Unmaking Percy

Part III - II, continued (The Dizzy Tent)

They walked past the convulsing dancers, taking care to swerve away from hands and feet that were flung every which way with an almost vengeful, raging delight. A purple fabric flap separated the hallway from the room that the dancing trail led to. Percy could not hear music yet, but he could feel it, crawling under his skin like a restless creature. But he still had The Rabble-rousers' tune mercilessly stuck in his head. If he was not careful, he would start humming any moment now. Valeria lifted the flap and held it up for them to walk through.

They stood motionless, mesmerized by the sight before them. The circular space was filled to burst with dancing bodies. The colours in the room fumed like incense, sandalwood red and rose petal mauve. There was a madness draped over it all like crumpled silk. The floor was covered in thick dark carpets, and the walls were of a rich purple and burgundy. From the beams that supported the ceiling hung mismatched lanterns, pooling an orange-glow through coloured stained glass. Percy felt he was engulfed in the folds of a great perfumed robe. It did not feel claustrophobic, as it had back in Astred's tent; but everything was steeped in scents and colours, and it made breathing and looking a heady business.

Even the fabric on the walls seemed to stir with a feverish urge for pleasure. Percy was swimming in a strange wine, warm and spiced and lush. He could not tell where sound ended and colour began. The strumming of a lute reached him clad in gold, and a light jingling of bells sounded in his mind like treasure. He couldn't yet see who was playing. And still, despite everything, that stupid tune from earlier nested in his mind.

Around him glistened the scented sweat of the dancers, their arms thrashing like branches in a shared storm. This was nothing like the dances Percy had learned for formal occasions. A minuet would have run screaming. Those dances had steps, and partners: they were a body made polite. This had the crook of chaos and misrule: it was a body made fever.

The music inched closer now, reaching for him past the sweat-knit bodies of the dancers. The clearer he heard it, the stronger grew in him an urge like he had never felt: an urge to free his arms and hands and legs and feet, as though he was at last uprooted and offered to the scattered winds. A dancer's face twisted just an inch from his, and he was stunned by their haggard expression.

"This Tombert must be quite something, if they command such a following" he said. "I mean, they look like they'd rather drop dead than keep dancing, and yet they're still going. Evans?"

When he turned, his friends where nowhere to be seen.

As a child, he had been fiercely guarded at every market-stall and packed square he had been to, and thus had never undergone the necessary rite of passage of getting misplaced by his carers and tugging at the wrong sleeve.

"Valeria? Myrtle?" he squeaked, wishing he could sound a little more dignified.

He saw at last Valeria's tall blond head bobbing above the others.

"There you are, I was – "

A ludicrous painting unveiled before him. Valeria's arms were lifted limply above her head, hoisted by a strength that was not her own. She fanned her hands about in a breezy joy that was completely misplaced in her; a boulder could hardly make for a good kite. A horrified grimace twisted about her face.

"In all my years" she babbled, "I have never – "

Next to her, Evans's arms were wrapped around Myrtle in an intricate net of swirls and twirls, their legs swivelling and swaying in half-circles, dangerously close to getting tangled together. Evans danced as he laughed: with a complete disregard for grace and a thorough enjoyment of his gracelessness. As for Myrtle, she was all of her sharp angles and rough edges, and her blundering energy was in full sway as she bumped against the dancers around her. They were wordless, with a forced rictus trapped on their lips.