4.3

Jewel wanted to brace herself. But she had learned you needed to be loose.

Muscles could be ready, her Wyrmfire could course through her. In fact it even helped, once she got going.

But she had stumbled and failed to find the ‘wind and water’ as Tsulogothulan had put it. For the last three days she had depended on the Bog Wizard to help her find how sound and voice and the movement of the Footmen could mean wind and water and movement in her own coils and wings, legs and tail and head.

She was confident that, if shown the way to start by the Weird of Swamps (and so much more) Jewel could continue.

Over twenty times now, she had shown that she did not even need much.

But Tsulogothulan was again standing solidly and still in their pond. According to the Wizard, whatever strange magic there was to dance Jewel was not quite getting it yet.

And Jewel was now convinced there was a magic to dancing that was simply foreign to her.

Like when she tried to explain Wyrmfire to Alexander, or even Father and Mother.

Apparently one simply was meant to feel it and it was there, obvious and whole and ready to guide you.

But Jewel was yet unable to catch the start of it.

She had not yet caught it the first four times today they had tried, never getting into sync and requiring Tsulogothulan to step in and demonstrate.

It was not helped that having identified how she was cheating (apparently memorizing exactly the timing was not how it was done) the boneless reed of a Sorcerer had started guiding the Footmen to chant and clap in different tempos and rhythms.

Jewel wondered if the lessons would culminate with Jewel memorizing every rhythm and meter and whatever other words Tsulogothulan came up with.

Or would she somehow overcome her shameful inadequacy and actually get whatever the Wizard was trying to teach her?

One thing she had learned.

Jewel had never danced before she started taking lessons.

She had copied and cheated and as infuriating as it was Jewel could not deny the difference now that she had (with guidance) felt it for herself.

Compared to the feeling when she caught the ‘wind and water’ that Tsulogothulan could seemingly slip into effortlessly and Jewel could only stumble in and out of without the initial guidance?

Dancing was magic.

It was like Wyrmfire.

Jewel paused for a moment.

She heard the rhythm coming up and stood still in consideration.

Hearing the music, but more importantly feeling it washing through the air and the Footmen and their voices.

Into the ambivalent earth.

Through the playful wind.

Disturbing the leaves and shoots of the grasses and even ever so faintly brushing the diffuse water that swung and swooped and...

Jewel turned her gaze up to the sky and she could not help but gape.

The clouds danced.

The sky and wind was not some result of the dance, some trick to think of it.

Jewel swayed her head slowly, slightly at first to the rhythm turning to look left and right.

She tried moving her feet and wings to the clap of hands and found it right.

Jewel spread her wings and while ducking and lifting her neck and shoulders tried to catch and carry the feeling of waves of sound from the footmen’s voices.

Tsulogothulan had no mouth, but its eye could squeeze to one side or another in a way that definitely resembled how eyes clenched in a smile.

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Nothing needed to be said.

Jewel understood.

And instead of congratulations or acknowledgement in words the Bog Wizard opened up and sang.

The song was wordless and yet it rose and fell with the wind, with the seasons, with water and reed.

The Footmen, having kept from moving but the minimum in all the drills since Jewel had first been taught to dance properly began to move with it. To clap and sing as they moved into circles while others slapped their hands together and stomped their feet.

Wordlessly and yet carried and buoyed on the songs were joined together and guided with Tsulogothulan.

And Jewel could feel it!

She swayed and spun and stomped and even gave delighted laughter.

The bewildering array of people moving in so many different and yet unified ways was not so daunting.

How could it be?

Jewel could feel her Wyrmfire in herself and the echo of it in all of them.

And they moved as one and separate.

All of them like leaves in the wind.

Like flecks of duckweed in the currents of hidden waters.

Music felt and heard but unseen still swayed and twirled and Jewel found herself spinning and twirling and stepping and sliding with it.

She leaped in delight up into arcs and cheers from the Footmen.

She sweeped low and they leaped over her.

Sometimes they even failed to clear the dipped coils of her body but instead of this throwing all into disarray and confusion Jewel could simply carry it through with the rhythm.

With the music.

With the song!

It was magic!

Jewel never wanted it to stop!

But soon she could feel them tire.

The claps grow faltering.

The voices are hoarse.

The sun was dipping towards darkness.

No one had eaten.

Or stopped for a drink.

How could Jewel have even considered it?

The music of the world had been through her and within her and all the rest.

She could still feel the very beat and stamp of her feet still echoing up from the hard packed stone.

The spiraling patterns almost glowing in her Wyrmfire where her claws had scraped and carved.

The stone below the packed dirt happily humming in time with the song that while no longer rising from throats or carried in clapping hands or stamping feet was still bubbling and sparklingly present.

Jewel felt a fizz all through her as her Wyrmfire coursed and charged in a way it never had before in her entire life.

Suddenly in the stillness that finally overtook her in absence of the song but still echoing cavernously with the music every single muscle found in the absence of motion to scream in unison.

And startled into laughter and growling in pain as one Jewel collapsed to the carved pattern she and the Footmen had made in the packed dirt of the courtyard.

A pattern that Tsulogothulan was peering at with great trepidation, poised in their pond as if it was a stool to keep them up from a particularly vast mass of vermin.

Jewel felt silly and happy and in so much wonderfully burning pain she could barely pay attention to the voice.

“Well, that was quite a bit more than I expected was going to happen.”

She faintly considered the fact all the Footmen were groaning and collapsing into leaning support for each other.

But everyone seemed to be smiling just as goofily as Jewel.

It was hard to be mad about dancing too much even when every single limb and join in your body demanded you had.

“Well, congratulations are in order, Lady Jewel.”

Jewel rolled her neck so she was looking up at Tsulogothulan with one eye. Heavens and Stars she was terribly thirsty now.

“I declare that you can certainly Dance.”

Jewel could not find anything to do but hoarsely squeak.

“Yay.”