I see a canal bridge in the distance, and I aim for it. Recalling that I crossed one on my way to the doctor’s office, I figure it’s my best bet out of the awful Penny backstreets. As I near the bridge, the streets look appreciably cleaner, and the buildings looks less like lean-tos. I mouth a silent plea to Apple that I’m getting close to the Teatralnaya ploshchad.
Apple answers my prayer. Only two streets away, I spy the high white dome and pale green walls of the Mariinsky Theater, home to the Kirov Ballet, the building that dominates the Teatralnaya ploshchad. My calling here is a blessing for my family—Euros to send home to Finland for them—but a curse for me. No matter how I really feel about it in the private chambers of my Spirit, because Apple can see even there.
I break into a sprint. It’s nearly a bell to curtain time, and the Keeper of the Ballet will be raging at my absence and screaming at the other Dancers about the whereabouts of his Principal. Soon, the theater will fill with the lavishly dressed men and women of the Euro class, and the Ballet cannot begin without me. Elizabet Laine, Prima Ballerina.
Throwing back the golden gates of the theater entrance, I race past the box office and the crystal lobby to the changing area. I dart into my dressing room, where the Dressers await me. Their faces are full of fear; the Keeper has flown through here on wings of fury, I see. The best thing I can do for the Dressers—for all of them, really—is to ready myself for the Ballet quickly.
I stretch out my arms, and the Dressers strip me of my clothes. In a mere tick, I stand before them completely naked. A few months ago, this would have embarrassed me to the core of my Spirit. But no more. It is what my career requires. It is what Apple demands. My body no longer belongs to me.
The Dressers affix to my body flimsy, sheer pieces of fabric. They lace onto my feet silken shoes with hard, wooden toes. They wrap my white-blonde hair into a complicated knot on the top of my head, and weave glistening jewels through it. But they leave my face to me.
I draw close to the mirror. I open my pink pack and pull from it a bag of yellow and pink stripes. As I do, my hand brushes against the packet of gear I used in Finland when I entered the rare smatterings of wilderness still left. Even though it serves no purpose here in Russia, I keep the gear in my pack to remind me of the time before my calling came—when I was still free to breathe forest air.
But I can’t allow myself to think about that now. Pulling out my Maybellines and Chanels from the bag, I spread them onto the counter. I begin to paint the face of another person upon my own. After I draw the last stripe of black across my lids and the final swoosh of red on my lips, I look in the mirror. The Elizabet I used to be—the girl romping through the vestiges of the Finnish forest, with wild hair and emerging freckles—is gone. I am replaced by the mask of a Kirov Prima Ballerina.
The dread at my calling begins to pound through me. The endless pivots and turns and bodily contortions that will be expected of me tonight course through my mind. The staring eyes and ogling looks and wild claps from the audience creep into my thoughts. The nightly exposure of self and sacrifice of Spirit—done for the audience’s pleasure at Apple’s bidding—washes over me.
But then I remember. The remedies.
I reach into my pink pack. Glancing around to make sure no one is watching, I place two remedy pills on my tongue. One for the pain that the Dance inflicts upon my body. And a Prozac for the dark depression that Dance inflicts upon my Spirit.
The Keeper yells for me. Before I answer his call, I take a tick to whisper into my worship tablet. Staring into its blank surface, I beg Apple to send the relief that the doctor promised. Then I step out into the hallway.
The Keeper looks me over, adjusting a feather draping over my right breast and tugging the sheer bodice of my costume down just a little farther. The audience likes this, I know. They like to see my flesh. He nods his approval and spins me in the direction of the stage.
The other Dancers part to let me through to the red curtain. I take my place near the opening in its enormous folds. I peek out at the gleaming gold walls and sparkling lights and filled blue chairs, expecting the nightly terror to settle in. But it doesn’t. The remedies begin to work.
The darkness of my Spirit and body lifts, and I become someone else inside and out. I feel no shame, no humiliation. I am not me. I am someone capable of sacrificing herself for Apple.
XXVIII: Aprilus 23 Year 242, A.H.
The Chronicle starts off slowly. But then it courses through me, aided by the forbidden Faerie tales told by my Nurse Aga, and the secret myths shared by Lukas, and the stories I made up myself to entertain Eamon. The Chronicle flows from my fingers as if Elizabet’s hand holds my quill and writes the words herself. I become Elizabet.
During the bells of writing, Elizabet and her world grow so real to me that when dawn breaks and I must stop, I blink at my white world of snow and ice as if it has become the dream. And the cacophonic world in the days just before the Healing has become the reality.
But then my dogs begin barking, desperate to be fed. The camp starts to rustle with the sounds of the Boundary servers preparing breakfast, the Testors readying. I am drawn away from the pre-Healing world and back into New North and the Testing.
Before I lose my nerve, I roll my Chronicle as small as I can. I march over to the Bird-Master and hand over the first pages of Elizabet’s story. He is not permitted to review what I’ve written, only to send. As he slides the Chronicle into the container at the carrier pigeon’s neck, I hold my breath. I watch the bird soar into the sky—due south—taking a part of me along with him.
Within a bell, I’m back down in the crevasse chipping away at the ice wall as if nothing ever happened. As if I’ve never stepped back into Elizabet’s world. Back into time.
Yet I’m changed. I am altered by this brush-up with a real person who lived and breathed and danced and trembled and loved in the days before the Earth’s waters rose up and submerged wickedness in a watery grave. No longer is the Healing just something my parents and Teachers and Basilikons lectured me about, a time and place so long ago that it defies comprehension. It is very real, and it is inhabited by someone I know well.
In some ways, this wisdom makes me reluctant to return to Elizabet’s Chronicle. I know what comes next. I don’t want to experience those last days of terror. And I think it will be hard for the people of New North to experience them along with me. But I can’t help myself; as my body balances in a crevasse of ice, my mind journeys back. When I return to my igloo tonight, I will write.
The Chronicle of Elizabet Laine, Part II
The pirouettes propel me across the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. With the remedies in me, I feel so free of pain that I spin faster than ever before. The audience cheers my performance, awarding me with bouquet after bouquet of flowers and a shower of MasterCards. The remedies have worked their magic.
The remedies take away the shame of so many strangers’ staring eyes. The remedies allow me to smile—instead of flinch—while being fawned over at the Patron Gallant party after the ballet. The remedies permit me to tolerate their leers and proprietary caresses.