When The Moon Turned Red For Me

All I ever wanted was to dance without falling.

My name is Cecil Lafleur. Ever since I could remember, my body answers to the sound of music and the sadness in stories. My feet greet the floor, and once they start dancing, I would not be able to stop. I’d look at the ceilings, and my heart sinks in the tragedy of soloists in heavens—a pity that they could not dance for eternity.

I spun in madness as I steadied my balance, and when my feathers struck the ground, a tear pretended to grieve for the dying swan. A loud ringing of applause brought me back to the realm of sanity. The people of Montreval celebrated as I made them cry yet another standing ovation.

“You were breathtaking,” whispered Lukas Pierre as he stole a dangerous kiss outside the changing room. The tall brunette always knew what to do when people weren’t watching. I wouldn’t blame him; he was my boyfriend.

At the main hall, we gathered with all of today’s performers and mentors—the elders facing the youth, the experienced congratulating and evaluating the unrefined.

The younger trainees received mostly compliments and advice for improvement. However, as an older apprentice, we have chosen ballet as more than a hobby—a professional career path, and perfection was expected from a pre-professional merit.

When Claude Beaumont stepped toward the center, the room didn’t dare move a finger. Claude Beaumont, the most celebrated senior ballet master in the whole of Paris. You would not be able to point out a flaw even if you hired the audience to watch him closely. To be taught by him was to be prepared for the best, and to be insulted like you were the worst.

“Cecil Lafleur,” my name on his tongue drew attention and turned heads. The juniors stared at me with admiration in their eyes, as if imagining an example of their near future if they worked hard enough, but seniors my age—they glared with unmistakable jealousy, hoping Beaumont would find something, anything, wrong in me, so the next lead role might fall to them.

I knew I made a mistake. I just hoped it went unnoticed.

I hoped, perhaps, a little too confidently.

“You let yourself fall earlier than you were meant to,” he said, calm but furious. “Don’t think I didn’t count. You lost your footing and missed a turn, and call yourself ready for Le Prix Ardent? Consider they only liked watching you because you were pretty.”

The lights then turned off. I couldn’t see people’s faces, but I could hear them talk. As I stayed at the corner where I would be for the next twenty minutes on a handstand, Beaumont made sure everyone had left so that I endured my punishment alone. At last, he walked away—and this time, my tears didn’t pretend.

Le Palais Ardent, the palace of burning sins and ambition, where obsession beats talent, and the biggest sin would be to surrender dancing—rebuilt and renamed after a prima ballerina who danced for her final audience when a fire broke out. Consumed by a flame that raged within, she refused to leave before finishing her sequence. Nobody saw her last bow, but one man swore he saw her rise as a red phoenix as she pirouetted into the fires.

Fire does not surrender. That was the only reminder I needed to keep going.

One. Two. Three. Agile, the tip of my fingers reached to open the thin sheet of invisible veil. Entering the void of in-between where dreams awaken, I began to forget my name and knew only the flight of notes on the pianist’s sheet music—like a leap, a pedal marking.

Four. Five. Six. I followed my reflection in the mirror, afraid she was getting better at me. Rays of sunlight welcomed themselves from the windows. Unwavering at first, then bent by the movement of shadows, enticing into a game of chase.

Seven. Eight. I shall be the best ballerina in the room, in the palace, in Montreval, Paris, and across the world. One day, I shall show Claude Beaumont what he made me: a star, burning, gleaming, never to fall.

The abrupt opening of door interrupted our session, and Beaumont entered the room. Behind him, a girl with a new face followed.

“Eloise Aagten,” he announced. “Transfer student from The Dutch Academy of Ballet. She will be joining us for Le Prix Ardent. May the best dancers be crowned.”

Le Prix Ardent, the most prestigious performance awaited in the city. Parisians would fight for the front seats, but the first and second rows would already be filled by the judges of Theatre de la Couronne, dream destination of most dancers.

Every year, the judges would crown up to two pupils if the second dancer was lucky, which meant that competition here was not going to be friendly. To be crowned was to receive a free entry to the world’s most wanted ballet theatre. It should be me. The lead role should be given to me, as lead roles always win the ardent prize year to year.

Eloise Aagten was no threat for me. She was only another mouse that should fear the cat.

With less than a month until Beaumont assigned to us our roles, I needed not to climb, but only to stay where I already was: the top. Rehearsals resumed day and night, and I heard some losers had already admitted defeat by accepting they were okay with just becoming supporting casts.

“Lukas Pierre,” Beaumont called. “Undoubtedly our best danseur. If you were to perform in a pas de deux, whom would you partner with?”

The room hushed with loud heartbeats. The girls at the back clasped their hands in vain delusion. Lukas looked at me once to made sure. I had told him I had eyes only for the solo position. A duet was not going to secure my place in La Couronne.

“Eloise Aagten, Sir,” he answered. Awkward applause replied in formality, and the Dutch princess motioned to join Lukas in a dual embrace.

She was surprisingly good alongside him, and their improvised performance received favorable remarks even from Beaumont.

I didn’t see Lukas after rehearsals that day. I wanted to congratulate Aagten and get on her good side. If she was kind, maybe she would let in a few routines. I was still the better dancer, but a cat recognizes a cat, after all.

“So sorry,” but she said, “Rivals don’t share secrets.”

Nobody ever talked to me like that, and to think she had the audacity to consider herself my rival… I was lost in a few seconds of bewilderment as she walked away, until I determined I wasn’t going to let it slide.

Catching up to her so I could teach her a lesson, I arrived at the balcony where I discovered a shocking scandal. There, standing naked, were Aagten and Beaumont, wrapping themselves in a dire hunger for skin—a forbidden affair between a mentor and a student twenty years apart of age. I held my breath as I watched behind walls, careful not to announce my unwanted presence.

“I want the solo,” Aagten murmured between tongues, “not the duet.”

“I’ll take care of it, princess.”

As soon as they finished their display of body parts, I crept silently to hide behind the further face of the wall—as to not be spotted when they returned to the stairs.

When I heard their steps descend, I recollected my calm from suspense. My heart throbbed of horror, but even more, I was outraged by Aagten and her schemes. That girl really sought to take what’s mine.

I was about to return to my chamber, half-considering telling Lukas, only to find that the girl was still on the balcony. She didn’t see me, for she was standing with one foot on the ledge—on a pointe shoe, flirting with fate and people-watching the streets below her, gripping a carved balustrade like a lifeline.

No wonder she was exquisite at balance.

A raging fire took me over. With just a sprint, I easily pushed her to an absolute fall—giving her a deserved fate, thus making her incapable of interfering with mine.

I locked myself into my room before the crowds noticed anything. Everyone was already inside theirs, and nobody saw me go down the stairs. I was safe.

She had brought this accident to herself. Tomorrow, that would be the news, and like everyone else, I shall be dumbfounded, although only in pretense.

I showed up to class like usual. It didn’t take long until everyone was asking each other, “Have you heard?”

Beaumont stormed in like he wished he had someone to blame. However, it was not an envelope with a black seal on his hand; it was dark purple, signifying a leave instead of death.

“Eloise Aagten’s parents took leave on behalf of their daughter earlier this morning,” he explained. “The girl fell from the balcony during careless practice, injuring herself badly and leaving her permanently blind and crippled.”

Everyone gasped in pity and disbelief, to the fact that she was no longer able to dance. It was also a surprise to me—about why she didn’t speak about it not being an accident.

That night, Lukas knocked on my room and asked if I was okay. He knew I was never comfortable with this kind of genre when watching movies.

Then he tried to convince me to replace his partner in the duet. “I won’t look good if it’s not with you,” he begged.

Still, I was more selfish than I was in love. At last, he surrendered and proposed I gave him a taste of it, even if it wasn’t going to change my mind.

“There is this secret clearing just nearby,” he suggested, a smirk washed across his handsome face. “Where the boys and I would sneak out to tear butterfly wings. A beautiful space, almost magical under a full moon’s light,” he hinted at the window, and indeed, it was a perfect full moon.

Putting on my favourite white dress and a pair of dirty pointes, we rushed outside toward the forest and into the clearing—away from the world’s dark obsessions and questionable morals. The full moon shone upon us like spotlight on stage, and we danced like lovers that transcended lifetimes.

We knew not what was to come one move after another, but we continued to make it beautiful. I could cling to him like Odette, and he could lift me up like Romeo. We were in our own worlds… until grass started to feel like glass, and hand became knife.

“Lukas Pierre,” I whimpered in pain. “What are you doing?”

The knife only went deeper, then behind me, came the sound of rolling wheels.

“Cecil Lafleur,” said the girl on the wheelchair. “You intended to kill me, yet made me a worse state than dead. It’s my turn now.”

She took the knife out of my stomach, and it pierced like no pain I ever knew before. I was already half-dead—my consciousness half-slipped—but she was not done with me.

Cutting the knife against my eyelids, my ghost felt her removing them so that I could not rest in peace. Held back in my own body, I saw how the moon watched as a silent witness—the round orb turning red as blood pooled in my eyes.

“You made me blind. But for you, I’ll let you see forever,” she said. Under the red moonlight, I watched as my nemesis and my boyfriend fell in love—while I fell in a restless death.

All I ever wanted was to dance without falling.