Confisalto Practice Rooms, Brunnhold
When, Madeleine wondered, did it get easier? She was 16 now – she was practically an adult. Surely life would start to make sense soon? Her older siblings seemed to have everything all figured out; Angelique and Sebastian were both ninth formers, and it seemed like they knew everything, and that everything Madeleine tried to tell them was wrong.
Even her classes – Madeleine went to every lecture, she did all her homework, and she thought really hard about what she was learning, as hard as she could, and tried to ask questions and give answers in class, but – sometimes she got the feeling that her teachers didn’t like her. She couldn’t think why, but sometimes in office hours – Madeleine had learned what annoyance looked like, and she knew – she knew how it felt in her chest, when it flickered across her face.
And so it was that when she ought to have been studying, when she ought to have left confisalto practice with everyone else, Madeleine had asked Professor Sauveterre if she might stay a little longer and practice herself. Dancing made sense to Madeleine; there were steps that she was meant to follow them. There were rules – her arms were to go here, and her legs there, and she was to turn her torso thus. And if she did it – if she really tried, if she put herself into it – it was beautiful, and it made sense.
And Professor Sauveterre had looked at her for a long time, and Madeleine hadn’t known what to make of it, so she had stood there with her hand extended for the key. And eventually she had started to feel nervous – started to think she had done something wrong – but Professor Sauveterre had just nodded, and given Madeleine the key, and told her to lock up when she was done. And she had swept away, and left Madeleine all alone in the middle of the polished floor, with the big mirrors and the long bar that ran against them.
Madeleine had looked up at herself in the mirror, had stared at her small face and the dark red hair around it, and she had tried to understand what Professor Sauveterre saw, but she didn’t; she didn’t understand it. All the same, she had set the key carefully on her things, her bag the last one left after everyone else had left, and she had stretched a little more. She had carefully lifted herself up en pointe, then down again; she had swept her arms up over her head and spread them out wide again.
And then Madeleine had taken first position, her arms held ready, and she had begun the dance again. It was different without a partner, but of course there were practice modifications for the parts that she could not do alone; here, where she was meant to clasp hands and lean back, she extended her leg instead to counterbalance; here, where she was meant to twirl with her partner, where she could not get the right speed alone, she halved the tempo and did it herself.
And as she danced – step by step, alone in the large practice room – as she danced, most of Madeleine’s thoughts flitted out of her head, and she was left with just the joy of it, the rush of happiness it sent through her, untainted by questions about why Evangeline Filangieri was mad at her again – why Professor Sauveterre had looked at her so – why a classmate had laughed at her as she left class that morning – why the girls in her dorm always seemed to fall silent when she came in the room – because there was no space for anything but the dance, but the sheer delight of it, and one thought, just one. Why couldn’t it be like this always?
She did not have the music, but Madeleine didn’t need it; she knew the beat in her soles of her feet and the sweep of her arms. She knew it in the gentle motions of her head, and the sweep of her arms; she knew it in the press of her toes against the floor, in the straightening of her spine, and she kept it through the dance, each step swirling into the next as the Anaxi spun back and forth across the room. The rest of the world faded away, and Madeleine was happy to simply dance.