An Introductory Note from the Author: After careful consideration and in response to reader comments, for the sake of clarity I have reverted all characters' names to their cannon versions/spellings regardless of whether that name was historically/geographically common at the time. (For those interested, the originally-conceived tweakings are on my Tumblr account.) The gents tend to refer to one another by surname. Hope this helps!
'Flowers' revealed so far: Iris - Ymir; Peony - Mikasa; Lily - Historia; Poppy - Sasha.
Chapter 5: The Dance of the Seven Veils
(Mercedes [OC], Erwin Smith, Jean Kirstein)
Mercedes stilled her breathing and bowed her head under the full-length pale gold silk veil that covered her entire body; the small platform underneath her rose into the half-dark until she stood at the highest point in the huge room – the topmost tier of the small stage on the roof of the carousel. The combination of the veil and the dimming of the room meant she couldn't make out much, but she knew that as the carousel turned underneath her, so did the stage and so did she. She was both grateful for and made nervous by the spotlight that illuminated her from above, and it seemed to wake her other senses – she could feel the cold, paper-covered stage beneath her bare feet, smell the incense and opium smoke, hear the meandering tune of the mandolin calling for her.
"Honored guests!" Cyrus' voice sailed through the vast space. "The Carousel is proud to announce the much-awaited return of Salome, and the Dance of the Seven Veils!"
There was mild applause in response, like the rustling of wind through wheat. Ever so briefly, Mercedes thought of home, and it felt as though her yearning for it was being drawn out of her body into the mournful notes of the duduk that were now rising through the dying applause.
It was time to start, whether she liked it or not. Her gaze lifted from the curved blade of the prop sword on the floor in front of her feet. She placed one foot in front of it, for balance.
The woman started slowly, first drawing up her arms. The spotlight penetrated the veil only slightly, meaning that only glimpses of her silhouette could be seen right now – every so often as she moved, bending and twisting sinuously, Smith made out the slope of a hip, the line of a leg, a mask of a face, but it was little more than half-shadows – and that in of itself was tantalizing. He sat forward in his seat.
The notes of the mandolin continued to be plucked at a varying tempo while the deep, serpentine notes of the flute-like instrument wove underneath it, and she moved with them, unhurried, like a shrouded statue was gracefully coming to life and testing its ability to move as it slowly turned on its pedestal.
Smith played with the glass in his hand, just as slowly tipping its bulb between first one finger and another, the claret inside it tilting with her body. A resonant male voice began to intone below the music – the alternately nasal and guttural voice reminded him of the muezzin he'd heard while accompanying his father to India for the last time.
How apt, he thought, that a call to prayer would end first one, and now another, chapter of my life. His eyes passed over the veiled woman again, from the glimpses of her ankles up to her crown and the tips of her fingers. Is it to you I must pray?
The mandolin and the muezzin's voice died away, leaving only the rise and fall of the duduk. Mercedes paused, and then one of her arms drifted across her body to the other to pinch the full veil. She didn't want to take it off – didn't want for any of this to be real. The last few confusing months of training and crying for home, the threats, the beatings, the foiled escapes, never seeing the sun again…and now, she had to pretend all of that didn't exist. Because maybe, just maybe, if she danced well enough, one of those vile creatures in the crowd could be her passage out. For that chance, she was even willing to give the highest bidder her virtue.
"In Japan, there are women whose work is the art of entertainment, called geisha," Mikasa had consoled her with one night; the night Cyrus had announced that her debut would also involve the sale of her virginity. "Their coming-of-age ceremony, called mizuage, would sometimes involve the loss of their purity, but this was not the focus. Try not to make it so precious a possession. To do so is to invite more harm to yourself than there already is – here, we must be as strong as possible."
Inch by inch Mercedes drew the veil back, down her arm, over her head and body, until it slipped down her other arm into her hand. She stared at it, waited for the cue, focused on dancing for home.
The girl under the veil was revealed to have dark, curly hair nearly down to her waist, and the gold semi-transparent silk of her costume nearly melted into her copper skin. The lower half of her face was covered with yet another veil, in contrast to the bareness of her stomach, and yet more gold silk formed a layered skirt and draped between her shoulders and wrists. From this distance it was difficult for Kirstein to tell much more about her, but he supposed it didn't matter.
A steady, rousing drumbeat began, as did the winding of the girl's wrists and the twitching of her hips. When the male singer's voice returned on a single loud, undulated note, with a flick she had tossed the other end of her previously-discarded veil and caught it, immediately spinning into a cloud of silk that briefly lifted to show her bare legs. Many of the men in the audience cheered. The beat sped with her, as if all the sounds in the room were tied to her feet.
When she finally slowed she did a few more swirls of the veil over and around her head, kicking a foot out every so often, and then discarded it; it floated off the carousel into the darkness, like a ray of sun into the ocean.
She held her arms above her head, her wrists crossed as if chained there, as the drums and chanter were joined by tambourine and the flute Kirstein had heard earlier. He had just enough time to appreciate the hourglass of her figure before her hips rocked and circled in time with the beat, growing faster and impossibly faster – a clash of the drums and she kicked up a foot to one side, span again, dropped down into a crouch, threw back her head. When her upper body rose again she had a curved, short Arab sword in her hands, and she brought it high over her head. The music slowed a little as she balanced the sword on her head; her arms lowered until they were parallel with it, and she carefully stood. The sword did not fall.
Kirstein was intrigued despite himself, as were his friends, he noticed when he glanced around him. There were claps and cheers to this effect that were barely heard above the music.
"Is that sword real?" Springer asked incredulously.
The Iris seemed about to speak but the Lily cut her off with a coy, "Now now, we can't reveal all our secrets at once, can we?"
Kirstein returned his gaze to the stage. The girl was managing to rise and fall on her heels, sway her hips and roll her shoulders, all the while the sword on her head remaining perfectly still. She worked at first one then the other curtain of shimmering gold dripping from her arms, until they were both detached and hanging loose in her fingertips. She danced with them, fluttering them about her body and turning on the spot while the men cheered, until she discarded them too.
As she repeated the process with two veils covering the outside of her thighs, the cheering took on more hoots and hollers; a flower was tossed onto the stage and she took the time to pause, ever-poised, grab it delicately with her toes, carefully balance and raise her foot behind her, and reach back to take it, all without unbalancing the sword. The men reveled in it. She kissed the flower and slotted it into her hair.
The male singer fell silent, then, as did the drums and the flute; the mandolin began a hasty reprise to accompany the quick clacking of what sounded to Kirstein like mere wooden blocks being struck. To this tune the girl in gold reached behind her through her hair, grasped something, and pulled. The silks that'd looped over her upper arms like fallen dress straps were drawn away and insodoing, drew out of her brassiere, too, leaving little more than a gold metal brace to push up her breasts and a strip of centrally-knotted satin across the vital areas. The men howled more and Kirstein found himself getting a little warm under the collar. She played a little more with the two free pieces of fabric and then, they too were cast away.
He wanted to see her face. Why that was suddenly so important was beyond him, but he wanted it.
One last swathe of gold silk around her waist was drawn out now, too, and tossed into the crowd in an almost lackadaisical fashion. She could do anything now and they'd lap it up, Kirstein was sure of it. But still the short veil around her face remained. The more cynical part of him wondered if she wasn't much to look at underneath it, but he hoped he was wrong.
The male singer's voice was coming back again now, low at first, as were the deeper drums. The girl's dancing was growing more frenzied again. As she rolled her arms and stomach as smoothly as ocean waves, Kirstein watched her gradually drop to her knees and then begin to lean back – still the sword did not slip from her head but it felt like the room was holding its breath. Finally, when she was as far back as she could go while keeping her head vertical, she and the music paused. As the singer's voice soared, she took the hem of her veil between her fingers and raised it; her other arm curved behind her head, palm open. The drums began again, hammering into a final crescendo.
The veil snapped free. Her head tipped back; the sword fell into her waiting hand – the music stopped. Above her from out of nowhere, a cloud of live butterflies were released, sparkling as they floated away.
The cheers and clapping rapidly replaced the volume of the music, but despite this, Kirstein heard Smith beside him hum contentedly to himself. When he glanced at him, he saw a satisfied, almost predatory look on his face. A look that Kirstein was surprised to find made him defensive.
"She'll do nicely," Smith said to himself, so low that only Kirstein seemed to hear it.