All Ceilidh wanted was to dance. She had the talent. She had the will. After years of sweat and sacrifice she had a shot at the most prestigious ballet company in New York, and nothing would stand in her way.
Except an interdimensional war.
Pursued by an immortal assassin from the edge of reality, Ceilidh falls into the Shadow Realm—a place of might-have-beens and never-weres. The cast-off bits of reality from timelines that never happened collect here in layers of magic and ruined beauty. It’s a world of nightmares and nobles, peril and prophecies, endless wars and venomous political intrigue.
Aided by the ghostly Skio, Ceilidh must survive long enough to master the dark power within her, protect the people she loves, and shatter the power of an empire that would devour the sun itself.
The only problem is, she’s already failed.
All Ceilidh wanted was to dance. She had the talent. She had the will. After years of sweat and sacrifice she had a shot at the most prestigious ballet company in New York, and nothing would stand in her way.
Except an interdimensional war.
Pursued by an immortal assassin from the edge of reality, Ceilidh falls into the Shadow Realm—a place of might-have-beens and never-weres. The cast-off bits of reality from timelines that never happened collect here in layers of magic and ruined beauty. It’s a world of nightmares and nobles, peril and prophecies, endless wars and venomous political intrigue.
Aided by the ghostly Skio, Ceilidh must survive long enough to master the dark power within her, protect the people she loves, and shatter the power of an empire that would devour the sun itself.
The only problem is, she’s already failed.
Wait. Back up.
See that house on the corner? Blue, two stories, trellised windows. A car rumbles in the driveway. The wrought-iron porch light casts bush-shaped shadows across the yard. And there, that streak of blonde in the pink tights and black leotard, leaping up the front steps? That was me, a few months and a thousand light years ago.
I burst into my living room, jetéd over Mr. Scruffles, and skidded down the hall.
“Mooom!”
I pas de bourréed past Dad’s bookshelves, swerved around the corner, and leaned into Mom’s study. “Mom! Guess what!”
“I heard you the first time, Ceilidh. What is it?” Mom removed her glasses and looked up from the chessboard.
Oh god.
The chessboard.
I glanced at the half-played pieces, but right then I had way more important things to worry about. “Okay, Mom, so, ohmygod, all right, Mom? Okay, so, you’re not going tobelievethisomigod—”
“Stop.” She twirled a black pawn between her fingers. “Take a breath. One word at a time.”
The antique chess pieces were hand-carved ivory and black jade, a gift from her friends in Indonesia or Malaysia or somewhere. Mom’s study was filled with things like that, from her time in the Service.
“Mom! Listen. I was in class with Miss Harrison, and she said we’d have a visitor today but—”
“How nice.” She set the pawn on the board. “Black in four, unless?”
I choked. I actually physically choked as my tongue tried to go in four directions at once.
When I was four, I asked for a tutu. Mom bought me a Harvard sweater. When I learned to call dance steps in French, she signed me up for Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin. When I asked if I could start en pointe, I got fencing lessons.
Dad was the one who bought my shoes and went to my recitals. Dad took me to audition at the New York School of Ballet. And when that miracle happened, it was Dad who signed the forms.
Mom … wasn’t thrilled. Not right away. I think that was the first time I had to fight for something I cared about. The first time I didn’t back down.
It wasn’t the last.
We fought for three days, but eventually we agreed on The Treaty.
I got to attend NYSB. I could live, eat, and breathe ballet five days a week, but every Sunday Mom would give me a subject. When I got home on Friday, she’d quiz me on it, and if I missed too many questions, she’d pull me from ballet.
Forever.
This I could not allow.
“White queen to d4. Queen takes bishop. Black knight takes queen. White wins in three. So our visitor was Marie LeClaire! The associate director of the New York City Ballet—”
“White in three?” Mom frowned at the board. “I think not. Rook to g5.”
“No, because the horsey piece can move here and now you’re in check. Anyway, Mrs. LeClaire came up to me after class and said Danica Kendall dropped out of the apprentice program to go to San Francisco—”
“And pawn takes knight.”
“And that lets this pawn in here and checkmate. And she said she remembered me from the Paris exhibition and—”
“Checkmate how? Pawn becomes queen? She can’t do anything from over there.”
“Not a queen. A knight.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Mrs. LeClaire asked me to join the New York City Ballet!”
I squeaked a little on the last word, and the echo thudded into silence.
“Mom? Did you hear me? They invited me into the apprentice program. I can start as soon as—”
“What did your father say?” She wouldn’t look at me.
“I said we’d see what you said.” Dad stood in the doorway, car keys still jingling in his hand. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Mom stared at the board. “So is jumping off a cliff.”
“Mom!” I leaned on the desk, forcing her to look at me. “This is the New. York. City. Ballet. This is everything I’ve worked for.”
“I certainly hope not.” She looked up, dark eyes clouded with warning. “What about Harvard?”
“What about it?” I bit at the end of that sentence, trying to snatch the words back, too late. The clouds in her eyes became thunderheads.
I switched to Facts Mode. “Maria Aragones spent two years with the City Ballet before she went to Harvard. Ruth Powell danced with NYCB in the eighties and now she’s a senator. How bad can dancing be?”
Mom’s eyebrow said she knew exactly how bad it could be.
“I’ll put all my earnings into a college fund.” I edged my way around the desk. “And I get a full scholarship at NYSB, so we can put that money aside. And—”
“The money isn’t a problem,” Dad said, but Mom silenced him with a look.
“I’m worried about your studies,” she said. “There’s more you need to learn, Ceilidh. So much more.”
My hands hurt, and I realized my fingernails were digging into my palms.
“Like what?” I was shaking, cold. “What do I need to learn? Calculus? You had me deriving tangents in sixth grade.”
Dad said something, but no one listened. I stared at Mom from across the gulf of a hundred pointless, gut-churning quizzes.
“What do you want me to learn, Mother?” My voice sounded strange in my ears. “I can list every president in reverse alphabetical order, name all the bones in my body, and tell you the capital of every country in the world.” The ones with major ballet companies anyway. “I can recite the preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Magna Carta. In Latin.”
Mom gripped the arms of her chair, her eyes wide. She looked a little scared, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I sank to my knees, pulling her hands into her lap.
“Mom. I am your daughter. And you have taught me all these wonderful things. But all. I want. To do. Is dance. Please. This is the future I want. This is who I am.”
Mom took her hands away.
“Ceilidh…” She hesitated, and I poured myself into that silence. Every part of me leaned into that one, hopeful stare.
Please, I thought, and the wind caressed the trees in answer. Please, if you never do anything for me ever again, do this. Just this one, last, time. This is my whole life. This is everything. Please…
“Ceilidh, you’re sixteen. You don’t know who you are.”
Behind my eyes, everything fell. Pictures on the walls, the bookshelves, the walls themselves crumbled into dust. Nothing remained but empty night, waiting to swallow me whole.
“You’re very talented,” she went on, oblivious to the waves of destruction exploding from every word. “That’s why I want you to make the most of your talents. All of them. You need to study … appropriate subjects. With the right people. You might not want to see it, but dance will only last a few years. The decisions you make now will follow you for the rest of your life. I am sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” I stood up. The floor felt faint and distant. “Or jealous?”
Mom sat up tall, her eyes narrowing, but I stared right back. The room dimmed until nothing existed but her eyes, and wind rattled the windows like ghostly fists.
Dad quietly cleared his throat. Mom sighed and rolled her wheelchair back from her desk.
“I’m not going to argue with you, Ceilidh. I know this is what you think you want, but soon you’ll have so many opportunities—”
“And then I can run from them, too. Maybe if I turn down every wonderful thing that ever happens to me, one of us can finally be happy!”
“Ceilidh!” Dad started, but Mom lifted her finger.
“Temper tantrums solve nothing.” She pulled the chessboard case from its shelf. “I’ll be happy to discuss it when you can maintain a civil tone.”
I swallowed the words I wanted to scream, clenched my teeth till my jaw ached, but one by one they squeezed past my lips. “Be precise, Mother. We’ve never discussed anything in my life. The word you want is dictate.”
I didn’t wait to be grounded. I pirouetted about and walked out on my own.
* * *
I threw myself on my bed and sobbed into my pillow. I quit ballet and transferred to a fancy prep school, got good grades and went to Harvard where I met a handsome boy named Bradley or Chadwick or something. We got married and had a billion babies and lived in a great big house with a big green lawn where he’d barbecue in the summer and the kids would build snowmen in the winter.
And sometimes, when we had time, our family would go to the ballet. Afterward, I would smile and tell everyone that, when I was a girl, I used to be a dancer too.
But it didn’t happen that way.
It could never have happened that way.
On my bedroom wall was a picture of Miss Harrison when she was my age. She stood behind a line of other girls, stretching at the barre. With one foot in a cast.
At the bottom she’d written: Act like it’s part of the dance.
That’s why, at two-thirty in the morning, I was climbing out of my window with a bulging backpack, a dance bag stuffed to bursting, and a Metro Card in my pocket.
My parents adopted me because they wanted a daughter, but they didn’t get one.
They got a dancer.
And dancers find a way.
Ceilidh (pronounced Kay-lee) Yak wants to dance. It's all she's ever wanted, and after fighting her mother tooth and nail, finally enrols to the New York School of Ballet. She can eat, breath and live ballet for five days a week, on the proviso that at weekends, she learns everything and anything her mother deems suitable. She's fluent in Latin, Mandarin and all number of languages. She's an expert at chess, maths, science and history; but it's not enough for her mother. When the opportunity for Ceilidh to apprentice with the New York City Ballet, her mother puts her foot down, and realising she'll never be allowed to follow her dream, Ceilidh runs away.
That's when her world really turns upside down. Almost literally. She falls asleep on the train as she flees home, and wakes up when her dreams turn dark. Her phone buzzes with an unknown number, telling her to simply "run". After a mad cap, mind mending chase through pre-dawn New York, fleeing something called a 'nightrider', she takes a leap into the unknown.
At times Born to Shadow dips into a confused narrative. Time ebbs and flows strangely, and huge chunks of Ceilidh's development seem to get lost in the mix. She suddenly, seems to be only happy to follow the dismembered voice of Skio, although I'm not entirely sure how it got into her head. She seems to have come to terms with her situation relatively quickly, developing her shadow powers with skill and speed. She accepts Skio's explanation of what is happening and why without seeming to bat an eyelid. Perhaps because of the fact that she's hurtled into another dimension and seen things no 16 year old from Manhattan should see? Or because she's always known there's something more to her; more than her love of dance.
Either way, Born to Shadow is a great read, fast paced and filled with moments that made me laugh and wince in equal measure.
S. A.