Music and Herself
Until then, Dolores had had no particular intention of defying her father's wishes.
Performing on stage, and the like. In truth, her father didn't even know she was learning ballet — not to this day.
What changed the situation was Marguerite's persistence. She persuaded Dolores's mother: your daughter possesses extraordinary talent, she argued — give her just this one chance. Mightn't someone's eye fall upon her? Wasn't it time, at last, to explain to Count Artois what a gift his daughter had?
At first her mother shook her head with firm finality, but in the end she could not outlast her old teacher's stubbornness. On the sole condition that her father be told nothing, she signed Dolores's entry form in secret.
And so it was that Dolores came to stand upon the stage of "that" evening.
By the time the sky over Aquigneux was bleeding from slate grey into violet, people carrying lanterns had begun to drift, in twos and threes, toward the square of the old spring — the spring that had once been the seed of the town's prosperity. Girls in skirts the color of a city sunset stood in line beside girls with orange ribbons in their hair, and young men with instruments ringed the little stage at the square's center.
A town festival had no grand formality to it. Anyone who wished could attend; there was no minimum requirement at all. The closest thing to a master of ceremonies was the owner of the spice shop beside the spring, who announced the program and the participants — and only because he happened to have the loudest voice in town.
Visitors who had come from elsewhere, villagers with their hearts opened wide — someone played a pipe, someone worked an accordion. Unaccompanied singing drifted past alongside the recitation of a poem. All of those sounds gathered into one, into a warmth that bound the small town together. And in the little yard of that festival, Dolores's turn was drawing near.
Anaïs, seated on an old chair and glancing about, twitched the corner of her mouth. She looked perfectly content simply to have secured their mother's permission to come watch the stage alongside her sister.
My sister, on a stage. How strange.
It's hardly that grand a stage.
She meant to brush it off lightly, but her voice trembled a little.
This was no examination, watched by ballet hopefuls her own age at the parish school, nor a lesson danced under Marguerite's scolding eye. It was a strange, unfamiliar process: convincing total strangers. Marguerite had said this was precisely the thing Dolores needed.
Anaïs looked her stiff-backed sister up and down once, then gave a small laugh.
"Go out there and be brilliant. So I'll have something to brag about to Mamma."
Dolores, who had been looking down at her sister's breezy composure, felt her face crumple all at once toward tears.
"Ana, do you think I shouldn't have said I'd do it?"
"What's gotten into you, at this late hour?"
"...I'm a little nervous."
"Everyone has a first time. Besides, how big can a village performance possibly be?"
Anaïs tossed off the reply and went back to surveying the stage as though nothing in the world were the matter. It was thanks to that very carelessness that Dolores, finding herself unable to flee, could instead settle her heart. Soon, from beside the stage, Marguerite beckoned to her.
"Now then, Dolores. It's your turn."
So this moment really had come.
"The music is ready. Dance to your heart's content."
Eyes squeezed shut, Dolores drew one deep breath, passed Marguerite, and stepped up onto the stage. From behind her came the low murmur of Anaïs's voice.
"When it's over, I'll tell you how wonderful you were."
Despite herself, Dolores let out a small, shaky laugh. Her tension had broken.
For the first time in her life, she set her foot upon a "stage."
The moment the orchestra began beneath the low, keening voice of the cello, her nerves dissolved as if they had never been. The stiffness drained from her shoulders, and her arms reached upward, graceful. Arms like a butterfly, feet like a hawk — as though in all the world there were nothing but the music and herself... nothing but the music and herself.
In a performance that was short if short — some ten minutes — she understood it. What mattered was not the sequence of choreography. It was the music, and herself, and nothing more.
Spreading both arms wide, Dolores closed with an effacé — the pose that opens the body to the light — and let it stand in place of a formal bow. It was an improvisation, not the choreography she had rehearsed dozens of times, yet nothing had ever come so naturally.
The music ended.
A few seconds of silence. Ragged breathing. Dazzled, wandering eyes. A world bright everywhere despite the night.
"Magnificent."
Clap, clap, clap... Applause begun somewhere spread like fire. In that modest yet heady ovation, Dolores stood rooted like a tree. It was an illusion, that the whole world was moving for her alone. Anaïs sprang up with eyes gone wide and bounced on her toes, clapping for all she was worth.
She was happy.
So happy she felt she could die content.
And then it was a boy, standing not far from the stage, who turned that exaltation into a feeling of an altogether different kind.
His hands shifted restlessly each time the cheers erupted. One hand would rise toward his ear, then drop again under the pretense of straightening his collar.
The boy's brown hair, which she had called to mind so many times, was more disheveled than she remembered it. A few strands fallen across his forehead trembled in the wind, and the lamplight of the crowd swirled around his hair until it gleamed like gold.
Xavier.
The name circled back to her of its own accord. From the very first moment she had seen him, she had never once forgotten it.
Xavier Bransen.
Holding her breath down to the bottom of her lungs, Dolores met the green eyes that were open to her. The boy was as calm as someone who had known her for years.
She could not say where the courage came from — perhaps from the lingering resonance and excitement of the piece, not yet faded. She ran to the violinist, the way one runs to snatch a fiddle from its player, and asked to borrow his violin.
His answer — honestly, she didn't properly hear it. Already, with the unfamiliar neck and bow of the violin winding themselves into her hands, she was dashing back toward the boy in a single breath.
"Excuse me! Could we... together —"
Panting shallowly, Dolores held the violin out to the boy. He regarded her steadily for a moment, then accepted what she offered.
The belated thought crossed her mind that an adult's full-size violin might not work at all — but he took it with surprising ease and set it against his neck. He studied the instrument carefully, almost as if observing it, then drew a long, sweeping bowstroke, smooth as an old habit.
Xavier, moving his head as though savoring the sharp cry of the strings, sent her a smile.
"Hello, Dolores."
The wondrous moment when a world already open to her touched another world entirely.
"...You remember me?"
"You were with Mademoiselle Marguerite, the dancer. Taking his violin the way you did — that's a terrible insult to the man, you know."
That moment had been anything but easy. Dolores handed the violin — seized so rudely, all but stolen — back to its owner.
Meanwhile, Anaïs had caught the scent of something intriguing and attached herself to them. What was that just now? Who is that boy? Dolores did not explain, piece by piece. Explaining would have been embarrassing and shameful and, all at once, thrilling. An emotion she could not name had taken hold of her.
Marguerite's laughter rang out nearby. When their eyes met, the old teacher smiled with the same look as ever — I know everything, my dear.
At a loss for where to rest her gaze, Dolores drifted into looking up at the sky. A beautiful night, thick with countless stars. The restless magic of that evening must have played its part in stiffening her resolve.
Yes. All right. Courage, then.
She left Anaïs in Marguerite's care — Marguerite, rather than dissuading her, simply laughed — and went straight to Xavier.
"Teacher, what's gotten into my sister?"
"She must have found a reason she can't sit still."
Dolores deliberately plopped down with a rustle of skirts and sank onto the spot beside the boy. Up close, the boy with the brown hair and the immaculate coat wore a cravat of the sort only grown men bothered with. He was so composed it was hard to believe he was her own age, so unnervingly grown-up — he carried himself with more nobility than she, an actual aristocrat, ever had.
For a moment, she found herself wondering why on earth she had sat down beside him at all.
