Completely Mental

For Anna - because, well, she can dance.

The music was Mozart and, though instrumental, was far too fast. I resisted the urge to get up and pace, an urge I have found to plague me strongly in the past few hours. It was really pathetic, I told myself, how worked up I was getting about something so simple. It wasn't as if there was anyone about to laugh at me. The things one does, I told myself, for research!

"Ahem."

My heart froze in my chest. Irreproachably dressed, as if this were serious, he stood in the doorway, leaning a little on the frame to get the most of his weight off his legs. Good-naturedly he had protested the endeavour at first - the advancing cold made him ache - but I had been stupidly persistent and in the end he had given in. I wished now I had not been so forward.

I frowned. "You didn't tell me you were getting all dressed up for this," I said with a touch of irritation in my tone. "I can't possibly stand up in my jeans with you."

"I reserve my views on jeans," he said ominously. Then, with a little sideways twist of the shoulders, he added, "Your hair went up so nicely this morning, I thought it a shame to have you wrestle into your gown. I know you get so very mithered about that. Now, are you serious or aren't you?"

"I - hmm," I said intelligently, and kept my seat.

He held out his left hand imperiously. "Come along, Half-pint."

He had the way about him. I found it impossible to refuse. With a prodigious sigh I rose, my heart still uncomfortably where my throat should be; in three steps I was across the room. A moment later, with my eyes shut as though I were expecting it to sting a little - maybe I did - I put my hand in his. When he made no move, I cracked one eye open. That light, mocking smile of his that had more to do with his eyes than his mouth was flashing at me. "Honestly."

I pulled myself together. "Should I put on shoes for this?"

"I will try not to step on your toes."

Hand in hand, he led me into the next room where there was more area to move about. Pathetically I was shaking a little, from embarrassment and excitement. In reflection, I thought it perfect. She would be feeling much the same feelings herself, under her own circumstances. Thus far, research was going well.

If only I had thought to put on a gown.

My companion took his position and wrestled me gently into my own. The music from the other room was faint now; I only heard little snatches of it. For a moment the sheer, stark reality of the room jostled with my imagination: sofas refused to give way to polished mahogany tables and a piano; the carpet refused to give way to a polished ballroom floor. With grim determination I took a heavy intake of breath and conjured them up for all I was worth, afraid all the while that even the slightest movement of mine would shatter them.

My companion maneuvered my hand onto his arm and took a firm but gentle hold of me. We were ready. I felt him pause, as if listening to the beat in his own head. I kept my eyes fixed on his as if I were grasping a life-line. He counted silently, then suddenly broke off with a splutter, which was very unlike him.

"You look like a cornered rabbit. Relax. I can't dance across from a face like that. Just relax. Think of your feet making patterns in ink, the way your fingers do. With me, now."

And suddenly we were moving. I was half a heartbeat behind him, which made for an awkward beginning. He stepped forward - which foot was mine? - and I stepped backward just as he was gliding to the side. Hurriedly I caught up with him, still as stiff as a poker, my eyes instantly glued on our feet. I began to worry now that he would step on my feet. Unexpectedly he pulled me forward, to the side again, and even turned about in step. I always seemed that half-heartbeat behind; my stomach was beginning to knot.

"Look at me," he said. With a painful hesitation I tore my eyes from our feet. My gaze trembled on his own. "Look at me. Dancing to ink, Half-pint. This is what you do every day. It's just like that. Look at me. Let me guide you."

He was wearing his gloves, his black doeskin gloves, and for that I was thankful; my hands were growing rather sweaty with all this strain. But I cared. Hadn't I told Uncle Raymond that once? If I cared, I stuck to it. For all I felt like an idiot, I was going to stick to it. Obediently I kept my eyes on his, moved when he moved, stiffly, stupidly, my heart in my throat...and then I felt it. It was beginning to flow. Over and over, backward and forward, gliding and turning, backward and forward, gliding and turning. Like Ben-Hur and his horses, altogether one with the lives of themselves flowing in the reins, he and I somehow managed to grasp the genius of the dance. A smile cracked my pensive lips. Dancing to ink, he had said: patterns of ink. Oh, the sofas were gone. The carpet vanished. I was in a Lookinglass ballroom, in a gorgeous red gown, and everywhere there were lights and laughter and the clinking of glass on glass - and perhaps even, if I listened hard (though I did not have much leisure to), the accompaniment of music. I knew, in that annoying back part of my mind which had a way of hem-hemming reality at my elbow, that I was dancing truly horribly in a rather small enclosure, but somehow that did not matter at all. I had ink in my veins. I could feel it rushing through with the beat of my heart.

Dancing to ink. Patterns in ink.

Just at the right moment he stopped, giving me one last turn while the realness of the carpet flashed hot-red into my bare feet, and we stood apart, panting a little. The tables and glass and music were gone. It was just the living room now, oddly bleak after the colour of my imagination. But even now that did not matter either.

My companion gave a little philosophical sniff and pulled at the hem of his coat, adjusting it back into position. "Well, amphibious girl," he asked, "was the research satisfactory?"

"Yes," I gasped, hands on knees. "I think I have the pattern for the scene now. What I do for my stories! I'm completely mental."

"Don't flatter yourself." He wilted gracefully into a chair and leaned his head back against the wall. "We knew that already."

"Ppthbt," I said childishly.