Chapter Seven
When nothing happens to me overnight, apart from some nightmares slick with blood, I tell myself to relax.
Nobody is watching me—it’s merely my guilt at play here, the uncomfortable truth I’ve been avoiding facing.
I took those slippers, and I’m worried I’ll get caught is all.
Satisfied with my realizations, determined not to allow it one more thought, I leave Sélie at home, trying her hand at pastries this morning since the shop is closed.
Alone, I walk into town, ultra-aware of my surroundings.
But nothing happens on the way to the theatre, and once I’m settled in the dark wings, pulling the ruby-red slippers on, I put the incident from yesterday out of my mind.
Incidents. Wasn’t someone watching me after the dress shop? Someone in the audience while I practiced? And then…the bleeding man. The dark, haunting form right after.
Pushing it aside, I stand by myself while Lysander practices alone on the stage. It was all, all nothing. I’ll return the slippers. One day…
Today, a Sunday, is the final practice before we break for summer holiday for the week—the one time a year The Red Clover is closed that long, partly due to the annual Pins carnival which occurs later in the week.
And it’s a shame, really, because I’ve only performed one show, and now I’ll be forced to pause.
I admire Lysander as he finishes practicing his routine.
His arms shake as he holds himself up, muscles taut and strong.
He is graceful yet powerful as he swings off the silks.
I whistle from the wings, awed by his strength and beauty.
He gives me a mock bow when he comes offstage, muscles taut, skin glistening with sweat. “Why, thank you.”
“You were wonderful. I love the routine.”
“What about that last leap, though? Was it too much?”
“Not at all.” I smile. “I loved it. So, are you heading anywhere for the holiday?”
“I am, thank God.” He gives me a boyish grin. “I do need to get going, wish I could stay and watch you.”
“You can see my routine when you get back. It’s barely anything now—I only have a few rough counts, but I’ll practice every day while we’re closed.”
“Rough? I doubt that very much. You are perfection, Corliss.” He refuses to call me Bell, which I rather like about him. I anticipate us becoming great friends.
Cheeks warm, I shake my head. “Hardly.”
He gives me one last smile before he departs. I wonder if I imagine the look of longing he throws toward Julian’s office on his way out. I’ve felt the expression of unrequited love on my own face before.
“Corliss!” Pearl gives me a wave as she jogs over, her thick hair pulled up into a twist, her face unmade-up yet as lovely as when painted with cosmetics. “How are you? How is your sister—she really seemed to love the show?”
“She really did,” I answer. “And we’re both good.
” And in this moment, it is true. Conversing warmly, the two of us stretch together as more dancers trickle in and out throughout the hours, practicing and packing up their things for break.
When I leave the Clover—the last one to go besides Julian, still locked in his office—I sling my bag over my shoulder and ease into the fresh air.
It’s a perfect summer night, with the deepening blue sky, the heat, the light floral aroma mixed with ocean. The Pins is at its peak, warm, nearly balmy, or as balmy as we can get here. Even now, there’s a moodiness to the air. The sticky feeling of future rain.
The breeze suddenly seems to whisper my name.
Corlissss—
I start, nearly stumbling over a curb.
Wary, I cast my eyes around the street, half-expecting something to jump out at me.
Everything appears normal, however. There are a couple of shopkeepers locking up, a few sailors coming off the docks, lovers strolling along, a lanky young man promising messages from heaven or hell, from “the dead relative of your choosing,” and he’ll take payment in kisses or coins.
I pass him with a look of contempt, but nothing accounts for this ominous feeling. I hurry along my way.
It’s fine, I tell myself, though I’m still certain I’m being watched.
Behind me, I sense it. That shadowy feeling, only worse, a hundred times worse, a thousand.
The further I move forward, the more intense it becomes.
Even more awful than yesterday, with that bleeding man.
With that other man…the haze of him as the world stopped and it was just us two.
Except he wasn’t a man, that second one….
Scanning the square, I zero in on a squat old woman standing at the corner.
She wears black, her white hair haloed around her papery face.
She snaps her pale eyes my way so deliberately I take a step back.
I’ve never seen her before, but she seems to know me.
My stomach drops as I wait for her to do something.
She looks…wrong. There’s an unnaturalness about her—not quite human, not quite animal. Wrong.
I force myself to stare back, tensed for an attack.
The woman doesn’t move at all, bust resting on her ample stomach. We look at each other for minutes while I hardly breathe, my stomach clenched so tight I worry it’ll twist itself inside out. All at once, she opens her mouth wide, wider than humanly possible.
In horror I stare as her lips form a silent scream and a murder of crows flies out of her maw, tearing their way across the square right at me.
I throw my arms up and duck when they swoop over my head, letting out a strangled cry.
Someone snickers as they pass me, huddled here, shaking like a tree in a storm.
“What’s the matter with her?” they say.
The crows fly past, and finally I rise, my legs weak as a newborn foal. Nobody else moves, they just stare at me with curiosity, and some level of suspicion.
Nobody else saw them, I realize. I am frozen in one spot, gaping at the birds cawing in the background, at the woman, whose mouth they flew from. How could nobody see that?
In slow motion, the woman turns her eyes to me again. She flashes me a sinister smile.
I don’t wait to see if anything else comes out of her mouth. Staggering backwards, I bump into someone in my haste.
“Watch it,” a voice hisses at me.
“Sorry,” I say thickly. Normally I’d hiss back. Normally I’d push back even harder. But not tonight. Instead, I turn and rush toward home with my bag banging against my hip, the townspeople parting for me. I run like the Devil is on my heels.
Just before I leave the woods, with the cottage in view, I stop to catch my breath. I finally toss a glance behind me, to make sure nobody is going to jump out. The only movement is a squirrel, chittering away up on a branch. Still, trepidation prickles my skin.
Did I imagine it all? Am I going mad? No. My senses have never failed me before. Not my ears, nor my mouth, nor my nose, and certainly not my eyes. I saw what I saw. I saw the birds flying out of that woman’s mouth, there’s no way I imagined the evil way she stared at me.
Something is after me. Maybe that something even knows where I live….
Panic grips me at once, as one name flashes in my mind: Sélie.
I tear through the final stretch of wood and across the short grassy area before I get to the cottage, throwing the front door open.
“Damn it!” Sélie yelps from an overstuffed chair near the window. She puts her hand to her chest, delicate fingers splayed over her heart. “You scared me to death, Corliss, banging in here like that! What’s wrong?”
“Sorry,” I breathe weakly, noting the state of the cottage and my sister—all as it should be. “I just, um, nothing. Sorry. I didn’t mean to throw it open so hard.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Did you get sick again?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m hungry.” The last word is a lie. Another lie. I haven’t been hungry in weeks. But I can’t tell her the truth—she’ll think me mad. Maybe I am.
Her face lights up, and thankfully, she doesn’t ask questions about the way my hands grip my bag, how my shoulders are drawn up tensely, how false my smile must look.
“I made dinner. There’s a plate for you.”
“Wonderful,” I say as I pass. “Sorry for scaring you. Go back to your drawing.”
And she does, disappearing into her art, and I take a seat to remove my boots.
When she tilts the page to show me, my heart skips at the image.
It’s me, all in grayscale, in the middle of the stage, leaping in the red slippers—the only thing in the picture she’s used color on.
My nerves soften. “Oh, Sélie. That’s so damn good. ”
She turns it back to herself, and eyes it critically. “It was better in person. Your costume was beautiful. The white with the red shoes was really striking.”
I watch as she starts another sketch, this time capturing Pearl from memory, on her toes, frozen in a moment where her song swelled with tenderness and her face was open, lit up.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” I muse.
“Definitely,” Sélie answers with her head down, her hands moving swiftly as she captures whatever made this impression on her. “I can still hear her voice. It was so angelic.”
While she continues to work, I pretend to eat the food she left out for me: roasted chicken, lumpy potatoes, and a pear tart with a soggy crust. It is kind that she made the effort, but my stomach turns too much to take more than a couple bites.
Sélie is fine. I’m fine. But something is coming. I can feel it in my gut.
And I know who it is, and I know why.
It’s the Colehart demon. Because he does exist. Because he wants his shoes back.
What have I done? This isn’t worth it. All the dreams I had, the goals, they turn to dust. I’m not going to keep dancing in stolen property.
Knowing this, I’ll probably not be able to continue at the Clover, not without the confidence and boost in skill the ballet slippers give me.
But it doesn’t matter—I’ve made a huge mistake.
As soon as Sélie falls asleep, I slip out of the cottage, into the night, sky dotted with stars as far as the eye can see, ocean licking the shore.
Everything at peace here in our corner of The Pins.
Everything except me, of course. I walk down the rocky sides, careful not to slip in my bare feet as I carry the stolen shoes in my arms. I don’t look at them, though.
I don’t want to see what I’ve done. I have to let them go, yet I hate, hate how much it hurts.
If only if only if only, my poor heart pangs.
If only I could keep you. I clutch them tightly to my chest, one last time.
But they’re not mine. They belong to someone else.
Standing by the edge of the water, I say out loud, just in case he can hear me, “I’m sorry.”
Trusting that they will make their way back to him somehow, I fling the ballet slippers into the ocean.
When I wake up in the morning, the red shoes are back. Cradled in my arms, like a baby.