Sarasha was a dancer with the Three Angel’s Theatre. A theatre that had been built long ago by a group of dark and mysterious gypsies out of the Black Mountains. They had come down from the mountains clad in animal furs and riding strange stunted black horses never seen in Avus before. It was said they’d woven their strange magics and their dark rituals and bound three angels to the building as they built it. Angels that were said to grant luck and beauty to those on stage.

The Theatre was still owned by one of the gypsies, an old man who dressed all in black ugly animal furs even though with the success of the theatre he could easily afford proper clothes. He was also covered in different talismans and symbols that were all made of wood and rock and bone and rattled when he moved. His face was all old and twisted up and he had deep dark eyes set back into it that seemed to stare right through the world around him as though it wasn’t there. His name was Rama and despite his odd appearance and strange customs Sarasha liked him. He had taken her in when she’d had nowhere else to go and he was always kind to her and the other dancers.

He had a young daughter though who Sarasha didn’t like. Her name was Daraim and she always got all the best roles. She was a good dancer, that was clear, but all the other dancers thought they were better and thought that she only got the lead roles because she was the owner’s daughter. So they shunned her and ignored her and tried desperately to get good enough to surpass her.

Some of the dancers had rich families and didn’t need to dance to survive. They didn’t usually stay very long when they learned they would never get the roles they wanted. They just gave up. Sarasha didn’t give up though, she couldn’t, she had to keep dancing and getting better and better if she wanted enough money to buy food for the week.

Initially she’d lived in the Theatre with other orphans Rama had taken in and he’d given them food and water and trained them up to dance so eventually they could pay their own way. Sarasha had lived in the Theatre with the other children for a long time but eventually there had been too many and she’d had to leave as one of the older ones. So now she lived in a small old house with three other dancers and struggled to make ends meet.

The other dancers in her house didn’t really like her very much. She thought they were jealous that she usually had much better roles than them. Because she was a good dancer. A very good dancer. Probably the best at the Theatre in her mind but sadly Rama didn’t seem to see it that way. To him the best dancer would always be Daraim, so Daraim always got to dance the best roles. While Sarasha and the others were overlooked every time.

This season they were dancing an old story about the harvest. It told the story of a man who went out to harvest his crops but all the crops came to life and frustrated him until he eventually befriended and then fell in love with the Autumn Queen and then all the crops harvested themselves. Sarasha thought it was a fairly silly story. Crops didn’t come to life or harvest themselves. But it had some beautiful music and even more beautiful dances and she hoped for the best role which was the Autumn Queen.

The day came and the script was put up on the board with all the roles and she didn’t get it. Daraim was the Autumn Queen as expected and she was Naga, the Queen’s Assistant and one of the most tricky and frustrating for the harvester.

Sarasha was disappointed but she didn’t mind too much. At least she hadn’t gotten the role of Fallen Leaf No 12 like Reyame, one of her housemates, had. Naga didn’t have as many dances as the Autumn Queen but she was one of the more difficult characters to dance with all her tricks she played on the harvester. Sarasha wasn’t worried though, she’d never had a role she couldn’t dance.

They practiced and trained for months at their moves and sequences. With Daraim as the Autumn Queen and her as Naga. It was the most difficult role she’d ever had and at times she did almost feel like it was too much. With what little food she could scrounge together on her meagre allowance and high rent. With the constant snide remarks and insults her housemates and the other dancers gave her. With the little sleep she could get in between her rush to and from the Theatre. But she pushed through it all, she was the best dancer at the Theatre and she knew it so she was going to do this role perfectly.

And she did. For the dress rehearsal everything went exactly as it was supposed to go. She jumped and skipped and danced around with Daraim, sneaking and hopping around the harvester and falling into step with the rest of the Fallen Leaves. That was the most beautiful dance. The Dance of the Fallen Leaves when almost all the dancers they had were onstage weaving in and around each other in their beautiful autumn costumes. It had taken a long time to get everything working for that dance since they had so many dancers and everyone still wasn’t perfect in Sarasha’s mind. She would never let herself slip up in the way some of the other dancers did. But it was the best they were going to get and it was unlikely anyone in the audience would notice. Most people who came to the dance didn’t know much about it unfortunately. They just came to see pretty girls dance to pretty music. Many of them came to see their pretty daughter dance to pretty music. Sarasha lamented that. No one would be coming to see her that way. She didn’t have friends outside the Theatre. Her busy life rushing too and from it hadn’t left much time for that.

There would be people who came to see her. Old men she didn’t like and tried to stay away from but who always seemed to find her anyway. She knew why they did it, she was young and pretty and didn’t have anyone to look after her, no one to care if she disappeared. That made it sting all the more when she watched the other dancers with their parents and families.

Rama would probably care if she went missing, he had looked after her when she was little and she knew he’d want to look after her now. But she knew he couldn’t do much to help. She lived at her own house now and he was old and busy, unable to do much of anything. On top of that he was a gypsy. People didn’t tend to listen to gypsies unless they were being paid by them. Sarasha just hoped the three angels would give her the luck she needed.

After the dress rehearsal Rama came up to her and looked up at her with his eerie black eyes.

“Sarasha,” he said. “Good work, very good. I knew you’d make an excellent Naga.”

Sarasha was proud but also slightly annoyed. Naga was supposed to be shorter than the Autumn Queen and she was taller than Daraim. She thought Daraim would have made a much better Naga had she been chosen.

“But I was thinking,” Rama continued. “You’re probably one of the best dancers here. Maybe even as good as Daraim. Maybe even better.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“So for our next production I was thinking we’d do The Princess of Paramon and I was wondering if you’d like to be the Princess?”

Sarasha’s eyes grew wide. The Princess of Paramon was one of the greatest dances ever written. It was usually only performed by incredibly rich companies because it needed a huge stage and over a hundred dancers. Playing the Princess would be the best role the Theatre had ever offered and they were offering it to her, not to Daraim.

She nodded eagerly and Rama smiled before walking away, his totems jangling.

That night she barely slept. She found it difficult to sleep normally before a show but this time it was even harder. Her stomach was in knots and her heart beat faster than when she danced. She turned this way and that, unable to lie still as she thought and thought all about the show to come and role after it. All through the night she didn’t stop smiling.

The next day the show began. Daraim seemed stressed, more stressed than she was normally before a show but Sarasha ignored her, she was used to doing that. She practised a few of her moves to warm up and nailed all of them. Naga wasn’t an easy role to dance but she knew she could do it. There was no role she couldn’t dance, and she didn’t think there ever would be.

People filed into the building after a while and the dancers all gathered backstage in their costumes. Sarasha was dressed something like a flower, with petals and beautiful colours woven through her dress. Her face was painted green, something to do with being a trickster forest creature. Reyame, playing Fallen Leaf No 12 had an impressive costume too, though not quite as good as hers. It was big and delicate and had plenty of impressive autumnal colours. But Daraim’s costume was the most beautiful. It was everything the Fallen Leaves had and more, she had a crown, she had flowing ribbons and a crest of leaves all around her neck. Sarasha thought it went a bit too far and for once was glad she hadn’t gotten the role. The ribbons would never flow the way they were supposed to all the time. Even if you danced it perfectly it would never be perfect. She hoped the Princess costume wouldn’t be like that.

The dance began and they spun through all of their moves. The harvester danced around, being spun and bedazzled by all the other dancers. Then Sarasha and Daraim went on and Sarasha spun through all her moves, tricking and trapping the harvester. Dancing as the mad trickster she was. Dancing all throughout the story. Until the dance of the Fallen Leaves.

There everyone went on, all the leaves, all the crops, her and Daraim. And they danced and spun and leapt and jumped, all across the stage the way they had been trained to do it. As she danced she noticed other dancers making small mistakes, a stumble on a landing, a mistep somewhere, a loose arm somewhere else. The audience seemed to love it though, and she was enjoying herself as she nailed all the moves she’d practiced.

Then came the end of that dance and she moved toward the front to take her pose with the Autumn Queen. They stood together, arms out to the audience, revelling in applause when someone in the audience stood up. They weren’t supposed to do that, it wasn’t the end yet. And the person standing up had a crossbow.

Sarasha moved forward, trying to point him out to someone but she was too slow, far too slow. He fired the crossbow at Daraim, she was a gypsy and he resented gypsies for some reason or another. So he fired at Daraim.

But Daraim wasn’t who he hit. Sarasha had been moving forward and she stopped moving forward as the crossbow bolt went through her stomach and into her spine. She didn’t feel much though. She thought she would have felt more.

She woke up in a room filled with empty beds. It didn’t smell very nice and all the curtains were closed, blocking out most of the sunlight. Next to her was a big bunch of flowers with a note underneath them. She reached for the note and stopped. She couldn’t feel her legs. She sat back in the bed and thought about that for a long time.

The priest came and talked to her. He told her her spine had been shattered and that she’d never walk again. That she’d never dance again. He told her she’d been very lucky as well, that she shouldn’t have survived at all and that even with all his healing skill he’d expected her to die from blood loss. But apparently she’d been very strong, very tough, very fit, and very lucky.

She didn’t think she’d been lucky though. She couldn’t walk anymore, she couldn’t dance. She couldn’t do anything. She wished the crossbow had killed her. Rama had sent the flowers but he hadn’t come himself. Daraim had come and cried and thanked her for saving her life and cried some more. Daraim was shorter than her, if the crossbow bolt had hit her she wouldn’t have survived.

Daraim told her why Rama wouldn’t come. He felt guilty, he felt terrible apparently and would barely talk to her, nevermind Sarasha. Daraim told her there had been threats on her life but Rama hadn’t taken them seriously and had put on the show anyway. She said his guilt was almost destroying him and he might not be able to run the Theatre anymore.

Then she’d left and Sarasha had had some blessed silence. She lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long time.

It was hard to tell how long passed with the curtains all drawn up like that. She drifted in and out of sleep a lot too from all the drugs the priest gave her. So it could’ve been days, it could’ve been weeks. For all she knew it could’ve been months. Before Meyras walked in. He looked just like Rama, except he wore even darker, older animal skins, and instead of totems of wood and rock and bone, he had totems of topaz. Little eyes of shining orange all over his body, on his fingers, on his arms, in his hair, on necklaces dangling onto his chest. He was Rama’s brother, he told her that. She’d never seen him before, never even heard of him. But now he was here and he sat down next to her bed and talked to her, looking down at her with eyes even blacker than Rama’s.

“You saved my niece,” he said. “Rama feels guilty about it, he feels horrible at what’s happened to you. His best dancer. It seems his three angels didn’t give you much luck after all.”

He leant down and took one of the topaz’s dangling around his neck in between thick wrinkled fingers. “He can’t help you now, that stupid priest tottering around somewhere can’t help you now, but there are people who can still help you.”

Sarasha’s eyes were drawn to the topaz as he moved it up and down his fingers. It was very shiny, and dark orange, a deep dark orange like a sunset. And inside there was something even darker still, some dark impurity that drew her eye as it moved through his fingers. Some shape and the shape almost looked like a man.

“You saved my niece and for that I only want to help you Sarasha.” He leaned forward more, she looked up at him rather than at the topaz. “How would you like to dance again?”