Chapter Ten #3
They’d practiced this dance forever and were looking to show off, clearly.
“We are the entities of truth and lies!” Imogen said, twirling her baton.
“To pass further, one must guess which one is which,” Jonah said, giving a playful wink.
“Boo! Get off the stage!” I heard Daddy’s voice as he jeered at Uncle Jonah from the audience. My uncle flipped him off, and the crowd laughed.
“Your dad is really playing the role of the spectator well,” Marcus said in approval.
“No, that’s just how he is. He’d boo anyway.”
Alana tapped her chin thoughtfully. “How may we tell which is truth, and which is lies?”
“The answer, simple, albeit, complex,” Erica replied, making a fist and casting her gaze away. “The truth is that which you don’t wish to see, but must.”
“I don’t wish to see any of this, so I’m glad I don’t have to.” Charlie’s deep voice resonated behind me, and it made my body shiver. He came close to me, lightly touching my shoulder. “Our part’s coming up. You ready?”
The tightness in my spine loosened slightly, making it so I could breathe again. “Yeah. Ready.”
“You’ve guessed our secret!” Jonah tossed glitter into the air that would take the Elves in this theater a thousand years to clean up or more. “Pass on into the realm of shadow, where you may meet your next foe!”
The lighting darkened until the entire auditorium was nearly pitch-black, besides a singular spotlight on the stage.
Ez and Opal darted onstage, dressed in matching costumes that had long strands of grey, ripped fabric trailing to the floor.
They were supposed to be ghosts, I think, but Marcus kept changing his mind on what he wanted them to be, insisting specters might suit the play better.
In my opinion, a ghost and a specter were the same damn thing, but he’d argued with me for a half hour they weren’t.
Whatever. It was his play. I noticed on Opal’s ring finger the beautiful turquoise engagement ring that Ez had shown me months ago. I was glad he’d finally asked her— and if we opened the Elven Gate today, they could get married once the Warden was done.
Within the twirling ghosts, a haunting figure appeared. A tall woman with raven hair, pale skin and red lips swathed in a hooded black cloak swept between the ghosts, extending a thin arm with sharp red nails.
“Beware, for ye have stumbled upon the entity of darkness,” Takahashi warned. “Her shadowed heart lay a curse upon all travelers in her path!”
Kallie’s aunt, Delmare, was playing the entity of darkness. She was one of Emma’s best friends. She withdrew from her cloak an aged piece of parchment, and began to recite.
What is it to devote your life to the page
A series of disappointments
A herald’s cry for being heard
In a world of silence
An ode to sacrificing your existence
To those who don’t honor the offering
What is a page
But a collection of ideas from the poet
Words placed this way and that
Which anyone can do
But cannot do
What is to be a poet
But to lament over life’s destinies,
Jumbled letters the ancients will read
A rambling of musings
What is inspiration
Except that which whispers away on the wind
And is gone forever
A cursed existence
What is a thought
But to be here one moment
And vanished the next?
Delmare’s poem was probably the best thing about this play— and she’d written it, not Marcus, thank the ancestors. If it had been one of his poems we’d be here a century and an age.
Alana withdrew a stage sword from a scabbard on her hip and cried, “Leave this place, foul beast, and do not cast upon the fair Empress a curse that may blight her beauty!”
Alana was a little too eager with the sword, because she whacked Delmare in the face with it. “Ow! Hey!” Delmare sourly rubbed the side of her head.
“Sorry— uh, I mean— be gone!” Alana chased the entity of darkness away.
Opal and Ez pretended to flee. The stage lighting became warmer, and Delmare wandered off stage right.
She passed her husband Stefan on the way out, who gave a loud smack to her ass as they crossed paths.
It wasn’t behind the sight of the curtains, so the entire audience saw it.
Delmare gave a yelp, and Stefan smirked. From the audience, Emma gave a cat call.
“That wasn’t in the script!” Marcus flustered, outraged.
“The entity of comedy, who is also married to the entity of darkness!” Takahashi ad-libbed, to make up for Stefan’s quip. “Accompanied by the entity of movement!”
Stefan strode onto center stage, wearing his hockey jersey from the game a few weeks ago.
Nobody was following the dress code around here.
After him, Marcus’ uncle Grant breakdanced onto the middle of the stage, doing a crab walk before performing a windmill that ended in a power pose, his legs in the air.
Stefan pushed him over, and Grant flopped to the floor. The audience laughed.
“Hey, guys. What’s up?” Stefan wasn’t even bothering to try and speak Early Modern English. I respected him for it.
“We seek the path forward, though the way is hidden to us,” Erica responded. “Wherewithal can we reach road’s end?”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but here’s a dad joke. I hated the one that was originally written, so I made one up that I think is better. I hope my boys like it.”
“Go, Dad!” I heard a teenage male voice call from the back of the auditorium.
“What is he doing? He’s going off script again!” Marcus hissed.
Stefan took a big breath. “What did the dragon shifter say to his hatchlings? Stop dragon ass, get it— AHHH!”
Grant was still breakdancing. One of his legs kicked out and knocked Stefan over. He tumbled to the side in the middle of his joke and fell into one of the sets, smashing the background to pieces and yanking down an entire backdrop. The crowd booed.
“Now, everyone, I’m sure that was intentional! After all, he’s the entity of comedy!” Cameron shouted.
Sure, let’s go with that. Takahashi rushed to usher the girls into the next scene as Grant dragged Stefan backstage. “To the entity of aging we go!”
My time to go on stage was coming up. I adjusted my costume, which was nothing more than a simple white gossamer dress. Charlie’s matching white shirt was crooked. “You want me to fix that?”
“Fix what?” He had no clue.
I reached out and adjusted it for him, straightening the buttons and smoothing down the fabric. “Never mind.”
Professor Amber was onstage right before us.
I expected the Demigod Guardian to go all out for her part, as she’d been almost as excited about this play as Marcus, but I wasn’t prepared just how far she’d go to serve her role.
Amber waltzed onstage with a stack of crystals, placing them in various areas around the broad stage before letting her long curls fly free as she began spinning within the stone circles, humming a tune as bangles shone on her wrists and a boho maxi skirt spun out over her bare feet.
And she was completely topless. Sixty-year-old Professor Amber was twirling half-naked onstage without a care in the world, dancing under the spotlights and wearing a daring smile.
My parents, and none of their friends, looked surprised. They’d all been her students, so this was common behavior from free spirit hippie child Professor Amber, I guess. More power to her, but was this really the time?
“Marcus, what is going on?” I said, gesturing to the stage.
“This is what she wanted! She’s the entity of aging— a portrayal of the transition into the role of the elder! I wasn’t going to stifle her artistic interpretation!” Marcus demanded. “I am a director, not a dictator!”
“Your theater kid bullshit is what’s going to get us caught! No one is going to believe this is a real show!”
I was proven a liar when Cameron started clapping from the first row, cheering out, “This is amazing! It’s the most incredible performance I’ve ever been to!”
Well, at least he liked it, and that’s what mattered most. He was the one person we had to make sure remained distracted, and Professor Amber sure was distracting. Amber finally finished her performative art, gathering her crystals in her arms before she pirouetted offstage.
“The entity of aging has found you worthy of venturing on!” Takahashi announced. “Go forth into the vacant void, the land of emptiness and sorrow that awaits before you!”
That was our cue. Charlie bent down and extended his arms. “This okay?”
I grasped his forearm, running my fingers over the muscles there. “Yes.”
Charlie lifted me into his arms, and the heat of the spotlight shone upon us as we stepped onstage.
A piano ballad struck up from the orchestra pit, and we entered into a dance.
Charlie spun in circles around the stage, and a fog machine placed at the corner coated the area in a light mist. I moved my arms in flowing movements, wrapping them around Charlie’s neck before drooping one in an arc behind me, performing intricate movements as we twirled.
We hadn’t rehearsed this at all in practice, and Marcus had skipped this part every time we got to it in the script, acting like it wasn’t there.
Charlie had outright refused to speak any lines of dialogue, and I just wanted to get my part over with as quickly as possible, so this was the role we’d been assigned.
We freestyled the dance, none of the steps choreographed or planned.
It didn’t matter. It was like we’d rehearsed this scene a hundred times and knew exactly what movements the other person was going to make next.
Charlie flowed into my body like I poured into him.
He knew when to dip me, when to shift my legs so I could wrap around him, lifting me into a spiral, a floating embrace.
His breath rushed across my mouth as I put a hand against his cheek, running my fingers through his hair, and my legs spanned out behind me before he scooped me up by the knees again, boosting me by the hips and lifting me higher so I could stretch my arms out toward the lights above.