The End
Glen’s silhouette cuts through the moonlight on the stone floor. I knew I would find you here.
Leave me alone.
He may be bound to my parents’ every command, but he is no longer bound to mine: he sits next to me in the empty feasting hall and looks up at Trix, serene and silent, her supporting leg trembling as she lifts her left high in a développé écarté.
‘Which role is this?’
‘Giselle. The Act II Adage. I wish I could set her free with the dawn, even if it meant giving her up to the spirit world. Anything is better than being my parents’ newest toy, overworked until she…’ I cannot say the word aloud.
‘Did you come here to punish yourself, or to try and think of another way?’
‘I came here because sleep…’ I wave vaguely, irritated that mortal grammar does not come as easily these days, when there are no longer days to count.
‘I did not want her to be alone, even if it makes no difference. And what is this talk of other ways? Have you forgotten which realm we are in presently? There is no other way. The king and queen’s gesture is law. ’
Glen leaves a respectful silence until my anger abates. As Trix starts up Odile’s thirty-two fouettés, round and round like a child’s spinning top, he places a hand on my shoulder for courage.
‘And what about the prince’s gesture? What of his word?’
‘They will not listen to love. They barely believe in it.’
‘What if you said something else? My prince. My friend. Sander.’
A fox crosses the lowermost window; Glen switches to gestures in case it’s one of my third cousins, playing spy.
All your life you’ve believed your parents have the final say in everything. No, let me finish – you decided to cross the border, yes, carve out a life of dancing for yourself, yes, but that was avoiding your fate, instead of changing it.
Changing it? I repeat his gesture with one eyebrow raised, twisting my hands as if grinding a pepper mill. Fate cannot be changed. That is what makes it fate. I have no power here. My fate was written long before I was born into this accursed realm.
Glen shakes his head and then, with a ferocity I have seldom seen, points to his chest. No. Mine was. I am a mortal changeling. You were born with magic in your blood. You are among equals. You are more than a dancer. You have a brain up there in that skull. Why not use it for once?
Am I tempted to hang him upside down by the ankles from a wall sconce for such insubordination? A little. But he has my attention, and for the first time since being taken back across the border, I feel alive.
You’re right. I spent over ten years in the Restless Lands; my parents have passed no more than a handful of days there between them, five hundred years ago. I must have learned something, if not magic, then… My palms turn up empty. I know not what.
Glen points to Trix, who is bourréeing back and forth to a Firebird’s Lullaby by Stravinsky that only she can hear. Towards the end, you told me you thought love was the only ancient magic that mortals still wielded, while your people forgot it long ago.
Towards the end.
I was not brought up to think deeply on endings. How could I, in a timeless place? I thought that 1990 summer was the end. I thought tonight, the eve of my wedding, was the end. I thought the end was a thing decided on my behalf, out of my control.
I rise, standing as close to Trix as I can without getting hit by a stray limb, and hope that my voice finds her, wherever she has gone.
‘This is not the end.’