Chapter Three: Troupe Dandelion

I heard the buzzing of voices around me and furrowed my brow. What were so many people doing in my room?

Then I remembered the occurrences of the previous night and my eyes snapped open. The ceiling above my head was ridiculously low. If I sat up, it would be just above my head. I looked to the left. There was a wall. I looked to the right and saw that the floor was quite a bit below me, and before the wall on the other side of the room were two beds—one on top of the other with just enough space for a person to sit up between them.

I shot up, kicking off the blanket on top of me. There was only one place I knew that was like this, and if my suspicion was right, this was no room.

When my feet touched the ground, I was startled to note that I was no longer wearing my ball gown, but instead an ordinary commoner's dress. That didn't bother me at all, except for one little detail—who had changed me? Because if it had been the Black Rose…

I shook the thoughts from my mind, stood, and walked toward the curtain at the end of the hallway. I knew, even before I pulled them apart and stepped through, that I would enter a place with a table and benches, and a closet. Everyone was sitting at the table, and they looked up with a start at the sound of the curtains parting.

"Nadja," said Sylvie in relief. "We were worried about you."

"How did I get here?" I asked, glancing once more around the inside of Troupe Dandelion's car. I was actually quite glad to find myself here, but how could the Black Rose have known that this was the ideal place for me to work for a week or two?

To my surprise, no one answered, and looked instead at Granny. Granny was the old fortuneteller, and she had a knack for knowing things that no one could figure out how she knew. I was pretty certain that she'd known that I was a noble from the first time that she ever saw me.

"A young man brought you here," she smiled at me. "And said that you needed to work for two weeks or so before you could go back home." My brow furrowed. 'Young man'? Was that the Black Rose? Certainly, he was a man, but I had no idea whether or not he was young. I had no desire to let my friends know that the Black Rose had helped me (they had heard how much I hated thieves more than anyone), but the desire to know what, exactly, had happened the previous night was stronger.

"Was he wearing black?" I asked cautiously. Granny chuckled.

"Oh, yes, child. Black from his top hat to his boots." So it was the Black Rose who had brought me here. I was pretty sure that no one else wandered the streets of Vienna at night, completely black. And the top hat was a giveaway anyhow. What normal commoner wore a top hat? However, that was a fact that everyone in the room picked up.

"Top hat?" asked Kennosuke curiously. He was a samurai, and had only joined the Troupe two years before. "You were brought here by a noble of some sort?"

"No," I hastily shook my head. "I sort of…bumped into him on the street when I was in trouble, and he helped me. I'm pretty sure he's not a noble." Honestly, what sort of noble would steal from nobility? And only the ones who obtained their money unjustly, too.

Arvell the clown, Thomas the violinist, Rita the lion tamer, Sylvie the singer, Kennosuke the samurai, Leader, and even Crème and Chocolate, the lions, looked at me silently and expectantly, as though awaiting an explanation. I glanced at Granny. Had the Black Rose told them anything? Granny was smiling her usual omniscient smile, and said nothing. Helplessly, I decided to tell a half-truth.

"You see…my mom and I went to see my grandf- my grandpa and uncle, and my uncle got a bit angry with me, because grandpa said that he would give me something that my uncle's wanted for a long time. He attacked me when no one else was looking, and I ran away. So…" I looked around at the surprised, familiar faces around me. "I was hoping that you'd let me dance here for a while—a few weeks."

"Of course, we'd love to have you dance for us. You're an excellent dancer. But…" Sylvie trailed off and looked at Leader, whose brow was furrowed.

"Nadja, we're a group of traveling performers," Leader said hesitatingly. He was a muscle man, but on the inside, he was probably the most kindhearted member of the Troupe. "We don't stay in one place very long. I know that we've stayed in Vienna for two weeks at a time, but that was because you were here. This time, we can't do that—we've got an appointment to be in Spain in a few weeks' time, and can't afford to miss that. I wish we could help…" He glanced at the other members of the Troupe, who were averting their eyes helplessly.

I thought for a moment. So the Troupe couldn't stay in Vienna. In fact, they had to go all the way to Spain. I could stay and try and find another job that I would probably be terrible at and wouldn't like half as much as I loved dancing. Or, I could…

"What are your plans after Spain?" I asked. Leader looked at me in surprise.

"We don't have any," he said after a moment of surprised silence. "We're traveling performers. We just go wherever the wind blows us. The only times that we have plans is when we're called somewhere, like we are to Spain now, but that's rare."

"How long will it take to get to Spain?" I asked.

"Well…about two weeks. And then we would be performing in Spain for a week or so at the least."

My heart sank. If I went with the Troupe, the soonest that I could be back would be five weeks. And that aside, how could I ask them to go right back to where they came from? So I was going to have to find another job.

"How long are you staying in Vienna, then?" I asked helplessly. If I could dance here for a few days, then maybe I could find another solution.

"As long as it takes to earn enough money to make the trip to Italy—a few days." Leader's eyes were sympathetic, and I knew what he meant. If I performed with them today, they would have enough money to leave tomorrow. I thought for a moment.

"I'll just perform with you for as long as it takes for you to earn that money, then," I said with a smile. "After you leave, I'll see what I can do then."

Leader looked down at me for a moment, and then grinned.

"That's our optimistic Nadja," he said happily, clapping my shoulder gently. I looked at the others to see them grinning as well.

"I don't have my dancing costume, though," I suddenly realized. "I can't go home to get it…"

"Oh, this?" chuckled Granny, and she held up a red and black dress—my dancing costume. It was the new one that I had just finished making on my last trip into the common streets.

"How…" I began to ask, taking it from her in bewilderment. I was sure that this had been in my room at Albert's manor…

Granny did not reply, but winked instead. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but she turned away instantly, cheerfully said something about making more hats, and walked off to the back of the car.

"So…what exactly happened, Nadja?" asked Kennosuke curiously. I looked to him in surprise.

"I told you—my uncle got mad at me," I replied, trying to sound as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Even so, I felt my knees begin to tremble. Apparently, a part of me was still unable to accept that Uncle Herman would actually attack me like that.

"Yes, but…" As Kennosuke averted his eyes, I began to fear that he would say that a person wouldn't normally run away at something so trivial, and I would have to explain everything.

"He wants to say that he didn't know that you had an uncle," Rita cut in, throwing an annoyed look at Kennosuke. I had known the eight-year-old to be mute until they had come the previous year. Apparently, when Crème and Chocolate had gotten trapped in a burning building, she had managed to call to them, thereby reviving her speech by sheer will. She now spoke more than the rest of the Troupe put together.

At the present moment, however, I gave Rita a confused look.

"You always said that you couldn't leave Vienna because you had a mother here, and so we thought that you had no other relatives," Sylvie explained helpfully.

"Oh," I said, feeling a little ashamed. I had explained badly. "No, I have family—my grandpa, my uncle, and Mom remarried to a new husband, too. It's just that Mom and I share a special sort of bond…"

"She's going to have to let you go eventually, when you start working," Thomas cautioned. I had to fight to keep from blushing at the thought that as Grandfather's heir, frankly, I never would have to work.

"Yes, I suppose," I mumbled, still fighting the shame that was spouting like a fountain in my chest.

"Now, people," said Leader, clapping to get our attention. "We still have to set up before the performance this morning, and then the one this afternoon."

"We're doing two performances per day?" I asked in surprise. That was rare for Troupe Dandelion.

"Like Leader said, we really are in a hurry," Sylvie said to me, and her smile looked apologetic. However, I didn't want to think about what I would do once they left.

"When is the first performance?" I asked.

"In about an hour," Arvell replied as he walked outside.

"We've got to hurry, then!" I gasped, picking up my dancing costume and turning to head for the back of the car.

I was intending to try a new dance for this performance. I had met a Spanish dancer a few weeks back, and talking to her, learned of a dance called the 'Flamenco'. I asked her to show me, and when she did, I thought that it was the most amazing dance that I had ever seen. I asked her to teach me, and she taught me the steps and said, "the rest is up to you". I didn't understand what she said until I went home and tried dancing in front of the mirror. I realized that something was missing.

I practiced all night that night—I even snuck out into the woods on the edge of the grounds so that no one would see or hear me. It was when blisters on my feet started puncturing and bleeding, and I still continued to dance that I realized what I was doing wrong.

I had only been thinking about how I loved dancing, and not about how hard it was—how there were times when one had to try to a painful extent to get it right. The next time I showed my dance to the dancer, she smiled and told me that I had it. I needed to work on my footwork, but as long as the passion was there, I would do well, she told me.

So now, today, I intended to try dancing that on stage. I had had this particular costume made for that. Previously, I had always danced the same ballet dance, only adding new steps and making changes occasionally.

After I had changed, I went to find Granny to explain to her that I was going to need a new record. The music that I had used previously would not work at all with the Flamenco. As long as I could listen to that song once, and then practice once before doing it on stage, I was confident that I wouldn't have a problem.

After all—at that moment, I wasn't Nadja Preminger, heir to the great Preminger Family, but simply Nadja, the dancing girl of Troupe Dandelion. And it was a traveling performer's job to learn quickly. I smiled to myself and did a twirl.

I certainly preferred this Nadja of Troupe Dandelion. No proper manners, no jealous uncles, no strict grandfathers, no stiff and formal meetings… And no Mother. My smile vanished. Mother, in my opinion, was worth everything I didn't like about nobility. I hoped that she wasn't too worried…

I shook my head. I wasn't supposed to be thinking about Mother and worrying—I had to focus on the dance. As I stepped out of the car, Thomas stopped tuning his violin to look at me curiously.

"I don't think you'll be able to do your old dance in that…" he said uncertainly, as though wondering if he had missed something. I instantly felt much more cheerful, and smiled brightly.

"I'm not going to," I told him, and felt excitement bubbling up in a torrent within me. For a moment, I pressed down on it out of habit. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have to.

I was free right now, with no restraints at all. I didn't have to act prim and proper, or hide my emotions, restricting anger to a small frown of disapproval and happiness to a smile or polite laugh.

I laughed out loud and began to twirl. Thomas was silent in surprise for a moment, but when he let out a noise again, it was not a sharp reprimand to behave myself, but a laugh.

"Then I hope that you do well," he grinned at me, and then returned to his violin.

I was tempted to roll into the grass beneath my feet, but knew that I had to find Granny and practice. Besides, I thought with a smile, there would be nothing stopping me from doing just that later.

"Granny!" I called as I walked around the car to the side that I knew the stage would be on.

And I felt faint at what I saw.

Troupe Dandelion usually performed in the main square where people came most. They had occasionally gone to parks or other squares, but this was one location where I was absolutely positive that they had never been.

They were at the edge of a garden. And that garden belonged to the Waltmular mansion.

We were performing right in front of my home.

I panicked. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't say that I wouldn't dance—they would suspect something. But if I did dance, chances were that Mother would see.

I thought for a moment. What was wrong with Mother seeing? I wondered. Nothing, I answered. It would let her know that I was perfectly well. And if I was lucky, I could find a way to tell her that I would be gone for a few weeks, but I would be fine…

These thoughts lifted my spirits again, and I resumed my search for Granny. I found her sitting on the side of the stage, arranging records.

"Granny," I addressed her, but she spoke before I could say any more.

"You need a new song for the Flamenco," she chuckled in her usual omniscient way. "Don't worry, it's right here." And she began to play the record that she had just placed in the record player. To my surprise, it was the song to which I had learned the dance.

"How did you…?" I began to ask. But Granny just chuckled and stopped the record.

"You'd better practice at least once to make sure that you know it properly," said Granny cheerfully, and so I did as she said. Granny was always uncanny, the way that she knew things that a person wouldn't expect her to have known.

Laughing off the strangeness as we all did in the Troupe, I got into the right position as Granny started the record once more.

I danced my dance, noting the parts that I would have to be careful not to get wrong, the parts that I would have to work on in the future, and the parts that I was good enough that I would have to be careful not to get too overconfident. By the time I finished dancing, my head felt much clearer, and I knew that I would try and find some way to tell Mother that I was going to be gone for some time, but would be fine.

Thanking Granny, I returned into the car. I would write a letter, I decided. It would probably be difficult to find the time to have a long conversation with Mother without being found out, but I was sure that I could find a moment to slip her a letter.