“Come on,” I said, picking her up. “You haven’t eaten much. Let’s find something in the kitchen and then we’ll wait until the stars come out and stare at them for a while.”
She nodded, wiping some of the wetness from her face. As I carried her into the kitchen, the phone rang. She picked it up and put it to my ear.
The voice on the other end spoke in a mixture of Slovenian and English, overcome with what sounded like cold, calculated shock. Never one for dramatics, the details came out as though she were discussing the weather. “Tell her,” was the parting words.
I moved my face away from the receiver and Scarlett hung up the phone.
“Was that my mother?” she asked. Her face was puffy, her eyes red-rimmed.
Nodding, I brought her to the kitchen table and set her down gently on a chair. I took a knee in front of her, then her hands, clasping them firmly in mine. “Something happened,” I said, my voice betraying the heaviness in my heart.
She searched my eyes, digging for the truth, preparing herself. She refused to respond with words.
“Your grandmother—she was still at the castle, with your family. She had gone missing. A while later they found her out in the snow. By the time they did, it was too late. I’m sorry, baby. Maja Resnik is gone.”
* * *
A week later, Scarlett sat next to me in the Palais Garner Opera House. After her grandmother’s death, it was announced that a memorial would be held for the old ballerina there, among other places, and her ashes were to be spread in front of the castle in Slovenia. She had asked specifically that Scarlett and I do it alone.
On the outside, Scarlett had become a rock, but she was still gracious to everyone who came to pay his or her respects. She wore a pale pink dress and matching gloves, a pink bow pinned to her chest, her hair swept back in a loose bun. The lines of her face were so severe that her cheekbones threw shadows. Every bit of her shook with cold.
On the inside, she had gone soft, her loss real, and a confusion born from feelings she couldn’t quite understand kept her quiet most of the time.
Reflective, was how she had been.
It took space from her grandmother for Scarlett to truly realize just how much of Maja Resnik had been passed down to her, and for her to accept the gift that had been given to her. Scarlett had never thought of her talent in that way before, as a gift. It had always been something she could do and excelled at. For as great as she was, I sometimes felt dancing was an arranged marriage for her—she had learned to love it, but it still felt like something she had no control over.
Her hand squeezed mine, as though she could read my thoughts.
The lights turned low in the theater. The curtains opened. A screen lowered from the ceiling, and the orchestra began to play. I recognized the song. It was one Maggie Beautiful listened to: “Autumn Leaves” by Nat King Cole.
One couldn’t see Maja Resnik without seeing Scarlett Rose Fausti. The video began with the old ballerina dancing with her infant granddaughter. Then the recording sped forward, to Maja Resnik at the end of her career. Her hair was as white and as pure as snow, but she was still so graceful that it was easy to believe that the woman could float.
The screen split.
Scarlett appeared on the opposite side. She had to be around six or seven, maybe even younger. Young ballerina and old ballerina danced side by side, costumes matching, movements identical. For each move that Maja Resnik made, Scarlett matched it as though she was the old ballerina’s reflection. Time moved, backward and forward, until the two ballerinas met in their primes—where Scarlett was now—for the finale.
“Oh,” Scarlett breathed out, face as pale as if she had lost too much blood. She held on to me even harder, her bones grinding into flesh. Ring against ring. “I move like her. So much like her. It’s eerie.”
The ending came when Maja Resnik and Scarlett faced each other, their hands coming together in some kind of cinematic magic, as if one touched the other through a thin mirror of time.
Granddaughter bowed to grandmother first, grandmother watching a moment before she bowed in return. Maja Resnik had passed the torch on to her student. All that she had taught Scarlett became her legacy.
Scarlett might have never wanted the gift in the same capacity as her grandmother, but it was clear that Scarlett had become one of the proudest moments in the old ballerina’s career.
* * *
After the old ballerina’s final performance, Scarlett and I took her grandmother back to the castle, to the spot she had requested. For miles on end it seemed the world had turned a sharp, glaring white. The day was full of wind and the air so cold, I wasn’t sure if Scarlett was going to be able to stand it. She was bundled up behind a thick black fur cloak. As pale as her skin was, her cheeks were rosy, her lips bright red, and her green eyes held flecks of white and gold in them in reflection to the snow and the watery sun.
Staring at a tree that had been split in two by lightning, its bark charred, she seemed to be thinking. In her silence, Scarlett's true grace permeated the air, something so classic that it made it hard for me to breathe.
“This is it,” she said softly. “This is where I saw him. Is this where they found her?”
“Yeah. She must have gone looking for him.”
“Again,” she said.
She made the sign of the cross, and then we released the old ballerina’s ashes to the wind, watching as they twirled and faded into the distance. “Free as an angel,” Scarlett whispered, her eyes frozen on the path that the ashes had taken.
