The dawn peeking up over the horizon was the first light Anna had seen in almost ten hours, the power cuts making nights long and mornings longer and the candles were not safe in the cramped space of their apartment. Though she was thankful for the reprieve of summer’s endless heat, her clothes sticking to her skin and air settling like wildfire in her lungs, a sensation she only ever remembered when the heat of the sun beat down on her.

Just before seven, the sun had risen high enough to glint off the red rusted roofs and corrugated iron, a ripple of golden-red echoing the dawn sky above it. Finches and Turtle Doves lightly landed on telephone wires, reminding her of the ballerina she had seen once on a passing TV display, white feathers fluttering as she left the ground in flight. Soundless in her beauty and grace.

As the sun continued to rise, the world around her awoke with the bustling of morning jobs and shutter blinds opening to reveal their protected treasures. The grocer, two buildings down and over the road brought the smell of yeast and sugar, strong enough to cover the smell of the open gutter grate below her window. Jack started crying, pulling on the cord above his crib that rustled the paper decorations and small bells around the room, catching Anna’s attention. She rushed over to him, the tattered, moth-eaten green quilt she had wrapped herself in dragging over their mum where she lay on the floor curled around a bottle with vodka staining her breath.

Anna brought a hand to his matted hair, brushing it off his sweat-soaked face. The silver bells on her wrist rang out every time she moved, a tinkling sound that broke through the quiet, muffled nature of the world around her. It was a comforting sound that followed her every step, making sure she was heard when she wasn’t seen.

Jack’s fever had finally broken, the medicine that Mum had payed for by trading some of her private time that brought her home well past the midnight bell, had finally kicked in. That meant Anna could go back to school today, back to the life mum was working so hard for.

She surrendered the quilt to her mum and replaced it with a threadbare uniform and shoes that were two years too old. Made sure to leave last night’s leftovers next to the stove, she shut the door quietly behind her, locking it twice.

~*~

Balancing on raised fences and garden walls, thin and narrow beams that fit only one foot in front of the other, was more than a game now and she was proud to say that she hadn’t fallen off in years. A balancing act, repeated day after day, finding new paths that grew thinner each time. One day she will walk on a rope’s thickness, no wider than her childish fingers. After that, she’d have to find something smaller.

She wants to be a swan, wants to dance on the tips of her toes and wears a cloud of feathers. It wasn’t going to be easy, years of broken toes and aching blisters, feet mottled by scars and bruises, but she would wear them all with pride. They were going to be signs of how far she had come, from sweltering summers and nights of hunger; to audiences of thousands, lines and lines of people dressed in their delicate silks and glittering stones lining their fingers and necks. Jewellery that could have fed her for years while she waited and waited, the clicking of the clock making the rounds, one after another while her body strained for the moment she was free, free to find the wooden floors and polished beams, her knees bent, arms raised and fingers pointed towards the sky, her head turned to the front. Never stopping, the only way she wanted to live was to continue forward, to learn and to practice, to eventually be the lady of feathers she once saw and continued to see in her dreams.

~*~

Anna had learnt long ago that children were cruel. They didn’t always mean to be but sometimes they didn’t know any better. So often it was just a child repeating the words of the parents, a living echo that given time may come into their own voices, but sometimes they were just a record of another’s beliefs and opinions. Forever stagnant as a shadow of another.

While she couldn’t hear the whispers that followed her steps, that didn’t mean she was oblivious to them. The muttering of open secrets and gossiping rumours that wisped after her family like the scent of smoke, of houses burned and memories drifting up to the smog-filled sky. It was always about the same things; her silence, her mother’s lifestyle, her father, Jack’s father. A roulette of topics that got repeated over and over again, like the plot of a daytime soap opera, new people and new colours but the story rarely changed.

Anna knew what was true, a past that the hidden-away photos showed. Of her mom’s nighttime pleading, begging them to understand. But these people, whispering behind their backs with their hands up to hide their cruel smiles, would never understand, these people who only cared about a story warped by rumours and alien to the truth. They did not care for accuracy and Anna did not care about their words.

Sometimes though, she wanted to hear of a fantastical rumour. Just once. One where her mother was a runaway princess, whose long hair was once littered with flowers and beads and topped with crowns. Maybe she was the successor to a throne, maybe she had loved and not suffered the uncaring nature of others. Days of royalty and family, magic and life outside the comings and goings of men, day in, day out. Those whose pocket change put food on the table and whose nightly adventures paid for the clothes they wore.

Stories pleasant to dream of at night, when the heater was broken and cold wind came under the draughty doors and the bed shook with muffled sadness.

~*~

The library was her saviour, books on posture, techniques and theory, on people who lived their own stories and danced their dreams. Hours and hours of videos watched, footwork and gentle gestures practised till her muscles cramped, a polished elegance built upon years of devotion. It became her home away from home, greeted by the librarian in the morning and wished farewell as the sun finished for the day. She was no longer asked to play, asked where she disappeared to, just given silent, uncomprehending looks by people who once dreamt of living amongst the stars but now the only stardust they knew was what covered their pillows at night. She was different, her dream had eaten her whole life and she did not care.

It was there that she learnt of the world, of things her teacher did not teach and that her mother could not. Of histories and traditions, of the world and its people, of stories and lives unknown to her. No longer was she constrained to the distance she could walk, to the streets she had known her entire life.

There was more to her now, more than cheap cotton sheets and cracked window panes taped up in winter. Her dreams were now haunted by the endless wine-dark seas, of morning-dew gardens and lush flower fields, snow-capped mountains and the endless bustling of cities in countries she never knew existed. But all this, the dreams and hopes of a future wanted, of the life she knew she could have, required something she was scared to ask for. Something she wasn’t sure she could ask for.

~*~

It was the hardest thing she had ever requested, a question that would shape not only her own life but that of her family. It would bring her the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, the happiest and the saddest moments of her life. She wanted to learn, to be taught, to bring her dreams into reality. But that dream costs time, work and money and of the last, they had very little.

Her mum’s face could have been carved from stone; her features unmoving and the deep red of her lips was the only colour left in the world that her nerves had bleached grey.

“Let me think about it.” Her hands mimicked the words her lips shaped.

She was quiet for days, her silence seeping into the floorboards below their feet. Even Jack knew something was different, watching from his crib with weary eyes as their mother sat in the corner of the room, tirelessly scribbling something only she understood. Numbers scrawled across the page and words that made no sense to Anna.

It was over a week later when she got home to the smell of apple tea and cinnamon, the warmth replacing the unnatural chill of the silence-soaked hallways and the veil of rain blocking out the rest of the world. Her mother was sitting there, a pleated skirt under her folded hands and manicured nails. Even with red-rimmed eyes and a split bottom lip, her mother was everything she aspired to be. Strong, elegant and unbending in a harsh world.

Her mother waved her in to sit beside her, a cocoon of blankets on a well-worn chair. There was a comforting moment as their tea cooled and the sun started peeking out from the clouds.

“This is what you want right, this, above all else in your life. If you take this money, everything that I have saved up for your future, everything I was planning to leave you after I was long buried, there will be only one chance. This is all I have left to give.” There was a tremble in her hands but her face showed only composure.

Anna would forever remember the smell of floral perfume and makeup and the heat of warm tears as they trailed down her cheeks and the feel of a warm hand in her hair. That night she slept in her mother’s bed of patchwork blankets for the first time in a long while, curled around each other and sleeping peacefully until Jack woke them up as dawn broke through the night, welcoming a new day.

~*~

Her first lesson would forever be ingrained in her memory, the smell of floor varnish on dark brown wood, the planks polished to the point of reflecting light. The mirrored walls, from the floor to the ceiling, catching every moment made. Her teacher’s hair, red streaked with grey and pulled tightly into a bun strengthened the sharpness of her features. The starkness of her blue eyes and the white of the room made her feel like a bird of prey, watching and waiting for a moment of weakness. A weakness she never missed.

There was pain, bruises and broken bones, toenails lost and salt-ruined pillows. There were nights when their bucket bath was filled with flowers taken from neighbours’ gardens and kettle water heated with love, where she waited and listened to stories of the past and the future as the aches of the day seeped out. Jack, now older, splashed water over her knees when they couldn’t be covered. Soon to be three, his English words were often sprinkled with French, an echoing of late nights and a language she must learn, if only for her own future. Maybe one day she would be able to teach him more.

~*~

Over and over, the sun dipped below the horizon and the moon got its chance to shine, coming out from behind the glowing glory of the sun, ready to capture the hearts of those that saw it.

There was a reason more love stories were told of moonlight and its reflection off still waters, poems of night-time rain and the misting beauty of early dew. The sun brought life, necessary by its nature but it was the moon that reflected the soul, for what was a life without dreams, of stories told and the peacefulness of silent moments. 

It was that silence that she lived, telling stories without words. An art she had learnt in childhood and would perfect in adulthood. 

~*~

As time passed, the blisters on her toes calloused over, forever painful but they no longer drove sharp pain up her spine every time she put her foot down, now it was just a dull throbbing that was simply ignored. The strain of muscles, holding positions and postures they were unused to faded behind the habits and joy of her new life. Spine straight and shoulders level, chin parallel to the floor. Some nights the voice of her teacher followed her into her dreams, with corrections, with praise, with evidence of her growth.

Her fourteenth birthday came and went, no more celebration than three strawberry cupcakes with a candle each, lopsided but made with love, no packet mix to be seen. Jack’s hair was white with flour but it was the brightness of his smile that outshone the candles. Mum’s manicured nails were impossible to see under the rose-tinted cream and melted chocolate. Even the chill of Autumn ending could not keep this warmth from her.

~*~

As the years passed, there were fewer people in her classes. The less interested had gone onto greener pastures, leaving the bruises and broken bones behind. Some days her shoes filled with blood and she knew it would never be her feet that people called beautiful. But they showed who she was, her life mapped into every scar and lump that would never leave.

As her mum had warned, there was nothing left for her after the cold ground became her new home, just Jack clenching his tiny fists in the pleats of her black dress. The last winter had been cold, colder than usual and sometimes that was all it took. She was eighteen now, old enough to take care of a ten-year-old. She wondered if it had only been a waiting game. As she grew, her mother had shrunk, almost like she was just waiting for her eighteenth birthday to come, for when she could pass over the responsibility and finally rest. She had prepared them for the world they were going to enter and now she was gone. But they were still here and that was what mattered.

~*~

The mid-stage curtains swung shut and the orchestral strings stilled leaving the purest of silence behind. A few seconds, a pause before they drifted open again, letting moonlight reflect off the midnight curtain of pleated velvet and glittering stones. And there in the centre, with white lace in her hair and flowers and beads and a crown sitting on top, was a swan in the moonlight.

There was the slightest of smiles on her face, delicate but pure in its joy. The feathers shimmered with silver, a sea of glitter-light trailed across her skin in an echo of the stars above. Silver bells, tied to every pleat of layered cloth tinkled like a running stream, gentle, beautiful and endless.

Her dance spoke that which her voice would not allow. That of a life of love and loss, a beautiful story. Her story.