Magic Steps

“Your dad got musicians?” Pasco asked, goosebumps crawling over his back and arms. “For me?” He’ll blame me when it doesn’t work, Pasco thought, panicked.

He’ll say I promised I could dance a catch for him, and want me to pay these people!

“It’s only my uncle and my cousin,” Osa told him pa tiently. “Calm down. You jump worse than a landed cod.”

Pasco made a face at his friend. The closer they got to the beach, the more he wished he’d said no when Osa first spoke: of doing this.

You wanted to be paid for dancing, Pasco thought woefully, his breakfast a lead weight in his belly. Paid like a real dancer, like’ the ones who dance at festivals and for the duke, instead of just dancing at parties with your cousins and, friends. .And now it’ll go bad, because you. didn’t’ have: the backbone to refuse!

His mother had said it time after time, “You. never think of consequences, Pasco. You just think about right now. One of these days the consequences will take you, blind side: in an alley, and you’ll, wonder how things got so bad. He pressed his; face to his knees shivering.

Soon enough he felt the scrape of bottom under their keel. Strong hands grabbed the sides of the boat and dragged it up onto the beach.

“Come on, boy,” a voice told him. Pasco looked up into the flinty eyes of Osa’s grandmother. She wrapped a big-knuckled hand around his arm. “Take off your shoon. You got to learn this net-dance fast if you’re to do it before we sail.”

Men were working next to the flute player and drum mer, laying something on the beach a corner at a time and securing it by staking it down. It was a real net, Pasco saw, one with bigger holes than most fishing nets. Hurriedly he stepped out of his shoes. Men and women left the boats to stand along the edges of the spread net, the lantern light rippling over their faces. They looked grim and forbidding, like statues of stern old gods.

“Two months ‘thout enough fish to cover the deck,” one of them muttered. “This better work.”

Pasco’s store of courage, never large, shrank even more as he looked at their faces, I’m dead, he thought weakly. I just ain’t bothered to lay down yet.

“It’s an easy step,” Osa’s grandmother told him. “Look at my feet, boy. I don’t want to go repeating it. See, you dance each square of the net, like so.” She was nimble in spite of her years, her feet tapping lightly on the sand to shape the four corners of a square. She did a light step over—,”Next square, right in the middle,” she explained to Pasco—her feet leaving a dent in the sand that would form its center. “Up one row of the net, down the next.” Drummer and flute player were trying a lively tune that made Pasco think of leaping fish. Suddenly he was wide awake. His feet were already tracing the sand pattern of steps without waiting for his head to decide to do it.

“Told you it was easy,” the old woman said, watching his feet move, “You ready?”

He would have said he wasn’t, not yet exactly, but the drummer and the flute player began that catchy tune in earnest, and his body wanted to dance. He stepped lightly into the first square on the net closest to him and marked the corners with his toes, his legs flicking across each other. It was a jig of sorts, and he always liked jigs. He locked his hands behind his back, keeping them firmly out of his way as the drum pounded and the flute trilled.

Square by square he called the fish, and he felt them answer, their tails flicking through the squares as his feet did. Oddly, his legs and feet were so warm they seemed almost fiery, though the warmth only came as high as his waist.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable warmth—if anything, It gave him strength.

When he finished, he did it by leaping from, the last square and coming down, feet together, as light as any wisp of silk The music stopped. He bowed to Osas grand mother, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

The sound of hands clapping made all of them, Pasco and the fisherfolk, turn. A party of riders had come onto the sand while Pasco was dancing.

Who was mad enough to be riding at this hour? Pasco wondered. He squinted at them, then gulped. His grace the duke of Emelan and the prettiest lady Pasco had ever seen were applauding him.

Chapter 2

The lady dismounted from her horse and walked over. She was just an inch shorter than Pasco’s own five feet five inches, but the way she held herself, back perfectly straight and head high, made her seem taller. She had a button of a nose, eyes of the brightest blue, and an open, friendly smile.

Blessed with four older sisters, Pasco took, note of the lady’s clothing. The girls would love to know she wore a pair of green breeches with legs so wide that, when she was afoot, she seemed to be wearing skirts. Over that she wore: a long, sleeveless tunic in pale green cloth, fastened down the front with a row of tiny buttons shaped like: suns. A full-sleeved blouse with green embroidery kept her arms from the cold. A, sheer green silk veil was fixed somehow to light brown braids wound, about the lady’s head like a, crown. She: removed, one of her tan, riding gloves and offered him. her bare hand.

Pasco took it and bowed, feeling a. little dazed.

“You dance very well,” she said with approval. “What is your name, please?”

Pasco could not reply. Osa’s grandmother said re spectfully, “He’s Pasco Acalon, my lady. A friend of my grandson’s.” She dipped a quick curtsy and nudged Pasco with her elbow.

“Wha—?” he asked, startled, and realized he still had the lady’s hand in his.