The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold (19 page)

“I’ll ask Michael for some paper so that you can draw,” Rachel said, and the other girls snickered. Rachel punched Debbie’s arm gently. “Come on, isn’t it better than staying home?”

She looked at the older girls, and said, in a general sort of way, “I noticed that everyone seemed to be ignoring Kirk yesterday. Why was that?”

“He’s such a hick,” Taren said. “He always smells like gasoline.”

“That’s because he works at the auto body shop,” Brittany said. “He fixes cars all day. He can’t help it.”

“You only want us to be nice to him because he has a boat,” Tammy said.

“And because that’s only fair to him,” Rachel raised an eyebrow. “He’s given us a ride every time we’ve needed one.”

“I wish we had our own boats,” Taren fretted. “Then we wouldn’t have this problem.”      

“Well, until then, we have to deal with the situation at hand,” Rachel said coolly, shaking her head. “And I’d hate to see Kirk stop coming because he feels you all are giving him the cold shoulder now that we know—this rich guy.”

“Hey, the boats are coming!” Liddy called, from the middle of the cliff path. Paul heard cries of panic from the girls above in the cave, who were still dressing. He could hear the boat motors coming closer, and soon the water splashed below him as the boats pulled into their temporary dock.

The girls crowded around, greeting the guys, and Paul waited until he heard them leave the boats. Fortunately the girls were never all ready when the boats arrived, so necessarily the boys left the boats to go on the beach and hang out for a while. That was when Paul made his move.

He peered around the tree to ensure the boats were deserted, and stealthily crept through the shadows to the biggest one, Alan’s boat, and slipped beneath the canvas covering part of the back. There were mostly deck chairs and old boat parts beneath the canvas, and he had found a place for himself amidst the jumble. He crouched into a small ball and waited once more.

Soon the parties started clambering into the boats, finding their way in the darkness and settling themselves.

“So how are you tonight, Alan?” Rachel asked. Paul saw her long legs, quite noticeable in her short skirt, slant down in his direction, and adjusted his position so that he wouldn’t be staring at them.

“Pretty good. Hot day.”

“I’m glad the wind picked up,” Rachel said lazily. “Hey Rich.”

“Hi Rachel.” Rich’s voice came in. Paul heard his heavy footfalls dropping on the boat, and his brawny legs stretched out next to hers.

Debbie clambered over the canvas, landing for a moment on Paul’s back, and scrambled into her seat. Melanie edged around beside her.

“Prisca!” Rachel’s voice had impatience in it.

“I’m coming! Gee whiz!” And there were two light footfalls, and Prisca landed in the boat. “Gosh I’m so hot!”

Alan started the engine, and they were off.

Paul found it difficult to hear any conversation that went on while the boat was moving, as his ears were so close to the floor of the boat and its motor.  He focused on keeping still, and out of Debbie’s sight. Lately she had been surreptitiously lifting up a flap of the canvas, trying to catch a glimpse of him.  He hoped he was too far back to be seen.

When they reached the island and docked, Paul heard Michael come out to greet the party, as he usually did. Paul listened for the other boats, and counted them as they docked. It was only after about ten minutes had gone by that he edged out from beneath the canvas. The night was dark, and Michael had put floodlights on the portico. Fortunately, the boats were out of the range of the lights.

eleven

Rachel was pensive that night as they landed on the island, despite her outward cheer.  It was windy. Michael was standing on the quay, waiting to greet them. She saw him toss something into the bay as they landed, and she was surprised. She hadn’t considered him a smoker.

But she didn’t smell anything like tobacco smoke when he came up and greeted them. Perhaps the wind blew the scent away. He greeted Rachel first, and the other girls and their friends. Then he said, “Some of my friends came down. I’d like you to meet them.”

Rachel saw three guys sitting in chairs, beers at their elbows. They all got up to greet the group, then sat back down. Mark, Brad, and Dillon were their names, but Rachel quickly forgot them. They were moderately good-looking guys, well dressed, obviously from the same set that Michael belonged to. 

If Rachel wasn’t particularly interested in talking to them, Prisca was, and Rachel resigned herself to sitting at her sister’s elbow, trading banter with the three new guys. They seemed older—well, they
were
older than the guys from church. Rachel felt distinctly that Prisca was getting ahead of herself. After all, she was only fifteen. Prisca giggled and chattered and peppered the three guys with questions. Rachel felt compelled to leash her in a few times. She wished Michael would come and sit down with them, but he seemed to be talking with Alan and the other guys.

After a while, he walked up to the group, Alan and Rich on his heels. “Rachel, you want to come for a walk with us?” he asked. “I’m going to show your friends around the island.”

“Sure,” said Rachel, glad for the break, discreetly seizing Prisca by the elbow. “We’ll both come.”  She had been seeing the wisdom in the buddy system more with each passing minute.

“Aw, do any of you guys want to come with us?” Prisca wheedled to the threesome. Dillon, a dark-haired handsome guy, said he would come, but the other two said they were too comfortable to move.

Rachel took a sweeping glance around the party. The twins were dancing with Kirk and Keith. Miriam and Linette were sitting on the quay with Pete. Liddy and Becca were pawing through a stack of CDs. Melanie and Debbie were walking by the oak trees on the border of the dance floor. Cheryl and Taylor were sitting at a table having a tête-à-tête while Brittany sat on the far end, looking slightly bored, flipping a bottle cap with her thumb.

Rachel ambled slowly after the party, which had started to file through the woods. Prisca, who had worn heels, was picking her way up the path with squeals, and Dillon gallantly offered her a hand. 

Michael led them up a woody path and said, “Come over this way. There’s an overlook where you can see over the island’s south shore.  It’s the highest point outside of the house balconies.”

He led them past the heliport to a stone wall, and Rachel looked down over the twinkling lights of the bay. She could make out her own home among the shadows of the trees.

“Hey! I can see the swimming rock!” Prisca exclaimed, pointing. 

Rachel saw the rock where she and Paul had talked earlier that day. Recalling that conversation this morning about mermaids and toys, she felt an odd, disjointed quality—a collision of two worlds that had very little to do with each other. 

“I can’t see it,” Dillon was saying.

“There!” Prisca said, leaning closer to him and guiding him with her arm. “Are you blind? Can’t you see it?” 

“Where?” Dillon squinted his eyes, obviously trying to get a rise out of her.

“There! There! There!” Prisca squealed, pulling Dillon’s arm over her shoulder. Rachel, in embarrassment, turned away on the pretext of walking further up the wall. Her walk brought her closer to Michael, who turned and smiled at her. She sighed and rolled her eyes at her younger sister.

“She drives me nuts sometimes,” she murmured to Michael.

Michael cast an appraising glance at Prisca, who was giggling as Dillon continued to fake long-distance blindness. 

“She wants it,” he said knowingly, and winked at Rachel. Then, perhaps sensing her disquiet, he took her arm. “I remember what you told me about your Underground Railroad hidden staircase,” he said. “I think this property had one too.”

“Really?” she asked, intrigued.

“Yes. Not this house—the house is new. But there used to be an older house here, a smaller one. You might have solved a little mystery for us. We too have a puzzlingly small artificial cave. Want to see it?”

“Sure,” she said, intrigued.

“All right.” He beckoned to Prisca and Dillon. “Come on.” They followed him along with Alan and Rich.

Now he ducked into the woods and began following a path downhill. It wound among the trees and over a ridge, then abruptly sank down into a valley tucked into the hillside. Rachel and the others found themselves in a small hollow, sheltered from the island winds by a huge rock, which formed the side of a hollow.  A tree grew against the rock, an ancient knotted tree with a smooth bare trunk rising seven feet into the air before twisting over into branches reaching over the rock and up desperately to the open air. The other side of the hollow jutted underneath the cleft, forming a shallow cave. Michael stepped aside, put a hand into a shadowed cavity, clicked something, and pulled out a powerful flashlight. The visitors gasped as he swept the bright light over the cave. It went into the rock that formed the foundation for the house, which was somewhere on top of the hill above them. There were rocks and logs dragged into positions for seating. 

“This used to be my smugglers’ cave when I was a kid,” Michael said. “My friends and I made seats here over the years. It was a good place to go when we wanted to get away from the elders. My parents might have known about it, but they never came down here, so far as I could tell. It’s my private spot.”

“Cool,” Rachel breathed.  She sat down gingerly on a log and looked around. There was an eeriness about the cave that did suggest hidden secrets, and a funny smell.

Prisca squirmed. “That tree gives me the creeps,” she said. “Why’s it such a funny shape?”

Michael pointed at the old wood. “It’s just trying to grow and reach the sunlight like any other tree,” he said. “It just has to get around that big rock.”

Prisca touched it. “Why’s its trunk so smooth?”

Michael shrugged. “People tend to grab it for a handhold, or lean against it, so the bark gradually wore away.” He laughed. “When we were kids, we used to try to capture one of my friend’s sisters and tie her up against the tree.”

“That wasn’t nice!” Prisca accused slightly shocked, but laughing.

“It was just a stupid kids’ game,” Michael said, protesting with a grin. “We always let her go, obviously. There’s no bones buried here or anything.”

Rachel shivered involuntarily.

Paul was apprehensive. Rachel and Prisca had walked off with Michael some time ago, and that worried him. However, Alan and Rich, who had struck him as fairly solid guys, were with them, so he had stayed with the larger party.

He didn’t like the look of Michael’s buddies who had remained behind, drinking. He noticed the one man kept casting glances at Debbie and Melanie, who were dawdling about on the edges of the portico. Debbie was so pretty that she was often mistaken as older than her eleven years. Paul leaned against the curved trunk of the oak tree, pulling his wrists backwards in his joint exercises, and watching both parties.

Still, his thoughts kept drifting back to Rachel and Prisca as he did his nikyo. He was feeling uneasy. His wrists were unexpectedly sore tonight, and he chafed them, wondering and turning the strange fears over in his mind.

His attention was focused again as he realized that Debbie was approaching the glade where he was hidden. She lifted up the thin curtain of willow branches that shaded the covered area, and stepped inside.

Debbie began to look around the trunks of the big oak and willow trees a few yards away from his, and Paul guessed what she was doing. He reached for the branch above him and silently pulled himself up. The massive limbs of the oak didn’t quiver as he settled himself on his new perch.

“What are you doing under here?” Melanie asked, the faithful buddy following right behind her stepsister. She pushed aside the branches timidly and stepped inside the partially-shaded clearing.

“Oh, just looking around,” Debbie said mysteriously. 

“For what?”

“Oh, for something that hides in the woods, watching us. Maybe a wood spirit. Doesn’t this seem like the sort of place where you’d find one?”

Melanie shivered. “That sounds so pagan.”

“Oh, you Fendelmans always think things are pagan.”