Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [14]
Casually, then, he walked away and around the corner of the house, as if he were going to the Babochkins. He stood in the shadows waiting until he heard the guard knock the ashes from his pipe, gather up the roses, and go indoors. Then he went to the oldest and largest of the oaks. Nimbly, he climbed up it and took his station deep within its leaves, where he could see into the second floor.
Arkady’s fingers bled from dethorning the roses, but his hands still smelled of their attar. He held them up to his nose and his heart soared nonetheless.
For a long, enchanted timeless time, Arkady spied on the Pearls. Much later, he would learn their individual names and personalities: laughing Aetheria, shy Nymphodora, mischievous twins Eulogia and Euphrosyne, solemn Olympias, and scornful Russalka. Their ringleader, Zoësophia, he had already seen. They wore…Well, who was Arkady to say that they wore too little clothing? Their mothers certainly would. But not he. If the clothes were flimsy and habitually revealed their ankles, their stomachs, and their long white arms, and occasionally hinted that further revelation was at hand…Well. That was all Arkady could say.
Their activities, it had to be admitted, were nothing like the fantasies he had conjured up in his mind. They played checkers and whist and charades. Nymphodora arranged the roses he had given the Neanderthal to deliver (and to Arkady’s dismay, pricked her finger on a lone thorn he had inexplicably missed), while the twins sang traditional Russian songs from sheet music they had found in a chest by his mother’s piano, and Olympias played accompaniment on the balalaika with such skill that when she put it down and remarked, “Not bad for the first time,” Arkady blinked in astonishment.
But which one was his love?
In an agony of delight and despair, he stared fixedly at each Pearl whenever she jumped to her feet and ran to fetch something, hoping to identify her by her walk.
And then, at last, a serene vision of beauty floated to the window, a single thornless rose tucked behind one ear. She lifted her chin up to the moon, extending the line of a neck that was as pure and beautiful as any line Pushkin had ever written, and as she did the light from a nearby candle sconce flashed on an eye as green as jungle fire.
Arkady caught his breath.
Then the corners of her eyes wrinkled up with amusement. And he knew: It was her, it was her, it was her!
“You may as well reveal yourself, young man. I can hear you breathing and smell your pheromones.” She looked straight at him.
Arkady stood. As in a dream, he wobblingly walked forward along the branch, one foot before the other, until he was so close to the girl he could almost but not quite have reached out and touched her with an outstretched arm. There he stopped.
“Whatever are you doing, perched up in a tree like a bird?”
“In a magical moment I’ll remember forever,” Arkady said, “I raised my eyes and there you were—a fleeting vision, the quintessence of all that’s beautiful and rare.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Emboldened, Arkady added, “My voice, to which love lends tenderness and yearning, disturbs night’s dreamy calm, as pale at my bedside burning, a taper wastes away. From my heart there surge swift words, streams of love, that hum and sing and merge and, full of you, rush on, with overflowing passion.” He stretched out that arm that still could not reach his beloved, and she took a hasty step backward. “I seem to see your eyes, glowing in the darkness, meet mine… I see your smile. You speak to me alone. My friend, my dearest friend… I love… I’m yours…your own.”
Giggles erupted, and, with a sudden jolt, Arkady realized that five more of the Pearls had crept up behind his beloved and stood listening silently while all his attention was on her and her alone. Now, seeing their amusement, he flushed with embarrassment, and they burst into outright laughter.
Zoësophia, who had been lost in a