Excerpt

Once inside the studio, Katya threw on the heater, but it was still a brisk fifty-nine degrees when the first dancers arrived. Giselle murmured apologies for her icy hands as she helped the eight highest level dancers into willis costumes to assess them for fit. The willis were the siren-like undead maidens of the ballet's second act, dancing on pointe in identical romantic era tutus.

The dancers in their careful row, white tulle clad, looked neither bloodthirsty nor fiendish. This was problematic, as the willis were supposed to be both.

Behind Giselle, Babushka muttered in dour Russian. Happily, Babushka was muttering not over the coming of evil rusalki but rather over the fit of the willis costumes—donated and faded—and how much work it would be to take in or let out the boned bodices, adjust the sagging shoulder straps, trim the fraying hems.

Giselle's grandmother considered the labor; Giselle considered the knowledge-base of the local audience and how they wouldn't for one minute believe the elegant, white-clad girls spelled doom for any man who stepped within their pale. The residents of Foulweather knew their water fey, regardless of whether you called them willis or rusalki or sirens.

Babushka, her back ballet-straight, her lips barely parting, had returned to mumbling about the imminent return of the sirens.

At least she muttered in Russian instead of in English, thought Giselle, turning her attention back to the dancers.

Morgan was joining the row of dancers, hands anchored on waist to protect her sagging tutu. The flat thump-thump-thump of Morgan's pointe shoes told everyone she was unhappy with the condition of her costume. It had been the only one remaining. Giselle gazed at Morgan's romantic-length tutu, frayed and bedraggled in what must have been the work of mice or squirrels or small boys with scissors. Really, thought Giselle, the look was rather lovely: tattered and … undead.

It made her think.

"Katya," she whispered, beckoning with a crook of one finger.

Her sister frowned and shook her head a few millimeters. Katya refused to leave the row of white-clad willis. Refused to place herself above her peers. Giselle admitted to herself this was probably the best way to promote harmony among the dancers.

Tilting her head, Giselle squinted against the dove grey light of morning, the girls' last morning in the studio before school began again tomorrow.

As usual, the Oregon sun refused to break through the cloud cover. But the light was coy—more silver than gray—and as it caught the hem of the unhappy dancer's gown, Giselle thought of the rusalka she'd met seven years ago, remembering her tattered dress-like covering, clinging in wet folds, strangely translucent. Not so different from ballet costume tulle, really.

Rusalki, sirens, willis … Yes, thought Giselle. Yes. Absently, she nodded.

In her head, the violins swelled with the theme for the undead maidens of Giselle, and she imagined the dancers crossing the stage wearing not the clean white of the nineteenth century ballet, but gowns distressed from long use. Use by ancient girls who rose from watery depths to lure men to their graves.

Like the rusalki in Babushka's tales. Or like the sirens.

[COULD END HERE OR CONTINUE]

And the more she considered it, the more the idea took a perfect shape in her mind. By tradition, the willis were supposed to dance in gowns that resembled clean, white bridal garb. But really, how white could the willis' whites be? They passed each night in frenzied dance, and Giselle could speak with some authority as to the not-clean of eternally unwashed garments.

She re-imagined the dancers' make-up: a pale base with deep hollows of charcoal beneath eyes and cheekbones, a streak of blood red upon their unsmiling mouths. And there it was: the solution to the meeting of a nineteenth century French ballet with twenty-first century Portland.

Giselle smiled because the ballet school, tiny and not reliant upon wealthy patrons, could take this outrageous step where larger companies could not. Larger companies relied on the good will of aficionados familiar with the canon of costumes. Such patrons would almost certainly object to any departure from traditional garb, let alone the radical change she was considering.

Giselle knew better than to try convincing her mother, but if she whispered the idea to Babushka and her sister, upon whose shoulders fell the alterations and re-stitching of torn frou-frou, well … Giselle thought they might just end up with willis who would call to mind the Sirens of Foulweather: Willis who would terrify.