Finale
stay on top of your leg
hold, hold, hold!
beauty is pain, my dear
remember Balanchine: just hold on to the air
relax that elbow ever so slightly
again from the phrase just before
let’s go from last position
one, two, three, and down on four
don’t be late on that arabesque!
ballerinas must be seen, not heard
connect, connect, connect!
move faster, get there faster, I said faster!
lift your head, why are you looking at the floor, what is so
interesting about the floor?
stronger in the back!
this is not the end
lengthen your line
watch out for Fiona’s arms!
relax those shoulders, girl
naughty toes, good toes, naughty toes, good toes
careful not to over-cross
you would break with your glamour for this?
Keep! Going!
breathe on the toe hops, this is your only chance
use your épaulement
feel it, don’t just act it!
attack the jeté!
neither will I
don’t leave that arm behind
you’re almost through
I love you, I love you, I…
I have never seen his body so still. Lying on his side, on the hard ground, with his back to me.
Hampstead Heath. Daylight. The air tastes different, and my voice floats away from me like any other sound.
‘Sander—’ I cough violently, shaking, grateful to be alive while also wishing I were dead, so that I don’t have to face the next moment. ‘Sander.’
He doesn’t move.
Stiff in my lower back, I try to sit up, searching the grove, and beyond, for help. The sun has only just risen. No one else is around. No one except the man it takes me a second to remember is Glen. He lies still too, eyes closed, face turned towards the sky.
Pieces of what happened between leaving the grove and coming back to it circle the darkness in my head. I curl up around Sander’s body. Hold him tight.
Then he rolls over, almost elbowing me in the spleen.
He blinks at the trees, then at me, and for a moment I think he’s forgotten who either of us are.
He tries to sit up, only to fall back. ‘Oof. Bad idea. Not yet.’
He pats his throat, as if pleasantly surprised that his vocal cords still work. Raises his hand and examines both sides of it. Sees what I see.
I help him to sit up. Blood warm, lungs breathing. His other hand hovers over his cheek, his forehead, under his eyes, feeling the faint new lines that have appeared.
He pulls me into him. Into a kiss, deep and slow.
To think I’d forgotten how it could feel. With him.
Time leaves us alone until we break apart for air, at which point a wheezing sound comes from behind us.
‘The Selkie… did not say… how painful that would be,’ Glen groans, using the tree roots to haul himself up a few inches at a time.
Then he blinks at me. At the two of us. I still feel as if I’m on the verge of waking from a dream within a dream.
Sander turns my face back to his, and my hands move independently of me.
I can’t stop patting his shoulders, his chest, his gorgeous, human face, to make sure he’s still real.
‘You… gave up your immortality. Your—’ I wait for the word to surface. ‘Your glamour. For me? For… us?’ I gesture in disbelief at the rest of the Heath, and London, the human world, which is somehow still ticking along as if nothing extraordinary just happened one world over.
Sander brushes fresh tears from my cheeks. ‘I gave up nothing. I gained time. Time with you.’
‘But I heard you. Your family. You could have died.’
He shakes his head. Slowly, almost losing our footing several times, we find our way to a clumsy standing position, holding each other. We help Glen to his feet. My own feet hurt, as if I’ve been dancing for days and nights, and things that are neither day nor night.
‘My back hurts,’ Sander says, blinking at the novelty. ‘Oh, God. Forty years is… many years. I feel them all.’
‘You’ll get used to them,’ I say, laughing between breaths at this almighty reversal of fortune we’ve engineered across two different dimensions.
‘Has the world always been so blurry?’ Glen says, squinting at the crest of Parliament Hill. ‘Or do I need spectacles?’
In adjusting my stance, I catch sight of tiny figures jumping in the distance, arms waving, a thread of joy on the air. My friends. Our friends.
Sander and Glen follow my stare. They don’t understand yet, not until Charlie comes bounding up with Layla and Freddie on his heels like puppies let loose. Sander turns to me again, speechless. Pointing. Instinctively miming the snap of a twig. They remember me? You did it? You broke my curse?
‘We almost lost you, Sander,’ Charlie says, voice thick after almost squeezing the new life out of him. ‘I’m sorry it took us so long.’
‘No, I…’ Sander is blinking at Layla and Freddie, and they at him, in wonder. He, a mythical creature come to life from the faintest echo of memory. Layla, a baby one minute and a person the next. Freddie, once a kiss on his parents’ cheeks, now a wish made true. ‘I am sorry I could not explain.’
When the others reach us, their breathless running turns to breathless sobbing. I am thankful, on top of everything else, for the privacy that early morning affords us.
‘You look different,’ Fiona says to Sander, eyes wide. ‘You’ve never looked different before.’
‘Just what the bloody hell happened to you?’ Jamie demands, his grip changing between my arm and Sander’s.
The mention of blood makes us both twitch. ‘Much,’ Sander says. ‘Much happened.’
‘I’ll tell you once we’ve finished piecing it all together.’
‘It’s been forty-five minutes!’ Fiona exclaims. ‘We tried coming after you, but no one thought to bring an extra CD player, or rosemary, and nothing we tried worked, and—’
‘Forty-five minutes?’ Sander murmurs in astonishment. ‘That was all?’
‘Do you, uh, do both of… Do all of you fancy some coffee, back at ours?’ Carolyn asks, her dazed smile widening as our new reality hits home. She keeps smoothing her hands over Sander’s cloaked shoulders, overwhelmed.
‘Yes, please,’ Glen says like a man weathering a spectacular hangover.
‘Make Trix’s Irish, perhaps?’ Charlie says. ‘You look like you need it.’
‘Shut up,’ I laugh, leaning into Sander because, like Carolyn, I can’t stop touching him. Affirming his existence as more than a memory.
‘You need a new wardrobe, mon copain,’ Armand says, dazzled by the cloak, the otherworldly fabrics that couldn’t bring themselves to be parted from their owner. ‘I’ll lend you something.’
‘And get you cleaned up,’ I say, wincing on Sander’s behalf at the scratches around his temples where his crown used to be. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Oh yes,’ he says happily.
We start down the slope together, the replanted trees of Lime Avenue on either side of us.
Charlie puts a tentative hand on Glen’s shoulder. ‘Listen, I don’t know how it works… over there… but you may or may not have heard me call you a bastard. I’m very sorry about that.’
‘Oh, that’s quite alright.’
Sander and I straggle at the back of our strange little group, exhausted. I tug at his hand until he slows down. A moment of stillness.
‘But… what if they come after you again? After us?’
Sander turns for a last look up the hill, and everything beyond it.
‘They won’t.’ He raises a hand, and I notice a subtle change in the summer breeze.
It brushes the back of my neck and grazes my cheek, almost affectionate.
‘As long as I do not forget my roots.’ He taps his shoe against a literal tree root.
‘You asked me, all those years ago, what I will do without the BCBC. Your suggestion of conservation… it was worthy of a raven’s prophecy. ’
He takes my hand and encourages me to keep walking, before the others can look back and see how far we’ve lagged behind.
‘But what does this mean?’ I say more seriously, caressing his face with one hand. ‘You’ll die? Like any other mortal?’
He kisses my palm and tilts his head back. Drinks in the air. City and woodland, combined.
‘Yes. But first, like any other mortal,’ he says, smiling to himself, giddy, pulling me close, his words blurring into a kiss on my cheek, a whisper in my ear. ‘We live.’