Swann at Breakfast

They are at breakfast sooner than their parents think is possible without having used magic to mend the long, rambling cracks to the walls of the foyer, but the butler comes in and rolls his eyes in response to their mother’s arched eyebrow and later when their father goes to inspect it, the repair job is still wet, the faint tracery of their early-morning explosions still faintly visible.

Orpheus leaves for the City soon after breakfast, hopping on one foot down the entrance hall as he struggles to put his shoe on.  He is not paying attention and his movements have the doorman scurrying to add four plies-worth of cushioning to the antique vases that are bouncing in time to Orpheus’ unintentional shoe Dance. 

The King’s Car arrives outside exactly when expected, the door already open and the driver standing at the ready next to it.  Swann watches from the window as Orpheus composes himself, undoes the button on his suit jacket, and slides into the dark interior.  The driver does not touch the door but Swann watches as it closes anyway, the driver’s feet marching around the car drumming in time with the door’s slow swing. 

Behind her Agon sighs and puts her hand on Swann’s shoulder. 

“He shouldn’t be going to that place,” she says, her voice subdued after the excitement of the early morning.  “It’s killing him.”

Agon slides away before Swann can even acknowledge her presence, her feet soundless against the wooden floors that line the house.  She picks up her dance bag from the rack by the front door and blows her sister a kiss before slipping away.  In the time it takes Swann to blink and turn back to the window, Agon has already mounted her bicycle, hitched up her skirt, and begun pedaling down the driveway, her dance bag bumping against her shoulder and pulsing with faint blue light.

Swann frowns and sits on the Good Couch too brusquely.  A maid raises an eyebrow as she waltzes past, a broom her compliant partner.  Swann sticks her tongue out at her back. 

“Something the matter, Darling?” Swann’s mother asks when Swann comes stomping into the library. 

“No.  Yes.  I don’t know…” Swann trails off then presses her elbows into the table where her mother is reading.  Swann’s mother pushes her reading glasses down her nose and looks up at her daughter through eyelashes with a natural curl.  “Do you think I’m a good dancer?” Swann asks, all in a rush, the words spilling out of her even as her hands drum against the underside of the table.  It is all Swann can do to keep her feet still as her mother arches an eyebrow then removes her reading glasses and sets a handwritten receipt into the pages of her book.

“I think you dance beautifully, Swann,” her mother says with all seriousness.  “You keep your toes pointed and your knees straight, your arms are graceful, and you put enough power into that half-hearted containment this morning to keep Agon confined and keep me and your father out.”  Swann swallows and looks down at the table.  Her mother covers her hand with one of her own, her older fingers wrapping around Swann’s.  “Never let anyone tell you that you are not a fabulous dancer.”  Without even a smile, Swann’s mother nods once and closes the book.  It takes off from the table in time with the graceful motion of her mother’s arm.  “You are one of the best in the country and it is high time you knew it.”  The book flutters around Swann’s head once, a paper bird that looks almost too heavy to fly.  “Do not let anyone tell you otherwise,” Swann’s mother says, her voice solemn.

“Thanks, Mom,” Swann says, hugging her mother and smiling.  “I just wish… sometimes I just wish I was as good as Agon, or as powerful as Orpheus or even just… I dunno, I think I’d be okay if I knew what I was supposed to be doing, you know?  Yeah, I can do this,” here Swann pushes her mother’s chair in with a chest contraction, “but what does it mean?”

“Well if it’s direction you want, why don’t you just look through your prophecy?”

Swann closes her mouth after a second of gaping like a fish and frowns. 

“Prophecy?”

Swann’s mother arches an eyebrow and puts her hands on her hips.

“Yes, Swann.  Your prophecy.  Every youngest child is allotted one by Royal Decree.  We very nearly had one divined for Agon but the Seeress saw you coming along and was able to divine one for you instead.”

Swann can’t quite seem to keep her face in the demure lines so respected by society.

“What does it say?  Where is it?” Swann asks, her voice high and thread like a little girl’s.  Swann’s mother smiles slightly before she offers Swann her arm and they leave the library.

“As to what it says, I wouldn’t know, Swann dear.  Your father never even removed it from the box it arrived in.  And as to where it is…”  Here Swann’s mother pats her daughter’s arm consolingly and steps away from her.  The maid with the waltzing broom comes down the hallway with her mother’s coat and bag and Swann’s mother steps into them with a swish of crinolines.  “As to where it is, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask your father.  I am sure it is filed somewhere in his study, although where exactly you will have to leave to him.”

Her mother twists her hair up under the hat that is proffered to her and nods once.  The maid curtsies slightly then leaves the hallway. 

“Am I…allowed to look at it?”  Swann asks as her mother checks her makeup in the mirror that hangs in the front hallway.  Swann’s mother meets her eyes in the mirror and her newly painted lips turn up at the corners.

“But of course.  Who else would be allowed to see your prophecy but you?”

Swann’s mother finishes straightening her lipstick, nods at her reflection in the mirror, then gives her daughter a kiss on each cheek.  With a smile catching at the corners of her mouth Swann’s mother executes a technical tondue and takes the handle of the door that has just opened.  “Now if you’ll excuse me dear, I have to get down to the Palace.  I will see you at dinner.  Do wear something nice, we’ll have important guests.”

Test of the Blogger Text. Here is the Call to Arms for tonight:

Hail Rodangoes! Brave adventurers all! Thy humble healer begs thee remember our quest this night.  We will meet in the Halls of Skype after the ninth bell tolls and continue from there.  Blood and Honor!

In which Agon, Orpheus, and Swann Dance...

The next day, Swann woke to the low brass movements of Korsakov’s Scheherezade.  The tuba’s thick undulations rolled through her bed and pulled her from the dream she was in.  With a sigh, Swann swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched.  The window shades that ringed the top of her room opened slightly with the motion and her room gleamed in the early morning sunlight.  Swann straightened her pajamas and stood, the shades opening fully as she rolled her shoulders back and put her arms above her head to remove the creaks that came from sleep.

The music got louder as Swann moved down the corridor, her feet nearly silent against the wood floors in the hall.  The song had progressed to the slow part with the woodwinds and Swann followed their trilling around the corner to stand in the open door to one of the practice rooms.  Inside, Orpheus moved slowly, his hands down at his sides as he traced the floor with feet that kicked up swirls of bright orange and the explosive sound of a bassoon.  Swann leaned against the door jamb and watched as her brother’s movements quickened with the beat of the music and the piece built to a crescendo.

As Orpheus began to do straight-legged fouttes, orange kicking up around him in violent waves as he turned, Swann heard a thump from the room across the hall.  This was followed by a second thump, a muffled groan, and a series of curses uttered in a tone so calm it was almost possible to ignore the vitriol and inventiveness in them.  Orpheus’ dancing crescendoed again and across the hall, Swann could hear Agon being dragged across the floor. 

“See how she likes it,” Orpheus hissed between his teeth, turning in place and then executing a precise grande jete that, from the sound of it, tied Agon into her sheets and dropped her on the floor again.

“That’s not very nice, Orpheus,” Swann said, trying not to smile.

“It’s not…very nice…when she dances that…ridiculous Chopin…at 6 in the morning,” Orpheus panted.  He was answering Swann as he did barrel turns around the room.  Across the way, Agon yelled something not fit for human ears and apparently managed a counter-gesture.  The thumping had stopped, if nothing else.  Orpheus stopped with a slow turn and let the true color of the room seep in slowly as he put his hands on his knees and tried to calm his breathing.

Agon came through the door a few seconds later, her hair disheveled and her eyes overflowing with fury.  Swann took a step backwards as Agon’s dainty footfalls sent streams of bright blue streaming up the walls to crackle against the ceiling.  Agon’s hair was lifted in the wake of her magic.  As she moved through the door, the blue arced out from her in lightning bolts and raced across the edges of the room, flying towards the ceiling, covering the windows and plunging the practice room into an obscurity filtered through the blue now straining to get through the windows.  Swann blanched and danced a quick containment.  Streams of her magic tried to twine themselves around the edges of the room, but it was early and Agon was furious and Swann wasn’t sure her quick measures had really done anything.

Downstairs, the big chandelier that hung in the foyer was swinging, Swann could hear it clinging against itself.  One of the maids yelped and the butler yelled for her father but all of that was muffled outside the electric force of Agon’s fury and Swann’s meager containment field.  Swann pressed herself against the wall of the practice room and watched as Agon swept toward her brother, her feet barely touching the ground, her hands limed in blue lightning.  Orpheus, to his credit, did not step back, he merely stood to his full height and looked down at his sister.

“Is this really necessary?”  He said his voice quiet and barely audible.

“I don’t know,” Agon said through clenched teeth, “you tell me.”  Agon’s smile was feral as she settled into a deep plié and looked up at her brother.  “Do try to keep up.”

With an explosion of trumpets, Agon leapt to her feet and into a sissonne buoyed by magic to carry her twice as high as she could normally go.  With the movement of her feet, Orpheus was flung across the wall and pinned there.  The low brass section that followed had Agon executing furiously perfect chaines across the room which slid Orpheus along the back wall, bumping his head against each light fixture as he went. 

Agon had conjured Stravinski’s Firebird Suite and jumped straight to the hunt.  The magic rippling across the edges of the room echoed her anger, leaping up in flames of a sickly green that left the wall scorched behind them.  Swann moved as quickly as she dared out of the way of her sister’s wrath and did a quick combination to pull Orpheus from the wall.  Orpheus slid from Agon’s grip and hit the ground harder than he had probably expected, wincing as he got to his feet.  Across the room, Agon was dancing the flames higher.  She prepared and was off, a sweeping glissade that had her halfway across the room then in the air in a heartbreakingly precise switch-leap, arms and legs extended, trailing fire.  Orpheus danced out of the way and watched as the music simmered down around her, the flames around the room subsiding as she pas-deburreed backwards, her arms waving like wings in front of her.  As Agon’s feet traced patterns of fire across the floor, Swann saw that she was barefoot, her magic wild and uncontrolled without the channels of pointe shoes to guide it.  She held her breath.

The hunt portion of Stravinski’s suite was mercifully short and Agon danced through it quickly, collapsing in a graceful split as around her the flutes died down.  Slowly, real sunlight filtered in through the windows again.   The room was silent but for the siblings’ harsh breathing.  Orpheus moved toward his sister and extended his hand.  Swann watched from the corner as Agon lifted her head and frowned. 

“You’re not gonna do the best part?”  Orpheus asked with a faint smile.  A thin trickle of blood had slid down the side of his face from where he had slammed into one of the lamps and Swann, coming up behind him, quickly snapped her hands and brought them together, closing the small wound.  At his feet, Agon smiled and let Orpheus pull her to her feet. 

“Well we might as well, I suppose.”  Agon stretched her hand out and connected the three of them with crossed arms.  “Squab?” Agon said, her voice softer as she used her sister’s nickname.  Swann smiled and began the combination, the growing grandeur of the music following the growing length of their steps. 

It was harder to dance when they were all connected, but ultimately more satisfying when they got it right, their jumps and echappes in perfect time.  Agon managed to make being linked to two other people look as graceful as dancing alone and Swann envied her for it.  Around them, the room filled with the gold of a spell danced correctly and the swells at the end of the Firebird suite had them moving faster and faster, their feet flying.  As the music broke, Agon and Swann took turns leaping into Orpheus’ arms and using the weight of the gold to slow their descents to the ground, taking the extra time to do slow, mid-air pirouettes. 

The final tinkling of the music signaled the end of the piece and the three siblings collapsed to the floor as the room lost its golden river.  Swann stretched her arms and legs out and flexed, feeling the satisfying pop as her meager containment field came off the sides of the room and dissolved.  With the dissolution of the containment, such as it was, the three could finally hear what had probably been there for a while:  the slow, unimpressed applause of their parents crowded in the door of the practice room.

“Well,” their mother said, her face creased with a frown, “I trust that little exercise will serve as its own deterrent in future…”  She cocked one eyebrow and then threaded her arm through their father’s and moved to go down the stairs.

“You’ll all three be repairing the cracks to the walls later,” he said over his shoulder, his normally sunny expression eclipsed with anger.  “No magic.”  He pulled their mother across to his other side, shifting her around him with two touches to her waist that made the hall completely silent behind them. 

Orpheus waited until he thought they were downstairs before he began laughing uncontrollably.