Losses

She is used to being called for tests at any time of day, sometimes in the middle of the night. She has become so accustomed to the same path from the library or the study to the arena that she could –and she has before- find it with her eyes closed. Tonight, though, she is led down a series of unfamiliar passages, thin dark twists in which the walls, which she feels by reaching out a tentative hand, are ice cold. She narrows her eyes in the darkness but her father walks behind her, giving directions when they reach a door or a fork in the passage.

Her father pushes her toward the arena, but she stops barely inside the room she has become so familiar with. It is not so familiar now.

In the arena, stretching across the floor is a huge raised platform, its supports hidden in the shadow cast beneath it. The platform is smooth and covered with calf-high wooden pegs, sanded to the smoothness of beach glass.

There are no lanterns above to illuminate the platform, no candelabras or flames flickering in sconces. The ceiling and walls are inky black. There is nothing to light up the space, yet it is lit, from some spot she cannot pinpoint.

Her father shoves her toward the platform when a low narrow staircase brings to the pegged surface. When she glances back, her father has dissolved into the shadows.

She tries to brighten the space around herself, expand the circle of light or bring unseen candles to life, and is surprised when she cannot. She is equally surprised when another figure steps onto the opposite end of the platform. It is a girl, in an apprentice’s pale blue uniform, with remarkably bright red hair.

She recognizes the red haired girl; they are no more than acquaintances but they have often studied in the gardens together, or when the gardens are filled with snow, in adjoining rooms of the library, though they study vastly different subjects. She recalls sitting next to the girl in an alcove as they both avoided their teaches, she was found quickly, she can never elude her father for more than a few hours, but the red haired girl did not emerge until the sun has melted into the sky and early stars were twinkling.

The red haired girl looks at her for an indication of what to expect. She is as puzzled as her opponent, her red brow wrinkles in confusion.

Two scholars emerge from the lightlessness, ascending the steps and wordlessly stopping before both girls.

She is handed two identical daggers, twins in gold and steel, much to her surprise. A long pointed one with a simple silver hilt, a gold dragon winding around the pommel and guard, where his coils are separated she slips her fingers into the grooves and grasps it tightly, the ore too soft, she would have thought, for a weapon intended for use beyond ornament. It is long and pointed, double edged, made for stabbing and slicing.

Her opponent, when she steps into the arena, also has two daggers, but hers are gold and black with a single ruby eye in the pommel.

She and her opponent lock eyes and they are equally confused by their battlefield.

In the ghostly light, the blade glints like the eyes of a needle.

“Fight,” says a voice, an amplified contortion of her father’s command, and she understands. It is a physical test.

It is not the tests she has taken before, not the challenges she has performed in what she has called, up to now, the Exhibition Hall. It is not the sequestered lessons in her father’s study, or the intimate affairs in which she presents her skills to her father’s company. The test has an entirely new meaning, and a much greater magnitude.

It is the first challenge in which she has faced an opponent and she thinks it may be her last. She knows this girl, not by name, but occupation. The red-haired girl has been apprentice to fencers and swordsman and is old friends with many exotic arms. She moves with the grace and speed of a jungle cat.

She knows she has no chance of defeating the red haired girl.

Uncertainly she raises her blade, the red haired girl mimics her. They take their time drawing toward one another, reluctant to confront one another with alien weapons, on such unsettling terms. They wind around the pegs, taking care not to bump their shins, until only a few pegs separate them.

She does not make the first attack. The red haired girl lunges forward, jabbing with the tip of her dagger. She catches it with the flat side of her blade, near her clavicle. She pushes the dagger away and sweeps to the side, bringing her other dagger in an arc to her left, aimed for the red haired girl’s side. The red haired girl dodges easily, spinning around her. As the seconds stretch out she hears them like the ticking of a clock. They cease when her opponent drapes a hand over her shoulder, reaching around her neck with her jet and gold knife.

She wraps her fingers around the slim wrist and pulls, launching opponent over her shoulder. The red haired girl lands lightly and spins to face her. The air is alive, crisp and cool and writhing with fury and her own fear. She is shaking with the effort of not snapping any of the pegs on the platform.

They continue to circle, lunging and parrying, moving like charmed snakes, bound to each other by fear. She keeps her eyes on the girl. For the red haired girl it is a test of swordsmanship, for herself, a test of her manipulation of speed and strength.

Suddenly, the ground tilts downward under her feet and she falls forward, reaching for the pegs to stop herself. Her opponent slides backward and drops on her knees to wind her elbows around two pegs, waiting for it to stop. It doesn’t stop. The arena is moving and the players must adapt.

They fall down together, she is thrown backward, landing awkwardly in the space between pegs and striking her knee on a peg while her opponent lurches forward. She feels as though she is in a dream.

They sway on the moving platform, bending and staying low to avoid falling, though sometimes the ground shifts so suddenly they must clutch the pegs so as not to slide off.

She wonders if she could still the ground, if it is a contraption built by the scholars, she is sure she could. She concentrates on the ground; feeling the depth of the wood and the hollowness beyond it, empty of clockwork or any sort or mechanisms. She loses sight of the red haired girl.

It is a mistake. The red haired girl, fueled by desperation and terror so acute it is almost palpable, and also by instinct, brings her dagger forward, slicing through the soft flesh of her shoulder. Time is suspended for a moment, the image frozen of blood blossoming on her white skin like paint on a flower.

The pain in her shoulder burns, she feels as though her arm has been torn apart. She tries to find the edges, to pull them back together. It is the balance, between focusing on the weapon before her, and bringing together the ragged fringes of her skin, it is more a thousand times more painful than the cuts she has practiced with before.

Her panic tastes coppery.

She concentrates, retreating a few steps out of reach to do so, following the threads of her broken skin with her mind. Slowly they weave together, her blood running back up her arm and into the cut, her skin pulls together and the cut fades to a red line, then to nothing.

It is the concentration she has worked so hard to build in her father’s study increased a thousandfold.

The pain dissipates, like ink in water, and her newly healed skin makes her feel strong. She feels like steel, energy breaking in her veins like white waves. The red haired girl’s face is white, her hands shaky, as she returns the strike.

The tempo of the fight increases. They dance across the platform, as hurricane of flashing silver and gold.

Smooth and graceful as snakes.

She moves lithely and fluid as water, stepping around the other girl, feeling powerful and fearful.

Her strikes to her opponent make her feel animal, carnal, vicious. When she stands the red haired girl flinches.

It is the most potent energy she has ever felt, born not from focus and concentration, but from fury and danger.

She is bright as sparks, cool as ice. Danger flares in her like fire. The air around her crackles with energy, she feels threads of wind twist around her and pulls them in front of her like a shield.

Her opponent’s blade ricochets off the air around her, like an invisible wall.

The air is charged with something hot and bright, like invisible flames subdued to barely burning, she expects sparks to crackle when they move.

The dagger splinters.

Long, jagged shards of steel spin across the arena, like arabesques of silver fire.

The arena halts mid-tilt. The red haired girl staggers back, clutching the hilt of her broken dagger, looking unbelievingly between the few strips of the shoulder still protruding from the guard and the pieces that lay around them like a starburst. The moment stretches on, until she looks up at her opponent. The red haired girl recoils.

She is still staring when her father grasps her tunic and throws her off the platform.

This time her father does not murmur directions at every threshold and crossroad, instead she feels propelled forward, jerked by invisible strings and aimed this way and that, careening down the passages with violent force.

The door to his study is almost flung off its hinges as it opens. He releases her. She caught herself with her hands as her knees came down on the marble with a sickening crack.

She begins to turn and stand but catching sight of herself in the mirror.

Her eyes are black. Black that spreads like a pool of ink from the pupil to the corners of her eyes, shrouding the whites and her irises.

“Your temper got the best of you. You failed your test.”

The papers on his desk begin to rise, the birdcages shake and doves coo in nervousness. The ink in its holder and the wine in its bottle begin to ripple. He narrows his eyes.

“I overestimated your abilities in a real challenge. You are a disappointment, strength and speed mean nothing if you do not have the energy to control them.”

He brings the bottle down on her wrist; her bones shatter inside her skin.

The papers settle, the birdcages come to a halt, but the inkwell shatters, spraying black across the papers on the desk, her father’s white shirt and her pale face and arms.

“Fix it,” he demands, setting the bottle down on his desk.

She stares at her wrist, feeling inside for the cracks in her bone. Pain lances up her arm and she releases it with a gasp.

“Concentrate.”

She tries again, biting back tears and bringing to mind the control with which she had healed her broken skin during her test. Her focus wavers and the candles in the room flicker. A sudden iciness builds in the air and the prickling on her skin pulls her away from the jagged edges of bone twisted around her veins.

“Your lack of control will cost you. When you can restrain yourself, your lessons will resume.”

He strides from the room, the door swinging closed of its own accord, the hinges returning to near-perfect condition.

Art by Cirque du Soleil (Ka)

Text by Lucie MacAulay