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.”

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.  

Swann's Song

Swann Elric Eldicott is stretching her calves against the back wall of the dance studio as Madame Michelin drums impatiently against the record player. If it had been on, it would have been skipping, a tune too tricky to dance traditionally to. But it is off, its needle hovering over the side of the plastic, a record speared by the center turner lying patiently and waiting for power. Madame Michelin clears her throat and manages to motion to the time that is passing without moving anything but an eyebrow. Swann smiles at the wall and sits on the floor to stretch her hamstrings. 

Her mother wanted to name her after a ballet, of course. Her older sister was named for one, her brother was named for one, even her mother’s name came from the Tradition. All of the other little girls in Swann’s year were named Coppelia or Belle. There were a few Odettes, one Giselle, a Carmen. Swann’s mother gave up on Jardin after her father declared that naming his youngest daughter after a garden was just not going to happen. Swann wanted to know what kept him from having a problem with the name of a big honking bird.

Madame Michelin does not even bother clearing her throat again. She drops into a deep plie and then rises to her toes. Swann is gruffly pulled to her feet and slid across the floor to stagger against the barre. Madame’s smile is a baring of teeth. She curves her fingers into position and the record player’s needle jumps, music creeping from the speakers. Swann slips her feet into the familiarity of first position and prepares. 

The magic wells up with the motion of their bodies, every drop of exertion poured out into the air around them, until the room fairly rings with light, a golden river that rises until Swann and the Madame are submerged within it. 

Swann hates this part; she always feels as if she is drowning. 

The barre exercises take them the better part of two hours; a slow layering of color added to the golden river with each new position, each different movement of their feet. Swann is exhausted by the end of it, her leotard and leg warmers sodden and gross and all she wants is to be allowed to go home. Madame looks at the bright green that has crept into their river of magic and shakes her head.

“You are not doing the grande battements correctly, Ms. Eldicott. This should be a forest green. A complementary shade. Not this…neon color.”

“Maybe the containment spell isn’t working properly,” Swann says, wiggling her toes in her pointe shoes and trying to calculate whether she has to shower at the studio or if she has enough time to do it at home.

“Nonsense,” Madame scoffs, absentmindedly standing on pointe and moving the needle to a resting position with the motion, “I danced it myself.” 

Swann takes the end of the music for the end of the class and bends at the waist to unlace her shoes. She sighs with relief as she pulls them one at a time from her feet although she takes the time to wrap them up carefully before she tosses them lightly across the room. Madame raises an eyebrow and Swann quickly flicks her hand out to slow the shoes’ flight. She straightens and pops her hip and the shoes put themselves away, her bag zipping up on its own, her street shoes aligning themselves in front of it.

“I have asked that you not practice that street magic in my domain,” Madame says from behind her with a frown. 

Swann apologizes, slipping her feet into her shoes and slinging her bag over her shoulder. She catches a look at herself in the studio’s mirrors and grimaces. She pulls her hair out of its long blond ponytail and twists it into a bun before securing it with a pencil from the outside pocket of her bag.

“Swann,” Madame says, her tone that of someone who is tired of repeating themselves. Swann turns to look at her. The Madame sighs and drops into a graceful curtsy, her feet perfectly positioned. Around them the containment spell drifts away in a twist of classical music. “Work on your turnout on those kicks, please. I fully expect forest green tomorrow.”

Swann opens the door to the studio, her entire body aching. As she closes the door behind her she can hear the Madame’s final missive through the door.

“Just ask your sister for help!”

Swann scoffs and takes the stairs down at a skip that makes the air around her ring with the clash of a gong. 

“Right,” she says as she heads for the parking garage. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

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Swann’s bike is waiting where she left it, and she takes the time to put her helmet on over her bun and then does a quick, exultant jump from the concrete so the bike springs to life between her knees. It’s really her brother’s bike, but she knows Orpheus won’t mind as he’s busy the entire week. And really, one of the King’s top magicians shouldn’t be riding a motorcycle to work. 

Swann’s smile is wide as she rockets into traffic and takes the turns too quickly, the fast beat of the music in her head letting her pass through cars that are in her way and make corners that a traditional magician would be terrified of taking. 

She gets home with enough time to shower and change and even knock out a quick routine that dries her hair and knots it into a complicated twist she knows her mother will appreciate. She glides down the stair to a ring of cymbals and her sister grimaces from the landing. 

“It’s ‘cause you put that hip-hop in your steps, Squab,” her sister says with a smile. Agon is a beauty in all the ways best loved by the Tradition. Her hair is long and dark and suited to a bun, her arms and legs exuding grace. When she walks, she glides and the only music that accompanies her is Tchaikovsky. From the landing, she stretches her arm up over her head and sweeps it down in a neat arc that lifts Swann’s skirts with the ripple of its passing. Swann giggles and jumps down the last step with a full body roll that upsets her sister’s magic and introduces a backbeat to the symphony.

Agon turns a quizzical eye to her sister, but smiles and locks her elbow with Swann’s as they descend the stairs to the mixed tune.

At the bottom, their butler does a pas de bourree and the doors to the dining room open. Orpheus sweeps in after them, the dark strains of a viola drifting around his head as he takes his seat with all the drama of a tortured lead. Agon laughs again and does a rond de jambe under her skirt that only Swann sees. Their brother is heaved forward in his seat and his tie lands in the soup. He looks up at his sisters and sweeps his arms through the first two positions, the viola music increasing as Agon flies backward. Swann takes a spread out stance and jumps to cross her feet then uncross them, curtailing her sister’s flight and allowing Agon to turn the fall into a cabriole that has Orpheus pinned to the far wall, soup dripping off his chin.

Of course, this is the moment their mother chooses to enter, her steps silent against the marble. Behind her, their father is buried in that morning’s paper and he fails to see the scramble as Agon, Orpheus, and Swann move to their seats, righting upset tables and dancing the soup back into the tureen. 

Their mother casts an appraising eye on her children and raises the left corner of her mouth in half a smile.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to tell you myself,” she says. In one motion she sweeps her skirts to the side and sits to the right of their father’s chair. “Now, shall we dine?”

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Swann knows her family are confused by her magic. Not many understand that the street dancer’s movements are almost as powerful and certainly more versatile than the Traditional forms. Once she caught her sister attempting a simple shoulder roll and her closet exploded into a warren of rabbits. Through the cracked door, Swann had seen Agon throw up her hands in frustration and then do a series of quick fouttes to turn the rabbits back into clothes. “I don’t know how she does it,” Swann heard her sister say, and she had smiled and kept going down the stairs.

There was definitely something to the Traditional magic. The control needed to dance the Tradition was a perfect base for any other kind of magic that might need to be done. There was not magic without breath and there was no magic without quick and agile feet and the Tradition taught that surer than anything else. But the form and function of the Tradition was steeped in the mastery that came from centuries of it being used. She saw how her mother exulted in a well-turned dance, and she saw the radiant joy that beamed from Agon’s face when she could perform a jump so cohesively it righted an overturned house two miles away from their home. 

Swann thought the soul and rhythm that infused the street dances was just as useful, and it had taken her a while to convince her family, but once she had they were willing to allow her to experiment. Of course, they frowned on her doing it too often, or in public, but Swann was thinking that maybe she could change that. 

An Odile was coming to court, after all. 

The Odile’s dancing was precise and beautiful and terrible in its beauty. The rumors said she had danced an entire village to death and sent the ghosts dancing into eternity, never to lie still. Swann was thinking maybe a good pop-and-lock would throw her off balance, and a properly placed foot switch would send the sound of drums to beat back the strains of her clarinets.

There was only one way to be sure, of course. But Swann was confident in her skills. Hadn’t she found all of the lost children last Christmas with a backflip? Hadn’t she proven herself capable in her chosen field?

Swann liked her name. It made her stand out and she appreciated that. But most of all she liked her initials: S.E.E. She could see clearly enough that the dominion of the Tradition needed to come to an end. Maybe she could make the rest of them see it, too.