Dance La Esmeralda
Judge Claude Frollo hated the Festival of Fools.
Perhaps "hated" was too soft of a term. He "hated" the gypsies, that was certain; but the festival was far beyond that. It was all that made his frame recoil in disgust clustered into one atrocious holiday.
The wide, cackling grins of the gypsies that the judge so despised now plagued even the most respectable of citizens. Those abominable smiles, a platform of jagged teeth riddled with slivers of golden caps (no doubt fashioned from stolen coins), now riddled the entire city in a similar manner. The bright colors of the gypsy garbs were enough of an eyesore when assigned to but a few misfit street performers, but now this sickening rainbow of the heathens was slathered onto every wall and pillar of the plaza.
Frollo's expression crumpled into a scowl as he sat back in his seat, sourly aware of the debauchery that awaited just outside the carriage doors.
The sixth of January was by far the most detestable slot on the calendar. It was an annual excuse for the people to shun all morality and glorify the pagans for their defiant ways, cheering and applauding those saturated with sin.
The horses outside came to an abrupt halt, and the minister stood. He emerged from the dark interior of his carriage into the stark flood of colors, drunkeness, and noise that assaulted his eyes and several other senses as well. From every direction there came laughter, singing, and chanting. Frollo's eyebrows sloped downward in annoyance as he made his way toward the public official's chair that overlooked the stage. He heard one gypsy in particular making a proclamation to the joyous crowd, his dark face masked with both a purple cloth and an expression of jubilee.
"Come one, come all!" his crisp voice exclaimed as Frollo took his seat. If he was to be charged with presiding over these vermin, he would at least try to derive pleasure from arresting as many of them as he could. Suddenly, the thin gypsy man was right beside him, latching his gloved hands onto the judge's shoulder.
"Hurry, hurry, here's your chance!" he chirped, as his unkempt hair spilled onto the shoulders of his purple-yellow array. He leaned toward Frollo, and with a deliberate wink, he cried, "See the mystery and romance!" With one last trill of chorus and a splayed handful of confetti, he bounded back toward the stage. The minister brushed the celebratory paper shreds off of his cloak with a snort of contempt as the gypsy continued.
"Come one! Come all!" he shouted with a dramatic welcoming motion. "See the finest girl in France make an entrance to entrance!"
Frollo's eyes narrowed, and he unintentionally leaned forward with curiosity. Who was this girl of whom he spoke?
With one last sweeping gesture, the gypsy man sang, "Dance La Esmeralda, dance!" and with a flash of pluming smoke, he was gone.
In his place was a goddess.
Frollo stopped breathing.
The girl twirled, dispelling what was left of the introductory smoke, and came fully into view. Thick hair tumbled in glossy curls down her back, as black as the night sky, and the jeweled tiara atop her head seemed then like golden, spangled stars. Her skin was amber soaked in warm chocolate, mixing to create a plain of soft brown. Her form was beauty incarnate, and her scarlet dress accentuated each luscious curve of her figure.
Immediately, she began to move. Her ample breasts heaved as her hips swung in a sultry tide to the rhythm of the music. She illuminated the stage in sleek glory, as if she herself were the sun and what hung in the heavens was a mere torch by comparison.
As she turned, Frollo caught a clear glimpse of her face. Set beneath her majestic brows were large eyes with irises of molten emerald, profoundly green and utterly captivating. Beneath her strawberry cheeks she wore a coy smile, like a tigress before a den of mice. Ivory teeth peeked through the curtains of her lips. Such sensual lips! Even from afar, the judge thought that they appeared to be rubies soaked in honey, making her heartbreakingly beautiful face into a gourmet of crimson and bronze.
The minister's keen eyes combed over every inch of the girl. He imagined that her calves, though laced in strands of wanderlust muscle, were not hard like diamonds under eggshell skin but rather like supple dough. Her thighs moved as effortlessly as melted nectar and met neatly where the judge's sharp cheeks toasted to crimson to think about. He could not be blamed, though; it was likely that this gypsy nymph could make even the sunburst horizon blush before her.
It was then that she truly began to dance. She dropped her tambourine, taking delicate steps with her tiny feet. With unparrelled elegance, she pranced about the stage as the crowd gaped and cheered at her charming performance.
Frollo realized he was shaking.
That was no mere girl.
She was like a dream; for in dreams, one may dare to create and to imagine things so beautiful that they could never grace the world with their grandeur. And yet she was real- she had flesh and blood, and she moved. Oh, how she moved! If the sun had but a sliver of her radiance, then the earth would catch fire… and yes, she set him on fire!
Her brazen hips, her sunburnt shoulders, those slender legs, her eyes, her lips, her hair! Each set him ablaze, each smiled with a gleam that sparked the flames beneath his heart's pyre. The passion seared the marrow within his bones, those happy bones, overjoyed to support the flesh that could stand before this goddess!
She seemed like an angelic panther, pure and radiant, yet wild and feral. Could this girl truly be human? Frollo didn't realize it was possible for creatures of such grace and loveliness to walk among mortals.
And not only was she a human, but a gypsy as well! She was a heavenly demon, but a demon nonetheless.
As the judge's eyes eagerly lapped up every detail of the gypsy's visage, he was suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety. He was a minister, a holy and righteous man. For him to be thinking of a girl in this fashion, and a gypsy girl at that, was appalling. Why, then, couldn't he tear his gaze from her? Why was he fantasizing about what it might be like to entangle his fingers in that ocean of rich hair? Why was he imagining the bliss of clutching that shapely body against his own, of devouring every inch of that gorgeous skin in a carnal feast of lust?
Frollo felt a shudder ripple through his frame. His blood was thrumming in a frenzy of scorching heat. All at once he began to fear that someone would notice, and that his inner desires would somehow be brought to light. He had to seem unaffected.
"Look at that disgusting display," he murmured darkly to Captain Phoebus, who was stationed close-by.
"Yes, sir!" Phoebus eagerly replied, watching the gypsy with equally hungry eyes.
Frollo felt a pang of acute jealousy. It wasn't just the captain, but the entire crowd was watching the gypsy girl freely with wolfish grins. Their eyes soaked up the sight of her delightful body, drinking her up as if her dance was a chalice of wine in a barren desert. The girl was putting herself on display for all to see, and for all to lust after, without any fee or pretense.
The judge was overcome with sudden rage. How dare she poison the minds of all those gathered with unholy thoughts? With each ginger step she took, gluttonous stares bloomed throughout the audience like vulgar, thorned roses. The gypsy's beauty was a form of sorcery in itself!
However, even more intense than Frollo's fury at the girl was his envy. He wanted her to dance for him, and him alone. She showered the gifts of her divinity and grace upon anyone who would look, the sinners as well as the saints. Damnable, this equality! He was the only one who was entitled to see this spectacle. That body should be moving for him alone. That flesh should tremble for him alone, sweat for him alone, writhe for him alone…
He was a pious, God-fearing man. He was a just, virtuous figure of authority. He was the only one who deserved to have her. And Christ, how he wanted her!
The very instant the judge thought this, the dancer turned and set her jade eyes upon him. His boiling blood suddenly turned to arctic slush, chilling the veins that snaked up his body like marble blue patchwork.
The gypsy drew a purple scarf from her bodice, sauntered to the edge of the stage, and then took quick leaps toward Frollo's seat. Before the minister had a chance to react, the girl propped herself up onto the armrest of his regal chair and slung the scarf around his neck. The sheer material nibbled at his throat as the gypsy slowly pulled him closer to her.
It was mind-numbing enough to watch the girl from afar, but to have her this nearby was so dizzying that for a moment, Frollo could only see her as a blur of vibrant crimson and purple. He leaned away from her, trying to resist as she brought her face nearer and nearer to his own.
To see each of her beautiful features so vividly, to see those emerald champagne eyes, those bright apple cheeks, that slender neck all mere inches from his face filled him to the brim with uncontrollable desire. Terror pumped through him as he met her gaze with more vulnerability than he had ever before felt. He was a fly caught in her web, a fish trapped in her net, a concept tangled in the constraints of her dream-catcher.
The gypsy's raven hair cupped her brandywine dimples as they widened with her smirk. Her eyes curdled with mischievous glee. She laid her rosy finger against Frollo's bottom lip, and pressed her own bee-stung lips against the tip of his nose. The touch of those plump red lips sent a wave of scorching heat through his face, his chest, his loins, and his innermost soul.
Thousands of possibilities erupted within the judge's mind, all of which would allow for him to feel those lips upon him as often as a bird feels the caress of the wind in its wings. The girl would have to be baptized, of course, and forsake her heathen ways. She be would be taught to dress properly, and they would be accordingly married in the church. It was possible- she could belong to him, beyond question or skepticism. This gypsy could become his mistress, his wife. They could live together, eat together, lie in rapture together…
All at once, however, the girl reached up and shoved the minister's hat down over his face with one insolent thrust of her hand, swiftly tearing each of his future visions asunder. Frollo furiously recovered, ripping the scarf from his neck only to see that the gypsy was already back upon the stage.
The music drummed rapidly to match both the judge's blazing wrath and the gypsy's quickened pace. The cadence peaked as she performed a handspring and then lunged into a limber straddle, flipping her hair back with a sly wink at the onlookers. Frollo was quivering with anger. How could this girl provoke and humiliate him so, in public no less, and yet still inspire such a maddening craving within him?
The gypsy seized a spear from one of the enamored guards standing by the stage, and with incredible skill, she struck it into the platform and spun around its length with lithe twists of her body. Her legs twined around the lance as her hair swept the ground like a trail of jellied oil.
Frollo never imagined a day would come when he would feel jealousy over a spear. Yet still, watching her thighs eagerly cleaving to the wood with her head tossed back, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed in steady concentration, the judge yearned to be in the weapon's place.
He wanted those silken legs clinging to the ruts of his hips with the same enthusiasm. He wanted to etch a cherry glow into her wrists and ankles as she grew damp in ecstasy, inhaling thin, waspy breaths. He wanted to feel her bleat out his name like a snowy lamb at the moment of martyrdom, in a half-strangled language caked with utmost pleasure.
At last the dancer's momentum dwindled, and with a final nod of her jeweled head, she outstretched her arm and took a meek bow. The crowd burst into roaring applause, and golden coins rained upon the stage. The masked gypsy man from earlier reclaimed his place beside her and began announcing the next order of festivities to the crowd.
The minister, however, wasn't listening to the declaration. His hawk eyes loyally trailed after the gypsy girl as she slinked off to the side of the platform. Her dance had ended all too soon. Frollo didn't have time to recover from the spell of aching want that she had inflicted upon him, and in a sudden bout of trauma, he began to wonder if he would ever be able to regain the same composure he had possessed just minutes before. He felt as if something had fallen deep within him, something that could never be raised up again.
The girl had broken him. Her dancing had ruptured his grasp on holiness, and soiled his chaste disposition. The judge understood that the torture of watching her was incomparable to what he would now undoubtedly feel each second that elapsed without the girl's hearty visage before him. With a mere dance, the gypsy girl had undone decades of his morality.
She had utterly destroyed him, but not without a price; Frollo would see to it that she would either suffer or comply. She robbed him of his virtue, and as such, he would take her freedom in return. He would await an opportunity, and when the time came, he would arrest her. Then, she would pay for what she had done to him.
Frollo leaned back in his seat, and his thin lips pursed into a cunning grin. Yes, she would pay. He was a patient man. Her time would come, and soon she would choose to be his… and his alone.