PARTI
A DREAM
1
This solitary dance will be my last. Each step shall seal my farewell to all the hopes I’ve harbored. There was a time I dreamed I’d get to spin and sway in a ballroom, my dance card full of names of eager suitors desperate to be my partner. But the closest I’ve come to the society balls I’ve fantasized about is this glade. For in this glade, I can live out my foolish dreams. My secret hopes can come to life.
One last time, at least.
My heart weighs heavy in my chest as I slip off my leather slippers and plant my bare feet reverently on the cool grass. The morning is mild, the breeze only somewhat chilly against the long sleeves of my plain gray dress. The rising sun peeks above the towering trees surrounding the glade, kissing the dainty white petals of the starflowers dotting the grass in hazy morning light.
With a deep breath, I gather the dew-scented air into my lungs. Country air. Air I’ll never have the pleasure of enjoying again. Not in this exact way, at least. While I’ve only left my convent once since I was abandoned there nearly twenty years ago, I find it impossible to believe anywhere else will carry this same scent—the dew, the starflowers, the fields of Starcane sugar growing nearby.
It’s strange how a place that felt like a prison for most of my life now carries such bittersweet nostalgia.
From my dress pocket, I extract a folded paper fan, tattered and faded after years in my care. On one side is a watercolor rendering of blue flowers. On the other, the illustrated steps to the quadrille. I memorized the dance long ago when I first found the fan discarded on the side of the road outside the convent, but I always take it out before I dance. It’s tradition.
I fan myself once, twice, batting my lashes like a demure debutante. Then I tuck my golden-blonde hair behind my pointed ears—a shape that marks me as full fae—and imagine my tresses are styled in a fashionable updo, the kind popular amongst human society. Then, gathering a corner of my wool skirt with my free hand, I dip into a practiced curtsy. As I rise, I close my eyes.
And dream.
Images flash behind my closed eyelids, a hidden inventory of memories I’ve captured and filed away for later use. Since I’ve never been inside a true ballroom, I select one of my favorite dreamscapes to dance within—the night of last year’s meteor shower, when stars fell over the Celesta Convent School for Girls. For a convent located in the Star Court and dedicated to worshiping starlight, a meteor shower isn’t a rare phenomenon. But that one was special. The glittering shards of light illuminated the sky in radiant rainbow hues unlike anything I’d seen before. The shower so greatly enriched the Starcane sugar—a crop the convent is renowned for growing—that my three teachers took a selection of the older students to the city of Lumenas to celebrate.
That was the first time I left the convent.
The second time will be tomorrow.
With a slow exhale, I open my eyes and find the scene of the meteor shower frozen all around me. The morning sky has now been blanketed in black, specks of multihued starlight suspended midflight. While my toes still experience the soft grass beneath them, the ground no longer resembles a glade but the rooftop balcony above the convent. Acres of Starcane sugar fields span before me, surrounded by the towering trees of the forest beyond.
Unlike most other things in my life, this scene hasn’t lost its luster. It still manages to spark awe, hope, and enchantment. I may have given up on dancing after today, but I’ll always have this memory.
I tilt my chin in a distinct nod and the still frame comes to life, the meteors no longer frozen but soaring through the sky. With another nod, shadowed figures take their places around me, pairing up in twos to dance the quadrille. Unlike the memory, these figures hold no clear features. They are merely constructs of my mind, conjured to interact with me and my daydream. While I capture memories of scenes, landscapes, and groups of people on a regular basis, I never do so of a singular living person. Not anymore, at least. Only once did I frame a solitary figure within the bounds of my hands—thumbs and forefingers touching to form a rectangle around the person—and I’m determined never to do it again. For that gesture is what creates a permanent memory in my mind. Capturing a specific individual and conjuring their likeness to interact with my dreamscapes feels…wrong.
Not that it’s stopped me from dreaming of that one person time and again. Unintentionally, of course.
Mostly.
Another nod and hazy music begins. I’m adept at recreating memories in my daydreams, but I’ve never been able to recreate music in quite the same way. It always sounds as if it’s filtered through a closed door, the melody too intangible to grasp. But it’s suitable enough for dancing, especially when no one else is around to hear the racket I’ve created. Only I can experience my dreamscapes. Anyone else who stumbled upon me would hear birdsong, the rustling of grass in the glade. They’d see the green clearing and a blue sky, not the nighttime meteor shower I’ve conjured. Once I begin dancing, I’ll certainly appear strange to any onlooker, prancing around with my invisible partners, but that’s what makes this glade so great; I’m the only one who comes here.
I close my fan and slip its beaded strap over my wrist. Then I curtsy to the featureless partner beside me. He mimics the gesture with a bow. I repeat the motion with the figure across from me. Then we follow the steps from the dancing fan, bypassing each other, circling, then bypassing again. We skip to the side in tiny hops, then circle around with the opposite partner. The dance is a complex yet joyful weave of movement, one that always puts a smile on my face. Soon my breaths are short and my temperature grows warm despite the cool breeze that brushes over my skin. I join hands with my imaginary companions and we skip forward, tightening the circle our bodies have made. With several backward hops, we widen it.
There’s an absence of pressure where I clasp my partners’ hands, something that can’t be remedied in my dreamscape. That and the vacant shapes of my fellow dancers keep me from feeling fully immersed in the dance—lonely, in other words—so I close my eyes and follow the next moves from memory alone. I step, turn, reach for my partner’s hollow hand. I skip, sway, and release the pretend hand. Then I weave through my fellow dancers, forward, then back. I reach for yet another weightless hand…
But the fingers that clasp my own are solid.
I stumble over my feet. My eyelids fly open to find a male figure dancing beside me. He isn’t one of my shadowed partners, but a man of flesh and blood. I’m so startled, my dreamscape falters, returning me to the glade, but in the next beat of my heart, recognition settles over me. I note the man’s piercing brown eyes, his dark hair that falls in tousled waves just above his shoulders. He’s dressed in a stylish navy suit, his waistcoat brown, his cravat white to match his shirt. Black leather gloves adorn his hands, leaving only the flesh of his face exposed. My eyes widen as I take in the horns curling from the sides of his head, then the dark wings folded down his back. That’s unusual. Considering he’s fully human, he shouldn’t have fae characteristics like these. I suppose that’s the nature of dreams though. Even ones about real people.
My racing heart returns to a more manageable rhythm, and the glade falls back beneath the dark curtain of my meteor shower dreamscape.
I regain my composure, syncing my steps to the beat of the quadrille while the man takes the place of my former shadowed partner. He easily keeps up with me, which isn’t surprising. He’s merely a construct of my mind, after all, and we’ve done this plenty of times by now.
I give him a withering look. “I shouldn’t be surprised you’re here.”
We step apart, then together. Apart, then together. He tilts his head slightly, a corner of his lips flicking into an amused smirk. “Why is that?”
“Because I always manage to dream you into being.”
“So you know who I am,” he says.
