The Stone Dancer

Once upon a time there was a great city. The city stood on the top of a great hill of stone, and of stone was it made, so that it seemed a part of the hill itself. Every stone of the city was carved with figures of trees and flowers, of sun and moon and stars, of clouds and rain, and most of all, of men and women dancing. Many of the stones were worked with inlays of jasper, and chalcedony, of agate and opal, and of gemstones of every color, so that the light of the lamps, and the light of the sun and moon and stars was colored and reflected, and refracted into such a whirl that newcomers would stand for days gawking in wonder and delight, and even those who had lived there since birth would often stop in the midst of their business just to watch the play of light.

In the very center of this city there was a great hall, shaped like a bowl, with a great arched lid. Every stone of the hall was plain, smooth, dark granite, a granite whose crystals ranged in color from the soft gray of a thunderstorm, to the deepest black, the black of a dungeon, on an overcast, moonless night. The rim of the bowl was circled with a hundred arched doors, and a thousand arched windows, each with great stone shutters. Every evening, the light of the setting sun would usher the audience into the hall. As the light faded, the great shutters would be closed, leaving the audience in deepest darkness.

The darkness of that hall had a reason. Every evening, on a stage in the center of the great hall, a dancer would dance. The light of a thousand lamps would shine down on the dancer, who would be dressed in costumes made of gold and silver, of jewels and gems, and the beauty of the costumes, and of the dance, would fill the hall, from the bottom to the rim, to the great dark arched ceiling of stone. If the stones of the hall had been decorated as the other stones in the town, the beauty of the dance, and the reflections of it, would have blinded everyone who looked upon it.

The dancer, too, was beautiful. And she was immortal. Long and long ago she had started to dance. When she was barely a child, when the city itself was no more than a few hovels of piled rubble, she had danced from joy. She danced from the joy of the sun and the moon and the stars, from the joy of the new plants greening, from the joy of the wind dancing in the grass. And everyone who saw her knew the joy she danced, and felt, too, that joy.

As she grew older the people more and more asked her to dance. And they built a large hovel of rubble, with a great hearth for warmth and light, so they could watch her dance, even when the rain fell, or the snow furred the cold granite of their hill.

Years and years passed. Every year the people improved the place of dancing, making it larger, to accommodate the audience that grew, as the town grew, making it grander as their wealth grew. And the girl who danced spent more and more of her time dancing within the great stone hall. The more she danced, and the more grandly the people made the hall of stone, the more slowly she aged. Until, at last, she ceased to age at all. She stayed within the walls, and danced every night, because the people of the town, and the visitors who had heard of her dancing, became so numerous that she must dance every night so that everyone who wanted could see her, and feel the joy of her dancing.

She continued to dance her joy. But after a while, her joy became the dance, the dance her joy, and the joy of the sun and moon and stars, of the trees and flowers, of the grasses in the wind, became for her a memory. People began to bring her stories, which she would dance. The people of the town, and the visitors from far away, brought her stories of their lives, and they joy they found in them. Their joy would shine out of her, through her joy of dancing, and the joys of their lives would seem all the brighter.

A Prince came, one day, from a very distant place. He had heard of the great beauty of the dancer, and the dance, and he traveled many weeks to come to the great stone hill where the dancer danced.

The Prince lived in a beautiful garden, in the center of an ancient forest. The great trees of the forest surrounded the garden, their great arching branches making a thousand hallways, each leading to the garden in the meadow at the center. The Prince and his people lived in the garden, tending it, caring for the flowers, the trees and plants and grasses, and living on the nuts and fruits and seeds it produced. And when they died there, their bodies were burned, and their ashes were scattered through the garden. They were as much of the garden as the garden was of them.

The Prince had inherited the garden from his parents, who had, themselves, returned to it. The Prince’s family, since time forgotten, had lived in the garden. Every generation had added to it, improved it, developed it, until it was the envy, and the joy of all who came to see it. And now it was the Prince’s turn.

But the garden, and the forest surrounding it, was so beautiful, so perfect, that the Prince could make no changes to it; for to put up something new, he must take down something old; to put in a new orchard, he must take down an old one; to put in a new path, he must dig up a bed of flowers that had been planted by his parents, or his grandparents, or his great-, great-, great-grandparents.

The Prince was in a quandary. Then he heard about the beautiful dancer, in the great hall of stone. He heard about the marvelous stone work of that town, and wondered if such work would make his garden more beautiful. He wondered, too, if the beauty of the dancer could be brought into his garden as well. So he made the long journey from the center of his garden to the center of the great city of stone.

When the Prince arrived at the stone city, the important people of the town greeted him warmly. They showed him through their beautiful streets, where the jasper and chalcedony winked, where gneiss and schist glimmered, and where the gems and jewels glinted. And every time the Prince exclaimed in delight they said, “Yes, it is beautiful, but wait until you see the dancer, and the dance.”

In the evening, the Prince was led into the great, dark granite hall. He was given a place of honor at the very edge of the stage. Other visitors, and people of the town, filled the hall as the warm light of the setting sun faded from the windows. The great stone shutters and doors were closed, and all was darkness. Then, one by one, the thousand lamps were lit, and their growing light shone on the stage and illuminated the dancer. All became quiet. And the dancer began the dance.

This night, the dancer danced a story of love between a man and a maid. There was such great joy in the dance, that the Prince began to fall in love himself, with the beautiful dancer. As he watched, it seemed to him the only way to improve his garden would be if he could love the dancer in it. He imagined the two of them loving each other in his garden, among the trees and flowers, beneath the sun and moon and stars, and among the grasses that danced in the breeze. The joy the dancer danced was reflected in the eyes of the Prince, and the reflection woke the memory of the dancer, the joy of her first dancing. And the remembered joy doubled and redoubled between them, until every person in the hall felt it, though none were certain what it was.

And then the dance was done, and the lamps were put out. The light shining between the dancer and the Prince remained.

The important people of the town were amazed, and afraid. The Prince told them of his beautiful garden, and of how it would be made more beautiful if he could marry the dancer and take her there to dance in it.

“What will happen,” they asked, “if the dancer were to leave the hall?” Who would dance for them with such great joy.

The Prince said: “The dancer and I will marry. I will become King, and she will be my Queen, and in my garden we will raise children. She will teach her daughter to dance, as I will teach my son to tend the garden. And when her daughter is old enough, she will come here to dance for you.”

The Prince, and the important people of the town looked to the dancer. But the dancer said nothing, only smiled. She had been dancing for so long, she had ceased to speak.

So they decided it must be so. They could still see the light that reflected back and forth between the Prince and the dancer, though it had begun to fade. The Prince and the dancer were married. There was a ceremony in the great stone hall, for which the dancer danced the joys of marriage. And there was another ceremony in the center of the beautiful garden, for which the dancer danced the joys of new life coming into the world.

But when the dancer had finished the dance of birth, she did not stop dancing. She continued to dance. She danced all the stories of the people of the town of stone, all the stories she had been brought over years, and decades, and centuries. And she danced the stories that had been sent to her from other places, even stories that had come from the very garden in which she danced. She danced with such joy that no one, not even the Prince wished to stop her. And as she danced, she began to age. She danced stories of adolescence, and of middle age, of summer passing. And still she aged. She danced dances of autumn leaves dropping, and of the moldering of fallow fields.

From time to time, the people of the garden had to stop watching, to tend the garden, and to eat. But the dancer continued to dance. The Prince became worried. He asked the important people of the stone city to come and see. They came, but they didn’t want her to stop dancing. They brought stones with them, from the great dark hall, hoping their presence would stop her aging. They placed the stones in a circle around the dancer. But she continued to age, just as she continued to dance.

For seven years the dancer danced without stopping. Every day she became older. She danced until she had danced away all the stories, and all the years in the great stone hall. And when she was very old, and could barely dance at all, she danced again from the joy of the sun and moon and stars, from the joy of new plants greening, and from the joy of the wind in the grasses.

And then she died.

Her body was burned, and the ashes placed in an urn of stone in the very center of the garden.

*****

The stones of the great city are fallen, and the great hall is open to the sky. If you were to look at it now, you would see only a hill of stone, with weeds and grass growing in the cracks of the granite.

The great garden, too, is gone. Where once were wide paths and banks of flowers, there are now thickets of weeds and brambles, threaded through by the paths of rabbits and foxes, deer and voles. Even the great hallways through the trees are choked with dead branches, and the dried leaves and stems of old vines.

There is a place, within what might be a ring of tumbled stones, where rest the fragments of what might once have been an urn of stone. The pieces have been cracked and weathered, by rain and snow, by wind and frost, and by the slow eating of the lichens that cover them. They are hidden among grasses. And when the wind blows, the grasses dance with joy.