The Box

Louis slaps me across the back. It’s supposed to be playful but it stings a little when his giant hand collides with my small shoulder blade. 

I still beam at him though as he pours his glass of rum and coke into my empty glass. “You’re a real star, Jessie!” My cheeks are rosy - I’m not sure yet if it’s the drinks or the compliments I have been receiving since my team walked out on the stage at the convention today.

“It was nothing really,” I say. “Just a little bit of illusionary magic and alchemy. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you guys anyways.”

Nox casts mage hand to flick my forehead across the table. “Stop being so humble,” they frown but I can still see the joy simmering behind their slitted pupils. 

I grab the drink Louis poured me and I spill the contents all over the table as I gesticulate. “It’s true! We all did something amazing out there today!”

And I’m not lying. The mix of wizard magic, alchemy and illusions meant that we were able to devise a machine that would bring the world into a utopia. A new age because of our invention!

I think that deserves a couple more drinks.

One drink, two drinks - they just keep coming, our tab paid for by a bunch of investors trying to schmooze us. But we’re too caught up in our own ecstasy to really notice anyone else. Jokes are flying, I’m on fire; in this candle-lit bar, I lose myself in the company of my friends.

Until a flickering candle catches my eye, it quivers inconsistently with the breeze coming through the cracks in the windows. My brows furrow, the unpredictable nature of the dance irking me. I don’t even know why. The oranges and yellows blur my eyes as I fall away from the world and my friends. There are spells in my arsenal that I know will steady it which should make it a bit easier on the eyes, easier for the light to fall away into background noise while I work on the important things without distraction.

But between one breath and the next, all the candles in the room are snuffed out. I panic that in my drunken state I had just plunged everyone in the bar into darkness. But no. A pale blue light switches on, bathing the stage in front of us in moonlight as six dancers walk out from behind the curtains.

They’re beautiful: tall, elegant - they’re skin covered in a light shimmer that turns them into stars under the stagelight. Their skirts - floating just above their knees - glow iridescent, their colours shifting like a hologram. Their slicked-back buns and winged eyeliner are sharp; their faces pale, cold and ethereal. They look like porcelain dolls come to life.

Or corpses.

The whole room falls from a loud, chaste drunken rabble to quiet, mesmerised murmurs. The music starts and synth-violins pick up a melody that is both romantic and tragic, lyrics in a language I don’t understand sung by someone with the voice of a siren fill my ears. And suddenly, my heart is light; my eyes want to cry.

The dancers begin to spin and leap across the stage, their synchronised movements so precise you’d think a computer was programming them. They’re brilliant - but they’re not what catch my eye.

The sixth dancer, her positioning at the back of the group asymmetrical like an afterthought, dances out of sync with the others. Her lines are still elegant but there’s a thrum of energy about her that is wild and untamed. Her cheeks are blushed as she twirls at the back of the stage, pouring her heart out to the audience. She’s magical.

And I’m distracted.

The music, her dance, the moonlight, they all make me feel a little dizzy but not in a way that makes me nauseous. I feel like, somehow, I am seeing the world through her eyes and for a moment I’m spinning and prancing and moving hypnotizingly to the melody.

I try to focus my eyes on my drink, drawing my attention to the stickiness of the table, the coolness of the ice in the glass. And not the heat in my cheeks and chest.

And not the way her eyes lock with mine from across the room, her gaze sharing with me a world of unrestricted pleasure and unadulterated bliss.

Another blink and she’s gone. The moonlight disappears and the candlelight returns. I wish for a moment that I could delete my eyelids so I never have to blink again.

“That was amazing,” Nox says as they sink their head into the palm of their hand, gaze hazed over, giddy smile on their lips. “I had no idea people could dance like that.”

The whole room erupts into applause as Nox is speaking. I put the glass in my hand against my hot cheek and feel some relief. “That sixth dancer…”

Louis is giving a standing ovation when he catches sight of my stunned expression. “Six? I only counted five.” He sits back down and Nox smirks at him.

“As if you were paying attention to anyone but the front lady,” Nox chides.

Louis stares down the pepper grinder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I saw you staring! Plus she’s exactly your type.”

I slam my glass back down and a box of cutlery jingles. I feel suddenly very feverish. “No no no, the dancer at the back. Didn’t you see her? I made eye contact with her and everything.”

Both Nox and Louis blink at me, then share a smirk. “I see I’m not the only one with a crush,” Louis says. He punches my arm and somehow that brings me back to reality.

Everyone around me, the bartenders, the waiters, Nox and Louis - they have all gone back to normal. Like the song isn’t stuck in their heads and the feelings have already left their chests.

“Wowwwwwww,” Nox coos. “I have never seen you so… distracted,” they wiggle their eyebrows.

“Sorry,” I mutter. But a twinkle of glitter catches my eye from the stage. A skirt disappearing behind the curtain.

Nox and Louis seem to be watching me, giggling. “Shoot your shot, Jess!” Nox says.

“Yes! No one is going to be able to turn you down tonight. This is your night!” Louis adds.

Impetuously, I stand. I guess, if anything, I want to know why she was dancing so out of sync and what the symbolism of that meant for the entire piece and where she learnt to dance like that-

I’m shoved forward a few steps. “Stop thinking,” Louis calls after me. “Just go.”

And so I go. Ducking under elbows and squeezing between chairs, snaking my way to the backstage area. It’s dark when I get there, the thick black curtains blocking out the light from the main room. It also smells a little bit musty; everything here is covered in a thick layer of dust.

But there she is. Taking off her shoes, she leans against the wall, still with the afterglow of the dance on her cheeks and skin. I take a few deep breaths, trying to dig out the courage the rum has given me tonight. 

She notices me approach her immediately. “Can I help you?” she says with a thick accent I can’t place. When she speaks it’s like I can hear the music start all over again.

My voice comes out as a croak at first. “I just wondered…”

She raises an eyebrow at me as my words fail. Our gazes connect once again and my heart flutters. This time I don’t blink.

“I wondered if… someone will be taking you home this evening,” I finally say. I blush at my own boldness, it’s unusual for me to be so forward in my flirting. But her presence brings out an honesty in me that feels unfamiliar but comfortable.

She smiles and it’s something mischievous; my gut is set alight. “You’re from the team that presented at the convention today, right?” I nod. “You’ve created something truly great.” She pushes herself off the wall and balances to put on a pair of battered trainers. “But I’m not impressed by card tricks in the bedroom.”

My mouth feels fuzzy. “What?”

She brushes past me and I get a whiff of her perfume. Intoxicating, just like her.

“I’ll be out getting some air,” she says as she passes me. Her lips lingering close to my ear. I shiver. “Impress me,” she whispers and all the hairs on my neck stand up.

She disappears into the darkness of the backstage area. I return to my table. I’m not the only one with a forlorn expression when I sit back down.

“She doesn’t know what she’s missing out on, Lou,” Nox pats Louis on the shoulder. Louis is sitting, arms crossed and pouting, staring down his empty glass.

“I think I need another drink,” he says.

“Make that two,” I add and gesture to the bartender to bring us a couple shots. We need something strong.

“Didn’t go well for you either, huh?” Nox asks.

“She said ‘Impress me’. Like what’s that supposed to mean?” I scrunch up my face - and that’s even before the shots arrive.

“Hey no,” Louis perks up and I can tell he’s got his game face on now. “This is an opportunity, Jess.”

“Yeah, you just need to impress her!” Nox chimes in.

“Impress her how?” I ask.

“Invent something,” Louis says. “Right now.”

I sputter out a mirthless laugh, “Like what?” He’s got to be beyond drunk.

“You’ll figure it out,” Nox says. “I’m gonna go see where those drinks are.”

They leave and I find myself glaring at the box of cutlery on the table. The edges are rough but I think that’s part of the aesthetic of this place. The grain on the wood creates pretty swirls and I think about the swirls in her dance. The music becomes stuck in my head again but I let it play.

An idea begins to materialise and I reach for the box, dumping out the cutlery. I mutter incantations under my breath and the box begins to morph, a little wooden dancer growing from between the swirls like branches from a tree’s trunk.

“Uhhhh what are you doing?” Louis asks me.

“Inventing.”

Every line of the wooden dancer’s body is perfect. Her fingertips poised with grace and dipped in a gold shimmer from a spell I had learnt years ago. Her arms are spread with an exact ninety degree angle with the ground as she poses. I speak again and new life is breathed into her. She dances on what’s left of the wooden box, spinning with precise and delicate movements. The angles are perfect every single time. Her expressionless face spins in time with the music on repeat in my head.

Perfect.

“Wow,” Louis watches the wooden dancer from across the table. He’s already downed all the shots in the time it took me to create the gift. He starts to laugh in the way he does before he’s about to tell a joke only he finds funny. “You could say she’s a bit ‘stiff’, eh? Wait, no. A bit ‘wooden’, eh?”

The satisfied smile that was on my lips instantly falls and Louis starts back-pedalling quickly. “Sorry, I mean to say that it’s perfect. I’m sure your girl will be very impressed.”

I look around for Nox. They’re much better at words than Louis. But they’re busy chatting up the bartender by the looks of things…

The candlelight flickers again. “Hey Jessie?” I look back at Louis, his expression has softened and it’s the most sober he has looked all night. “You don’t need their permission. Or their approval.”

I gulp. I don’t really know what to say to that. I scoop up the wooden dancer and cradle her in my hands for a moment.

“Go, knock ‘em dead tiger,” Louis winks at me and returns his attention back to his drinks.

I use a spell to conjure a box and place the wooden dancer inside. Then I tread out into the cold in search of her.

And cold it most definitely is. I immediately wish I had brought my blazer out as my arms collect goosebumps from the biting breeze. Shivering, I look around. There’s a few people out here, some smoking, most just chatting - all of them with coats.

I’m about to return back inside to fetch something a bit warmer when a pair of soft lips trace the back of my neck. I jump away with a squeal, putting up a golden shield around me.

Which I lower when I see who it is.

“Sorry,” she says with her beautiful, strange accent. “You looked cold.”

“I uhhh…” I’m stuttering as she waits for me to say something remarkable, I’m sure. The cold slips away and I’m suddenly burning up again. A fire is lit in my gut and the music is loud in my ears again. It’s now or never.

“I made you this,” I sheepishly hold the box out to her. Curious, she takes it. When she opens it, the dancer immediately begins her dance. After a few loops of the choreography and several long silent moments, she closes the box.

I take a tentative step closer. I can feel her heat but it’s warm - she isn’t on fire like I am. “What do you think?”

“It’s perfect,” she eventually says. But her face is somehow solemn, her voice stoney.

I brush her arm with my fingertips and it’s like an electric current goes through me. I feel my pulse thrumming where our skin touches. And just as if I was being electrocuted, I find myself gripping onto her suddenly, unable to let go.

She looks down to where my hand circles her bicep and sighs. “It’s perfect,” she pushes me away, shoving the box back into my arms. “I have been dancing for over a decade - I know a good dancer when I see one.”

My heartbeat is painful and my throat suddenly feels like someone has poured acid down it. “What’s the matter?”

“This tells me nothing about you,” she tosses the final blow over her shoulder as she walks back into the bar. My body is plunged into the cold once again.

It takes at least three more rum and cokes before my sadness subsides enough for my friends’ words to cut through the haze.

“If you think about it, all five dancers looked mostly the same in the uniform. You could try again with another one?” Nox says. They’ve returned from their conversation with the bartender buzzing. Good for them, I guess.

“Not her,” I say. “She was-” my words are slurred and I struggle to find the right one to finish the sentence.

“Perfect?” Louis offers. He looks as dejected as me. But he doesn’t understand.

“No. She wasn't perfect,” I say. “She was beautiful.”

“Well, if she wasn’t impressed by your brilliant mind, then she wasn’t the one,” Nox huffs out. They would defend me to the end of the universe and back. But I can’t help but feel that this time they were wrong.

The bar staff have taken down the stage and have now turned it into a dancefloor. People dance and smile and sing and laugh. It’s messy - not like the performers. 

But it’s joyful and wild and brilliant and-

“Beautiful.”

Nox and Louis both look at me but a song I know comes on the speakers. I get up and inch my way across the floor. They call after me but I don’t hear them. 

I bump into tables and chairs and people carrying trays of drinks as I make my way to the dancefloor. I feel silly and unstable but my song is playing and the beat is thundering through my chest. Everything else falls away.

I reach the dancefloor and I’m a little bit unsure what to do next. The candlelight is flickering again and between flashes I see her eyes across the room, watching me. She smiles her mischievous smile and claps along to the beat. 

I clap too, a little off beat but that doesn't matter anymore. I fall into the melody and I reach my arms up over my head as if I can touch God. Hips swaying, I give myself permission to get lost in the moment. I hand myself over fully to the memory and suddenly I feel like I am floating. I close my eyes and spin. I feel a little top-heavy and try not to fall over but it’s okay; I turn it into the dance. My fingers float rhythmically on the air like wings. I spread my arms and move my feet and everything feels so easy. One move leads into the next one and it’s like I have been practicing this dance for years - not coming up with it on the spot. I feel fluid and light, like I’m slipping between molecules in the air.

I open my eyes and she’s right in front of me, joining me in my dance. She grins and I notice a crack in her front tooth. I mirror her and suddenly we’re spinning and leaping and people are cheering and I’m laughing and, god, I want to kiss her. But between one twist of the candlelight and the next she’s gone again.

So I just pour myself in the music and keep dancing.