Arcane Gateway

The Autumn Party-2

I frowned, taken aback, and stepped away from him. “What do you mean?”

He crossed his arms and shook his head once. “Down there they dance with their bodies and with the private lusts of fantasy.” I blushed at this and almost fled from him right there, thinking back to what I had said to my father earlier. I wondered if Hans had overheard that. But he was still eyeing the dancers and went on, oblivious to my reaction. “If you really want to dance . . . you have to dance with your soul . . . with your heart . . . .” His voice trailed off, and he c****d his head to look down at me with a strange triumph in his dark blue eyes.

There was something mystical glittering in his eyes, igniting my curiosity. “What do you mean, dance with the heart?” I asked, beating down my discomfiture at his earlier remark. “They’re dancing just like I’m learning in school, and I’m sure they’re doing it with sincerity.” Except for the drunks, of course.

Half of Hans’ mouth curled upward in a mocking smile. “That may be, but they don’t know how the Teutons dance.” He looked back at the guests again.

With that statement he had me hooked. At that point in my life, I knew little about Teutons besides what I had learned in history class in school. I knew that my family had Teutonic blood, for I had overheard a few adult conversations on the subject. I had no idea what that meant, but now I was determined to learn. If my father did not want me to take part in the rowdiness of drunken dancing, I might as well learn some sort of historical tradition instead. If nothing else, it would help distract me from thinking of Dane. “How exactly do the Teutons dance?” I asked when Hans looked down at me again.

He looked at me for a long moment, straightening from his casual stance against the wall. He uncrossed his arms, and his expression grew thoughtful for a moment, his eyes narrowed. At last, he seemed to make a choice, and he smiled suddenly, showing his teeth. It was one of the first times I ever saw him really smile. He gestured at the dark hallway behind him and said, “Come. I’ll show you.”

My eyes widened. “Now?” He nodded. “But I’m too young!”

Hans’ smile turned wry as he said, “Not for that.” He turned swiftly away, headed down the halls toward the back staircase. I stared after him for a moment, thousands of emotions seizing me—fear, anticipation, horror, excitement. Then I raced after him.

At first I had no idea where we were going. Hans reached the bottom of the back staircase, me six steps behind, and threaded his way through the kitchen, nodding once at the extra cooks and servers my father had hired for the party. A few of them glanced at him absently and returned to their work, while most ignored him entirely. I slipped past them unnoticed and followed Hans into the pantry and the laundry room, and finally through the back door to the garage. I was starting to get confused now, for he had not looked back at me after taking off down the upstairs hall—had he been joking, or was he crazy? I entered the garage just in time to see Hans flinging open the side door to the backyard. He halted just outside and turned back to me, the same wry smile curling on his lips. “Are you coming?”

“Out there?” I shivered once from the autumn wind blowing into the garage. Hans nodded, and I protested, “But it’s cold, and I don’t have a coat with me!”

“You won’t need it.” He stood waiting, holding the door for me.

I had a feeling that I would truly be treading unfamiliar ground tonight if I followed him. But anticipation overtook me, and I had never really feared any of my father’s servants. After all, if he did something to hurt me, I could get him fired. I had heard adults say that Hans was a Teuton priest, and if there was something to know about traditional Teutonic dancing, a priest would know all. So I threw hesitation aside and walked through the door into the crisp night air.

Hans closed the door behind me and swept his gaze over the entire yard at once. “We’ll have to do this some distance from the house,” he noted, “for we would not want to disturb the guests.” He scoured the hedges and shadows with a fierce expression. The waxing gibbous moon cast the landscape in a silvery hue.

I agreed with him wholeheartedly. If my father found us out here, he would kill me, since I was supposed to be upstairs in my room. After a moment’s consideration, I suggested, “Maybe we’d be safe out by the stream and the gazebo.”

“Hmm.” Hans frowned thoughtfully, then nodded. “You may be right.” In the same second, he turned his stride toward the trees some thirty meters out, keeping to the sides of the yard near the curved wall coated with ivy.

The Thaden house stood on the outskirts of München on about two hectares of land. My father had bought the house just that April after two very profitable years for his company, Süddeutsche Getriebe. Before that, we had always lived in his father’s house, which was somewhat smaller and on the other side of the city. He never told me how much it had cost, but it had to be a staggering amount. Since his business continued to prosper in subsequent years, he never regretted his purchase. The backyard was magnificent, covered in gardens and woods with a tiny stream running through the back. The house and the gazebo by the stream were about a hectare apart, which would not have been a terribly long walk had I not been trying to keep up with Hans. He moved through the yard swiftly and silently like a cat, finding and melding with every shadow. By the time I reached the clearing in the trees where the gazebo stood, I was out of breath and no longer felt the cold air. He was right; I did not need a jacket.

Hans stood at the doorway to the small white gazebo, his face turned toward the water and the waxing moon above. He shifted his gaze to me when I emerged from the trees. I paused at the edge of the clearing to recover my breath, and the tranquility of the night in this tiny forest took hold of me. The chattering stream and the whispering breeze reminded me of how it felt to relax in the Englischer Garten—in a bustling city but set apart from the fray. I need to spend more time out here, I realized, for apart from school and dance classes I had cloistered myself in the house while I mourned my brother, channeling my grief into music and books. Maybe some sort of primal dance was what I really needed.

Hans had removed his white gloves and stepped onto the grass while I stood lost in thought at the edge of the clearing. I looked back at him at last, and he stretched one hand out toward me. “Come dance with me, child,” he intoned.

I stepped toward him slowly, shivering slightly with the autumn breeze. I paused several steps away and looked down at his hand, ghostly pale in the moonlight, then up at his face. His eyes shone with some internal glory now, almost like a flame of fire somehow. I trembled again and wondered for a fleeting moment what I had gotten myself into. Then I reached for his hand.

I pulled away immediately as a searing pain shot through my skin. I gasped and took a step back, staring down at my hand. There were no outward signs, but I felt as though I had been burnt. The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come; I shook my hand in confusion and heard Hans sigh. When I met his eyes again, they evinced a deep disappointment. “Ach, Teuton child, it is not truly that difficult,” he murmured. I frowned, and he went on. “I don’t know what element you are, since your father chose to stifle your ancestral spirit all these years, but you certainly are something. You must relax, let go of your cares, bring out your soul, and embrace this night.” He swept his arm in a wide arc, indicating the trees, the brook, the sky. “To dance as a Teuton, you must be free,” he finished, then held out his right hand again. “Dance with me, Teuton princess.” His voice was low; his gaze burned deep.

I had listened to his every word, and I tried to concentrate on the night air, on this little bucolic glade in the middle of the suburbs, alone with nature. I took a deep breath, and now the chattering of the stream overshadowed all other sounds. I closed my eyes and stepped forward with more surety to take Hans’ hand.

I heard a new sound when our hands touched, as he clasped my hand in his. I felt no pain this time, but it seemed as though I heard something sizzling quietly. When I opened my eyes I saw what looked like a bit of steam rising from our entwined hands. I stared and breathed out, noticing that I could see my breath now. Hans looked down at our hands, then at my face, and his eyes burned with amazement. “Ice princess,” he said, correcting his earlier label of me. Ice? I breathed out again, staring in wonder at my frigid breath. For some reason my vision had grown fuzzy. My eyebrows came together, and I reached up to touch my glasses with my left hand. Yes, they were still there, though slightly fogged. Hans’ face shone with amusement, and he brought his left hand forward to remove my glasses, fold them up, and place them in his pocket.

I blinked in amazement at the clarity of the glade in the moonlight. It was as though I could somehow see the life emanating from the trees and stream, all in a frosty shade of blue. “The awakening of a Teuton’s element improves the senses,” Hans explained with a snicker. I blinked a few times and put my left hand to my head, not knowing what to say. Had I stumbled into a fairytale? Suddenly, Hans flexed his grip on my right hand and swung it into the air, pulling my body against his with his other hand. I gawked at him in shock, and he warned me teasingly, “Don’t let me melt you, Swan of Ice.” In the next instant, we were dancing.

This Teutonic dancing was not like the dancing I had learned in class. On some occasions our feet found the traditional steps of the waltz or the polka, but in general we danced a far more primitive dance, whirling astride the wind. We leapt from tree to tree, into the gazebo and out again, sometimes breaking apart and bounding through the dell in an olden form of tag. I found myself chortling almost the entire time, feeling no cold, just the thrill of exhilaration in the night. I was the stream, an icy river breaking over rocks, crashing over waterfalls. My partner took the form of a black fire, leaping high into the air, consuming everything in his path. At the start I feared that he might consume me, that his skill and ferocity might overwhelm my inexperience, but as the dance progressed I found my own element, the ice, to be as strong as his. His fire could not burn me, and I could not freeze him. We were equals, even though he danced with far more expertise.

I could have danced this way, this instinctive, heart-felt dance, until the dawn and not grown tired. Ultimately it ended, though, about the same as it had begun. Hans brought us to a graceful stop just outside the gazebo, easing my hand down to my side much more gently than he had lifted it into the air at the start. He let go of me but did not back away, and for a long moment we stared into each other’s faces. My eyes were wide with shock and likely a little blue from the ice I had just discovered within me. His were black as the night sky, glowing with an inner fire and perhaps with something more. Slowly he raised his right hand again and brought it to my face, tracing the side of it with a tenderness that shocked me all over again. A beautiful smile spread across his face again, as I stood frozen, and he whispered an accolade: “Sconi . . . .”

I did not know what that word meant, but I began to tremble with a tumble of teenage emotions. Then Hans dropped his hand to his side and looked back toward the house. “We should go before someone starts looking for you,” he said in a normal voice, as though my entire world had not transformed completely in a single hour. He handed my glasses back to me and left the glade, but I remained for a while longer, my breaths still dotting the air with frost.

“What . . . was that . . . ?” Dread had begun to supersede my wonder.

Chapter Two: