~Continued from Faded Legacy, Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Now that I finally had the key, I thought I’d get through Irissa’s diary fairly quickly and get on with figuring out how to break the family geas.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
Having the key was great and all, but I didn’t know any of the formal dances. I was lucky that Regita was a good lead; all I’d done was follow along, trying not to step on her toes or look too clumsy. I was going to have to research dances, and the best way to begin was to attend Nora’s dance classes.
Okay, then. I could do that.
To allay Brad’s suspicions of me, I grumbled when he reminded me that we had a class, but I went along. Nora had progressed to variations of the waltz, and I’d used her diagrams to decode more of the diary. Still, it was only a very few entries, and they weren’t consecutive, so I wasn’t getting the full picture. I needed more.
I was going to have to ask for help.
I debated how to go about it. I didn’t want to show anyone the diary, but I needed Nora to decipher the graphics for me.
Finally, I decided on an experiment. I copied a schematic from the diary onto my tablet to show Nora after our next class. I just hoped she’d be intrigued by the dance, and not question me too closely on where I found it.
My plan worked to a point. After the class, I hung back while the others filed out of the studio.
“Nora? Can I show you something?” I asked, digging into my bag for the tablet.
She turned from the board she was studying and shrugged. “Sure.” She sighed. I wondered what was bothering her, but she didn’t seem to want to talk, so I didn’t ask.
I pulled up the diagram. “Can you tell me what this is and how it works? It’s a dance, right?”
She took the tablet from my hands and stared at the drawing, brows wrinkled. Finally, she took a step back from me, then, holding the tablet at arms length before her eyes, she began to pace. I watched, wondering what on earth was going on before it dawned on me that she was working out the dance steps. Huh. She doesn’t know this one? I thought she’d trained in all the classic dances.
Nora stopped, chewed her lip, then started pacing through the steps again, this time a bit faster and more confident in her movements. She finished, stopped, then went through it again. Finally, she turned and ran to the board, where she erased the waltz and the variations we’d been working on and drew out the steps from my tablet.
“Iris, you’re a lifesaver! Where did you find this? It’s a variation of the foxtrot that I’ve never seen before! I mean – never seen how it’s to be danced. I’ve seen some of the fey doing it during a Dance, but I couldn’t really work out the steps and Sandor refused to teach me.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s an idiot, then.” I shrugged. “I came across it doing research on the family geas and looking for clothing pictures and patterns for Brad.”
“Hand me your stylus, let me put in the movements for you. And you’re going to be a little ahead for once! I’m teaching this next class!” Her eyes sparkled as she took the stylus and began to draw in the lines and arrows of the movements.
She finished and handed me the tablet and stylus before turning to the board. As I slipped from the room, she called, “Iris! If you find anything else like this, bring it to me! I’ll teach every variation you can find.”
“Sure,” I said, and opened the door. I tried to hold in my elation, but it didn’t matter as Nora was paying no attention to me at all.
“I’ll show you, Sandor,” Nora muttered. I didn’t think I was supposed to hear that, so I closed the door as quietly as I could and skittered to my room. I couldn’t wait to see what I found when I decoded this entry.
###
The system worked. Every few days, I’d come back to Nora with a new “find” and she’d work it out for me. The downside to this was that I had to actually learn the dances, and some of them were incredibly complicated. A couple even stumped Nora…but only for a little while.
I noticed at a few Dances that Nora and Sandor sailed around the room, and that more and more often, Sandor only Danced with Nora. He was an exceptional dancer, and even the Fey were pressed to match his grace and elegance. But not Nora. She matched him step for step, with her smile intact and eyes glittering in challenge.
Alaric didn’t avoid me, but he no longer bothered to follow me out when I slipped away from the ballroom. While the diary was fascinating, I needed to find points of reference. Some things Irissa alluded to eluded me, and I always needed more information. At first, I really wished Alaric would join me, as no one would ever question an assignation, but time went on and no one questioned my movements. Still, I was always careful to rejoin Regita for the Final Dance.
So I researched, and I decoded, and I read and time passed. The diary – well, I still wasn’t able to decode everything in order. I suppose that Irissa had a method to how she encoded her entries and there was some sort of system, but I could never figure out. So, I continued to get bits piecemeal, and was still lacking the overall picture of the geas and the curse.
Time was both my enemy and my friend. For us Dancers, time passed much slower than outside, but I did know that it was passing and that I wasn’t getting much closer to breaking the geas.
The more I read, though, the more I wanted to know. While I had always sort of hated my I-forget-how-many-times great grandmother, some of the entries made me feel for her. She was an intelligent woman with no resources of her own, and her very life was at the disposal of her father. No wonder she rebelled.
I had figured out rather early on that Irissa had a Fey lover, though she only wrote about him in the most obscure terms. But the day I found a variation of a volta dance, things became clearer.
We’d been working on variations of the galliards, and I’d deciphered an entry in Irissa’s diary where she was very distressed. Her father, it seemed, was still determined to marry her off, and had finally made an arrangement with a neighboring noble. Irissa initially thought it might be okay, as she’d known the boy since they were children. When she found out that her father had contracted for her to marry the boy’s father – a man as old as her own father who had already buried two wives – she’d been driven to despair.
The entry ended: “All our revels may well end with this news. I do not know that I will be able to open the Door from another place, nor do I think my husband will allow me the freedom to do so. I remember his other wives well, and they were always quiet and subservient to his bluster. I am neither quiet nor subservient, so I do not see that this match will suit, though Father will hear none of my arguments. He said that I would learn, at my husband’s direction, to amend my will to suit his needs. I cannot bear this, not after having known happiness, though only for a few short months.”
There was a blank space, then only, “Jeros has a plan.”
I stared at the entry. There was no Prince named Jeros. I mean, this Jeros was obviously her lover, but who was he? Or she?
I had to know more, so I looked through the diary. If I could find another version of a galliard, Nora would give me the key. I could hope that it might even be the next entry. How I wished that Irissa had kept her diary in chronological order! Instead, it seemed she’d written her entries on loose pages, coded them, put the entries into a random order, and sewed them into the binding. While it was an admirable exercise in secret-keeping, it was doing me absolutely no favors in terms of figuring out a way to break our geas and the Princes’ curse.
I thumbed through the undecoded pages and finally decided to keep with the galliards, so I chose another variant and did the copy to my tablet thing so I could show it to Nora. We had a class right after dinner, so I didn’t even have to wait that long.
“A volta!” Nora exclaimed when I handed her the new drawing. “We haven’t done one of those yet!”
My heart sank. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was another galliard type dance.”
Nora looked up. “Oh, it is and it isn’t. It’s not exactly a galliard, but there are many similarities in the steps and music. There have been arguments that is in fact a variation, and just as many compelling arguments that it is an entirely separate dance. But whatever, we know enough that I feel confident teaching this one.”
As usual, she copied the dance to the board, and then noted my tablet for me. “Thanks again, Iris! And bring me anything else you find!”
I assured her that I would and hurried back to my room with my prize.
Unfortunately, the entry I decoded with the volta wasn’t the next consecutive one, but it did give me a bit of information. She wrote that she was unsure of the plan, but this Jeros person assured her that it would be fine. She finally acquiesced, it seems, as she couldn’t figure out any other way to save herself. She wrote, “The Hunt will run with the Autumn Rade.”
I stared at that last sentence. I wished it made sense. I mean…something about it niggled in my mind, but I couldn’t grasp it. Maybe it was time to corner Alaric and get some real answers. Luckily, there was a Dance coming up. I wouldn’t allow him to ignore me again.
###
There’d been some drama over the theme, it seemed. I’d missed it, busy doing my research, but Brad had told me bits and pieces. The twins – Kara and Amber – had wanted to go as fairies, like, little cutesy ones from storybooks, and could not see how utterly disrespectful that would be to our hosts. They sulked and pouted and generally acted like brats.
I’d told Brad at one point that I thought they just wanted to wear wings, so he came up with the butterfly idea, which seemed to appease them. Everyone agreed to the theme, and I didn’t pay any more attention.
Personally, I’m pretty sure I was right. I also told Brad that I was not wearing any kind of wing contraption on my back as I’d probably take out half the ballroom with it. He laughed and agreed.
So – those that wanted to wear wings did, and the rest of us merely wore clothing that mimicked the colors of our chosen insect, with wing-shaped masks. I’d not paid much attention to my costume.
Brad dressed me as a Death’s Head Moth.
My gown was a deep brown velvet, with touches of creamy yellow around the hem and neckline, and in the mask. A brass skull attached to a velvet ribbon nestled in the hollow of my throat. Long black gloves and yes! – once again, I got away with carrying my chatalaine bag, Irrissa’s diary tucked safely inside.
The twins had gone overboard with their wings, of course, and needed a boat to themselves. Giselle had also opted for an elaborate set of wings, though most everyone else that opted for wings contented themselves with capes and demi-wraps that mimicked wing colors and designs. Marcus, Ian, and I had eschewed any wing-like additions to our costumes.
I was glad I’d adamantly refused any kind of wings when, during the First Dance, Regita caught a glimpse of Kara with her elaborate wings and snickered.
After Regita had retreated to join her comrades, I approached Alaric. “Can we talk?”
“We’re talking now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Privately, please?”
He raised an eyebrow, but placed his cup on the table and gestured for me to precede him. I went, and he followed. I ducked down our usual hallway, passed the locked doors – they didn’t bother me as much anymore – until I felt that we could talk without being seen or heard.
I pulled the diary from my bag and turned to face Alaric. “Who’s Jeros?”
His face froze, wiping the sardonic smirk away. He stared at the book in my hands. Finally, he took a deep breath. “What did your great-grandmother write?”
I shook my head frustrated. “I haven’t decoded all of it. She didn’t have a system, the entries are jumbled, random, not chronological. I can’t really piece together a complete timeline. But she does mention Jeros, that he was her lover, and that…” I shrugged. “Something to do with her marriage? I’m not completely sure. Like I said, nothing is chronological.”
Alaric began to pace; three steps, a sharp turn, then another three steps, like a metronome. His face was carefully blank, but I knew he was thinking furiously, trying to decide what, if anything, to tell me.
Finally, he stopped and faced me. “Jeros was the leader of the Hunt. And yes, your great-grandmother’s lover.” He grimaced, as though tasting something bitter. “When Irissa told him of her impending marriage, he took the Hunt after her betrothed. It was not…sanctioned…by the Courts.”
Alaric began to pace again. “We found him, but Jeros wouldn’t allow a quick kill. He wanted the man to know who and why. He was angry, and let his emotions go. If we’d done a quick kill, probably nothing would have come of it. But we didn’t. Jeros let the man run, then we chased him down. Again and again and again, until he begged us to finish it.”
Alaric stopped and faced me again. He shrugged. “We were seen, and brought before the Judges, where the curse was placed on us and tied to your family via the geas.”
I nodded. “Okay. This is new information, something I can work with. There are rules to these things. If there’s a curse, it can be broken.” I met Alaric’s eyes. “Where is Jeros? I need to talk to him.”
Alaric stiffened. “Jeros talks to no one.”
“He’ll talk to me.” I said this with more confidence that I actually felt, but I would not let Alaric see me waver.
He grinned, but there was no humor in it. “No. He won’t. He’s the frozen statue in the ballroom.”
I felt like the tunnel was collapsing in on me. “He’s the what?”
“He’s frozen. Aware, but unable to move. In the ballroom.”
I took a deep breath. “That seems harsh, even for the Faerie courts. I thought they loved a good doomed romance.”
Alaric shook his head. “Oh, his punishment has nothing to do with taking a human lover. His is frozen because once the curse went into effect, it was discovered that the curse unbalanced all four Courts. There is no harmony where there is no balance. That is why the seasons are too hot or too cold, too long or too short. There are no judgements, the rule of law is also unbalanced.”
I turned Irissa’s diary in my hands. “So we have to break the geas, then what? How do we break the curse?”
Alaric shrugged.
“I wonder…I wonder if we could figure out how to bring the Courts back into balance, would that break the curse? Free you? And Jeros?”
Alaric leaned against the tunnel wall and crossed his arms. “How do you propose to do that?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but there has to be a way. What do we know? One thing I know is that the geas can’t be broken by any of us; so I would think – since they’re connected – that none of you can break the curse, either.”
I looked up, and caught Alaric’s eyes. “We need outside help.”
~ To be continued….
When The Reverie Breaks 