Look At Me!

'Mine and every withered heart’s desire
An adoring glance to stroke our dying fire
My ragged soul for a drop of tender love.'
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It was a ballroom, shimmering like a nighttime fire, and she was a princess, weightless and free. She spun and twirled with the winds of the room, blowing from north, east, south, west, this way and that; they caught her sails and sent her spinning, rudderless, through the golden bright sea. And with every gentle breath, she smiled, she danced. She danced for each of them, in their white and black shine-coated outfits, so perfectly presented, so perfectly placed, so perfectly still.2

Look at me!3

It was a stage, and she was a ballerina, graceful and alive. She leapt and soared with the ease of a lioness, untamable in her own jungle, and dared her stiff audience to close their eyes for the slightest of seconds. She was captivating, she was unique, and the floor under her feet could not hold her for long. 4

So she whirled and flew, while strings and songs touched many deaf ears, and found only two that could hear. She was a lone butterfly in a thorny field.5

Then the music stopped, and so did she. What a magnificent place it was, this room full of people! Here, next to her, was a prince in black, tall and illustrious in the spotlight, and there were the king and the queen with elegant crowns beaming, presenting them to the crowd. Over at the wall, in the best they could afford, were the tight-knit peasants: working men, slaving women, and always-dirty children milling through a thousand legs. Knights paraded in the North, foreign travelers showing off exotic styles traversed the Eastern edge, and palace guards stood at every entrance. It was a glorious scene, and she saw it all. 6

But it was also a lonely room. Everyone’s eyes were everywhere, but none came within miles of a glance at her. Wherever she danced, whenever she spun and let her dress fly out like pure white wings that picked her up from the floor, nobody found that place interesting; nobody found it beautiful. Nobody stood watching as she flitted between the high stalks of order and sang her own harmonies to an inaudible melody. The place was full of dead, gray eyes, awake and blind, open and closed.7

The girl danced again. Look at me!8

She waltzed in a wide circle, through the midst of royal couples in their birdfeather gowns, and dodged between their sluggish feet with a childish grace. Round and round, speeding and slowing with the sounds, the silence, she drifted to every corner and back to the middle as the orchestra ended its dramatic number and started again with another. In this moment, she paused and stood, pettily beside the prince, who stared nobly into nothing. His face was hard and perfect, like a beautiful mask, and she studied him, trying to see his eyes. But he did not look down. She jumped and pirouetted and bowed; she waved her arms, but he still stared straight, gazing lifelessly into the glittering air. 9

Finally, she spoke. “Sir?” she said, in a tiny, timid voice, “Will you watch me dance?”10

The prince glanced down at her smallness and smiled flatly with the smug mouth of a braggart who knows that every victory is his, because it always has been. His face, as flawless now as it was before, took in the little girl, and examined her with its gray-as-dusk eyes. “Well,” he stated with a royal voice, “A little princess, are we?” he laughed, and the king and queen laughed with him, big, throaty laughs that boomed like drums and gongs and mockery. “A princess in a tired, plain robe. What is your name, my dullish damsel?”11

The girl’s lips curved up with the prince’s, following the smiles on their mouths that did not reach their eyes. “Faith,” she said, sweetly. “I’m Faith.”12

The prince’s grin became lopsided, as he moved in to maim with boastful words, a savage in silk. “Faith!” he cried, he shouted “What a name, oh yes! Such a wonderful name, a beautiful name, an impeccable name for my horse, or my cat, or the noble palace dog!” He found the king and queen with his colorless eyes and brought them to join his cruel game. “What a clownish idea, a dog who can dance! Here, Faith, can you do me a trick?” Erupting out in brutal mirth, their mouths laughed again, louder, louder, deafening the music and the orchestra. They laughed and cried, and then they abruptly ceased, to continue their passive gaze into the atmosphere, silently pondering.13

The prince would not look.14

So she danced away, with a slightly smaller heart, and the band changed its tune. Now it was quick rather than charming; the song moved her like a wave, no longer a fairy, and she played with its rhythm all across the floor. Up and down, she tossed her hair and swung her arms around herself, conducting the string section, the brass, the drums. She traveled beyond the corners of the earth with the music, and when she opened her eyes she was in a different country full of different people.15

These people were not so gorgeous to look at. They huddled together, scared, and their clothes, which might have been elegant, fit like a snake’s shed skin. These were the people from the town, the villages, lucky to be at the ball at all, and so determined to maintain their stature amongst royal company that they had lost it hours ago. The men were harried by the wives and the wives were harried by the children, who did not understand why they couldn’t dash across the room like wild dogs. Faith saw them and smiled, but the other children did not dance, they squirmed, they wiggled in discomfort, pulling at the ruffled sleeves of their jackets and frilly hems of their dresses.16

“You!” one of the mothers yelled at Faith with a long, grubby finger, pointing. “Get off the dance floor, will you? It’s no place for a pack of rats to go scurrying about.” She ran frantically over to Faith, to protect the sight of her from the upper-class, and began to push her towards where the rest of the children fretted in their quarantine.17

“I’m not running, I’m dancing.” Faith said, and sidestepped with the tune to avoid the woman’s grasp.18

“Dancing! Who taught you how to dance?” her eyes darted about, nervously. “Peasant children cannot dance.”19

“But I do.” Faith sang, “Watch me!” The wind caught her and sent her feet moving again, around and around the tall woman.20

“Watch a child dance?” She laughed shortly and spoke quickly. “Children are watched to keep them from dancing. I haven’t the time to stand and look at nonsense. Don’t you realize that the prince is here? And the king and queen? We must win their favor tonight, and keep our collars straight!” She grasped Faith’s wrist in her cold hand, and began to pull her over to where the other children were held captive.21

And she saw their eyes, the children’s eyes, gray and deadened like their parents’, like the prince’s, stare back at her dispassionately. 22

“No, no!” Faith screamed and ripped free from the tight fist. She held her dress over her heels and ran away, far away from the distressed group of people as the woman froze in her spot, serious and unhappy. 23

“And where are we running to?” asked a deep voice, melodious with an accent from strange, distant places. Faith skidded and met a baron, with skin deep like a canyon and a magnificent, colorful garment. He stood tall, taller than the woman or even the prince, and looked down his long nose at her. But his eyes were cold and dim, gray like everyone else’s. 24

“She,” Faith pointed, “tried to stop me dancing.”25

“You dance? Let me see,” said the foreign voyager, just as a new melody sprung up, light and exciting. Faith beamed at him, and began to move. Her arms, her head, her legs, breathing in and out on the beat; she became a bird soaring over forests, a petal floating through a meadow; she was high and alive, vibrating with the tremolos, leaping with the crescendos, dancing, dancing. To the left, to the right, over bridges, under water, wherever the song took her, she went. And all the time, the man from far away stood with his eyes on her, still and unmoved.26

She finished with a pink face and gave a meek curtsey.27

“Hmm,” the man hummed like a baritone, “Hmmm.” he thought again. “While that may be what they call dancing here, it is quite depressing when viewed after some of the glory and grandeur that I have seen.” He stepped back and frowned a superior frown. “Why, little girl, just yesterday, I was five hundred miles from here, in a country where they know how to dance, not just move. They were excellent, faultless in every motion; you could hear the music through their gestures and felt as if you were part of them. Oh, how breathtaking! You, young one, are not anything wonderful. Of course, someday you may be, but not yet.” He nodded at her and tipped his hat, “Until we meet again, my lady.” He said, and disappeared into the crowd.28

It was silent for a small second.29

Faith skipped off again, down a road between the rows of waltzing couples, all alone. And her feet were not so light as before, the air around her not as joyful. Her skips became slower and shorter as she approached the wide, arched doors, where no one but a single guard in a faded green tunic stood. The guard leaned tiredly on his spear, and observed the party, lonely like her.30

And the music changed again; this time a song of memory and stories filled the room with dreams of long ago.31

She stopped in front of the man in green. “Do you see me?” she whispered to the wrinkled old eyes peering out from under a dirt-stained helmet. Those gloomy eyes blinked and frowned, turning from gray to grayer as they looked down at her.32

“I see,” he said. 33

“Aren’t I beautiful?” she asked, giving a twirl and a short curtsey. 34

The palace guard, in his somber outfit, twitched his mouth to the side and remembered. “Beautiful…” he said. Slowly, the shape of the sound was unfamiliar on his lips. “I have not used that word to describe anything for a long, long time.”35

Faith listened and smiled, and spun once again for the sad man.36

And he saw, but could not see.37

“You almost remind me,” he said, still slowly as a day, and darkly as a night “of something I believed in once. Before death and the wars, before thoughts and injustice and hell, hell, hell; then, when I was young. It was something; what was the word?” he frowned deeper, searching for a memory he missed so much, that he hated it more than any other. “Oh, hope,” he whispered with a long, painful breath. “Hope that something ugly can be beautiful. Hope that red can be pretty, even though it is blood, that brown can be life, even though it is rot. Hope that love is still lovely, though most often it is pain. But, no, it will never be. Nothing will. Even you, my darling, will only be innocent until you meet real guilt, and you will only be white until black swallows you up forever. Beauty left these bitter shores long ago. So long, in fact, that I doubt it was ever here.” His words fell like tears onto the floor around him, as he drowned in them once again. “Child,” the guard said finally, “nothing is beautiful. Not even you.” He closed his weeping mouth and straightened his tired back, and then he was gone like all the others. 38

Faith frowned for the first time. Would no one watch her dance? She looked across the ballroom floor and saw everyone else moving together, each lady with a partner staring deep into her eyes, and she let her arms fall limp at her sides. The music played on, but she did not dance. No one was watching.39

Then she saw, shining on the other side of the vast, radiant room, a staircase, spiraling and grand, and above it, a balcony. A balcony over the entire room, where everyone could see! She smiled again and picked up her arms, steering herself this time, to the high stage, where royalty sat, where the room displayed its very best. She would dance on the balcony, and the people below would see, and they would clap and clap, and love her! And then she would bow and love them back, and they would dance together, watching each other and basking in the beauty of it all, forever.40

She reached the staircase, and began to climb. A slow, sad tune hummed from the orchestra pit as she swayed carefully up the steps, back and forth across them, following the drawn-out notes above her. Up the stairs, across the balcony, where high posts held up a railing, and blocked her view of the floor. But on top of that railing, yes, everyone could see, she could see everyone and everyone would see her! So climb, climb the posts to the top!41

She tiptoed precariously on the banister for a frightening moment, and then found her balance, stepping strong to withstand the breezes which threatened to push her off. And she began to dance. She danced, slowly, quickly, spinning, twirling, leaping, her feet finding solid places on the railing and showing her off, beautiful, beautiful, to the crowds gathered below. She danced for them, all of them.42

Look at me!43

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A different sort of light, that of sunlight, shone through the windows of the splendid dance hall, and with a clunk and the turn of a key, the big, bronze doors creaked open. It was the next day, and two suited men edged through the doorway to view the scene.45

“Eerie.” One said, after a moment’s pause.46

“Yes,” the other said, “It’s often strange to see at first, so many people standing, stiff as rosewood, yet looking as alive as you or me.”47

They stood silent for another brief second.48

“Well,” said the manager of the room, “Let me show you around.”49

They walked.50

“Here,” he fingered an old man’s helmet, “is one of the palace guards…whoops!” the figure’s head rolled off and plunked indifferently on to the wooden floor. “That’s why the signs say ‘do not touch!’” he laughed comically, and jammed the head back onto its post. “And there,” he pointed to the center of the ballroom, “are the king and queen, representing the royal rulers of their time, obviously. We’ve even included the prince, who later on, as you know, usurped the throne of his father!”51

“Interesting, interesting,” said the other.52

“Yes,” said the first, “this room is a fountain of medieval knowledge, a visual time machine! You see the townsfolk over there? And the foreign nobility on this side? They all were real people, once. Not literally, of course, but it is still majestic, no?”53

“Oh, yes. And each is made of wax?”54

“One-hundred percent! You see, wax gives them a lively look, especially in the candlelight of the evening. Wait until this exhibit opens, sir, it will be the historical experience of a lifetime.”55

“Most assuredly,” the impressed visitor said.56

“Ah, but my friend,” the excited man bubbled, “you haven’t yet seen the most enthralling piece of our show: the great spiral staircase, leading to the luxurious balcony! And on that balcony is where our richest guests may dine, creating for themselves an authentic Middle-Age meal experience!” The manager virtually bounded to the Western wall, where the great, wide staircase stood, inviting them up. 57

He suddenly stopped short.58

“What is that?” he asked, pointing at a small, white object, crumpled on the open floor underneath the balcony. He and his guest tiptoed quietly towards it, as a thousand blind eyes gazed blindly through their backs. “It isn’t part of the display.”59

They crept closer.60

Then he gasped. “It's...she's...” Both men froze in horror, seeing the lone, crushed figure, the one figure in the room that was not at all made of wax. With eyes as gray as the festive partygoers, dancing all around them.61

For minutes of hours, they stood and stared with half-open mouths and looked at her.62