Right of Passage

 “Hold still, just like that, don’t move a muscle”, as the little old man weaved among the dancers, lifting an arm here, a leg there, twisting someone just a little higher towards the sky. Arnica was smiling so hard her cheeks began to burn and still the photographer wouldn’t take the picture.

He had no idea how painful this process was and had no interest in hearing about it. She counted to 30 in her head, certain that any second, she would fall out of this ridiculous position and ruin the entire scene. She couldn’t even squeeze her eyes shut against the pain. Around her other dancers, also in strange and painful positions, were standing as positioned. They looked cheerful and joyful, but she could feel the strain, like her own, wafting like an odor around the room.

This was a kind of torture she knew but with out the posters and advertisements no one would ever come to the show. She sighed inwardly, shifted her position ever so slightly and swung her eyes back towards the camera. It wouldn’t last forever, she knew.

               “Remember people, you are graceful, ethereal, you are swans!”

               The camera clicked, just once and the photographer relaxed, smiling down at his camera as if it were his first grandchild. He only ever took one photo. Like some grand artist of old, he believed the set up was equally as important as the moment of truth and so, torture. He wasn’t a bad man; they all knew he was just a bit, well, self oriented. Not that the girls had much say in the matter. They were all orphans and happy not to be out in the streets.

               There were 7 residents of the Ballet school for orphaned children this month. Sometimes it was as high as ten but never less than 6. The school, funded by a combination of grants from both children’s programs and art programs, was housed in an old Victorian house just a few short blocks from the town center.

The house was large, with a massive garden, and a large main hall dedicated to performances. The main floor, which housed the kitchen, dining room, parlor and cloakroom, had been turned fully into a theatre. While upstairs, 4 bedrooms, dressing room and a washroom served as the dormitories. No one was supposed to climb the back stairs to the attic. They had all been warned.

               “There is a monster up there,” says the oldest girl by candlelight, the first night of any new arrival. “You can hear it move around up there, sometimes late at night. It ate a few of the rejects along the way. Everyone who graduates from this school becomes a ballerina, they say, and it's true. What they don’t tell you, is that not everybody graduates. You’ll see, one day if you don’t dance well, do as you're told, they may ask you to ‘bring something to the attic’. If they do, it means you have failed and now they are going to feed you to the monster. I should know, it happened to my old roommate.”

                They would watch as the newest member of their little circle swallowed with fear, glanced nervously up towards the ceiling. Satisfied that she was being heard properly the eldest continued.

               “let me tell you about Lucy,” she said, leaning in closer, her features shadowed in the wavering candlelight. It helped that it was raining hard outside the window, setting a perfect atmosphere for scary tales in the near darkness.

               The new girl brought her knees up, holding them as if they could protect her from the monster. The girl was only 11 years old and made for easy prey. All the girls had gone through this upon entering the school. It was right of passage, a game.            

Arnica wondered how long it would take this new girl to figure out that there was no actual monster. Slightly embarrassed she remembered that it had taken her a whole year to work up the courage and go see for herself. That day had been a turning point in her life.

When Arnica had first arrived, it had been on a rainy day much like this one. She had been so small then, the world seemed so big and frightening. Everyone she knew and loved was gone and she was brought to a large scary house and told that this was her new home.

 They introduced her to the other girls as they were on their way out of the dormitories, heading to the schoolhouse in the back garden. They unpacked her things and assigned her a small bed close to the washroom at the back of the room. The youngest always got the bed closest to the washroom she had later learned. As they aged, they would be moved to another bed and then another until finally they left the rooms completely. Going on to dance colleges around the world.

Most of the rest of the day passed in a blur of tours, rules, and schedules. Arnica tried her hardest to remember everything, but she was soon overwhelmed. That night after lights out, they gathered in her room, and with a single candle in the middle of the circle they had told her about Lucy.

"Lucy was a gifted and talented dancer, but she was snotty and had a bad attitude. During one of the performances, she had tripped and managed to upend an entire tray of red wine onto one of our benefactors. Instead of apologizing, she actually began yelling at our patron to watch where he was going.” Arnica gasped, a hand flying to her mouth in horror. The older girl smiled nodding.

“Exactly,” she said looking at Arnica approvingly. “A terribly rude thing to do and very much against all the rules.” She sat back a little, creating a dramatic pause and before long Arnica begged the girl to go on.

“Well this hadn’t been the first such incident with Lucy, fed up, our teachers decided the time had come for Lucy to pay for her attitude. They packed up her things and told us that they had simply moved her to another orphanage, one with less opportunity but that would be able to help her, in the unique way she needed help.” She made a whirling motion at her temple to indicate crazy-town.

“That’s not so bad” said Arnica in a quiet voice, and the older girl smiled wickedly.

“If it were true, it wouldn’t be. Only I found her things, She had two suitcases with unicorn stickers and I saw them after she had supposedly been transferred, standing by the door of the attic. I watched as the attic door creaked open and a large dark shape dragged the cases into the room. I heard them dragged across the ceiling and I ran as fast as my legs would carry me back to our room. I was terrified. Still am. Knowing that thing is up there. Go have a look some time. The teachers all know. That’s why they leave offerings in bowls up by the door. Keeps the monster from coming down and eating us all in our sleep.

So remember to be good, be humble, follow the rules and dance until you drop. That is the only way to survive this place. “With that the older girl blew out the candle leaving the room pitch black. Lightning struck the weathervane, and thunder boomed overhead, sending the girls screaming back to their beds. That night Arnica dreamed about the lonely, sad monster in the attic.

               For the next year, as the youngest and the newest, Arnica found life difficult. She worked herself to the bone, terrified that if she messed up, said the wrong thing, looked at someone the wrong way she would be fed to the monster. The other girls, smelling weakness, exploited that fear to no end, turning her into their slave for fear of reports of mischief to the teachers. Finally on the one-year anniversary of her arrival she decided she was tired of the fear and went to face it. It was her first ever decision for herself, but she would not have realized it until much later.

At midnight when she was sure the other girls had been asleep, she snuck down to the kitchen. For a few days now she had been hiding her dinner rolls in a large jar at the bottom of the pantry. She thought that maybe if she fed the monster now, it would not want to eat her later, maybe she could even make friends with it. She was lonely too she thought as she pulled out her jar of food and made her way back up the stairs.

She arrived at the back stairs, the dark set that led to the locked door to the attic. Her heart was beating fast but she was determined. She inched up the stairs, little by little, taking deep breaths on every step. Soon she stood before the door and she reached up for the key that hung on the hook to her right. She slipped the key into the lock and with a prayer she pushed the door forward.

attic was dark and smelled musty. She stood waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, holding her jar as if it were a shield.

“hello?” she whispered into the darkness. A low moan came to her and she used every ounce of her control not to run and keep on running for ever and ever. She took a deep breath, letting her curiosity seep back in when nothing jumped out at her. She took a step forward and found that she had stepped into a bowl. Inside a piece of bread had been soaking in milk. Someone else was trying to feed the beast she thought but put the thought aside. She pulled her foot out and continued into the room.

“hello?” she whispered again. “Please don’t eat me,” she said as she inched further into the room. Her heart pounded so loudly she was sure that everyone could hear it. The low moan continued but no other movement in the room caught her attention. She waited 2 of the longest minutes of her life, before she set down her jar in the center of the room and pulled out her candle. She struck the match, closing her eyes for a second against the bright flare of light. Then she lit the candle and surveyed the room.

To her surprise the room was filled with shapes, furniture covered in sheets that looked kind of like ghosts in the darkness. Now in the candlelight she could see that they were not frightening at all.

She walked around the room, peeking under sheets, rummaging through boxes. The low moan sounded again, and this time Arnica followed the sound. She found a boarded-up window set into one wall that was letting just enough wind through to make the place sound haunted.

She breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that she had been holding her breath the whole time. She laughed at herself and slid down to the floor with relief. As she sat for a while, lost in her musings a small mouse scurried across the floor to her and perched on top of her jar. She smiled at it, realizing now where the noise from the attic had come from, she unscrewed the top of the jar and sprinkled her dinner rolls out on the floor. All save for one. This one she nibbled on as her new little mouse friend feasted.

        She never did tell the other girls about her midnight adventure up to the forbidden world of the attic. Instead, she simply stopped being afraid, and that had lost the other girls hold on her. No longer could they threaten her with the attic, she would laugh and tell them to go first. Now she danced because she wanted to, and so her dancing improved, as did her schoolwork, her friendships. She thought back to that night, reflecting on how facing the fear was a choice, the first she had ever made.

She thought too, that soon it would be her turn to tell the story of the Monster in the attic, and she knew that she would do it. Like the girls before her, to give the newer kids a chance to face their fears, or not. It was a right of passage she thought and knew she would not deny it to anyone else. There was value in what they did.

She smiled to herself as the photographer called the girls back for another shot, He positioned her into yet another difficult position, but she did not mind so much. She was choosing to be here, after all.