“The dance is strong magic. The dance is a spirit. It turns the body to liquid steel. It makes it vibrate like a guitar. The body can fly without wings. It can sing without voice. The dance is strong magic: The dance is life.” Pearl Primus
Astrid had visited Willow Branch Dance Academy’s headmistress only once before, when her Uncle Gabriel had dropped her off for the first day of middle school. At the time, she’d been too anxious to notice the mural extending across all four walls. Today, the frolicsome fauns struck her as odd, entirely out of keeping with the otherwise crisp formality of the boarding school’s dark polished wood floors and starched white collars of the students’ uniforms.
She sank lower in the hard-backed chair, her gaze traveling slowly from wall to wall. The scene had the appearance of a tapestry, a story that progressed from beginning to end, as if she were turning the pages of a book. The forest revelry almost felt real. Fauns emerged from all four corners of the woods, caught up in a wild dance by the edges of a lake.
At its center stood a white heron, like the master of festivities. Legs and wings splayed, the heron’s head was thrown high as if he, too, was part of the same enchantment, or perhaps weaving the spell himself.
“I don’t understand,” Uncle Gabriel said, huffing in frustration at the stern-faced headmistress seated behind the carved wooden desk. “Astrid is not excelling among her classmates?”
Emelia Burton gave a slight sniff when she smirked. Ordinarily, she would have been upset at having to explain herself, but with a guardian as affluent as Gabriel Hamilton she knew better than to show her annoyance.
“Astrid is not progressing according to Willow Branch standards,” she reiterated. “Her form is mediocre. Her performance does not reflect the amount she practices. She is nervous, distracted, and…”
The headmistress paused. She watched Uncle Gabriel thread the brim of his hat through his fingers. He raised an eyebrow at her in question.
“Astrid is…fragile,” Ms. Burton asserted. “The rigorous program here is fraying her nerves. I only want what is in her best interest.”
Outside, stray snowflakes spiraled in the wind. January on the moors was bitterly cold; the halls of the Academy creaked with the drafts.
Astrid’s jaw tightened; she kept her hands folded neatly in her lap, attempting to hide the dark bruises covering her knuckles. The dance instructor had been particularly aggravated with her uncoordinated practice that morning; the thwack of her walking stick against the back of Astrid’s hands had been the result.
Uncle Gabriel didn’t need to see that, nor did he need to know that when she bit her tongue, a little taste of blood was the result. She wanted to stay at Willow Branch more than anything. She longed to become the dancer her mother had been: a prima ballerina, famous for her technical mastery and the infectious passion of her performances.
On that terrible day when her mother had been taken to the asylum, she’d pressed Astrid tightly to her chest and handed her a journal. Her mother’s last words, whispered gently against Astrid’s hair, had also been the first words recorded in the journal. Deep magic thrives at Willow Branch, but no one is ever willing to search for it.
Astrid had studied the journal every day since, desperate to discover what her mother had meant, convinced that if she could only unravel the mystery of it, she could discover the key to unlocking her own potential.
Uncle Gabriel’s fingers paused along the woolen rim of his hat. “I needn’t remind you how badly the roof over the east wing needs replacing,” he said, his voice low and serious. “I doubt it will last another winter.”
Ms. Burton paled. She pressed her lips in a thin line and lowered her gaze, then met Gabriel’s eye.
“The Hamiltons are a large part of the reason Willow Branch maintains its impeccable reputation, yet I would be remiss if I allowed you to assume Astrid has inherited any of Lydia’s exceptional…” she paused before accentuating the word, “…talent.”
“My niece has only been here one semester,” Uncle Gabriel said. “She needs time to adjust.”
Astrid longed to interject, but knew it was pointless. She would only jumble the words she meant to say, the same way her feet tangled underneath her despite knowing the moves they were supposed to make. She wanted to tell them that she would work harder–even harder than the other girls–whatever it took to stay at Willow Branch. She was meant to dance, it was the intense scrutiny of her instructors and peers she quailed under.
“With all due respect, Mr. Hamilton, it’s not a matter of ‘adjusting.’ I do not wish to see Astrid struggle so among her peers, or with herself. I ask you to consider removing her from the dance program here at Willow Branch, for her own well-being.”
Uncle Gabriel’s voice became strident, sending a shiver down Astrid’s spine. “I’ll authorize no such thing. I will not allow you to cull her from a program that I, in part, help to fund.”
“Her performance anxiety is not something we can train out of her!”
Angry words burst back and forth over the headmistress’ desk like startled pheasants. Astrid squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the noise, her nails carving half moons in her palms.
When she opened her eyes, the room buzzed softly, the pale winter light cold against the painted walls. The bitter argument had faded, resonating somewhere far off in the distance. She let out her breath and stared at the mural, head tilted.
The fauns in the wood had begun to move. They kicked up their heels, leaves swirling in their wake. Some beat tiny drums and marched, others wove through the merry gathering playing piccolos, garlands of ivy and flowers strung about their necks and heads. Astrid lost herself in the joyful notes of their strange music.
One of the fauns spotted her, and he straightened. His drum dropped to the ground beside him. He leaned closer, straining against the invisible divide, and beckoned to her, as if for her to take a magical leap of faith and step inside a painting was the most natural thing in the world.
She shook her head, squirming further back in the hard chair. The faun’s face fell. Astrid’s heart burned, like the feeling behind her eyes before she was about to cry, only deep inside in her chest. Her mother had been right.
There was deep magic here, but she hardly felt brave enough to pursue it.
If word got out she’d tried to step inside a painted wall, she’d bear the brunt of an onslaught of cruel jokes from the other girls for a week. Astrid stayed rooted to her seat. If she could have moved at all, she would have fled to where she’d hidden her mother’s journal under her mattress, clutched it to her chest, and begged the pages to reveal their secrets to her.
“…this behavior…exactly what happens…when she’s required to perform at her best…”
The voices grew louder, first Ms. Burton’s, then Uncle Gabriel’s.
“It’s a mental weakness…a lack of nerve,” the headmistress continued. “She’ll never be a top performer without it.”
“You’re driving her too hard. Astrid needs a gentle touch, encouragement with the progress she does make.”
“Willow Branch does not pander to its students. Our girls are trained to perform under every kind of pressure. Excellence is pain, Mr. Hamilton.”
Uncle Gabriel’s eyes steeled over. His knuckles whitened on the silver-tipped cane resting at his side.
“I’m not asking you to remove her from the rest of the Academy’s curriculum,” the headmistress said, lowering her voice. “Astrid’s grades are excellent. She’s near the top of her class.”
“You want to dance according to Willow Branch standards, don’t you, Astrid?” Uncle Gabriel interrupted, nudging her elbow.
Astrid hadn’t taken her gaze off the mural. Specifically, the pleading faun, the tender green forest, the shimmering blue water with the majestic white bird at its center.
Dancing.
It was her future they were discussing, yet she’d gotten so caught up in the painting, she’d tuned them out. Astrid forced her gaze from the mural. “Of course I do,” she said. “Only Willow Branch can mold me into the dancer I know I can be.”
Uncle Gabriel glanced at Headmistress Burton. He held her gaze with the imperious air of one who had judged his assessment to be exactly right. She, in turn, sighed gently through her nose and gave Astrid a pitying look.
“You may return to your room now, Astrid,” the headmistress said. “Your uncle and I will finish this discussion privately.”
Astrid eased herself out of the chair, stiff and guarded. She longed to cast one last glance back at the mural, to see if the faun still beckoned, but it would have to wait until another time.
The headmistress’ eyes were on her, her assessment as bone-chillingly cold as the winter wind that howled outside the frosty windows.
***
It was past midnight, and Astrid was still awake, her gaze riveted on the dark shadows that played across the light gray wash of the ceiling in dreamy, sinuous lines.
She’d run up directly after dinner to study her mother’s journal in peace. Once the other girls piled in, privacy was a lost cause. They would question her about boys and other uncomfortable subjects. If they thought she was keeping any secrets from them, she would wake up to find her hair braided to the bed frame and the journal missing, scoured from cover to cover for whatever juicy tidbit they could find.
Of the many mysterious phrases replicated across the pages of the journal, two crept into her mind.
The dance is a spirit. The dance is strong magic.
Astrid couldn’t begin to understand it. Dance was a series of memorized, choreographed movements. A ritual. An expression, if you were lucky, though most days Astrid struggled so much with the technicalities, she despaired of ever achieving any kind of aesthetic.
That first line haunted her, even more since seeing the fauns come to life in the mural of the headmistress’ office.
The dance is a spirit.
The repetition of the words meant her mother had been haunted by it, too. Whatever it was, this spirit of the dance, the answer lay inside that mural.
Astrid snuck one leg out from beneath the sheets and carefully pressed her toes to the ice cold floor.
An arm next, followed by her other leg. Silently, she sank to her hands and knees and removed her chrome flashlight from under her bed. She tiptoed between the rows of sleeping forms, freezing at the slightest rustle of bedsheets, then continued on in the darkness, stealthy as a specter.
Once in the hallway, she clicked the flashlight on and used her free hand to dim down the bright cone of light. The light bobbed in front of her as she descended the musty staircase.
At the door to the headmistress’ office, she hesitated, the flashlight a lead weight in her grip. She wiggled the hairpin she’d snitched earlier inside the lock, holding the light close to aid her efforts.
She thought she had it a few times, but the knob refused to turn.
Astrid peered past the darkened staircase to the second floor landing. She’d heard rumors of other girls creeping around the Academy after hours, raiding the pantry or running out to the lake to swim at night, but never in those stories had any of the girls dared approach the headmistress’ private quarters.
It would be foolish to try.
Soft footfalls threaded along the carpet on the landing. Astrid flicked off the flashlight, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
Her gaze darted down the hallway for a hiding place, to the looming dark of the library doors and the labyrinth of stone halls leading to the kitchen and washrooms beyond. She’d only trap herself if she went that way, and be discovered missing at the first head count.
On the landing, a lantern’s pale light broke the gloom, flickered up the walls, and drifted toward the stairs. A long shadow stretched in front of it, taller than any of the students. Astrid squeezed her eyes closed, the flashlight and hairpin tight in her grip. Too frightened to run, she groped for an excuse as to why she was downstairs alone at night.
A burst of warm air swept across her cheeks, like summer sun against her skin. Astrid popped her eyes open. Beside her, a fae light illuminated the stained glass panels surrounding the large oak front door.
She peered closer at the bits of colored glass, marveling at the way the colors stretched and pulled past the borders of the lead strips, bleeding into each other and creating entirely new shapes amidst the shimmering of the preternatural light.
She rubbed her eyes.
The pieces of glass were, in fact, reconfiguring themselves from geometric shapes into mythical creatures like those in the headmistress’ office.
The stained glass fauns were exact replicas of the ones in the mural, the bright flowers in their garland crowns glowing in shades of crimson and violet. The hairs on their goatish legs had been painted on with a deft touch. She could practically hear the clatter of hooves as they twisted in glass form, reached out to her, beckoning–
Whispers drifted to her in the air. Astrid inhaled sharply and searched the second floor landing.
The light had moved on, down one of the hallways to the younger girls’ rooms.
She was safe, for now.
The whispers continued, a low chant impelling her to approach the door. To find out what lay beyond, just on the other side.
The dance.
The dance.
The dance is a spirit.
The dance.
The dance.
The dance is strong magic.
Astrid stood in front of the door, the fauns in the stained glass growing more excited the closer her fingers drew to the knob. Her hand shook. She wasn’t proud of it, but at the same time she could hardly prevent it. The door felt like a giant curtain separating her from a vast audience while backstage, she waited nervously for her part in the performance to start.
Her breath felt tight in her chest. Her feet, as heavy as the rocks that lined the edge of the lake. The light burned her eyes, the knob felt like a hot coal in her palm.
Astrid pulled open the door and stepped outside. The light shimmered around her, less brightly than the moment before, but with all the fullness of a warm summer day. Beyond the broad expanse of manicured green lawn, fauns capered in and out among the trees, convening by the edges of the silvered lake that lay on the southern slope of the Academy’s land.
The rhythm of the fauns’ chant swelled in the air, the beat of it twining through Astrid’s muscles, wrapping around her heart, and urging her forward with them. Her bare toes sank into the lush earth, her skin warmed as much by the honeyed sun as by the mounting anticipation of the revelers around her.
She had expected to be thrust on stage, made to announce her presence, perform her dance to perfection, but here–wherever here was–she was a part of something greater.
She was inside the mural, or the stained glass, rather, without knowing how, or what she had done to get there. She was inside a story, but without knowing whose.
Certainly not hers.
A faun gently snatched her hand and half-trotted with her toward the lake edge. His teeth glimmered at her, and his eyes danced with glee.
When he turned his attention to the center of the lake, Astrid followed the path of his gaze.
A white heron, nearly twice as tall as the tallest faun, danced atop the shining surface. With delicate legs fully outstretched, he carved graceful circles and arcs in the water beneath his feet, creating showers of diamond droplets in his wake.
“Who is he?” Astrid said.
Her question appeared to fall on deaf ears. That, or the fauns hadn’t even heard her above their endless chanting. Though not all of them chanted at once, those who didn’t seemed to be as caught up in the significance of it as all the rest.
A significance that felt lost to Astrid.
The dance is a spirit.
Yes, but which one? Whose spirit?
She nudged the faun at her side, the same two questions burning her lips. She repeated them aloud, but instead of answering, he swept her up in his arms, whirling her around in circle after circle.
The chanting around her grew louder. Several of the younger fauns draped a garland of flowers around Astrid’s neck and on top of her hair. The mixture smelled of honeysuckle and apples, the sweet tang of it rich against Astrid’s throat.
The fauns spun her in wild circles until her heart beat like a drum against her ribs; she joined them in their games. After dancing herself to exhaustion, she ate with them: nuts they roasted with the headiest of spices like cloves and cinnamon. During moments when the fauns’ chant crescendoed, she closed her eyes, pretending she understood.
The sun had not moved in the sky. Astrid might have wondered at the passage of time (or the lack of it) if her belly hadn’t been so deliciously full.
Yet happy as she was, the ache in her chest had grown into a fist-sized knot. None of the fauns appeared to want to listen, much less respond, when she’d asked them her questions.
The white heron was immersed in his own world, twirling over the silver surface of the lake, wings flung heavenward, neck extended like an arrow yearning for the vast reaches of the sky.
Never once when she’d glanced at him had he slowed, tired, or chosen to rest, as even the fauns had needed to.
As she had needed to.
“Mr. Heron?” she called.
A fine iridescent spume lifted off the water at the brush of his wings, but he didn’t waver in his dance.
Astrid stepped to the water’s edge and hitched up her nightgown. Fine, then. If he wouldn’t acknowledge that she had spoken to him, she would move closer.
Her feet plashed against the fine pebbles on the shore until the deeper water grazed the hem of her nightgown. She stared down at her legs underneath the surface, bent and shadowy, with wiggly-lined margins.
What made her think she could walk across the water to talk to the heron?
A peal of laughter rang out from the shoreline, and her thoughts scattered. Her cheeks fired hot. She gripped her nightgown hard to conceal her trembling hands.
Someone had laughed at her. At her effort.
Astrid whipped around, eyes narrowed. The fauns had begun another wild round of dancing. They ducked and gyrated, spinning in crazy circles until the others rocked with laughter at their joyful antics.
Their chant continued.
The dance is a spirit.
They weren’t laughing at her. No one was. Everyone was caught up in their own enjoyment of the white heron’s dance.
Astrid wanted to be a part of it. She had to be. It was the key to everything. To staying in the dance program at Willow Branch. To not feeling humiliated by the other girls. To becoming the best dancer she could possibly be–free from her own fears that she didn’t measure up, able to let go of expectations, and simply feel herself dance intuitively.
She didn’t know why she was so certain of her thoughts. It was something the white heron emanated, a silent quality that pulsed off him in ripples and waves, the same ripples that flowered across the water’s surface and lapped at her toes.
Her toes.
Astrid let out a short gasp. She was no longer knee-deep at the water’s edge. Her feet skimmed the surface of the lake, only her toes dipping under.
She was dancing on the water, or she could be, so long as she concentrated on the white heron and didn’t linger on the impossibility of what she was doing.
With every doubtful step, she sank.
With every step of faith, she moved closer to the glorious white bird. The flap of his wings sent warm, summery air shimmering along her cheeks.
Astrid drew close, so near the fine spray that flung from the tips of his wings showered her vision with sparkling diamonds.
“I don’t want to sink,” she said. “Teach me how to dance like you.”
One gleaming black eye flicked toward her. The heron paused, though the rhythm unfurling from him did not. Swept up in the downy softness of his wingtips, Astrid tried to match his movements. Her legs quivered and her steps faltered. She didn’t have the reach he did, her flexibility a limited, stiff thing compared to his.
The water crept up around her calves. Astrid’s breath went tight in her chest. She flailed about in frustration, heat rising to her cheeks, her heart beating staccato against her ribs.
“What am I doing wrong?” she cried.
At a whisper from deep inside him, her heart stilled, so quiet the heron’s gentle rhythm hushed through her, a sweet softness against her ears.
Dance with me, Astrid. Dance with life.
The heron’s words felt like true knowledge, the kind that ran deeper than an instructor yelling direction, a tightly choreographed series of movements, or a tempo rapped against the wooden stage with a stick. The heron’s wisdom lived in her own muscle, sinew, and bone.
The heron’s wisdom lived in her heart.
In that moment, Astrid knew that if she thought about herself at all, the heron’s magic would be lost to her. Her raucous fears would drown out the gentle pulse of his rhythm, the tender touch of his wing feathers that brushed against her fingers, that she longed to let guide her across the mirror shine of the water’s surface in a liquid, grounded semblance of flight.
She rose with him and, together, they glided across the lake and danced. Her body felt as fluid as oil, yet strong as steel. Her muscles were taut, not out of fear and desperation of bending the right way, but primed like a guitar string, her body coiling and unwinding to the rhythm of the heron’s life inside her, the song of his beauty, transmuted through her.
Astrid was flying without wings, the movements of her body capturing the heron’s rhythm and translating them into notes of her own.
So this was dancing.
Astrid leaned into the downy softness of the heron’s chest, pressed her fingers along the rigid length of his flight feathers, breathed the sweet spring air that was the rhythm of life woven through him, and now inside her.
She woke with a gasp, her hair a tangled, damp nest flattened against her face. She swiped the bothersome strands out of her eyes and sat up, listening.
Pale dawn light filtered past the window shades, milky enough not to have woken the other girls, who snored softly in their beds.
A gentle rhythm echoed in Astrid’s ears, the dust motes in the air pulsing in time to the soft whoosh of blood in her veins. The surrounding sheets were damp, heavy with the smell of leaves and spices.
She glanced down at her hands, where her mother’s journal rested, the leather cover darkly stained and sodden, soaked through with water. The pages were crisp and dry, her mother’s words preserved, as they always had been.
Words that Astrid now understood.
A white feather lay between the pages. The soft down of it felt like silk against Astrid’s fingers.
A heron’s blessing.
Her invitation to dance with life, in her own voice, with her own body. Her spirit gliding in harmony with the magnificent white heron in the center of the shining lake of her soul.
