familiar – like a fairy ring, she thought – and she knew that here, at least, she was safe.
He had let go of her hand and was searching in the basket. 'Ah, here we are. I knew I'd brought this old thing along.'
It was a stubby white flageolet of polished wood.
'Oh,' she said, 'I didn't know you played the flute!'
He beamed at her. 'Let's just say I've taught myself to play one or two songs.'
He brought it to his mouth, but paused.
'Wait a second,' he said, 'before I go gumming it up, why don't you have a try?' He extended it toward her. 'Don't worry, it's clean.'
'But I don't know how to-'
'That's okay,' he said, holding it out, 'just give it a try.'
She stepped back – he was practically shoving the thing into her face – but she didn't want to hurt his feelings and he seemed so eager that at last she took it and put the end in her mouth. Touching her fingers to the holes, she played a few notes. The sound was jarring, strident, but the fact that she had tried it seemed to please him.
'Good,' he said, taking the instrument from her. 'I can see you've got real talent!' He laughed.
'Very funny,' she said, oddly humiliated. 'Now it's your turn.'
'I'd be delighted,' he said, with a courtly bow. 'But only on one condition – that you dance for me.'
'Here?' She searched his face in the darkness, trying to see if he was joking. 'What kind of a dance?'
He cocked his head. 'The one we've been practicing, of course!'
'I'm still a little stiff from a class I took last night,' she said. 'And I'm not so sure I'd feel right doing it here… '
'Come on now, Carol,' he said, smiling, 'this is absolutely the perfect place. You've always wanted to be a dancer. Now's your chance!'
Maybe it would be best to humor him. Besides, it was so dark no one would be able to see her.
'Oh, all right, why not? I'll pretend I'm a – what did you call it?-a dryad.'
She stepped forward into the circle and waited silently, trying to recall the steps from last night. There were just nine of them, she knew, repeated over and over in a complicated sequence: a step here, a back-step, a spin…
He was already raising the flute to his lips, and now he began to play – a slow, measured series of low notes, not exactly a melody, but the notes seemed to belong together, flowing into one another like the music a snake charmer played. Concentrating on the rhythm, she began to dance, slowly at first, in time with the music, but then faster as the music picked up speed. She had started out feeling somewhat self-conscious, even after her practice it was hard to think of where to put her feet, but gradually, as she let the music take her, she began not to think about the steps, they began to be second nature, maybe it was the wine; she simply let her feet and hands and head move the way they wanted to and felt wonderfully free and not afraid at all.
The song ended. She found herself standing in the center of the circle, thoroughly winded but, like last night, eager for more. She took a few deep breaths; her head was spinning.
'That was wonderful!' said Rosie. He walked out toward her. 'It was like watching the music come alive.'
'Oh, really, I was awful.' She shook her head but was pleased. 'It's a wonder you could even see me. There's practically no light here.'
He smiled. 'I could see that necklace of yours whirling in the dark.'
'You mean my little plastic halo!' She could feel it encircling her sweaty throat. Her hand went to it. 'I'll have to remember to dance with it again some time.'
He checked his watch. 'As a matter of fact, we have more time right now. Ic isn't very late, and there's something I'd rather like to try. Something special.'
'A different dance?'
'No, just a different song.'
She shrugged. 'All right. Sure. It might be fun to try out a new song.'
'Actually,' he said, 'it isn't new at all. In fact, it's very very old. But I think you might enjoy dancing to it.' He didn't give her time to reply. Laying out the blanket, he sat down and crossed his legs. 'Ready?'
'No, wait.' She ran a hand through her hair and loosed the top button of her dress. 'Ready.'
The new song was even more beautiful than the first – more exotic, yet she almost felt she'd heard parts of it before, and wondered where. No matter, she was busy now, concentrating on the steps: The backstep, the spin, the lift of the arm, the faster spin…
The rhythm was different this time, it took her a while to get accustomed to it, but then she saw that, in fact, it was far more suited to the dance than the first song had been.
The lift of the arm, the faster spin, the special signs the hands made with the next spin… And then the step, the spin, the spin. ..
And suddenly she was into it; the music was inside her now and the stars were whirling overhead. It felt lovely, she had never known dancing could be like this… And the steps were suddenly easy, they came to her so naturally that she didn't even have to think about them, she could watch the trees surrounding her like guards, their arms entwined, all black and green in the starlight.
The spin, the spin…
And the night was heating up around her, and the grass was soft, and the tune he was playing was indescribably beautiful; she let it move her as it willed, stepping when it called for her to step, and spinning when it called for her to spin, and her body grew warm as she whirled round and round in her silky green dress with her flame-colored hair forming the center of a great green flower and her head spinning and her hands making the signs…
The special signs the hands made with the next spin, the step, the spin, the spin…
And her body was hot now, her feet were on fire, she paused to kick her shoes off beneath one of the trees and then whirled back into the circle, barefoot now, the music lifting her again, whirling her round and round until her head was spinning faster than the stars and the green dress was swirling round her legs and her necklace was twirling in the dark and her body was burning, burning… And she knew what to do; while Rosie played and didn't see, she spun behind a tree and slipped off her underwear, leaving it a little splotch of white on the dark grass, and then she spun back into the circle, Rosie would never know, she whirled and danced for him and felt the music lift her as before, the grass alive and hot beneath her feet, her dress swirling around her waist now, her legs and body bare against the night, the night air on her body as she spun.
The spin, the spin…
The trees danced round and round her and her body was on fire, and she knew she would have to dance faster till the burning went away, and dimly she knew, as she danced even faster, that her dancing was forming a pattern within the circle of trees, tracing a picture so monstrous and huge that no one in a million years could ever possibly imagine what it was… And the stars were a part of the dance now, whirling with her as she moved about the circle, and dark green things were stirring in the grass, rising from the earth and fluttering around her, tiny green butterflies with wings like leaves, or maybe they were leaves that moved like butterflies, creatures from a deck of magic cards, and even the trees were moving to the song, and things in the trees, the faces in the leaves and the branches and the air, and she danced and danced until she felt so hot that she thought she would burn up, and she knew she was the native girl who'd dance until she died, and her body was on fire, and the fire was all around her, and she collapsed in a heap in the middle of the circle just as the song ended.
She could hardly remember how she got home. She had dim memories of Rosie pulling her after him into a cab, and of riding up in the elevator with him, her feet still bare, the floor painful beneath them, painful and dirty and cold… And then he was gripping her hand tightly and saying goodbye at her door, just as if he were a proper young gentleman and she his date.
And the next thing she knew it was Sunday morning, she was still in her green dress, the cloth all damp and sticky now and wrinkled from the bed, and her hair was matted and greasy and there was a silly white piece of plastic around her neck.
She was stiff and aching all over, but her feet hurt the worst. They were raw and blistered, as if instead of dancing last night on some grass in the park, she had been walking through a desert.
