Lucky Child

With her face still half pushed aside by Xavier's hand, she had stammered out her greeting through nothing but her lips — honestly, it had been a comical sight.

Dolores burst out laughing before she could stop herself.

The young masters.

She had rarely had the chance to talk with Luka or so much as acknowledge him since.

Two adults had come walking from the opposite direction and politely badgered Xavier and Luka — the performance is over now, sirs, you really must be going. You did promise. Judging by their accents, they were not Madame Anne Roux's people but outsiders. She had enough presence of mind to guess they must be from the Bransen household.

Fine. Fine, you scolds.

Luka and Xavier offered no resistance and readied themselves to leave.

Dolores felt a longing she could not hide. The reluctance lingered so sharply it made her toes curl.

Before they departed, as he straightened the jacket Luka had rumpled, Xavier suddenly lifted his head and looked at her.

'See you next time.'

That one line was magic. It meant we'll meet again. Her chest filled up as though someone had dropped small bright balls into an aching, empty basket.

Dolores called out after his retreating back.

'I have lessons with Madame Marguerite on Mondays and Wednesdays!'

Once they had all but vanished from view, she found herself wanting to boast.

How wonderful it would be to carry this happy news to Marguerite! Anaïs was too young to understand much, but she would be envious all the same.

Yet something puzzled her. Marguerite and Anaïs, who had certainly been right over there moments ago, were nowhere to be seen.

Where did they go? As she turned this way and that, she felt a presence behind her and spun around.

What was this?

Her father was standing there.

'Dolores Artois.'

Her father's eyes, blazing with fury, bored into her. Dolores collapsed where she stood.

That day was the end of her meeting with the boy.

She was confined to the house for three weeks.

Having been caught learning ballet in secret, the punishment was only to be expected. Her father had also found out that her mother was the one who had made it all possible.

And then he raged at her — for deceiving him, and worse, for dancing play-act performances before the people of Aquigneux, dragging the honor of House Artois through the mud. It was the worst scolding she had ever endured.

Dolores nearly lost her lessons with Marguerite as well. That much her mother fought to prevent.

And so, after three weeks spent shut away like a crushed worm, on the day she returned to class, the news Marguerite gave her was that the Bransen family had left Aquigneux.

That night, Dolores wept and wept.

But before her tears had even dried, her own life reached a small turning point.

'...It must be coincidence, but Madame Anne Roux came by yesterday. When I mentioned you, why, she said she would write you a letter of recommendation. So that you might enter the Quenire Municipal Middle Dance Academy. And if you score highly on the entrance examination, she has offered to sponsor your tuition in full. If your father only wants to keep you in the parish school for the sake of money, surely he would permit it if you won a scholarship?'

Madame Roux had offered to become her patron.

Dolores was no rising star who had placed in some competition; she did not so much as have a record of entering a well-known contest.

Her first performance had been the night of the Singing Spring — that stage had been her first and her last.

'She said you made quite an impression on her that night. Truly, I think you were lucky.'

Dolores had never once dreamed of being a ballerina. She had simply loved ballet.

But now that a real opportunity had arrived in the flesh, an ungovernable ambition began to well up inside her.

'...I want to try. I want to try.'

And so, the following spring, the Artois household was once again in an uproar.

Her father ranted that he never should have turned a blind eye to her dancing in the first place.

It must have been a shock — that she intended to study ballet seriously, to become a ballerina one day.

The decree came down at once: quit, immediately. But Dolores had steeled herself for exactly such an outburst.

She was battered and bruised. Her father rounded on her mother — why did you let her waste her time on this useless ballet and create this mess? A girl only needs to marry well. He berated her without mercy.

What she feared most was not when he seized her by the hair, nor when his thunderous rage shook the walls, nor even when a blow to the face sent her to the floor.

It was when her father screamed that he would break her legs. That, above all, was terrifying.

Dolores begged for nearly a month.

'Just once. Let me do it once, and after that I'll do everything else exactly as you say.'

By then Dolores already had a new goal.

To enter the Le Havre Higher Music and Dance Academy.

It was not for any particular, nameable reason. Only a vague, aching hope.

'I love ballet, Papa. Even if Mama had tried to stop me, I would have loved it all the same. Please, just let me try once. I'll work so hard, I promise.'

Attempts do not always end in success. In the end, it was neither her mother nor Dolores who changed her father's mind.

One day, her father was invited to a drinking party — a gathering of the Aquigneux officials he so admired.

He came home having heard rather a favorable opinion of ballet there, and he changed his mind.

'I don't much care for it myself, but apparently the Beloffans mistake ballet for a cultured art. That counts for quite a lot, you know.'

Ballet could reflect well on a daughter's marriage prospects — well, that sort of thing.

In those days her father was possessed by the obsessive conviction that what they needed to restore their lost authority as counts was the successful marriages of his daughters, so it was almost certainly exactly that.

'But don't you dare do anything reckless. I cannot pay an entrance fee. Pablo's tutoring alone already stretches us thin.'

In the end, neither her father's careless remark nor Madame Anne Roux's generosity amounted to anything.

Her entrance results were so outstanding that Madame Roux's support proved unnecessary.

Hearing the news, Madame Roux was graciously delighted, and made her a new offer — to cover her living expenses. She would become her guardian in earnest, she said.

Dolores accepted with gratitude.

'Beyond my expectations. I like children with artistry, and a lucky child even more. You, unusually enough, have both. You are a child of fortune.'

Fortune — or misfortune. Which was it, really?

'How far do you wish to go? The New Year stage at La Brillance? A solo performance at the Beurgesoid Hall? The lead in Come Here, Swan? I am willing to help you reach any of them, you know.'

Visions, dazzling as flowers and sweet as honey, drifted one by one through her head.

Dolores's goal was at once small and enormous.

'I would like to be taught the fundamentals all over again, from the very beginning.'

Madame Roux stared at her for a long moment, then muttered, 'What a deflating child you are.'

Dolores entered the Quenire Middle Dance Academy.

Her feet cracked, sprained, festered, blistered, and burst. Even on days racked with fever she did not rest, pointing her toes again and again — until the tips of her smallest toes could no longer remember the feeling of the floor.

Wishing, and wishing again, that Le Havre would draw nearer.

And so, for every term she spent at the middle academy, Dolores ranked solidly within the top five. After two years, Le Havre was within arm's reach.

Madame Anne Roux smiled.

'Le Havre?'

'Yes. Its credentials are recognized everywhere.'

'Why Ruisseron, of all places? Not Beurge?'

'That is... just because.'

'There are better places. Going to the capital is an option too. Why do you think dancers flock to Lauranche until its doorsteps wear thin? The Verdohine in the capital, or the Royal Gorden Dance Academy — those are a dancer's true dream...'

'Thank you for the kind advice, Madame Roux.'

The capital — well, she lived among countless people who believed that success in Lenore was the only success that counted, but Dolores had never once felt that way.

Her roots in a foreign land, her life here.

Because her whole being was shaped by the life of an in-between immigrant, the capital of Beloff was for her an ideal land she could never hope to touch.

Rather, what would have meant greater success to her was a future in which she earned recognition somewhere other than the capital, until at last even the people of that place came to welcome them.

'But Le Havre is enough for me.'

Madame Anne Roux looked faintly puzzled by this, but in the end she supported her all the same.

Marguerite smiled as though she knew everything.

'It's because of the Bransen boy, isn't it?'