dolphin in the ocean. It had gotten into my blood and my feet. I could have flown to the moon or danced along a high wire. I could do anything. This place was perfect, with its colored lights, its deep shadows, and its music, and I was perfect in it. For the first time in my entire life, I was comfortable in my own skin. This was right where we needed to be. I knew it for sure.
Jack was perfect too. He steered me beautifully during the slow numbers, and when Mr. Basie’s band picked up the pace again, we stomped down and kicked back into a swing step.
“Callie…,” Jack whispered like someone coming up for air.
“I know!” I cried as the next song began. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
There was just a heartbeat before his great big grin spread across his face. “Sure is!”
Jack gripped my hands tightly, and we plunged in deep among the taller, slower dancers. We spun around each other, kicking and jumping high. The music washed through me. I was made of music.
But then a new noise rippled beneath the music. It was a kind of distant roaring, like the wind rushing around the eaves. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw someone fall down.
I blinked and turned my head, trying to see better. All at once, I wasn’t in the middle of the glittering crowd anymore. I was in a dim and dusty pavilion. Daylight filtered through tiny strips of window high above. Around me, people in faded dresses and overalls staggered around the dance floor to the strident, off-key music of a tired band. Next to the door hung a sign:
FAIRYLAND DANCE MARATHON!
27 DAYS AND COUNTING!
WHO WILL BE THE NEXT TO FALL?
But Jack, following the music, turned us again, and I caught sight of my grandparents on their thrones. I was in their dance hall again, and I knew that other place was just my imagination. The dance marathon was a whole world away. This was my party. I could dance forever; I was that strong and that free. I grinned at Jack.
But Jack didn’t look quite right anymore. He was kind of pale, and his coffee-and-cream freckles stood out sharp against his skin. He was sweating, and he had to close his mouth around his breathing to smile at me and swing me around again.
KANSAS CITY DANCE MARATHON. The words from the flyer I’d pulled out of Shimmy’s handbag flickered in front of my eyes again. Why was I thinking about that? This wasn’t a dance marathon. This was a celebration, the celebration of my homecoming.
Jack stumbled. I tightened my grip on his hands. His cold hands.
“Jack?”
His jaw sagged open again. “Callie…,” he croaked. “Callie, I think something’s wrong with me…”
But what could be wrong, with the music and the lights and my grandparents smiling down at us? It was perfect and magical. Like time was standing still.
Jack stumbled again.
“Jack…”
“Gotta… gotta keep moving…,” he gasped.
“No. Let’s go sit down, okay? I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Can’t. Can’t. Gotta keep moving. They say I gotta keep moving.”
“Who, Jack? Who says?”
He stared at me. His eyes were clouded over, milky. “Don’t know,” he wheezed. “Just… gotta keep dancing.”
I whipped my head around, turning us, trying to catch my grandparents’ attention. But they just waved from high on their thrones.
The current of the music pulled hard at me. My grip on my worry started to loosen, and I wanted to let it go. This was where I belonged, inside this life and vitality. I needed to drink it all into myself. I’d be even stronger than I was now. I’d be able to dance forever, and that was all I wanted, wasn’t it? Sure, I wanted to talk about who I was and what had happened to my papa. But there was time enough for that later. Grandmother had promised we’d talk when tomorrow got here.
Which was a funny way to say “later.” Like when Shimmy said Jack would take no harm walking into her house, when we weren’t in her house.
We weren’t in her house now either. We were in a magic country where even Death could be pushed around. Could they push around Time too? Thought and memory shoved hard against the music, trying to get up to where they could be seen.
I’d torn time right open back on the prairie, back when it was Jack who believed I was half fairy and I tried to tell him that was all baloney. What if my fairy grandparents could stop time in its tracks?
The music slowed down, becoming sultry. A woman in a sparkling red gown had stepped in front of Mr. Basie’s piano. I blinked, and looked, and blinked again.
“SHIMMY!”
Shimmy waved and smiled at me like nothing had ever been wrong. Then she took hold of the microphone and raised her voice to sing.
Shimmy had a fine voice, full of feeling. She sang-she wept, really-about a man who’d done her wrong, and about how she should never let him go, never, ever let him go.
Jack slumped into my arms, but that didn’t seem important. What was important was that Shimmy was alive and well, and right where she wanted to be, home among the fairies, singing for their delight. Grandfather had promised she’d be rewarded, and she was.
I felt I should listen to that song about holding on to your man. I should hold on to mine forever and never let him go.
“Gotta keep moving,” Jack said. He was right, of course. I couldn’t leave the music or the dance. I didn’t belong out there. I never had. I belonged right here, just like Shimmy did. I waved at her, and she winked at me.
But Jack’s head lolled against my shoulder, and a bolt of fear shot through to my heart. It touched the spot where I could still muster a sense of right, and that feeling spread up my spine to my drowning head. It occurred to me that this much magic might not actually be good for a normal person. As much as I belonged here with my family, it wasn’t Jack’s world. I thought maybe I should get him out into the fresh air, away from some of the swirling power.
“Okay, Jack. We’ll keep moving.” I stretched my neck to see past the dancers until I got a bead on the double doors we’d come through. Jack was supposed to be leading because he was the boy, but he could barely support his own weight now, so I had to take over. I struggled with the rhythm but slowly steered us toward the edge of the dance floor. If I could just get him back outside to the midway, it would be all right. I was sure of it.
“Callie, my dear, where
I turned us both around, and there was my grandmother.
She didn’t look so happy anymore.
24
My hands went cold, and I groped quick after a lie. “I… uh… I was gonna go ride the Ferris wheel. I’ve never
