TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT, IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT; WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE, COULD FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY? IN WHAT DISTANT DEEPS OR SKIES, BURNT THE FIRE OF THINE EYES? ON WHAT WINGS DARE HE ASPIRE, WHAT THE HAND, DARE SEIZE THE FIRE? AND WHAT SHOULDER, AND WHAT ART, COULD TWIST THE SINEWS OF THY HEART? AND WHEN THY HEART BEGAN TO BEAT, WHAT DREAD HAND, AND WHAT DREAD FEET?
There was a quiet routine to the dance, one that reminded her so very much of battle. She cleaned her skin, dampened her face—stared into a polished mirror in the readying room, where she could see the dark crimson of her eyes. Adrenaline coursed through her, nervous and knotting in her stomach, her throat, and it made her hyperaware.
They painted her skin with metallic paints, just as her people had once done with gold—gold, always, for war. For the dances, they covered her face with it; they coated her white blaze in shades of gold, copper, silver. They lengthened her mane by braiding it with bright copper ribbons, ribbons, ribbons that would flutter and snap like guidons in the brisk sea-brought wind.
Yes, the longer she stared, both the more and less she recognized herself. What was this flashy thing, she might have thought, with the ribbons dangling to one side, long and silken. Her face was bright and dark all at once, responsive to light but oppressive, somehow, of her face’s true shape. Her eyes stood out in stark relief—and they were all blood, blood, blood.
Her people had danced. It was where she had learned. They had danced for Oreszi, their dark island god, the god of the land, the god that kept the sea at bay. They had danced for victory over the Khashran; for dominance over the sea; and their dances were dark, violent dances with children dressed as wolves, lions, and tigers. Dances not so different from battle; dances intended to teach the young how to fight with the intensive discipline dance could engrain.
Her guide of gypsy-like performers stoked the fires by the stage; the hall filled with the odor of woodsmoke, and Boudika breathed it in as it wafted beneath the door, into the readying room. She had heard there was a dancer in Denocte that could devour fire—and a part of herself felt threatened by such a concept, because she could not devour flame… But each and every one of her dances was derived from some lifelike memory, a battle. Upon cliff-sides, upon the sea’s edge, on volcanic sand.
The time passed—other dancers entered and existed the room, and the tribal, beating music began. Boudika closed her eyes and absorbed it—it was like a heartbeat, almost. The magic of art, she had learned, was how it possessed itself—haunting, perpetual, even if ephemeral. The heartbeat resounded in her hooves, up her legs, into her chest, into her blood—and by then she had become it, swaying, her mind brimming with a thousand conflicting thoughts. The sea, crashing against the cliff, bellowing beastly challenge toward the land—the first time she had seen a Khashran, as a foal, offered to it by her father—the second time, when she was much older, the horse far away on a beach, running more quickly and more beautifully than anything she had ever known, and now the beats of it hooves on the sand, sending up a misty spray of saltwater, those hoof-beats were now matching the music of the present, bam-ba—bam—ba.
It was time for her to dance. Boudika stood, anointed in oils, covered in her metallic paints, looking not beautiful but fierce, the beauty of a tigress, the beauty of a blade. She passed a series of dancers as they exited the stage, but said nothing—the music, the music, it had changed, and the beat of it was primordial, the songs belonging to a distant land of primitive fear, before fire mastery, before stone masonry, when the world was even more unforgiving. This was the stage Boudika entered, a thing too elevated for such beastly melodies.
Boudika kept her head down—and the ribbons fluttered and danced about her face, about her shoulder they streamed. The firelight danced against her dark body and every muscle stood out in stark relief. She was a corded, terrifying thing—a slick coat that glistened with paint and oil, she was all at once dissolving into the surrounding darkness and being lit, both consumed and insurmountable.
The acoustic began, a violinist that weaved amidst the drums in a halting, rising, falling keen. The drums… the drums, suddenly much fiercer, much more frantic.
Boudika began to dance.
It was the only time in Denocte she felt more than a shadow, was on this fire-lit stage, was possessed by a music similar to that of her homeland, of all the things she loved and hated. The passion animated her decorated body so that it transcended her mortal sphere—the paint, the glistening oil, the flashing, spiralling, whiplike ribbons, they animated her beyond her war-torn mane, beyond her war-torn eyes, and her impassioned, fiery, violent dance brought such turbulent fancies back to life.
The first class she had had on killing, at the academy, had ended with the instructor chastising her for her too muchness. The other children did not wish to spar with her, because Boudika did simply practice through the moves. She lived them, as though with the intent to kill even then, in class, rolling and tumbling with colt-like inelegance. It was what had one day made her an excellent fighter; she was creative, ingenious, fearless, complete. Boudika did nothing halfway, nothing lazily—and this showed now, in her swirling, her violent rearing, the way the drums and violin screamed, contested, reached a fever pitch—
and ended with the abrupt finality of death. Boudika came crashing down from a leaping rear, ribbons flying, half her body in shadow and half in bright, inescapable light—her front hooves hit the stage with a definitive clamour, sharper than a gunshot, and her head bowed in a mess of streaming ribbons.
The clapping began and Boudika, her flanks heaving in heavy breaths, bowed her head once again, and exited the stage.
——
Later, the fervour had not left her. It was not often she visited the bar at the back of the dancing hall, but she did that night. The ribbons had been removed from her mane, leaving it short and Spartan. The paint, too, had been mostly removed—except for where it clung, stubbornly, in indiscriminate locations. Her cheek, beneath one eye, smearing her chin, the crook of her neck, a shoulder—there was no telling, where.
The bartender was surprised to see her, and said as much, but he brought her a drink were she sat quietly in the corner. There were other performers entering and exiting the stage in a grand flurry of activity, a transiency marking each performance with both beauty and melancholy. This life was of such different severity for Boudika and, staring at the stage, her heart laid out there somewhere, she could not help the sardonic smile that briefly grazed her lips—oh, the liquor burned, and she felt alive.
But never as alive as she had felt with teeth at her throat, or the sea at her hooves.
WHAT THE HAMMER, WHAT THE CHAIN, IN WHAT FURNACE WAS THY BRAIN? WHAT THE ANVIL? WHAT DEAD GRASP, DARE ITS DEADLY TERRORS CLASP! WHEN THE STARS THREW DOWN THEIR SPEARS AND WATER’D HEAVEN WITH THEIR TEARS: DID HE SMILE HIS WORK TO SEE? DID HE WHO MADE THE LAMB MAKE THEE? TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT, IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT; WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE, DARE FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY?
@
