Juniper & Thorn(5)
The ballerinas swooned dramatically. I knew from the story in Papa’s codex that they were the spirits of ice, of pure virginal frost, of Oblya’s land before the conquerors came to burn and spoil it. Black-clad, the Dragon-Tsar mimed laughing as the cellos droned gravely. I knew, too, that eventually Ivan would enter, clumsy and swordless, just a farmer’s son and a peasant until he became a warrior—and, in this version, as the pamphlet’s synopsis had told me, a saint. There were no saints in Papa’s version of the story, but there was always Ivan.
Though I had spent so many years conjuring an image of Ivan in my mind, I was not prepared to see him now: black hair streaming, chest bare where his shabby jacket parted. As soon as he was there under the lights, it was impossible to look anywhere else. It was impossible not to follow his path across the stage. In his presence, the flame-men wilted like cut roses. The snow-women stirred, silver faces brightening with nascent hope. He stumbled past them to the Dragon-Tsar; even his floundering was graceful.
The Dragon-Tsar reared, as if to strike him down, and then the pretty tsarevna danced between them, pleading with her father while Ivan retreated and the snow-women simpered. The Dragon-Tsar swept offstage with his flame-men, leaving Ivan and the tsarevna to circle each other like hesitant wolves.
Ivan’s threadbare shirt tumbled off his shoulders, and in that moment I felt as if all the audience was holding the same long breath. Sevastyan Rezkin was so lovely under the livid candlelight that I had to force myself to exhale.
My eyes traced the delicately corded muscles down his abdomen and along his thighs. He took the tsarevna’s hand and kissed it. Her movements seemed somehow clumsy next to his, as if she were counting the steps in her head. Sevastyan’s steps were as fluid as a spill of water, as though he could not imagine moving in any other manner. He lifted the tsarevna’s leg. Her fingers stroked along his face.
I felt like a voyeur, like some uncouth intruder witnessing a tender miracle not meant for my eyes. I felt the same way I did when I watched the gulls and cormorants arc from the pier over our rooftop, embarrassed of my own heavy, flightless body.
His knee parted the tsarevna’s thighs, and I blushed so profusely I knew Undine would mock me for it, if she had been looking at all. But every face in the theater was turned toward Sevastyan. He was the beacon of a hundred unblinking stares.
Whatever my sister’s suitor had paid for the tickets, I would have paid double. Triple. For the first time I began to understand Undine’s and Rose’s reckless desire, the thrill of possibility that drew them out of their beds at night, shucking our father’s dire warnings.
My fingers curled into a fist in my skirts, and I did not unclench them until the final act, when Ivan emerged as a saint. Sevastyan was bare-chested again, wearing only thin nude stockings that he looked like he had been poured into, for all the modesty they afforded him. His chest was leafed in gold, whorls of gilded paint that crawled up his throat and spiraled onto his cheeks. Even his lashes were daggered with false pearls. Over his shoulders he wore a winged mantle, white feathers ruffling with his twirls and leaps.
I could not fathom how he spread his legs so wide, or how he jumped so high, or how he didn’t crumple with the shudder of inertia when he landed again. As the music quavered to its end and Sevastyan and the tsarevna bowed, half the theater lurched to its feet at once, thunderous with applause. Several of the women around me were weeping, kohl tracked down their pink faces.
“I told you,” Undine said as she hauled me out of my seat. Even her voice was breathy, her blinks too quick. “It was worth it, wasn’t it?”
But the curtains had closed, erasing Sevastyan from view, and I felt as though I had been left unanchored, adrift in the sea of voices. The noise was pressing into me and the heat of all the warm bodies was making my head swim. The air tasted sour with so many tittered words. And once again I could scarcely breathe, like some hot, invisible hand was closing around my throat.
Faces pinwheeled past me. I could not tell the wolves from the sheep.
“I have to go,” I managed, jerking my hand from Undine’s grasp. My voice sounded like it had been wrung from wet cloth. “I have to get out of here.”
Rose made a garbled protest as I pushed past her, but I did not stop. My steps fell clumsily on the red carpet. I could hear the rustling of silk as the audience members shuffled from their seats, though a haze had fallen over my eyes, and everything looked as bleary as the grass covered in morning dew. By some gift of mad, manic instinct, I found a side door by the left of the stage and barreled through it, gasping as I tumbled out into the cold blue night.
Relief felt like the snapping of a thread. I leaned back against the side of the building, my forehead damp with a cool sweat. My hair had come loose from Rose’s pink ribbon and fell in coils all over my face. I brushed it back as best I could, fingertips buzzing.
The alley stretched out to either side of me, boundless and black. Overhead, the stars were smog-veiled, and the only light was leaking through the windows of the ballet theater, a pale yellow film. It had only just occurred to me to be afraid when the door swung open, and someone else staggered out.
The man was doubled over, one arm bent across his abdomen. With the other hand, he braced himself against the wall, turned away from me, coughing and spluttering.
“Are you all right?” It was all I could think to say. Reeling, my mind still addled with its ebbing panic, I picked my way toward him and leaned down to examine his face. “Sir, are you ill?”