The Ancient King
By Michael R. Colangelo


Herr Eidhart took up his thin cane once again and snapped it against the wooden floor of the dancing parlor.
“And again. You will practice. Again, you will dance.” He told her.
She felt like crying. She felt like stamping her feet against the floor and walking from the parlor, never to return again. But even though she felt like that, she began to dance again, even if she knew that she was doing it wrong.
Eidhart’s dance lessons were rigged for failure. Hated by her stepmother, she’d been sent all the way up north for special dance lessons from the master Eidhart. But it was a conspiracy, wasn’t it? Her mother and Eidhart had conspired against her. A large inheritance and a dying father had guaranteed that.
“I suspect you’re trying to kill me.” She told him.
“Not kill you. Make you perfect. Bend you into perfection even if it is in ways you do not bend.”
“And if one doesn’t bend that way, then one breaks.”
He shrugged. “It is all the same to me.”
She started to accuse him and her mother of conspiring against her, but he interrupted.
“Pay attention. Try harder. You are embarrassing to watch. And fat. Fat and sloppy.”
So she danced that afternoon and felt the sting of Eidhart’s insults as well as the sting of the cane on her legs and arms and buttocks. She danced for so long that even he became bored in his torment of her. As the sun set for the day, she glanced to where he had been yelling at her to find him slumped over in his chair. His head was propped against one arm. He had fallen fast asleep.
She realized then that she could snatch up his cane and beat him senseless with it. Perhaps even kill him. Wouldn’t it be grand?
But she also realized how tired she was. Dancing and being beaten for a full day had left her exhausted. She wondered if she’d even have the strength to pick up that cane and use it, if she so dared.
So she did nothing. She wandered back to her quarters beneath the kitchen stair and lay down on her sack cloth bedding to sleep. The maestro would be awake early enough to throw cold water on her in preparation for another full day of dancing. He would repeat this dance of death until it killed her.
She needed an escape. She needed a dream.
A dream is what she received.
There was a grave, open and waiting, and even though someone had gone through the great trouble of erecting a stone monument of a girl poised perfectly in dance, the yard itself was clearly filled with paupers. It was a field of unmarked stone and sticks crudely tied with twine to represent crucifixes.
There was but a single mourner in the distance. So distant that she could not make out anything but a formless dark blob kneeling in the muck. And there was a king there. The King, perhaps, or another, much older one. No, a much older one. An Ancient King.
And he danced around her open grave.
She woke up and knew what must be done. Eidhart was disappointed to discover her already up and about when he arrived with his pot of cold water.
“Are we ready to begin?” She asked the question with all the innocence of a girl who had just arrived at his home.
When Eidhart snapped his cane, she danced.
It was not her usual routine. It was not the dance he had trained her to perform. Instead, she danced as the king in her dream had danced around the open grave.
And she danced perfectly. She tipped over chairs and knocked down planters. She kicked Eidhart’s cat and she spun through a curio cabinet filled with expensive crystal with such force that glass shattered in all directions.
Eidhart rose from his seat then. He snapped his cane and took two steps towards her, but then the cane dropped and both of his hands came up to cover his heart.
He grew very pale, and then died there on the floor.
She danced around his corpse as the Ancient King. She continued on with this whirlwind of destruction.


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