“Why,” Elise exclaims, “I believe it’s time to dance!”
My sisters, the guards, and the ghosts gather onto the dance floor. Merile remains by the gramophone with Mufu. That’s her part tonight. She’s the orchestra.
“What’s my part?” I whisper to Rafa.
She tilts her head to lick my chin, floppy ears drawn back. Her brown fur glows under the light of the chandeliers. Dressed in white, next to the curtains, I’m invisible.
“Am I a ghost?” I ask her, glancing at Irina and Olesia. But even they’re more present than I am. Olesia has her arm hooked around Tabard’s, who has no idea about this. Irina fans her face with her palm, eyeing Belly rather coyly.
Rafa shifts in my arms, to stare at them. No, not them, but their shadows. She’s so much smarter than I am. I whisper in her ear, in agreement. “Tonight, I’m a shadow.”
And I won’t be in anyone’s way. No one will see me apart from those who know where to look for me. I tiptoe further into the hem of the curtain.
Merile changes the song. The needle scratches the disc for a while before violins announce the waltz. Captain Janlav strides from Elise to Sibilia and bows deep. “May I?” he asks my sister, though his is the name my sister scrawled down first on the dance card.
“You may.” Sibilia waits still as a statue, but not as still as I am, for him to step closer to her. She places her hand on his shoulder only after he’s positioned his behind her back. Though he smiles, she doesn’t move an inch. But when the waltz really starts, she melts in his arms.
He’s a fine dancer. His steps are sure and firm and never stray from the rhythm. When my sister stumbles he’s always there to save her, swirl her around or bend her back to make it all seem right. Sibilia’s smile widens with each note of the violins. Her crown is red and her hair is gold, but it’s her hem that’s very white, swirling up and down and up and down. My sister is a striking sight, but when she next turns, I catch a glimpse of her eyes, and for the shortest of moments, her gray gaze is keyhole-hollow.
“Shall we join them?” Tabard bows at Elise as the first part of the waltz is almost over. Beard strides to Celestia, to ask the same question.
My sisters curtsy at the guards, and it’s…
“We’ve never curtsied to them before,” I mutter to Rafa.
She nods in agreement. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that everything is unraveling tonight.
Led by Tabard and Beard, my sisters join Sibilia on the dance floor. Under the light of the two chandeliers, they’re wonderfully graceful, swans soaring across skies. I want them to stay that way forever, and that’s why I won’t look at their shadows. I don’t even glance at them as the polka starts and the dance partners change, not even when the polka ends and the couples shift to dance our version of the goose song.
Halfway through the goose song that reminds me of a three-legged table, Rafa shifts in my arms. She wants to stretch her legs. I lower her down. “There you go.”
And as soon as her paws meet the planks, she runs to Merile, without as much as glancing over her shoulder at me. My throat shrinks, though she’s her companion, not mine. Now I’m as alone as a shadow should be. As I know my shadow will soon be.
“Here you are!” Olesia glides to me, past Boots and Boy, who stomp in the merry rhythm of the mazurka. She looks different, too, a lady invited to a feast, though none of the other guests here can see her, dance with her. “Oh, why are you crying?”
Am I? I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. They come away wet. I don’t know why I’m crying, or I do, but I can’t say it aloud, because then everyone will grow worried about me.
“My dear, what is wrong?” Olesia bends down to cup my cheeks.
I swallow back tears, though my shrunken throat hurts. This is Sibilia’s night, not mine. Real shadows never draw attention to themselves. “My sisters look so happy…”
Olesia shifts so that she can look at my sisters. They swirl in the arms of the guards, not only happy, but somehow wild, too. As if we were someplace else, maybe back in the Summer Palace and not locked into the drawing room of a house so far up in the north that during summers there are no nights.
“I know, it is sad…” Olesia trails off, her gaze fixing on Sibilia, my sister crowned by the too-early autumn, “that she won’t ever leave this house.”
That sounds wrong. I grip Olesia’s ghost hand, but my fingers go through hers. “What do you mean?”
Irina and Olesia weren’t present when Celestia confronted the gagargi. They remained away when she returned victorious, when she spoke slowly the news that filled us with joy, when she drifted to sleep that lasted for three days. But I did tell them everything, word for word. When the gagargi sends for us, either we all go or we all stay. And if we all go, Celestia won’t let the gagargi feed me to his machine, she promised me that.
So why did Olesia then single out Sibilia?
“Nothing.” Olesia pulls her hands away and straightens her back. “Nothing at all.”
But I don’t believe her. Merile has always said that I shouldn’t trust the ghosts so blindly. I’ve always defended them, but now…
“Oh, this is the cotillion!” Olesia tousles my hair. “You will be all right.” And without waiting for my answer to the question that may not have even been one, she hurries to the dance floor, waving at her sister. “Irina, come and dance this with me!”
The cot-cot song, my favorite, has never made me as sad. I wish Rafa would return to me, but she’s busy with begging treats from the guards, and I don’t want to call out to her, because shadows are supposed to stay silent. When I’m silent, people sometimes forget I’m present and say things they didn’t mean me to hear. But for the ghosts, I’m the only one who can always see and hear them. I think everything they say is always of great importance, though I don’t always understand what they mean.
Waltz and polka and another goose song. No one misses me during the dancing, as the evening behind the sewn-shut curtains and tar-black glass and barred-shut windows arrives, but doesn’t darken. Yet, the room darkens so that all that remains is the brighter glow of the chandeliers, the whiter shapes of my sisters, and the redder belts and ribbons of the guards. Though the music is the same, each song is somehow faster than the previous, the steps of the dancers fierier than before, followed by soft pops. The guards spin and fling my sisters. They soar from one man to another, their feet moving in patterns so quick and complicated that I fear they might hurt themselves.
But faster they go, even faster, and soon their heels no longer touch the floor, and it’s as if both they and the guards are dancing in the air, rising higher and higher, toward a ceiling that’s no longer there, but replaced by a black sky as vast and wide as the one outside these walls.
And it’s all so impossible, so very impossible, that I need to know that it’s not true, that they’re not about to leave me in this house alone, and that is why I decide to look at their shadows.
The guards’ shadows are heavy, black and right, but those of my sisters…
When Celestia spreads her arms wide, in the deepest curtsy, she extends the wings that she doesn’t have, but still has, that I know aren’t strong enough to carry her.
When Elise spirals at the center of the dance floor, arms raised and twined together, head tossed back in a pealing gale of laughter, her shadow sways in a way that doesn’t make sense, as if it were hanging from such a great height that her feet can’t reach the ground anymore.
When Sibilia… I can’t look at her shadow. I can’t. My sister’s hair has come loose and she’s lost the crown of maple leaves. Yet her steps are lighter than they’ve ever been as she falls in the arms of Boy at the end of the song.