Around me, other dancers were emerging from the lodges. I scarcely noticed them. I was scarcely aware that I shared a body with Soldier’s Boy. Did he move the feet or did I? It did not matter. I was caught up in my dance, and how fine it was to be dancing on such a wonderful morning. I swayed, I turned, and I had taken a dozen steps down the path when I heard an agonized call from behind me.
“No! No! Do not give in to it. Refuse the dance! Do not go to Kinrove’s dance. Refuse. Still your body, plant your feet on the earth. Do not enter the dance!”
Her words were an icy shower down my back. Soldier’s Boy jerked and twitched and then, by a great effort of will, broke free of the dance. He did as she had told him. He planted my feet on the earth and willed my body to stillness. It was more difficult than it sounds. The dance shimmered around me. It told me that I danced even when I did not. My breath was the dance, my beating heart was the dance, the morning wind was the dance, even the stray raindrops that tapped down on my face were the dance. The summoning spoke so sweetly; it was all I needed, it said, all I had ever wanted to do. Had not I longed for a simpler life, a life free of worries and tasks? All I had to do was come, come to the dance.
I do not know how Soldier’s Boy resisted. I could not. I wanted to dance, but he leaned forward, over my belly, his hands on my thighs, and stared at my feet, commanding them to be still. I heard Olikea still shouting. Someone rushed past me, capering in wild joy. Another went less willingly, shouting angrily, but dancing away all the same. Distantly I was aware of the croaker bird cawing. It was an avian laughter, and as the bird flew off, it faded into the distance until it sounded like a man chortling. Or choking.
For most of that morning, the dance tugged at me. I had never guessed that the summoning was so insistent or that it lasted so long. Some who had held firm against it at first gave way to it later in the morning, and went cavorting down the path. Olikea continued to shout her warning at intervals. Soldier’s Boy spared her a glance once, to see that she had actually lashed herself to a tree and clung to it as she shouted.
I had known summer days on the prairie when the chirring of insects was a constant, morn to night, so that after a time one could not hear them. Then, abruptly, they cease, and one remembers what silence truly is.
It was like that when the summoning stopped. For a long moment, not just my ears, but my lungs and belly felt abruptly empty. Soldier’s Boy staggered where he stood, and groaned as my legs tingled and burned from my long inactivity. He straightened up. His head spun for a few long moments, and I feared that he would fall. He took deep steadying breaths and suddenly the world was solid again. I knew that he was completely back to himself when the first hunger pang assailed me. It was nearly noon, and Soldier’s Boy had neither eaten nor drunk since the night before. “Olikea!” he called, desperate for his feeder.
She didn’t answer. Soldier’s Boy looked around me, more cognizant now. Several of his feeders sprawled on the earth where they had fallen. Resisting the summons had taken all their strength. Olikea, still bound to the tree, sagged against her bonds, weeping. She gripped the trunk of the tree as a child would cling to its mother. “No,” she was sobbing. “No, no, no. Not again. Not again!”
Soldier’s Boy went to her as quickly as he could manage. It was startling to me to find out how weak he could feel after a single morning’s fast. Obviously my body had changed in many ways under Soldier’s Boy’s ownership. His hands were gentle as he set them on her shoulders, kinder far than he had been the night before. “It’s all right, Olikea. I’m here. I didn’t give in to the dance.”
She let go of the tree only to clasp her hands over her mouth. She rocked back and forth in agony. “Likari!” she managed to say at last. “Likari has gone! I tried to catch him but he tore himself free of me and danced away. And I, I could not unfasten the knots. A great bird followed him, squawking and cawing, as if it, too, must answer the summons. Oh, Likari, Likari, why did not I bind you last night? I did not think the summons would come so soon. Always, I have heard that the feeders were not called. I thought we were safe. Oh, Likari, I thought you were safe! Being a feeder is supposed to make one safe from the summons to dance!”
Soldier’s Boy was struck dumb with horror, as was I. A terrible hollowing began inside us, a dawning of loss that emptied us both and then filled that gap with guilt. Likari, my little feeder, snatched away from me by the very summons Soldier’s Boy had urged. And the bird that had followed him? Orandula, the god of balances, keeping his promise or his threat. Was he taking Likari’s life or his death to pay my debt? The result was the same, whichever he called it. The boy was gone from us. What a fool Soldier’s Boy had been!
