Cedric catches fire

“What’s she saying?” Gwynn asked.

Her sweet voice had sharpened into an anxious squeak, and Cedric felt a surge of something dizzying and strange swell up in him. It was hot like anger, so he decided it was meant for Kraaia and sent an angry scowl in her direction.

“Just ignore her,” he muttered. “Whatever she’s saying, she’s saying it to me, not you.”

Gwynn laughed an anxious little laugh that was unlike both her customary affected tittering and her occasional honest, chiming laughter. “I hope you’re right – she lives with me, not you.”

Cedric’s skin prickled with a sudden chill. All at once he realized that by charging in to save Gwynn from the present annoyance of Kraaia’s teasing, he might have condemned her to a far more painful ordeal at a later time – at a time when no one would be near to save her.

What was a boy to do? Had he better stop speaking to Gwynn entirely, for her own safety? Was that not precisely what Kraaia was trying to make him do?

Gwynn interrupted his worrying with a giggled, “Now how does it go?” She raised her arms.

Cedric gasped, “Wait!” – but too late.

For the first few awkward beats, Gwynn seemed to think the dance was all about the arms and hands. After she made a short, sidelong study of Cedric’s mother, however, her heedlessly swerving hips fell into the rhythm and began to shake in perfect time with the thumping of the Scottish drums.

Cedric could not believe what he was seeing. This was not like watching his mother dance, shaking the very hips that had borne him. This was not like watching his little sisters dance, with shawls tied around their scrawny hips in a vain attempt to give themselves curves. This was the soft, round, and supple body of a young lady, and she was shaking her hips mere inches from his own, undulating with a liquid grace that she could never have affected if it were not inborn.

The slippery, shimmering blue silk of her dress fit her so perfectly it seemed no more than a sheen of water flowing over her curves, and Cedric imagined he could almost peer through it to her naked body… down through the transparent shallows over her dappled breasts, down the smooth slopes of her waist and belly, and down through deeper shadows to the mossy tuft he would find in the cleft between her legs if Cubby was to be believed…

And then Cedric caught himself imagining he had snatched her up and was holding her wet and naked and shimmying helplessly in his grasp…

“Wait!” he shouted over the din of music and laughter. “Not that one!”

Her arms flopped limply to her sides like swaying fronds lifted suddenly out of water. “Was it wrong?”

“No, it was – very nice,” he laughed awkwardly as the smiling faces turned towards him began to turn away. “But my mother and uncle are already dancing that one. That’s already three different dances to the same tune – we ought to dance a fourth. Funnier that way.” He grinned in relief at his own cleverness.

Gwynn shrugged. “What shall we dance?”

Just then, beneath the shrill piping of the musicians overhead and above the thumping of the drums, Cedric heard Finn snap, “Shut up, Kraaia!” in an eerily boyish imitation of his father’s exasperated bark.

Cedric’s cleverness trickled to idiocy as suddenly as if the sluice gate of his mind had slammed shut. In his panic he blurted the first dance he could think of– “Bartholomew Fair!”– and thrust his arm through the crook of Gwynn’s elbow.

“But that’s a children’s dance!” she protested as he spun her once around.

“Oh, do, Gwynn!” Hetty pleaded. She giggled so deliriously that Cedric feared she would tumble out of her chair. “It is so pretty to see young men and ladies dancing as children! So sweet!”

The “young men and ladies” seemed to settle Gwynn, if not also the “pretty” and “sweet”. She was a fine dancer – fine enough even to compensate for Cedric’s own embarrassed awkwardness – and a gracious young lady besides. She fell gracefully into step beside him without further complaint.

For a blissful half minute Cedric basked in his relief – and then Finn came loping up from behind him with Kraaia trotting along at his heels.

“Heard any good nursery rhymes lately, kiddies?” he whinnied as he passed.

Kraaia laughed.

Gwynn threw back her head and protested, “If it is not a Scottish dance” –bounce– “simply because it danced to a Scottish tune” –turn– “then it is not a children’s dance simply because” –bounce– “children dance it. And we’re not!” She clapped her hands and both tossed her head at Finn and curtsied to Cedric without missing a step. “Children, I mean.”

“Here she goes again!” Finn groaned.

He caught Kraaia’s arm and turned her around. Finn was not ordinarily a clumsy dancer unless he tried to be, but Kraaia seemed to stumble, and her foot stomped alarmingly close to the hem of Gwynn’s gown.

“Careful!” Cedric cautioned.

“Are you a kiddie or a granny?” Finn laughed. “Careful!” he cackled.

Hetty clapped her hands and squealed with laughter. “Ach! No one is careful tonight! How I wish I could dance with you all!” she said breathlessly. “Who would dance with me?”

“I have two arms, Hetty,” Finn said, flapping his free elbow like a duck. He dropped Kraaia’s arm and concentrated on performing a deliberately clumsy shuffle. “And two left feet!” he laughed.

Again Kraaia’s foot came down inches from the long, trailing edge of Gwynn’s dress, but this time Cedric could not quite blame Finn. Moreover, the hem of Kraaia’s own gown was stretched tight between her ankles, and for an instant she seemed more off-​​balance than attempting to catch her balance.

“Ach, I wish I could join you!” Hetty clapped her hands all out of time with the music and laughed in hiccupping sobs. “Is it leaping if I lift my two feet?”

Cedric looked down at Hetty’s feet in time to see her pointed toes rise together from the floor, but he missed what happened near his own. Kraaia bobbed strangely, and suddenly Gwynn’s body jolted straight and fell towards his.

For an instant – he almost believed it was his last – he saw her red lips parted into a startled O, falling in a perfect arc towards his; and her wide, dark eyes staring pleadingly into his own.

Then her breast crashed against his – not her breast but her breasts – and her hands fell on his shoulders and slid down his arms. He might have caught her, but in his shock and his superstitious horror of touching Matilda’s daughter, he flung out his arms and let her drop.

It seemed odd to him that the music could continue: time seemed to have stopped. Certainly he could not move.

Gwynn laughed – awkwardly and anxiously once more, unlike both her affected tittering and her honest, chirping laughter. Cedric felt that rush of hot dizziness again, and he wondered what it was.

Then Gwynn lifted her face from the floor, and Cedric saw the stain.

Hetty saw it too, and after a first gibbering exclamation in German she managed to shriek, “Gwynn! You are bleeding!”

The musicians stopped, and time crashed around Cedric’s head again like sluice gates opening. His uncle shoved him aside, and all around him people were babbling their fright and confusion in many tongues. Only Cedric was struck dumb, horrified by his own helplessness – horrified by his own failure to help.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kraaia darting away.

Another surge of heat flooded over him – another something strange and new – but this one he recognized and understood.

He cracked his heel down on the spot where Kraaia had stood and leapt up.