The Gold in the Dark

Chapter Nine

"And this is what we do every single day?" she asked.

Wynna chuckled as she piled more chicken onto her plate. "It's the premier dance academy in all of Hygot. What did you expect?" After the class with Mistress Primbuck had ended, another teacher had led them through strength-building exercises on the floor and then a final, lengthy stretching session. Tia stumbled out of the studio on heavy, wobbling legs, feeling like a lost desert trader searching for an oasis as she followed Wynna to the dining hall. She guzzled down water as Wynna watched on with an amused smile.

Wynna pointed her fork at the dishes spread across the table. "Make sure to eat something. If all you have is porridge today you'll pass out by the time we get to partnering."

She choked on her water. "Partnering?"

Her spluttering earned her another wry smile. "That's right—couple's dance. Scared?"

She opted for honesty over a feigned cool. "Yes. Does everyone already have a set partner? Who will I dance with?"

"Probably no one for the next few days, until they formally ask Selitta to leave," Wynna said. "Then you'll be paired with Simas." She crooked a finger towards a lanky, blonde boy several tables down. His lunch companions were guffawing with laughter as he spooned a veritable mountain of mashed potatoes onto his plate and carved it with surprising dexterity into a sagging fort. Taking in Tia's dismay, Wynna said apologetically, "Completely different person in class, I promise." A second glance at Simas revealed he was now torpedoing green peas with his spoon toward the droopy potato fort. Any secret visions she had of being miraculously paired with the gray-eyed boy fled from her mind, replaced by premonitions of galumphing around with someone who played with his food. Nonetheless, it was a small price to pay for only having to deal with Selitta for a few days longer.

After lunch they had an hour-long class with Master Sonnen, who led them through an acting and expression class. The session mainly involved him shouting at the dancers to maintain their serene expressions as they balanced in complicated poses and executed bounding leaps across the floor. "Stop biting at your lip!" he bellowed at Tia, then rounded on a red-haired boy who was raising his eyebrows too high.

"No one likes him much," Wynna whispered as the bell sounded and she moved toward the studio doors, a dejected Tia trailing behind her.

The next class took place in a room that looked more like a library than a dance studio. The walls were lined with overflowing bookshelves, so that the whole room was suffused with the smell of dust and paper. She had never seen so many books before in her whole life. She was used to picking through the general store's ledgers, but these were real books, thick tomes all inscribed with titles like A History of Northern Folk Dance and Myth and Muse.

As soon as the students arrived they set to moving a cluster of large, wheeled mirrors from one corner into the empty center of the room. The whole class conversed in quiet voices as they finished getting set up for class; the cramped, dusty atmosphere of the room did not invite loud conversation. Tia wheeled her mirror next to Wynna's own, then looked around expectantly. "Where's the teacher?"

"Mistress Laserie will be here soon enough," Wynna murmured. "Sometimes she gets a bit caught up is all."

A moment later, a small side door that Tia had not noticed swung open with a creak, and a hunched, plump old woman shuffled into the room. Her short, gray hair was a frizz of corkscrews around her lined face, and she was draped in wispy black chiffon that caught and trailed in the air as she moved. The woman clutched a stack of four or five weighty books in her left hand and an ornate, wooden cane in her right, which made steady clicks on the floor as she walked to the center of the room. Without a word, the woman cast a slow, appraising gaze over her students, finally alighting on Tia. Big eyes magnified to twice their size by thick glasses met Tia's own.