It is quiet.
This is the first thing she notices – or no, maybe it is not the first. Time is as faint and distant as the flecks of light scattered across the inky expanse that lies before her.
Perhaps this is an old realization as well as a new one, or perhaps it is a flicker of knowledge from a future self, a different self.
She does not know.
It does not matter.
It is quiet.
It isn't a silence borne of hushed noise, of the sudden loss of sound: it is the absence of sound itself, of the idea of sound, of its past and present and future.
It is quiet.
She does not know why.
It does not matter.
She is alone.
This is the first thing she notices – or no, maybe it is not the first. She does not remember if anything has come before. The stars lie before her, constant, constantly changing. They are what they have always been. They are not what they will be. They are faint and distant.
She is alone, and she does not remember why.
It does not matter.
She has not forgotten: to forget is to lose something that was once known. It is an absence made notable by the presence it used to have.
Perhaps she has not yet learned what it is to remember, to be remembered.
It does not matter.
She is alone, and she does not remember why.
It is quiet, and she is alone.
Perfect silence. Perfect stillness. And yet, they are not perfect – cannot be, can never be. Perfection is the opposite of imperfection, its balance and counterweight. Without imperfection, there can be no perfection.
Silence. Stillness.
It is not silent. Silence is the absence of sound. Without the possibility of sound, it isn't silence. It simply… is.
Stillness.
Is there such a thing as stillness without the potential for motion? Nothing without something is not precisely nothing. It simply… isn't.
She speaks aloud, and her voice echoes into starlight.
It is not silent.
She dances.
It is not still.
She is alone, and she does not remember why.
She dreams.
She remembers.
She is not alone.
In her new world, she is old.
Or: she is not young. She is not old compared to the rocks that make up the stone steps leading up to her front door, nor even to the large, leafy tree whose shadow falls across the pavement.
She is not young. She is not old.
She is.
As usual, Lilia's feet ache in the narrow points of her shoes. She barely notices, but in the moments when she does, she thinks that it is a fitting echo of her past. Her feet always hurt when she was young.
Her doctor had insisted that she spurn heels of any height. Instead, he told her, she should fill her closet with the sort of sturdy, sensible loafers that women are meant to wear once they reach a certain age.
She'd allowed him to speak for exactly sixty seconds when he brought up the matter, talking about bunions and knee strain and arthritis. Once the minute came to an end, she nudged him into silence with a slight nod.
Lilia doesn't think back to his courteous displeasure as she strides into the athletic complex. Her heels count out sharp, measured, twinging clicks against the tiled floor.
"Lilia. Thank you for coming."
"Good morning, Yakov," Lilia replies. He is unsure of himself. His voice is too loud and his movements are tense as he tries to find the balance of their meeting. It is tiresome. "If you would introduce me to your student so that I may make my decision?"
"Oh. Yes. Of course."
Yakov hadn't been a bad husband – he was merely unexceptional. Lilia does not surround herself with the mediocre.
She does not regret her choices. She does not doubt herself.
She does not reconsider.
Yuri Plisetsky is talented and ill-mannered, brittle and bristling behind his sneering, arrogant veneer. Above all else, he is changing, growing, evolving; he is a flickering spark that must be guided before it bursts into an uncontrolled blaze or gutters out in a wisp of smoke.
He will do, even if his flexibility leaves something to be desired.
"People who can be reborn as many times as necessary are the strong ones," she tells him, and Yuri understands in a way that Yakov never had.
The self cannot be constructed from memories. It must be created anew each moment, willed into being again and again and again. There is no room for doubt.
The present cannot be remembered. It can only be.
She wakes, and she is.
Before her dream, she was not silent, because there could be no sound. She was not still, because there could be no movement. She was not alone, because there could be no others. Before her dream…
But no, not before. Nothingness has no space even for something as small as time.
Rather: she was not. Now there is a now, and in that now, she finds herself. She finds silence, stillness. She is alone.
She remembers.
The flaws of her dream haunt her. It is an unfamiliar sensation.
It feels like being trapped.
It feels like being free.
She isn't sure if they're truly so different.
She remembers, but she does not understand.
"I miss you."
She murmurs her confession to the distant stars. They do not hear. They are not listening.
"You never knew me."
She is remembering, and she is dreaming. She is not alone.
"I created you," she says.
She speaks to a young man who holds a golden ring. The metal is impure, but it is beautiful. She speaks to him – a different him, who knows a different her. He is older, greying. He stares down at the ring in his palm. She speaks to a boy who is everything she is and everything she isn't. She speaks to Lilia with her sharp eyes and ruined feet.
"But you never knew me," they reply.
"I made you." She turns her thoughts to Lilia. "I am you."
"You are not." Lilia is not lost in the nowhere that is everywhere. She stands, confident in herself, confident in her judgement. "You are not. You are nothing."
"I was, and I am."
"To be is to become. It is to act, not to remember, not to dream. A memory is nothing more than a ghost of what no longer is, and a dream is a ghost of what never was."
"You taught me that," Yuri adds. "That's how you created me, Madame Lilia. A beautiful, ever-evolving monster, born and reborn as many times as necessary." He grins, quick and bright and sheepish. "Yeah, I know you kept that article. I found it in your desk."
"When?" She does not remember this.
"Huh." He tilts his head. "I guess you haven't gotten there yet."
"You keep a lot of things," Yakov tells her, tells them, tells Lilia and she-who-isn't. He holds up the golden ring but doesn't put it on. "Your name. Your shoes. Your dreams. They must be more than ghosts, Lilechka."
"Whatever they were, they are not now," Lilia retorts. "They are nothing. We are not our pasts."
"We are who we have made ourselves."
"We are who we make ourselves."
They – Yakov and Lilia and Yuri and a thousand other faces – turn to her. "Who are you?"
"I am me. I am now."
Lilia frowns. "Who are you becoming?"
"Myself."
"Who were you?" Yakov asks.
"I…"
"Why?" Yuri looks up at her, as if he'd heard the answer she couldn't give. He's young, a child both driven and directionless.
"I don't know," she finally replies. "I haven't gotten there yet."
She is young.
She is young, but she is not new. Lilia has seen enough of the world to scoff at its mysteries. She has seen enough to tell gilt from gold.
The difference is this: gilt will eventually be tossed aside. Gold will be treasured.
Lilia sometimes wishes that she hadn't chosen to dance, but it is who she has always been, even if it's not who she always will be. It is who she is, and so Lilia walks in every day on torn feet.
She keeps her pointe shoes from the Bolshoi's last show of each season. Lilia does not look at them where they rest, stained with old memories and dried blood, but it is safer to store the final performances in a box than in her mind. The future will hurt her if she allows the past to creep in too frequently, and that is something she is not allowed to forget.
"You are art, lily girl," the director croons. Her title is not capitalized on his lips: there are many lilies and many girls. Both are transient, fleeting. "I am the artist."
The dancers are tools. They are the canvas, but not the hand that holds the brush; they are the flute, but not the breath that calls the notes to life.
The dancers are tools, and Lilia is the prima ballerina assoluta. She is art, and she is beautiful, and she is to be discarded once her bristles begin to bend and fray.
"Yes, Kostya," Lilia says. She smiles with the sweet delicacy of water thawing beneath a frozen surface. She is spring, and she is blooming, and she is dangerous. Art can hold more power than its artist, even if she has not yet learned to wield it. "I am art."
"Do you hate him?" Yakov asks her. He scowls before grumbling, "I do."
"I can't hate him, Yasha. I need him." Lilia knows that he does not understand, will not understand. Yakov will skate, though he may not win, and then he will teach. He is a man. He will not expire. "There are many dancers."
"Not like you, Lilechka. You've always been more than he'll ever be."
"I dance his steps."
"For now," Yakov says, his eyes soft. "Don't forget that."
She sighs. "I never do."
Lilies wilt. Girls grow up. Men die.
A heart attack. It's explained in short, soft, gentle words by men who look down on the gathered ballerinas as if they're speaking to children. The male dancers have been told already.
A few of the girls begin to cry. What will become of the season? they ask each other. What will happen to us?
The new director will be another artist. He will have his own visions, his own palette.
But Lilia is the prima.
"We will continue," Lilia tells them sharply. "We will dance."
She leaves lilies on the grave of Konstantin Pavlovich Ignatyev. She does not cry. She does not gloat. He is nothing, and she is here. She is art.
She will not be painted, played, written. She was created, but now she will create.
She is not a lily girl.
She is not gilt.
She is gold.
She watches the stars.
Did she dream them, she wonders, or did they dream her? Neither feels true. They are and she is, without beginning or middle or end. There is nothing to shape her.
There is nothing.
In this emptiness, she has no past to remember and no future to await. She is only what she creates in each moment.
Lilia stands beside her. "It is perfect."
It is nothing, so it is perfect. There are no flaws. It is everything that her dream is not, was not, will never be.
It is nothing. It is not perfect.
"Why can't it be?" Yuri asks her.
"I dreamed it. I am not sure that I created it."
He huffs. "We can make it better."
"Would you change everything, Lilechka?" sighs Yakov.
"We are more than our pasts," she tells him. She looks to herself, to Lilia. "We are more than this moment. We create, and we remember. We are remembered, and we are created."
She turns to Yuri. Softly, she says, "We are more than who we will become."
"Who are you?" they query.
"I am the dreamer."
"And will you dream?"
"No." She smiles into the perfect, imperfect nothingness. "We will live."
Lilia dreams and she wakes. She moves and she is still. She is alone and she is not. She remembers and she forgets. She creates and she is created.
She was.
She will be.
She is.