Then, without warning, notes from a single flute floated as if down on a breeze, and with a quick snap of wrists the dancers twitched the ropes into soaring, billowing squares of gauze.
A gasp from the watchers greeted the sudden change, as the gauzy material rippled and arched and curled through the air, expertly manipulated by the dancers until it seemed the scarves were alive and another kind of dance altogether took place above the humans.
Then the dancers added finger cymbals, clinking and clashing in a syncopated beat that caused, I noted as I looked about me, responsive swayings and nods and taps of feet. Now it was time for the love songs, and first was the ancient Four Questions, sung in antiphony by the women and the men, and then reversed. High voices and deep echoed down from the unseen gallery, as the dancers below handed out smaller versions of the scarves and drew the guests into the dance.
…why this firebrand for me?
Dancers, lovers, all turned and stepped and circled, connected only by the scarves which hid them, then revealed them, then bound them together as they stepped in, his corner held high by the shoulder, hers low at her waist.
The music, flawlessly performed, the elusive perfume on the scarves--all made the atmosphere feel charged with physical awareness. In the very center of all the dancers were Branaric and Nimiar, circling round one another, their faces flushed and glowing, eyes ardent.
I scarcely recognized my own brother, who moved now with the unconscious ease that makes its own kind of grace, and in a dainty but provocatively deliberate counterpoint danced Nee. It was she, and not Bran, who--when the gauze was overhead, making a kind of canopy that turned their profiles to silhouettes--leaned up to steal a kiss. Then they separated, she casting a look over her shoulder at him that was laughing and not laughing, and which caused him to spin suddenly and crush her in both arms, just for a moment, as around them the others swirled and dipped and the gauzes rose and fell with languorous grace.
As I watched, images flitted through my mind of little Ara, the girl I'd met last year who talked so cheerily of twoing. And of Oria, and of the summer dances on our hills; and I realized, at last, how emotion-parched I was and how ignorant of the mysteries of love.
I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had never felt it myself. As I watched, isolated but unable to turn away, I suddenly wished that I could feel it. No, I feel it, I realized. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it before as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. And I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.
A gasp from the watchers greeted the sudden change, as the gauzy material rippled and arched and curled through the air, expertly manipulated by the dancers until it seemed the scarves were alive and another kind of dance altogether took place above the humans.
Then the dancers added finger cymbals, clinking and clashing in a syncopated beat that caused, I noted as I looked about me, responsive swayings and nods and taps of feet. Now it was time for the love songs, and first was the ancient Four Questions, sung in antiphony by the women and the men, and then reversed. High voices and deep echoed down from the unseen gallery, as the dancers below handed out smaller versions of the scarves and drew the guests into the dance.
…why this firebrand for me?
Dancers, lovers, all turned and stepped and circled, connected only by the scarves which hid them, then revealed them, then bound them together as they stepped in, his corner held high by the shoulder, hers low at her waist.
The music, flawlessly performed, the elusive perfume on the scarves--all made the atmosphere feel charged with physical awareness. In the very center of all the dancers were Branaric and Nimiar, circling round one another, their faces flushed and glowing, eyes ardent.
I scarcely recognized my own brother, who moved now with the unconscious ease that makes its own kind of grace, and in a dainty but provocatively deliberate counterpoint danced Nee. It was she, and not Bran, who--when the gauze was overhead, making a kind of canopy that turned their profiles to silhouettes--leaned up to steal a kiss. Then they separated, she casting a look over her shoulder at him that was laughing and not laughing, and which caused him to spin suddenly and crush her in both arms, just for a moment, as around them the others swirled and dipped and the gauzes rose and fell with languorous grace.
As I watched, images flitted through my mind of little Ara, the girl I'd met last year who talked so cheerily of twoing. And of Oria, and of the summer dances on our hills; and I realized, at last, how emotion-parched I was and how ignorant of the mysteries of love.
I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had never felt it myself. As I watched, isolated but unable to turn away, I suddenly wished that I could feel it. No, I feel it, I realized. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it before as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. And I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.
( Sherwood Smith )
[ Court Duel ]
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