By Jonathon David Hawkins
Enjoying the warmth of the setting sun on his bent back, the feel of clean, fresh air in his lungs, Dr. Karl Jäger was lost in reverie, enjoying a peaceful Sunday afternoon working in his garden. For once his coughing had subsided and he had been truly able to enjoy the spring afternoon without his medicinal draughts. He was bent over his bed of white roses, breathing deeply their sweet perfume, when a blur of color and sound came streaking across the small yard.
"Herr Doktor! Herr Doktor!" The dark haired girl crashed into Jäger, almost knocking him to the ground in her anxiousness to embrace him. "He asked, he asked, he asked! He asked! " Kissing the old man on his coarse cheek, the girl backed away with a joyful scream, dancing between the rows of plants, spinning and leaping.
"Steffi! Quiet, child, what is all this noise? Calm yourself before you crush my acacia!" The old man groaned a bit as his knees straightened, leaning heavily on his cane as he walked toward his niece. He raised his hands in protest, and his voice in mock reproach, as the girl rushed to embrace him again. "These bones are old, Little Angel! You threaten to break me with your affections! Now be calm and tell me what your screaming is about."
Jäger was a very old man, and the disorder from which he suffered so badly stooped his back so that Steffi was able to look her uncle in the eye when she collapsed cross-legged onto the ground. "Monsieur Reynard has asked me to marry him!" This secret revealed, Steffi leaned forward to place another kiss on her old uncle's cheek, her dark hair falling forward to touch the pristine whiteness of his own. Steffi's smile grew ever brighter until the corners of her grin threatened to touch her ears.
"The director of the company?" he asked with eyebrows raised.
"Yes! He asked me this morning. We are to be wed this very month!"
"So soon?"
"He said that he could not bear to wait even that long! Oh, Herr Doktor, Alfonse said that I am going to be his masterpiece, that I am perfect for the lead in Le Danse de L'Angel Noire." She had sprung to her feet again and spun about the edge of the garden, the bright spring daylight spraying off her whirling skirts until it seemed Sol itself had come to bless the herbs and flowers he grew for his shop. "He says that he will teach me to dance beautifully!"
"But, my child, you already dance beautifully, all the critics say so." Walking to the small building which doubled as his house and his apothecary, Jäger gestured to the young woman to follow. "But more importantly," he said, turning to her with an impish grin, " I say so."
Steffi returned his grin in kind, climbing the stairs behind him. "But Alfonse says that he will make me perfect, like an angel." Her smile faltered a little as memories flashed across her face. "Like my mother." Turning, Jäger reached out to hold her chin in his strong hand. "Steffi, you are like an angel come to earth when you grace the stage. You do the memory of your parents proud, and they live on every time you dance." He leaned forward and kissed the down turned cheek of his niece. "Come, let us go inside before Night's chill touches the air."
Again her smile turned down at the corners, and concern touched her eyes. "Herr Doktor! Your lungs...?"
"... Will serve this old and decrepit man for a while to come." he said, placing two fingers over her lips. "Now get inside so that I may have my evening tea."
Though the sky overhead was covered in a veil of graying clouds, the day was still bright and the white lace of Steffi's wedding dress glowed in the noontime light as she and her new husband stood greeting their guests at the reception. It was truly a grand celebration and—as she looked out over the laughing crowd and the tables laden with food and drink—Steffi felt a twinge of regret.
"What is wrong, Steffi?" She looked up into the dark, almost black eyes of Alfonse Reynard. Those eyes were set in a handsome face with features that seemed cut from oak, framed by soft brown hair.
Steffi looked back over the crowd of guests "I just wish that Dr. Jäger could have made it to the wedding."
"The old man?" Her face turned away, Steffi could not see the look of distaste that had spread across Reynard's face, but something in his tone and the shape of his words made her turn back to face him.
"He is very sweet and kind, and an old friend of my family. When my parents came here to France from Germany, they convinced him to come with them. They hoped that the warmer climate would help heal his lungs, and it did. But not entirely." Steffi paused to return a greeting from a young corps dancer with hair almost as black as her own. "That is why he could not make it today. Since my parents were killed he is all the family I've had."
"Until now, Steffi. You are with me, and I am your family." She felt his arms tighten around her waist and looked up into his face again. "From now on you are my Little Angel."
The guests saw them embrace, and many of the men gave up a rowdy cheer. But none of them could see the looks on their two faces. They saw neither the expression which Alfonse wore for that brief instant nor Steffi's small twinge of fear at what she saw flashing in those opaline eyes.
And Monsieur Reynard, director of the company, also announces that his wife will be taking an extended sabbatical from her position as principal ballerina in order to perfect her art. Furthermore..."
The doctor shook his head and his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he read the notice in the day's paper. Spring was already giving way to summer outside his window, but the season's warmth was unable to reach his bones as his aching and gaunt body bent double in a fit of coughing.
Why?! Why can't you do as you are told?!" Alfonse raged at the exhausted Steffi. She stood meekly, hugging herself, in the center of the studio that took up the third floor of his home. "Damn your eyes! Can't you even execute a simple petit allegro without stumbling? You are supposed to be portraying an angel falling from grace, an object of beauty, not a drunken farmer falling off of his cart!" The spit flew from his lips as he chastised her, his beautiful dark eyes burning like chips of coal. "Your dancing is as ugly as those dead trees!" With a derisive wave of his hand the angry man gestured to the trees standing outside, bare as fall turned to winter.
"I... I'm sorry, Alfonse. It's my feet, they ache so I can hardly stand to..."
"Don't give me your excuses, little girl." He pounded the floor with his baton, the hardwood cracking under the force of his anger. "I don't want to hear any more of your damned complaints!" Alfonse stalked across the room to the door, retreating to his study as he did whenever a session ended like this—as they all too often did. "Go to that crippled little witch-doctor uncle of yours if you feel so ill. Maybe one of his potions can make you dance like a ballerina instead of a jackass."
Steffi's body shook as the door slammed behind him.
Awakened from his light sleep by the sound of the horse drawn cab stopping outside his shop, the old apothecary was already approaching the door when the knocking started. "Come in, Little Angel! Come in!" Dr. Jäger ushered his ashen-faced niece through the entry and into his study. "I've not seen you in months! And you limp! What is wrong?"
Steffi, collapsing into a high-backed chair, looked up at her uncle. "My feet hurt, Herr Doktor. I need you to make them well so that I can dance beautifully again. So that I can make Alfonse happy." Jäger's strong hands, nimble despite the ravages of his disorder, moved with the utmost care as he removed her shoes, but she still winced in pain at their soft touch. A gasp escaped his lips as he saw her feet.
They were bruised, callused, and swollen, twisted almost into deformity. The nails, curving down over the tips of the toes, were cracked and chipped and in places the calluses were cracked open and bleeding. "What has happened?" he demanded. One look into her tired red eyes and he knew what, or rather who, had happened without need for her to speak. "How many hours a day does he make you practice, Steffi?"
"He just wants me to be perfect, Uncle. It's my own fault that..."
"How many, Steffi?"
Her eyes fell shut and her head lolled back against the chair. "Eight hours, Herr Doktor. Sometimes nine." Her eyes opened again and tears began to well up like the first heavy drops before the storm, and he embraced her as they began to flood down her cheeks. "I try! I really do! But I can never do it well enough! He wrote Le Danse de L'Angel Noire especially for me, but I can never get it right!"
He stroked the hair of his niece, holding her as tightly as he could. "Hush, Little Angel, hush." The aged man held her for a long while, until the sobbing gave way to trembling and then to gasps and dry tears. "I must go into my shop to make a salve for your feet, Steffi, then I will return." He waited for her to nod before hurrying away as fast as his aging body could carry him. When he returned, he held a glass bottle and a packet of brown paper.
She winced in pain as he rubbed dark liquid from the bottle onto the skin of her battered feet. "This is a salve of Arnica, Agrimony, English Ivy, and Fenugreek. Apply it four times each day. It will help your wounds heal." He showed her the brown packet. "And put two teaspoons of this into your tea at every meal."
Her eyes heavy, Steffi reached out to grasp the thick envelope, asking "What is it?"
"Heather Blossoms, Skullcap, and Devil'sBit." Touching her thinning arms, "It is for the rest of your body. You are feverish and have lost too much weight. You must eat more if you are to regain your health."
The girl shook her head and closed her eyes, the dark circles seeming to deepen them into pits. "I cannot, Herr Doktor. Alfonse has me on a diet, so that I may look like an angel as well as dance like one." She collapsed into tears again. "But I can't do it! I try so hard, but he asks so much... He wants me to do things that are impossible. I dance en pointe till my toes almost break! I'm just so tired..."
The doctor sat there holding her until she drifted off to sleep. Once her breathing deepened and he knew she would not wake, he finally allowed himself to surrender to a fit of coughing: he fled leaving the room as he did so, not wanting to disturb her. Lost in worry over his niece, he absently wiped the blood from his lips and stared out the window and into the night.
Herr Doktor, please! You mustn't leave me alone!" Steffi was even paler than the last time he had seen her. Yet even she was not able to compare to the old man, whose skin was white as the snow that piled against the window and the hair spread upon his pillow. His body had shrunken to almost nothing with the progression of his illness and when he spoke, his lips, reddened by blood from his lungs and torn throat, barely moved. In speaking his voice was almost lost to the wind that whispered just beyond the frosted glass.
"I have no choice, Little Angel." His fingers, as brittle as the stems that lay beneath the pale blanket covering his garden, reached out to his bedside table to clutch at the silver locket lying there. He was too weak to lift it to Steffi's open hand, so she reached out and pulled it gently from his grasp. "That was your aunt's," he said in a hoarse whisper, "she wore it until the day she died. We gave them to each other on the day we were married. Each contained a lock of the other's hair, so that each would always have a part of the other, no matter what became of us." One of those thin, white fingers reached up to touch the locket that still hung around his neck. "Her hair was as black as your own, and still lies next to this old heart."
The doctor's body shook with a spasm of coughing and he did not talk for several moments afterward. Her heart tearing in two, all Steffi could do was watch and wait. "I give this locket to you, Little Angel. Keep it next to your heart now, so that a part of your old uncle will always be with you. And this old apothecary has one other last gift to give his niece." He crooked a single finger at her and she bent forward to hear what he had to say as his voice dropped so low as to be almost inaudible. When he finished whispering into her ear, Steffi pulled back, a happy but confused look upon her face, doubt tugging at the corners of her eyes. Then, as his gaze slipped back into memories and years long since passed, a slight smile traced those reddened lips and his voice grew somewhat stronger.
"One last dance... Long ago—before this body started to fail me, before my muscles weakened and my back bent—I, too, danced. Not as well as your mother and father, but well enough. It was so beautiful, to be able to go beyond this world, to bring to it something from beyond Heaven, even if only for a few moments." His chest shook as he exhaled what little air his lungs would hold, his eyes closing for a moment before he again met his niece's tired gaze. "Oh, my Steffi, the joy in watching you dance!" His own smile was reflected in Steffi's face even as the tears glistened brightly in her brown eyes. His voice again began to fade. "Don't cry, Little Angel. Remember: one last dance.", his eyes slowly closing as he found his peace, "One... last... dance."
Alfonse looked at Steffi over the top of his brandy as she walked through the front door. "Close it. You're letting in the snow and chill." He looked back into the fire. "Is he dead?"
Steffi stood, a puddle forming around her feet as the snow melted off of her cloak. "Yes. He is no longer suffering."
He made a movement that might have been a shrug. "You missed your afternoon practice. You'll have to make up for it tomorrow."
"No." He looked up at her sharply, the anger already welling up in his eyes as the tears had in hers but a short while before. Her next words, however, cut his rage short. "I will practice tonight. I will finally dance as you've wanted me to dance. I will be waiting in the studio."
Alfonse stared dumbly at her as she walked lightly and quickly up the stairs. He poured himself another glass of brandy and finished his pipe before rising. When he reached the third floor, Steffi was already changed and standing in the center of the studio, finishing her stretching.
Picking up his baton from where it stood by the door, Alfonse crossed the floor to take his accustomed place before the windows. Steffi merely shook her head.
"There will be no prompting tonight, Monsieur Reynard. Tonight only the music and the dancing will speak." He opened his mouth to protest, but her voice had such a strength, a presence, that had never been there before. He had no choice but to sit and watch as she allowed the needle to drop onto the wax disk. The music started, the score he had commissioned filling the massive room more completely than the dim light shed by the few lamps Steffi had lit. She began to dance.
Her movements flowed like wine from a glass. Her pirouette was like a leaf spinning on a gentle breeze, her brisé volé like the swallow's flight. As the music swelled, then ebbed, then swelled again, so did Steffi's movements. It seemed as if the music danced to her rather than her to it, perfection beyond dreaming. From the round of her arms to the lines of her legs as they cut the air, she was visual ecstasy.
When the record stopped and its music ended, she filled the studio with the silent symphony of her movements. Alfonse, transfixed, didn't even notice that she had gone beyond his Dark Angel's Dance and on to something far more perfect, far more moving. The beauty of her movement caught the breath in his throat and the absolute and angelic perfection of her grace touched his darkling heart, gripping it in a stilling embrace. And as the light faded from his eyes, Reynard was certain that he could see the figure of a man—an inferno of red hair blazing upon his head—raising Steffi above him in the most graceful arabesque he had ever seen, like a piece of lace held aloft by the heat of a flame.
The maid, looking for her employer, found the two bodies the next day. Steffi lying on the floor in a sleep of immaculate peace and happiness, a smile playing across her lips, and Monsieur Alfonse in sleep far deeper, far more still.
On the floor by Steffi's hand lay a silver locket, fallen open. As the maid looked closer she was able to see that its contents, stirring slightly in the soft draft of Steffi's breath, were two small locks of flame red hair.