Folio Two, Page Forty (svegra mos droskron)
The Regional Academy of Fire Dancing occupied one of the oldest buildings in the city, and it had even trained dancers during the Occupation. The Taritit had seen traditional Canyon dancing as a curiosity, and while they couldn’t tell the difference between the schools beyond what the dancers wore, they had allowed the old system of training and initiation to continue.
As you have always seemed mystified whenever I mention dancing, perhaps you have never given thought to the performances you have seen in the city. Go to any major square at the end of the week (with the exception of those weeks during monsoon season) and you will see one of the schools giving a demonstration of their craft. The schools each have an approach that matches their name. Shadow Dancers believe in the martial aspects of the craft, and their way of manipulating the shapes and moves was borrowed by the Tveshi Shadow Guard. The Rock Dancers do impressive footwork, and many of their postures emphasize balance. They keep low to the ground. You get the idea.
Now, Fire Dancers are more passionate than the rest. The school trains their dancers to be more flexible than all of the others combined, and sometimes the moves remind me a bit of those reckless idiots who string tightropes across ravines and do tricks for tourists. They always stay on the edge of what they can control. Their forms flow like flames shooting up a burning building.
People begin training for one of the dancing schools at three or four, but the dedicated can become masters even if they begin late—they just need a flexibility trainer. No once dances with real fire until they reach fifteen.
All of the schools also train musicians with almost the same rigor. Each of the dances — or speeches, as they are called when we don’t borrow words from Tveshi — has its own requirements for key, rhythm, and chord progressions, but the musician may innovate as he or she likes. That Sukua had made it in even with his family’s reputation spoke to his talent.
I remember the light rain hissing against the concrete as I walked up the steps and the perfume-laden flowering ivies that clutched against the sides of the building, the birds staring down at me from the middle of the street. A train whined down the street behind me, shaking my image in the antique windows. The downtown Kobsarka houses squished together all along the block on either side.
One of the street sweeper robots stopped in front of the Academy and looked up at me. The sight chilled me. I pressed my hand against the door and jiggled it open. Inside was hot — almost unbearably so — and I felt myself break into a sweat just standing in the doorway.
Two girls about my age sat on benches in the corridor. We probably went to school together, but I hardly remembered anyone from my class. They all had something wrong with them — words can’t describe how I felt seeing them — and sometimes it seemed mad that I had to stay with them for years. It was like something in my head kept turning and propelling me forward and everyone else remained trapped behind me, blinking in the dust. It wasn’t very team-oriented of me to be so smart.
They whispered something to each other and ran off, hair bobbing behind their heads. Another train passed by outside.
Sukua rushed out behind a gaggle of other children, sticking to the shadows. I poked him as he went past me. He stumbled and fell to his knees.
“What’d you do that for?”
“You told me to meet you here, remember?”
“Not inside!” He jumped to his feet and whirled around to face me. “Hey, I thought your eyes were blue.”
I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at the woodwork. “We got a new shipment of contacts in. Need to make a good match, or so my cousin says. Too much blue in the family, even though we’ve always been clean.”
“That’s stupid.”
I looked down. “My mom used to say I had eyes like my Dad, whoever he was. But everything will be all right now. So what do you want to do? We could go to the ravine and muck about for a while. I know a place where we can get berries.”
“Sounds good.”
We grabbed hands and walked out the door. The rain came down harder now, but every kid from the Canyons plays outside during monsoon season. By the time we’d gone half a block, it had plastered our clothes to our skin.
Water rushed down in the ravine in a huge surge, so we couldn’t go down, but we climbed some overhanging trees and sat close to each other, looking up at the dark afternoon sky. I could hardly hear him over the deluge, and then it started hailing and I wished we’d gone someplace inside — but inside meant someplace where other people would see us.
I climbed up the slick branches until they creaked in protest beneath me, always pushing to see how far I could go before they sent me tumbling down. Climbing and pressing into places others didn’t or couldn’t go made me feel accomplished, the closest thing to disappearing into nothingness. Sukua couldn’t keep up.
We left after about an hour of climbing, but we came back the next day and the next until the storm broke and the waters receded. We gathered stormberries along the water and sold them to the tourists downtown until we had enough money for rail fare, and then we went into Menarka where no one recognized us — but I get ahead of myself.
0 comments:
Post a Comment