re fat.”

  “Growing up in the food enclave, you get fed,” Maddie said. “And it would probably be fine if I were staying in the food enclave, because muses there tend to look well fed. But I want to dance, and I don’t think anyone wants to watch a fat dancer.”

  “You shouldn’t keep saying you’re fat,” Nora said. She’d overheard conversations like this amongst other girls and always thought they were sort of silly. She’d assumed those girls were fishing for compliments. Talking to Maddie, though, she realized the girl was really insecure, that it wasn’t a front. She wished there was something she could do or say to make Maddie feel better. “It’s not true.”

  Maddie shook her head, but didn’t say anything else.

  Nora could see she hadn’t convinced her. She tried to think of something else to say, some way to show Maddie how attractive she actually looked.

  But Maddie was standing up. “If you’re going to stay here, we should go to the architecture enclave and see if they have any spare tents for you. We can set it up so that you have someplace to sleep tonight. It’s much nicer to sleep here than anywhere else, because it stays cool under the leaves, and you can sleep until noon.”

  Nora grinned, glad of the subject change. She picked up Catling, tucked her back in the pocket of her skirt, and stood up. “Can we get a tent for Owen too?”

  “Absolutely,” said Maddie.