Wedding Dancing #3
“No. I have never done a dance before. But I have done sword drills.”
Khatu guffawed. Lill glanced at Vanu and saw a broad smile on his face, crinkling the scar on his left cheek. Something about that made Lill feel warm inside.
Padunu demonstrated the steps of the second and third dances: in the second you had to spin and hit your stick against your neighbours’ sticks on either side, and the third involved jumping back and forth and forming up in a circle.
Lill found it easy to learn all the steps.
In the Order you would be beaten if you didn’t follow directions properly, and this was nothing more than that.
Padunu’s voice even sounded a little like some of the masters.
But no one would have beaten him here for failing at the dance steps. Instead there was Vanu watching him with that smile on his lips. What made him smile? Lill did not quite understand.
They began to dance, and it was not like a sword drill.
Padunu took his place in line and called out the different steps in a half-singing, half-shouting voice like herdsmen used to call cattle.
It echoed off the stone walls around them.
The guards outside the fortress must have been able to hear it; what did they make of it?
The men’s boots stamped the paving stones, and they twirled and thumped their sticks.
The older men joined in the chant with Padunu, and so Lill did too.
In the second dance, he got to bang sticks with Barda on his left, who was usually late or hit at an awkward angle and endangered Lill’s knuckles—and Vanu on his right, who smacked his stick precisely against Lill’s every time on the turn and smiled at him in that way that was kindling warmth in Lill’s belly.
At the end of the third dance, they put their sticks on the ground and jumped and stepped back and forth over them, as the spectators clapped in a rhythm that gradually sped up, and when someone trod on their stick, they were out and went to stand with the women, and the dance started over again.
By the end, everyone was standing under the trees clapping except Vanu and Lill.
Vanu didn’t even look tired. Lill was; that was one of his weaknesses, a lack of stamina, and it was pronounced after the week of injuries and indolence that he’d had.
But he was used to pushing through fatigue to do what was required.
Then Vanu, to Lill’s surprise, just stopped. He didn’t make a mistake or step on his stick, he just flung up his arms and came to a neat halt.
“Vanu forfeits!” Padunu announced. “Lill … is the winner.” He sounded annoyed.
Lill came to a halt too, shaking back his hair, which he was wearing loose, and breathing hard. He realized the dance had just crossed the line from ease to toil, and he was quite ready to stop. What a coincidence that Vanu had chosen that moment.
“What does he win?” Halza inquired.
“Traditionally the winner is rewarded with a—chaste!—kiss from the bride,” said Padunu. “It is said to convey a blessing, especially if given to an unmarried man. Obviously under the circumstances … ” He flung up his hands in lieu of finishing the sentence.
Vanu stepped close to Lill and leaned down to give him a kiss. Lill would not have called it “chaste.” The Gukhártu brothers hooted.
“Burira!” someone—Tirtu, maybe—called out.
“Burira!” roared Barda and Khatu.
“Dance the burira!”
Vanu nodded. He put a hand on Lill’s shoulder and nudged him gently toward the spectators under the trees.
Lill moved obediently. Vanu was bending down to pick up the sticks from the ground.
He tossed them to Padunu, who caught them awkwardly.
Everyone else had begun clapping in a slow, syncopated rhythm.
Vanu stepped back out onto the sunlit pavement, moving in time to the rhythm as if feeling it out.
Gurti began to sing, a wordless tune, and Tirtu and then Halza quickly picked it up.
Vanu began to dance alone. This was a different kind of dance.
He raised his arms, and his feet moved in quick steps over the pavement.
He jumped and kicked, high enough to hit an opponent in the head but not the way you would kick in unarmed combat—exuberantly, just for the fun of showing off his skill.
He slapped the heel of his boot with either hand and spun around.
It should have been a joy to watch. He was beautiful, the way his body moved to the music, the ease and grace and skill he displayed.
But Lill could not enjoy it. He told himself it was because he was shamed by watching Vanu’s performance, which made him realize that his own had been stiff and ungraceful, technically correct but not really deserving the name of dance.
He told himself that, but it wasn’t the real reason he didn’t want to watch Vanu dance.
“Were they makha?” Deru had asked, about the dancers in Torakand. “Deliciously beautiful,” he’d said the word meant. And Lill had thought not about the dancers but about Zish. And Zish … But he was not going to think about that now.