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I was panting and my hair clung to my ears with sweat by then, so quick and fast had I been forced to leap and turn and step, with the tiny, heel-to-hip kicks the narrow corridors demanded, the elongated, elegant, sliding motions of the long straightaways, with the pirouettes, with the catlike tiptoes. The voice of the shoes kept perfect time, and my body hummed to the dance, hummed with the knowing of it, hummed with the learning of it, as sometimes it had hummed with the books on my lap in the calligrapher’s shop.
“Why the maze, though?” I gasped, executing a daring midair turn and landing hard on my heel.
The shoes did not answer for the smallest of moments. “I did not build it. I assume the Weaver made it, as she makes everything else here, and for her own reasons. It was here when I floated to the bottom of the black reservoir, and I discovered its use quickly enough.”
Finally, with three full spins and a flourish of my arms, I completed the maze. The shoes clacked their heels against the floor in applause, which is very disconcerting, having your feet move without your say-so. I doubled over, catching my breath.
“Thank you,” I wheezed.
“It is my pleasure,” demurred the Dancing-Master.
I could feel the sides of the root-shoes squeezing my feet, trying to hold on. “It is time for me to go now,” I said uncertainly.
“There is no need to leave me down here in the dark. Think how well we could dance together, in the candelabra halos! Think how beautiful all men would think you, in your cinnamon shoes, with your long legs dancing like a Gaselli!”
The shoes were strangling now, trying to hold on to me, trying to keep me fast inside them. “I… I think I should like to feel my own feet on the cobblestones, if it’s all the same.”
“It is not the same,” cried the Dancing-Master, squeezing tighter, like a snake around a mongoose. “I am tired of lying empty in the dark, waiting for girls to come and fill me up for a moment, only to run away when they are finished! I like you as well as I have liked anyone since the dead girl, and I want to dance again, in the Duke’s Palace, in the Duke’s garden, with perfume in the air!”
I scraped at the shoes, trying to get them off, tears of pain springing to my eyes. “Please! I don’t want to dance at the Duke’s Palace!”
“But I know, pretty little bird’s daughter! I know what it is right and proper for girls to do! I can answer your question!” The shoes ground tighter against my bones. “Girls are meant to dance, and spin until their skirts flare like petals, and look more beautiful than ruby-rimmed roses at balls which never end; they are meant to live for the revels; they are meant to bat their eyelashes and whirl in the arms of handsome men!” Tighter still the cinnamon shoes pinched and pulled. “They are meant to drink bubbling wine and laugh like finches singing and dash into the shadows to be kissed! They are meant to blush and curtsey! They are meant to swoon! But they are meant to dance, most of all; they are meant to dance, dead or alive, cold or hot; they are meant to dance until their bones crack! They are meant to care only for the dance, only for the whirl of shining gowns and the sashes on young men’s chests. They are meant to spin in men’s arms for all their days, until their heel bones strike sparks on the dance floor!”
The voice of the Dancing-Master spiraled higher and higher, more and more shrill. I was weeping as the shoes wrenched, crushed my feet into the red roots, and my fingers scrabbled against them uselessly. I drew a hitching breath, my chest searing and tight, and leapt up into the air, just as the maze had taught me, a high, strong leap, and came down as hard as I could on the flats of my feet. The landing shivered my calf bones and I bit my cheek in a sharp-edged wince, but the careening voice ceased abruptly, like a door slamming shut.
The shoes were broken into pieces on the stone floor of the cistern, lying around me in sweet-smelling cinnamon shards.
“No,” I said simply, and turned back to the long tunnel, back up to the air and the light.
When I emerged from the grate, it was nearly light. Sleeve was there, snoring lightly, as spiders will snore. It takes a long time to learn to hear a spider’s snore, but by then my ears were keen as an owl’s, and I heard her little wheezing, in and out, in and out. She woke with a shudder when I stroked her back, and looked up at me with her glittering black eyes.
“And how did we do this time? Same as the rest?”
“More or less.” I shrugged.
“Well, come on with you, then. It’s nearly time for Lantern to dance.”
As the sun blinked sleepily over the Sirens’ tower, Lantern stood in the courtyard with the gurgling fountain, amid the shouting and singing of the Carnival, and danced. His flaming tail tossed scarlet and yellow up into the air and down again like a fan, each frond of peacock-bright feathers wavering as if each one was a separate dancer. His huge feathered feet lifted up and stomped down in a quick rhythm, one I had always loved. A dozen violins and trumpets and flutes played his music, and he turned his face to the new sun, his bronze beak catching the first light, sending it into the fountain in a shower of gold. I wanted, as I have always wanted, to see the world from within his tail, and that morning of all mornings, I stepped shyly up to my dazzling, burning father as he hopped up onto one claw and spun to the delighted gasps of the musicians.
“Papa,” I said, and I wish my voice had not wavered; I wish my cheeks had not been so red and hot! “Let me dance with you.”
He smiled, as only a bird the size of a house can smile, and I stepped into his tail.
The world through flaming feathers is washed in gold, scrubbed to gleaming by fire, and the sound of it roars ocean-fierce. I moved my feet as though the maze were still red and wide beneath me, I moved my arms like wings, and I danced in my papa’s tail like a Firebird.
THE TALE OF THE
CAGE OF IVORY
AND THE
CAGE OF IRON,
CONTINUED
SOLACE GRINNED, HER FACE BRIGHTER EVEN than her father’s. “I shall not dance until my bones crack,” she said. “I shall dance every morning until my heart catches on the sun, and I fill up with gold like a crystal cup! And I shall never wear a proper dress, no matter how many Sleeve shows me, all a-spangle with green and silver!” Lantern nuzzled his huge head under her arm and she kissed his burnished plumage. “Of course, my hair burned up completely that first time! It has grown back just like Papa’s tail, and I have had to learn since how to dance without catching fire. It is not too difficult, once you get the trick of it.” She pulled hard on one of his feathers and the great bird squawked like a common duck. “But you should have told me, you rotten old seagull. What a trial I have been for my poor spider.”
“Yes,” Lantern said simply, and turned to me as though I had only just arrived. “That is all we have to tell,” said the Firebird. “You may go or stay as you like, now. But the sun will be up soon, and we are for the Carnival.”
