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Rue was not allowed to dance, when she came home.
Her father didn't say this aloud, not in any explicit sense, but he dressed her down in petticoats and corsets until it was all she could do to even keep a brisk walk through the house. And it was a large house. Every time she visited, the stairways spiraled longer, the halls stretching beyond her vision in the carefully cleaned darkness. Wood did not squeak beneath her feet as it was meant to, here. Very little played as it was meant to, in her father's domain.
"No," she muttered, forcing strings of hair behind her ears, "A death dirge is unacceptable." She sneezed as more records fell forward through her hands. The heavy dust of the attic stopped the noise before it could go far, but she still paused to straighten her back and look to the closed hatch. For how sound could betray her, it would never grant her equal power.
The candles glowed as vibrant feathers along the edges of her vision, brighter and brighter until everything before her had blurred. Blinking was out of the question. In the moment, her hair would pull itself together, tight in its bun again, and her makeup would no longer be smeared from sweat and exertion. Her father was powerful. Space and time could warp around his presence, and the shadows that bridged his nose, as he rose up with unspeakable grace and wisdom until she could not meet his eye. He would ask why, what about him was so terrible to her, and she would say,
Tears fell fat and cold against her hands, and she jolted upright.
The hatch was behind her. Her father had not come. The candles were only tame orange flame.
That wasn't quite right. Orange was never tame.
Outside the house, as ever, she heard the scream of a crow. A dirge is fine. Accept it.
Outside the house, as ever, she remembered the cheery laugh of a girl who had all the manners of a woodland creature. "Do we really always have to dance to such sad stories?"
"It's how it's always been," her own feet snapping cleanly against cobblestone road. "Would you rather not dance at all?"
Her bright orange braid bounced between the two of them like a pendulum, knocking off her count, of how many steps. "I'd like to dance to something happy with you, Rue!" If she had been counting in the first place - she shouldn't have been. "You always look like you're trying so hard. I'd like to see you dance to something you really enjoyed."
One step forward, Ahiru was right there, and Rue smiled, "Well now. That's rather presumptuous." The slightest challenge dancing along her lips. "Do you truly believe you could keep up?"
A clumsy girl waving her hands frantically, trying to correct herself - a reserved young woman laughing behind her fingers - sparrows chirped and flew away in the setting sun, instead.
Rue took one of her father's old jazz records. It was preferable to nothing at all.
Down the attic steps, there were twenty-five steps. To the floor she lives on, there were first fifteen steps forward, until she reached the one candle her father always forgets, and thirty steps right. There were only twenty steps down here, and to her unmarked door, past the window dressed in black lace, past the taxidermied birds that watch her every move, she needed to remember.
The birds had a tendency of watching for your steps. Curiosity, in some cases, most, most she wanted to believe. They remembered too well, themselves, how many wing beats it takes to reach their destination. Their home was written into their bones, and she could not allow herself to forget, forty-three steps, and a sharp twist of her heel to the door.
If she didn't, "Who knows," her father could echo in the shadows when he had not spoken, "Where you could end up?"
The darkness that stretched through her room did not carry the sun's soft resonance. Color was leeched away by how black stretched across the bed, dry white left to reflect dust ground away from bones. She threaded her fingers together, married in a cracking dance, and reclaimed the space.
Her father's record player sat clean in the space she slept, one of many that belonged to him alone. Placing the record itself was a ritual, steps along a wire, fingertips graciously slipping along the infinite edge. She took care where she placed her hands, in a dance, within her father's house, between Ahiru's fingers.
Rue took a step away. The thought of music never fit this house. Music was sitting late while someone else made up failures in class with extra, endless, practice, chaining her alongside her with smiles and hopeful blue eyes.
"How did this school ever accept you, Ahiru," she could say, more as a tired statement than any question.
Ahiru, with her fumbles in class readings and constant missed homework and struggles to stay present, would only ever laugh when the thought came up. Sheepish, apologetic, "We should make the penguin some cookies for staying so late," dodging the issue.
The pianist - she called them a penguin. Instead of reminding her it was impossible for flippers to dance along the ivories, as only people and humans play instruments, Rue would respond, "Penguins don't live around here, Ahiru."
"Birds migrate all the time!" in return, and Ahiru knew as many birds as she did. The two of them could hop back and forth about the relative likelihood of new winged neighbors.
Her friend flapped her arms in water as though she would take off through it, dive underneath as though she'd lived there all her life, when Rue would sit at the side admiring how her legs reflected sun and stone. Both of them preening and smiling - laughing about Ahiru managing to build her own nest of pretty rocks and beautifully curved sticks.
"If I'm building a nest, it'll have to be big enough for both of us," she'd say.
"I already have my own nest to stay in."
"Wow!" Ahiru was too excited about terrible things. "So your dad's a bird?"
Her nails caught along her petticoat as she tried to escape it. A bird - a monstrous raven.
Rue unwound herself from clothes and expectations, down to thin undergarments and slippers. Hair bounced against her cheeks, tight and crinkled but open to the breeze weakly pushing through the door's crack. Her music started with a distant hum. She took the first step onto the balcony.
In school, she would dance along piano and violin. She prepared herself for that, feet poised and knees bent, yet - this was percussion. Lively, burning drums that made the hair along her skin stand on edge. Rue relaxed, to her heel, and lazily spun in a circle. A trumpet rung out and she popped to attention. There was no careful arch here, no practiced lope, not like ballet demanded of her. Jazz carried her in a different way, till she was bouncing from foot to foot, unsure of what to do with her hands, incredulous smile uncontrollably wide on her face. Gentle memories sprung up from the blood rushing through her veins.
"Miss Edel taught me about all kinds of dance," Ahiru said one day, in the hall between their rooms. "Grampa wants me to keep learning ballet, but did you know about tap? Or ballroom? Sometimes they wear these huge dresses instead of tutus, isn't that amazing?"
"It makes sense, Ahiru," Rue had answered, distracted. "Different forms of dance allow for different weights and movement. We need lighter acrouments for our assignments." Less and less until she could leap from the balcony and fly lighter than air away from the house, away from the swamp her father was so sure she would fall into.
Here, her feet pounded against the ground, unable to take off, but she kept on bouncing with childish exuberance as saxophones sang to her, unable to carry anything but her spirits.
"You know that much?" She was always amazed at the most unnecessary things, and Rue's eyes were so tightly shut, colors blossomed and exploded into melting pinks and blues like that freckled face. "What else do you know about?"
It wasn't enough - it wasn't even important. Rue couldn't bring herself to brush Ahiru off. Edel was just another witch in the swamps, no matter how kind her friend said she was.
"She also told me about swing! It all sounds so amazing, Rue, we should try it sometime!"
Always running off before Rue could pull together the strength to say no, always smiling and knowing how much she wanted to say yes. She didn't have a clue how Ahiru knew so much she'd never been told.
"Your name is Rue, then?" Edel was tall and moved as though she had been cut from marble. But she was beautiful - her hand against Rue's shoulder, the nape of her neck, had the most distant warmth. "Ahiru has told me so much about you."
"I'm sorry she's caused so much trouble on my account," she had answered, stately, sweating despite herself. Standing in front of the woman, she knew Edel could not truly be a witch. But it was terrifying - how safe her touch felt. "Thank you for allowing me into your home today."
Edel had given Rue the first of many strange smiles, then, in her room of candles and flickering bulbs and gentle pendulums. "I thought as much..."
Rue didn't ask why. Feathers could rise up in suspicion along her skin, if she was properly like her father, if she was not bound to be lost to these same crowded homes deep within trees and forsaken waters. If she was not so taken in by her dearest friend, she could say it was a lie, that this was Ahiru's home - she could say it was a lie that a home could feel so welcoming.
Lessons she didn't need to take - she couldn't say no to Ahiru after all this time.
So here, her legs began to remember what Edel told her, a minute late as she fumbled and realized how she'd bashed her arms against the metal banister.
Ahiru had grabbed her hand as the two of them stood by each other, facing forward, and jumped into the first step before Rue knew where she was going - the two of them sliding back on one heel to a harsh landing, but she had still laughed the whole time, apologizing, helping her up. Rue fell into the proper, simple step, bouncing one foot forward, back, the other another step back, and around again. It was so simple, but Ahiru took forever, and with her on board, it took so much longer for her to understand.
But there was a better bounce to her step, a better flourish and cheerful spin than she knew with ballet. She tired quickly, but kept pushing, imagining that she could spin the perfect 45 degrees to find Ahiru right there. She didn't open her eyes - she wasn't at home, but rather padding in her socks along Ahiru's dorm room.
"Surely there's somewhere better to do this," Rue panted, shoving a trunk up and against the wall. It was a dance school. The two of them had anywhere they wanted to practice.
"But Rue," Ahiru had responded, spinning her own name around her like a rope to draw her closer, "You seem so tense when we're using any of the main rooms." She threw extra leggings and skirts on her bed, unused notebooks and bags of bird feed. "You really change when you think other people are looking at you."
"No, I don't." She wasn't good with hairbands - always flicking them along her fingers and twisting up her masses of curly hair, frustrated that she hadn't pulled it into a bun before coming. She did the same countless times, never learning her lesson, always visiting Ahiru regardless. "You just make me act like a complete fool."
"Really?" There was too serious a tone to that, too shocked, as Rue looked back to her friend to see consternation and confliction, until Ahiru clapped her hands together. "Well, I'm glad. That's how friends are supposed to act together, after all!"
Rue practiced responses sometimes - to inform Ahiru how absurd that was, how they weren't as close as she thought, and trashed every single one.
Her feet in tights, on a concrete balcony, things stuck more than on carpet, but she pretended Ahiru could make her own room do that. Such a strange girl - she could imagine Ahiru accidentally layering concrete mix across the floors, just so she could write the names of everyone she loved, only to realize how much of a mistake she'd made later, and Rue, laughed.
"Wow," the softest murmur from below, ringing louder in her bones than any trumpet or drum beat.
Rue cast her gaze down to the ground, falling from the balcony, to a flicker of orange flame dancing through the bushes.
Her voice crackled in dissonance against the music. "Ahiru?"
The flame startled, leaping out of shadow, till the girl's inflamed face was clear in sunlight. The record skipped, stammered, "Well, I." Well, she - could see distant fingers tap together, horns jumping over one another backwards. Another I skipping back from her mouth and Rue was shocked all over again, in that single moment of fire biting at her skin. She would jump away, sensible, but it was gone before it could progress, gone before it could hurt her, held back in Ahiru biting her tongue.
"And I will always lo-" skipping again to the rise of brass. Her head spinning, on point alongside the machinery, Rue chose to turn the record player off.
"Ah!" Ahiru's voice was the chirp of sparrows that would not cross the border of her father's house. "I'm sorry, you didn't have to stop the music on my account!" Her voice was fresh rain, rather than the years of antique dust in Rue's ears, both of them padding closer till she felt her hair cascading over her shoulders.
She would look down upon Ahiru. "I hope you realize how out of sorts you are." Yet her voice could not come as a hiss towards her. "This is my father's land. You should leave before anyone notices." For her, Rue spoke with a dignity that melted into worried affection.
"You looked like you needed a partner, though!"
"Not one like you, certainly," she responded, a short laugh, her heart pounding in her chest.
"Just until you get a better one!" Ahiru stepped forward, her shorts catching in the leaves and branches till they caught her, just like Rue had warned. She swan-dived into the grass, arms flapping fast enough to blend into wings, still bouncing into the ground with a muffled giggling grunt.
"Ahiru," she murmured, concern wavering through how she tried to hold her face still, hand reaching forward and down. "Go home. When we go back to school."
Every time, she would scramble up - every time, color in her memory, leaves like down feathers in her hair, bounce on her feet, wave like all her untamable hair. "Why wait?" For all her confidence, Ahiru's smile was sheepish. Beautiful, Rue would never say but had to admit. "I've never seen you look like you're having so much fun with dance before ... you were so pretty!"
Effort, nervousness, concern, too much dance she barely knew, the thought that her father would come, but he hadn't - her face was burning. Tears pricked at her eyes and Ahiru's gaze would not let her go.
"You can't come up here," she said, utter finality. Her long legs fit over the railing, beautiful, elegant, till another smile spread on her face. Mischievous. "I suppose I'll just have to come down to you."
Ahiru never stopped lighting up, brighter than the sun, impossible to look at for anyone who hadn't already been burnt up in her rays. Rue didn't mind. Her friend, her dear duck, was too predictable and she should have known Ahiru would leap up to try to catch her as she fell - tangled up in her long braid, legs caught between her arms, aching and laughing.
"Are you okay?" and she would answer with a million affirmations, taken away with the feeling of music and everything Edel had taught the two of them in those swamps she called home. "I could take to you Miss Edel, if anything's wrong!"
Rue stared, wide surprised eyes - for all Ahiru knew, it was so strange she didn't already know the answer was simply, "Absolutely."
The two of them always happy to learn, together, all their clumsy dances, buoyant over all that threatened to drag them down.
Dance to remind her she had her own magic beyond these stately chains.