A BOY WITH GRIMY LONG BLOND HAIR stood beside a crowd of kids. The group stared down at a pink chalk hopscotch grid the boy had drawn on the sidewalk. A little girl, about seven, squinted up at him.
“Does everyone play dress up where you’re from?” she asked.
The boy, Daniel, glanced down at his tattered overcoat, patched trousers, and the beat-up top hat he held in his hand. The overcoat with tails had seen better days. It had begun to deteriorate even before he had gone to Free Country. No surprise, seeing as he had found them in the rubbish heap. The trousers had once belonged to one of the sons of his master in the factory. Hand-me-down hand-me-downs they were.
Daniel looked at the neat and tidy children surrounding him and felt a bit disheveled. Usually, he didn’t mind how he looked. Everyone in Free Country looked however they wanted to. Well, truth be told, he always made sure his face was clean and nothing was too dirty if he knew he’d be seeing Marya. He was sweet on her, and he didn’t care who knew it.
“Where I come from,” he told the little girl, “you can dress up as a fairy princess if you want to. Or a frog, even.”
The girl giggled. “I wouldn’t want to be a frog.”
“Well, then, don’t, for all I care.” Daniel was growing impatient. A dozen children had already hopped the pattern. This batch had slowed things down by asking questions.
“Come on,” he instructed them. “Hook it. If you can’t hop any faster than this, we’ll catch it for sure!”
He watched with satisfaction as the children picked up speed—excited, no doubt, by the possibility of being princesses and frogs. After the last child hopped, skipped, and jumped, Daniel started to follow but paused, teetering on one foot.
“Slag me,” he scolded himself. “I forgot! I promised Marya I’d snag her a souvenir.”
He placed his bare foot back on the ground and glanced into the window of the shop behind him. Daniel couldn’t read, so he wasn’t sure what kind of shop it was. But there was a little statue in the window of a ballerina.
“Coo,” he breathed, admiring the statue. “Ain’t you the cat’s canary.” It was just the thing for Marya. He picked up a stone from the gutter and hurled it at the window. Taking care not to cut himself, he reached in and snatched the statue. He shoved it under his coat and hopped his way back home into Free Country.
A moment later, Daniel stood on a cobblestone path in Free Country, surrounded on all sides by trees, flowers, and rolling lawns. The sun warmed the stones so they felt cozy under his bare feet. The sky was the same brilliant blue it always was, and a hint of the smell of chocolate cookies was in the breeze. Daniel took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the delicious air. “Free Country,” he murmured, “and about time, too. Another day of that drudge and I’d have been Bedlam bait.”
How long was I out there on my mission? he wondered. It was probably only about three days, but it had felt like years. That’s how passing time felt to Daniel anyplace but in Free Country. When he was anywhere else he felt all nervous.
His charges—the children he had just instructed in the special hopscotch pattern—stood gazing about them. They all look a bit daft when they come through, he observed. Well, no mind. They’ll get themselves sorted soon enough. And meantime, I’ve got a present to give! He patted the ballerina statue under his coat. He couldn’t wait to see Marya’s face when he gave it to her.
He pushed his way through the crowd of confused children. “Coming through, coming through,” he bleated. He charged up the hill, where some of the children Daniel had sent through earlier were gathered around Kerwyn.
Kerwyn was tall and skinny, and whenever he spoke to the newcomers, he made his voice deeper and lower than it really was. Why he’d want to sound like an old ’un was something Daniel didn’t understand. Isn’t that why we’re all here? To get away from the grown-ups?
Daniel thought Kerwyn would sound more commanding if he didn’t use all those ahems, ers, and uhms, when he spoke. Blimey, Kerwyn’s given the same speech a million times, so why does he still sound like he’s trying to guess at what he wants to say?
Okay, maybe a million is an exaggeration, Daniel conceded. Daniel wasn’t really sure how long Kerwyn had been here. He knew it was a lot longer than him. Or Marya. Maybe longer than everyone. That was one of the reasons Kerwyn was head boy. That, and the fact that at fourteen years old, he was the oldest among them. And always had been. And always would be.
“Ahem,” Kerwyn cleared his throat. “I am sure you all, ahem, have questions about…uh…er…things.”
Daniel tried not to laugh. Not a single child was paying the least bit of attention to Kerwyn. Maybe the kiddies should have had some questions, but they were having too much fun, discovering the amazing pleasures of Free Country. Boys and girls were rolling down the soft sweet grassy hills. Others chased brightly colored butterflies, who obliged by landing on their noses, tickling them between their astonished eyes. One group was plucking the candy lollipops that sometimes sprang right out of the ground.
“If I could have your attention, please?” Kerwyn asked. Now his voice was back to his ordinary pitch, which was sort of whiney.
“Kerwyn,” Daniel said.
Kerwyn looked annoyed. “I didn’t mean you, Daniel. I meant the new ones.”
“Where’s Marya?” Daniel asked.
Kerwyn crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a white shirt, with poofy sleeves that dangled a little along his wrists. Marya called it a “poet’s shirt.” But as far as Daniel knew, Kerwyn never made up any of that kind of soppy poetry stuff. Kerwyn much preferred spending his time making speeches and playing word games.
“Really,” Kerwyn said, rolling his dark eyes. “That is a stupid question. How should I know where Marya is?”
Daniel glared at Kerwyn, feeling anger rising. Did Kerwyn not want him to see Marya? He glared at the taller boy and advanced a step.
Kerwyn took a tiny step backward. “Out mooning with the Shimmers, I suppose.” Kerwyn threw up his hands. “Isn’t she always?”
Of course! Whenever Daniel didn’t know Marya’s whereabouts, he could always find her with the Shimmers.
“Thanks, mate!” Daniel called over his shoulder as he dashed away.
He charged down to the clear and cold river, which was full of rainbow fish leaping out of the water to greet him. “No time to play now,” he told a speckled bass.
He hopped onto his lovely, handmade raft. Daniel was quite pleased with his accomplishment, and that made him protective of it. He never let anyone but Marya ride on his raft. Before he came to Free Country, Daniel had never owned anything that was only his. Working in the filthy, noisy, stifling factory, anything he’d made had belonged to his master, Slaggingham. Everything there, by rights, was his master’s: Daniel’s time, even his life, it sometimes felt. But this raft, this was his.
Grabbing the tree branch that he used as a pole, he guided the raft downriver. To Marya.
Gliding downstream, he grinned, knowing he’d soon be seeing her. He knew exactly where to find the Shimmers. They danced in a little pool overhung with willow trees, just where the sun usually set.
The Shimmers are pretty, Daniel supposed. But he didn’t really understand why Marya spent so much time with them. They were hardly even real. You can practically see through them. Marya is far prettier than any of that lot. But girls like shiny little things, and the Shimmers were certainly that.
He finally spotted her in the distance, sitting on an overturned rowboat. She was a little slip of a thing, really, and just about his age—thirteen—with beautiful long red hair that curled and danced in the breeze. Her skin was pale white, like those dolls that have glass heads, and her eyes were the most sparkly green. Greener even than the greenest grass of Free Country—and that was the greenest Daniel had ever seen. There hadn’t been too much green in Daniel’s world. In fact, where Daniel had come from, there was very little that wasn’t covered with soot and grime.
Marya was so clean. He liked that, too.
Daniel ducked his hand into the river and gave his face a scrub. He ran his wet hand through his blond hair, hoping it wasn’t too much of a mess. Kerwyn did sometimes scold him for being so untidy. Usually Daniel felt like clocking Kerwyn for that. But sometimes he thought perhaps Kerwyn was just trying to help him along a bit. To fit in, like. Make a good impression.
Daniel poled up into the tall grasses of the riverbank. Without his asking, the grass parted for him, so that he could maneuver the raft into place. The long green fronds knew he was in a hurry. Free Country was like that sometimes. You just wanted something and before you’d really realized that you’d made a wish, Free Country gave it to you. It didn’t always happen that way, though. Daniel wished and wished for Marya to kiss him and she never did. Not even once. He was still puzzling over why Free Country gave him some things but not what he wanted most.
He leaped onto the bank and hurried toward Marya.
“Marya,” he called. “I’m back!” He wondered if she had missed him. Maybe he’d impress her with how many of the little kiddies he had brought back.
“I’ve done it!” he boasted as he made his way to her through the long grass. “We reeled in the lot of ’em.”
He clambered onto the overturned boat that Marya sat on and sprawled beside her. “You ought to see the world they’s from,” he told her. “They got these boxes they string to their ears that makes music and games like you never seen.”
Marya nodded a little, and she gave a small smile so Daniel knew she had noticed he was there. That was a start, at least.
“There’ll be more of ’em scarping over any time now,” he continued. “Kerwyn’ll be picking missionaries for the last crossing soon as he gets the new ones tucked away.”
“That’s good,” Marya murmured.
Daniel laughed. “You don’t give a fig, do you? Not really.”
Now Marya gave a real smile, even though she still didn’t look at him. “No,” she answered. “I don’t.”
Daniel tore his eyes away from Marya’s pretty face and followed her gaze. The Shimmers were putting on a splendid show.
He wasn’t sure exactly what they were. They looked like little cherubs, only they weren’t chubby. They were silvery and pink and glowing, and the air around wherever they were glowed, too. They didn’t touch the ground but floated above the river, dancing. They were always dancing. Daniel had to admit they were very impressive—all fluttery and floaty like that. Marya always said they were the most delicate, graceful dancers she’d ever seen. Daniel had never seen any other dancers so he took her word for it.
He stood up and dug his bare toes into the soft wet riverbank. “I don’t care about that stuff, neither,” he told Marya. “It was fun, being picked for the mission and all, but after that…”
He glanced over his shoulder. He was going to tell Marya something he had never said out loud to anyone. “It weren’t so bad over there, you know. Not so bad as Kerwyn says. The air weren’t that bad. It was a sight better than where I came from. The water, too.” He thrust out his bottom lip as he thought about things. “And only a few of the little ’uns looked like they was getting the stick at all regular.” He shook his head. “That Kerwyn. He’s such a jerk.”
Marya didn’t respond—not even to this bold statement. She just stared at the Shimmers. He’d never get her attention with them about. He would have tried running them off, but this was their spot. He figured they’d never go.
He sighed and flopped back down onto the rowboat. Maybe if he tried harder to care about the Shimmers, he’d be able to spend more time with Marya. He sat silently beside her, watching the fancy creatures dance their fancy patterns. They were kind of mesmerizing. Still, Marya outshone even their glowing presence.
“You ever try dancing with ’em?” he asked.
Marya finally gazed straight at Daniel. It made his heart feel all gooshy. “Dance with them?” she repeated. “How could I? Look at them.”
He watched them for a few more seconds. Marya could do anything, he was sure of it. Why didn’t she see that?
“Oh, just you wait,” he assured her. “You’re bound to catch on sooner or later. Besides, they’ve been here a long time. A real long time.”
Marya’s shoulders slumped. “So have I,” she mumbled. “Only I never grow up. I just stay the same.”
“Who’d want to grow up?” Daniel said. “Not me!”
Marya stared down at her feet. Her long hair covered her face, but Daniel could tell that she’d gone all quiet inside again.
Now you’ve gone and done it, Daniel scolded himself. He forgot that Marya wasn’t always happy to be in Free Country. And that she’d probably been trying to dance like the Shimmers as long as she’d been here. “Snaffle me, Marya. I’m sorry.” Do something, he told himself. Make it better.
He sat back up and felt the weight in his inside coat pocket. Perfect! “Never mind that,” he said, pulling out the ballerina statue. “Look, I brought you something.” He handed Marya the dancing girl. She stared down at it, her green eyes wide.
His stomach felt suddenly sick. She was supposed to smile when he gave her the doll. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “I thought you’d like it. You’re always thinking about the old palace days and learning to be a ballerina and all.”
“I do like it. I do,” Marya told him.
Girls are funny, Daniel thought. Marya’s lips are smiling, but her eyes are still sad.
“She’s beautiful. I promise I like it,” Marya assured him. As if to prove it, she kissed the statue’s head and looked up at Daniel.
Daniel wished she had kissed him instead. It made him want to smash the stupid statue. He shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets.
She still didn’t seem ready to leave the Shimmers, so he lay back down beside her. At least now, though, she was looking at the statue he’d given her instead of at the shining dancers above the pool.
“Tell me what it was like,” Daniel asked her, “in that Petersburg place of yours.”
“I’ve told you a dozen times,” Marya protested.
“But I like hearing the telling,” he said. What he truly liked was the excuse to stay close to Marya. He liked having her tell him stories about her life.
Marya gave a little smile and lay the statue across her lap. “Once, long, long ago, my mother belonged to the Empress.”
“Belonged?” Daniel repeated. Marya had never started the story quite like that before—never used the word “belonged.” “Like that statue I just gave you belongs to you?”
“Yes, exactly like that.”
“I wouldn’t want to belong to nobody!” Daniel said.
“It didn’t seem strange at the time,” Marya said. “It was just the way it was. And Mama got to wear pretty dresses, and I did, too, and eat well and live in the palace year-round.”
“That part would have been all right.” Daniel had spent most of his thirteen years sweating by the coal furnaces of the factory or freezing while scrounging for food or shelter.
“Yes,” Marya said in her soft voice. “But Mama had to do whatever the Empress wanted. They all did. So when the Empress went to France one day and saw people dance a way she liked, she came back and told all her servants to bring her their girl children.”
“No boys?” Daniel always asked that question in the same spot in the story.
Marya smiled. “No boys. My mother had to make me go. I didn’t want to. The Empress scared me.”
“She scares me, too.” Daniel shivered.
“The Empress looked at all the girls and she picked the prettiest ones.”
“So of course she picked you!” Daniel always said this, too.
Marya stood and pointed at Daniel. “You are going to dance for me!” she said in a highfalutin, bossy tone.
She jumped off the boat and sat cross-legged on the grass. Daniel flopped down and stretched out beside her. The Free Country grass came together under him to form a pillow.
“If the Empress picked you, you couldn’t be with your family very much,” Marya continued. “You spent too much time practicing ways to stand and move. If you didn’t catch on, they’d hit your legs with a stick. They gave you shoes that had wood on the toes. The dancing shoes made your feet bleed.”
“It weren’t right!” Daniel was furious at Marya’s mistreatment. He hated the shoes that crushed her toes and made them bleed, the dancing master who beat the students. “I’d ’uv flung those biting shoes straight at that dancing fool’s head!”
“But I wanted to dance!” Marya exclaimed. “It wasn’t all bad. There was something in the dance that was good—like a promise.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her slim pale arms around them. Her eyes looked dreamy. “Sometimes you’d feel like you could soar away from everything—just glide, free, if only you knew how.” She tilted her head and looked at Daniel. It made him turn shy—her gaze was so direct for once. “I thought it might make a difference if I took off the shoes. And it did. A little bit. But not enough. It wasn’t the shoes that held me down. It was that I had never learned how to fly. No one else knew either. No one could show me how.”
Daniel’s eyes went to the Shimmers. He was finally understanding why Marya was always here. “The Shimmers fly, don’t they?” he asked. “They know.”
“Yes, they do. But I don’t think they can teach me. It’s their own dance.” She faced the Shimmers again. “I think everyone must have to find her own dance.”
She had never said so much before. Daniel reached over and gripped her hands. “What do you think your dance would be?”
He must have grabbed her small, cool hands too tightly, because she winced. He instantly released her soft fingers.
Daniel stared at the dirt, ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“I know,” Marya replied.
They sat quietly for a few minutes. He couldn’t help her, and it made him sad and a little bit angry.
“Did you say that Kerwyn will be choosing the next missionary?” Marya asked.
“Any time now,” Daniel said. Was she hoping that he would go, go away? She wanted to be rid of him, didn’t she? He couldn’t bear to look at her in case that was what she was thinking.
Marya stood, clutching the statue. “Thank you for the dance,” she said to the Shimmers. “And for my present,” she said to Daniel. And then she ran off, leaving him alone.