… a year later…
Tess.
It’s supposed to snow tonight. A blizzard, which will shut down the trains and the taxis. A storm like New York hasn’t seen in years. I don’t see Soph before. Not because there’s a rule against it, but because I’m stuck in my own schedule—my pass to leave for the City doesn’t start until noon, and by the time I take the bus across town and get to where I’m supposed to be, she’s already behind a door, preparing. She calls me while they’re doing her hair.
“This is ridiculous, Tess,” she grumbles. “My hair is pulled back so tight I can’t close my mouth. The damn comb is practically nailed into my skull. And wait ’til you see the red lipstick. I look like this year’s queen of the flamenco dancers.”
“You look so beautiful,” I tell her.
That makes her laugh. “You can’t even see me!”
I tell her, “I don’t need to.”
“I can’t believe you talked me into this… this tradition. I should be hanging on the wall in a gallery at the Prado.”
I chuckle. “‘The most significant of tradition…’”
“I know, I know, ‘Survives and blooms through endless revision.’ What was I thinking? Right now, I just feel like something from the seventeenth century. I am not the least bit revised.”
“You are, though.”
And then she has to go, to finish getting ready. I know all I have to do now is wait. I wait and wait and wait, and, finally it’s time to adjust my jacket and my gloves. I follow the directions to where the chaperones tell me to stand. I hand the little card to a lady standing by a microphone behind the curtains, announcing the debutantes.
She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, then inspects the card again. She’s confused. “Is this right?” she asks me. “Do you realize you’re escorting…”
“A girl,” I say, and I don’t so much as blink, just stand as though I was at attention in front of her. “I’m escorting my girlfriend, Sophronia Borbón del Alcazar. I’m West Point Cadet Tess Desmarais, First Year, ma’am. As you know, West Point had a long tradition of providing escorts for the young ladies who are first presented at this ball until very recently. My First Captain, ma’am—she’s a woman, too—granted me special leave to attend. I guess we’re starting a new tradition.”
The woman blinks at me and looks back at the card. She clearly has no idea what to say. So I add, “And yes, I know she’s a girl. Respectfully, ma’am, she knows I’m one too.”
Then Soph is next to me. She says my name, and I can barely breathe because I was right: She’s beautiful with her long black hair piled on her head under her family’s comb, the lace falling behind her. She is wearing the most elegant, full-skirted, heavy white ball gown I’ve ever seen. The lace of her skirt matches her mantilla. The announcer reads her name and mine, and I put out my arm for her to take. We walk out into bright lights and flashbulbs and applause.
Later, after she dances with her father and we eat prime rib with a bunch of other girls and their escorts, Soph sneaks me out to one of the hotel balconies. She giggles that glittery laugh I still love, and tries to pull me into her white fur wrap for a hug. But I won’t let her, because the escorts were warned against PDA and, if I get in trouble here, I won’t be allowed off campus again until Memorial Day. I stand right next to her, though, and hold her hands, which are covered in opera-length white gloves. She apologizes.
“I know you used to watch Disney movies and always wanted to dress up in the ball gown. I’m sorry they made me wear it instead,” she says.
“I what?” I say, not understanding her. Then I remember the talk we had back at the conference. “Silly,” I tell her, “when I said I used to watch those movies and imagine being at a ball with the music and the ball gown, it was never me wearing it.”
“It wasn’t?”
She’s surprised, and I laugh out loud at her, but there’s no bite to it. “I’m a girl who likes girls, Soph. I was always watching the princesses in their ball gowns because I wanted to dance with them. Not because I wanted to dress like them.” She laughs with me, and we look out across the city at all the lit-up buildings. I’m not sure I could ever live here; the city is so crowded. But I’m glad to be here with Soph tonight.
“Is your family all right with you being here?” she asks gently.
“They will be,” I say. Maybe I’m starting to believe it. “But Joey texted from Boston. He found a new job, one that pays better, and Orly is coming up in March, right?”
“Yes,” she says. We both stop talking.
We can hear the dance music and the sounds of clinking crystal and silverware and conversation coming through the glass doors. Out here the night is dark, despite the city lights. Soph shivers in her wrap. We stand together, enduring the cold. Neither of us wants to go back inside.
I kiss her, even though I’m breaking the rules. She’s too beautiful not to kiss tonight, and I know I’ll regret it forever if I don’t.
“Will you dance with me now?” I ask, because we have to rejoin the party. “I want to experience the full Sophronian tradition of a debutante ball. It may be my only chance.”
When she smiles and gives me her hand, snow starts to drift down out of the night sky like a blessing on both of us.
* * *
From the Fan Fiction Unbound Archive,
posted by conTessaofthecastle and Debutaunt:
Daphne and Astoria stood in the wooded clearing, a ring of witches surrounding them. Today they were sharing the magic they had acquired with their new coven. Astoria’s royal blue cape fluttered softly in the breeze. Her hair, braided with matching blue ribbons, glinted auburn in the sunlight. Daphne couldn’t look away. Her own soft gold cape pooled around her ankles. Daphne’s mind wandered to the weeks before: Astoria fetching wood for the fire, hunched over the wooden table as she studied the spell book, lying close in the dark of their bed each night. Astoria’s voice had whispered spells in the dark each night, lulling Daphne to sleep with magic. They had worked and practiced and talked. And they had finally created the enchantment that would bind them to each other and to their own coven.
Adder’s fork and carrot nose,
Tiny shoes on porcelain toes,
Silver moon, fav’rable Venus.
We need none of it between us.
Bat’s wool, dog’s tongue, newt’s right eye,
Laws of nature we defy.
Heaven’s blessings, absent Uranus,
We need neither to sustain us.
Demons, gorgons to placate.
Better angels susurrate.
Garland of roses to link us,
Fragrance of ash forever syncs us.
My heart, your heart, they demand,
“Love each other,” their command.
Make no sacrifice too tragic—
Love becomes our strongest magic.
As bright sun wound its way through the spring leaves on the trees towering overhead, Daphne reached for Astoria’s hand. “How shall we proceed?” she asked with a smile. Astoria looked back at her with a wide-eyed happiness that drove every other thought from Daphne’s mind and said, again, “Together.”