Icicles framed the dark stone portico of the Palais des Bijoux, glinting in the light of the white December sun. They seemed to form a crystal chandelier above Liana as she entered the home of Mme. Karina’s Rubies. A world of ballet, a world of dreamy orchestral music, a world of jewels.

It was a world she had to be a part of.

Yet the line of at least thirty young ladies entwined around the rose-marble columns of the reception hall hardly heralded Liana as a princess stepping into her rightful kingdom. No, all these girls thought themselves equally special, equally unique in securing a position as one of the Rubies. The Prima Ballerinas of the Palais des Bijoux performed not only in Paris, but at the finest opera houses in Europe, Asia, and even the Americas. In their red shoes adorned with rubies and their elegant motions crafted to perfection, there was no comparable troupe.

Liana took her place at the end of the queue, noting the middle-aged woman behind a desk at the end of the hall. The woman’s chestnut hair coiled smoothly into an elegant coiffure with a dusting of silver strands. She spoke with each young lady sternly before presenting her with a contract, a crisp white paper dense with scrawled ink. It was barely eight in the morning, an hour before the auditions officially began.

I have time, Liana reminded herself. She loosened her clenched fist from the strap of her linen ballet bag. Perhaps she had packed too many ribbons; none of the other ladies were so fancifully attired. Simple buns, gelled and combed to perfection, and deep crimson lips cast them as professionals eager to secure a position that was all but granted to them. But Liana knew they couldn’t all succeed. They couldn’t all live the dream of the young girl trapped inside Liana’s heart, twirling ribbons in her bedroom while she leapt about in her soft pink shoes. But she would. The Rubies were the epitome of perfection and grace. The life she envisioned without the ruby shoes was one of labour and despair. Endless hours in her aunt’s kitchens with a mop that was always insufficient in lifting up soup stains and char from the woodstove…

“Your name?”

Liana had reached the table in a daze, but steeled herself against the sudden jolt in her chest.

“Liana Desrosiers.”

The woman hardly suffered her a glance as she pushed one of the contracts before Liana and tapped the paper with a sharp, polished nail. “Sign here and enter the Quartz Hall to my left.” She gestured to an arched door behind her. “And note that the Ruby Hall on my right is strictly prohibited to all but the Rubies. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Then sign and proceed.”

Liana lifted the dip pen, her fingers clumsy as they fumbled to put the nib into the inkwell and set it to paper. I should read this, she reminded herself.

This agreement is set forth between Mme. Karina, proprietress of Mme. Karina’s Rubies of the Palais des Bijoux, and the candidate ballerina—

“Well?” the woman demanded.

“I’m still reading—”

“Do you wish to delay the auditions?”

There were so many clauses, it would have been impossible to read it all in less than a quarter of an hour. But she couldn’t risk her chance, so Liana skimmed the document, noting what seemed to be salient points amid the swarms of ink:

…never to speak of the inner workings of the Palais…

…agree to accept the Ruby Shoes only at such a time as Mme. Karina deems suitable…

…a lifetime agreement to be concluded only if and when Mme. Karina deems suitable…

There were another twenty girls behind her now, and Liana found the words blurring into black rivulets upon white. She drew the pen to the bottom of the page, signing her name with the date, 7 December 1865.

It was done.

The contract was snatched from under her nose with a flick, and Liana found herself entering the audition hall. Winks of morning light caught in the floor to ceiling windows of the grand hall, an icy jewellery box of hopeful ballerinas. There were ladies tall and short, willowy and plump, all with taut anticipation like icicles that would shatter upon the cold marble floor the moment a “no” was uttered from Mme. Karina’s lips.

As it turned out, Mme. Karina was not present, and instead, a certain Mme. Julie Clairveaux and the lady from the desk—Mme. Cecilia Marillier—were the auditioners. The day proceeded in a blur, arabesques blending into jetés and pas de chat, with more pliés than Liana could count. She could feel the sweat in the corners of her eyes and along her nose, and she knew her bun was disintegrating like those of the other girls around her.

By the end of the afternoon, icicles glittered outside the windows as the sun set in golden-bronze hues behind the city’s towers, manors, and churches. A tall man, clad in black with limbs like poles, arrived at the day’s end to light the chandeliers. When the dancing had concluded, the young ladies stood attentively, not daring to sit despite their cramped muscles and bruised toes. Liana noticed blood seeping through the edge of one lady’s shoe, a mockery of ruby red upon pink.

Once Mmes. Julie and Cecilia had finished conferring, they read the names of those fortunate ladies who would be tested by Mme. Karina the following day. They were presented with a single red jewel, a promise of what was to come. The rest were handed a scrap of red cloth and dismissed.

Cold air seemed to sink into Liana’s throat, cloy in her lungs. Her fingers pinched the cloth, hard, as if she could somehow condense it into a ruby by sheer force. She pushed her stiff limbs forward and stopped Mme. Julie at the door.

“Madame,” she began. “I believed we would all be tested by Mme. Karina. That is what the contract—”

“Foolish girl,” Julie snapped. “The Mistress has no time for those who do not show potential.”

“But I—”

“Have been dreaming about this your whole life?” The sing-song lilt to the woman’s tone froze the words in Liana’s throat. “As have all.” Julie gestured to the room where the girls with scraps of cloth were numbly packing their belongings.

The woman departed, and Liana was left with a hitch in her throat. Her skin, previously warmed by the day’s exertions, started to prickle with gooseflesh as the chill of the chamber met her sweat-coated skin. Only ten girls had been chosen, leaving nearly fifty bereft of hope. Bereft…but no, she couldn’t accept it.

Liana approached a young lady who appeared no older than fourteen, her red hair forming a frizz of curls where they had escaped her bun. “May I have that?” Liana asked, pointing to the girl’s scrap of red fabric.

The girl handed it over at once. “I don’t want to see that again,” she muttered.

Liana collected a few dozen scraps from the remaining ladies, all of whom shared similar sentiments. But Liana was possessed with fierce determination rather than defeat. She left the Palais des Bijoux at a brisk pace, her boots creating a steady clacking rhythm upon the cobblestones. Her breath curled in the December air, coalescing in a white mist that blended into the evening fog.

When she arrived home, she retrieved a new candlestick from the pantry and a long loaf of bread from the kitchen to quench her hunger. She then got to work in her room.

***

The shoes were a poor excuse for ballet slippers. They were patched furiously with crude stitches, as if performed by an army surgeon from the trenches of war. The two hard ends of the bread had served as a frame upon which to sew the toes and were now spiked with needles.

Liana slid them on her feet and felt the uneven stitches press into her toes. But that didn’t matter. Slipping them off again, Liana stepped into her boots and tossed a cloak over her light practice attire—she hadn’t changed out of it yesterday, and after her nightly exertions, it clung to her skin like the scales of a snake. No matter: they wouldn’t be looking at her attire, or the state of her hair or skin. Only her feet, and the perfect rhythm flowing through her body. Exhaustion hadn’t yet come over Liana, and fortunately too, for she had a long walk to reach the Palais des Bijoux.

The girls who were to be tested by Mme. Karina hadn’t yet arrived, for it was only half past six when Liana reached the opera house. But the building was open, the chandelier of icicles above the door dull without the morning light. Inside, the double doors to the Ruby Hall pulsed in Liana’s vision. Strictly prohibited, Mme. Cecelia had said. Unless she was a Ruby, that is.

Liana’s pace slackened as she approached the doors, each step leadening her already sore muscles. She stopped at the doors to remove her boots and replace them with her makeshift slippers. Their faded red fabric, criss-crossed with fevered midnight stitches, were crude against the rose-marble flagstones. Pathetic, they seemed to sneer. This only strengthened Liana’s resolve.

She pushed open the doors, leaning her full weight into the heavy marble. An unlit hallway stretched into the depths of the opera house. Liana’s feet were silent as she walked inside, the winter chill creeping from the stones into her limbs in sharp pricks that forced her to keep moving. Halfway down the hallway, she froze upon hearing a whimper.

To her left, a door was ajar, and faint voices arose from within. When she peered inside, Liana at first took herself to be dreaming. Or perhaps hallucinating after her sleepless night. There were half a dozen young ladies, all clad in the characteristic red slippers of the Rubies. Four of the ladies were strapped down on narrow beds in a twisted imitation of sleep. Their arms and waists were bound to the frame with thick harnesses which their bodies pressed tautly against, jerking to be freed. Their legs were unbound, and their feet performed rhythmic motions. Dancing. But their eyes were shut, foreheads gleaming with sweat even in the chill air.

The remaining two girls were dancing, though their motions were forced and without joy. One girl was sobbing as she turned to and fro, shaking arms a mockery of the grace and poise of the Rubies upon the stage.

“It never stops…” she cried, turning another pirouette.

“Elaine, listen,” the other girl pleaded. She was older than the others and her green eyes were dull and rimmed with grey. But still, she danced with a steady, ceaseless rhythm. “You will get used to the beds. You need to sleep, or you’ll faint.”

“But…will it ever stop?”

“No.”

Liana waited to see if she would offer some comfort to the girl, but none was forthcoming. Her breath grated like icicles in her throat at the lady’s next words.

“Your contract is for life. Once you put on the slippers, you will never stop dancing. You will live only for the stage, Elaine, and the rest of your life will be to survive the dance.”

As she spoke, Liana noticed a peculiar pattern upon the floor, bronze-red streaks across the marble. Blood, dried over years of endless dance, invisible against the ruby red of the slippers but all too stark across the floors of the hidden chambers of the Ruby Hall.

Liana backed away, preparing to flee, but a vice-like grip caught her forearm, knobbly bones digging into her flesh.

“What are you doing here?” The hissing voice belonged to Mme. Cecelia. She didn’t wait for Liana to respond, but pulled her into an adjoining chamber with uncanny strength, locking the door behind them.

“How did you get in here?” she pressed.

Liana tried to break free, but the woman was relentless. “I…I came to see Mme. Karina.”

Unlike the hallway, this chamber was illuminated by tall candlesticks in wall sconces about the room. It was a sitting room with red divans, dark wooden bureaus, and a desk with obsidian stationary, behind which…

“Let me speak with her.” The woman from behind the desk curled a finger toward Liana. The cast of the light set her cheekbones in stark relief beneath her hooded eyes, and her painted red lips were like a streak of blood.

“Mme. Karina,” Cecelia began with an incline of her head. “I did not know you had arrived yet.”

Mme. Karina flicked her wrist in a careless gesture. She did not take her eyes off Liana, who was feeling prickles of discomfort under the woman’s gaze. Mme. Karina was perhaps in her early sixties, her snow-white hair styled in elegant coils that created a wintery frame about her narrow face.

“Come,” she told Liana.

This was what Liana had wanted—to see Mme. Karina herself, to prove to her that she was worthy of…what? What were the Rubies but slaves to some dreadful curse? She wanted none of it. She had been foolish, so fixated upon those glittering shoes and the prestige they entailed. But for what? Agony, isolation, fatigue.

Liana didn’t move. Cecelia prodded her forward and she stumbled in her makeshift slippers. A slight upturn of Mme. Karina’s lips made her shrink back.

“You wish to be a Ruby,” the woman said, standing. “We can make an exception.”

“No, I’ll leave, I won’t bother you again,” Liana stammered, tearing herself away from Cecelia.

“Oh, but you agreed to become a Ruby whenever I deemed fit,” Mme. Karina said. She moved to the front of her desk, yet she did not walk. Her legs were missing, and she manoeuvred herself forward with a wooden contraption on wheels that rolled her out like a statue. Her black dress swayed in the empty air where her legs might have been, a phantom in the candlelight. The woman removed a ruby pendant from around her neck and held it toward Liana’s feet.

Liana had felt her body freeze at the sight of the woman, but now she forced herself to run to the door. It was locked. Turning back to her captors, she saw the ruby glowing, a little beating heart pulsing and extending its sphere of light toward her. She glanced at the windows, but they were too narrow to permit escape, and besides, she wouldn’t have reached them in time. The red glow reached her feet, encompassing her makeshift slippers in a frigid pool of light, turning the faded red fabric a bloody crimson.

Mme. Karina grinned with a cruel delight as Liana struggled to move away.

“Stop, please,” Liana pleaded.

“But we need perfect ballerinas,” Mme. Karina said coolly. “Do you not wish to be one? I did. I wanted the jewels, the applause, just as you do.”

“I don’t want it anymore.” Liana’s shoes were forming hard, pointed toes, the crude stitches blending into the darkening fabric.

“You don’t?” Mme. Karina asked. “I very much doubt that. We will see how long you can withstand the dance, when you are at your wit’s end with fatigue and must resort to death, or amputation.”

“Is that…what you did?” How terrible it must have been for Mme. Karina, trapped in an endless dance until she could no longer take it, forcing herself to cut off her legs. How could she knowingly subject her dancers to such a fate? Was it some morbid curiosity to see how long it would take a perfect ballerina to collapse or be driven mad? Liana realised she had never seen the name of a Ruby appear more than a few times on the opera house posters. Did they only last months? Weeks?

Liana’s shoes were now smooth and forming rubies. Just as she’d always wanted… She reached down to tear off the shoes, but found they burned with an impossible coldness as if each ruby were a shard of ice. Then the burning crept into her feet and her toes were aflame, forcing her to move. As she danced, the pain subsided. Her body was no longer her own, and she had to force the horror of being no more than a marionette out of her thoughts so that she wouldn’t panic.

Her arms traced the fluid motions of Giselle, her feet gliding within her perfect shoes. She could not stop. Pirouette, pas de chats…had she been on stage, it would have been a revelation of elegance. All she had to do was smile and her body would need no prodding to fall into the steps from her childhood rehearsals.

She rose in an arabesque toward Mme. Karina as the woman retreated back behind her desk, her task complete.

“Take her away, Cecelia,” Mme. Karina said. She flinched into silence and dropped the ruby pendant onto her desk, clutching her hands together as though burned. Her eyes snapped up to Liana, icy fury sweeping across her face in a tempest. “What did you do?”

Liana hadn’t done anything, but when she looked down to her feet she noticed that the vibrancy of the jewels had faded, the crimson fabric beginning to show wear. It was as if the crude shoes she had stitched were becoming visible underneath, until…

Liana fell to the floor from her position en pointe when the hardened toes softened back to plain fabric. Her feet no longer forced her into an endless dance—was she free? She stood tentatively and the two women regarded her with taut, rigid expressions.

“You broke it,” Mme. Karina snapped. “After all these years, none could truly relinquish their desires. Their greed. But you…”

Liana looked down at her shoes. They were more beautiful than the ruby slippers had ever been. Crafted by her own hands—even if in bitter disappointment—they were alive with memories rather than frozen in ice. They were the shared despair between Liana and all the other girls who had been given fabric rather than a jewel. And although they didn’t know it yet, so too was it the despair that would come to those who were given a ruby.

“Do you truly not desire this?” Mme. Karina asked, a bit more softly.

“I don’t.” The freedom Liana felt was greater than any jewel. “Yet I am no saint. I made mistakes, and so did all those other ladies. Please release them, they have surely learned the price of being a Ruby.”

The ballet mistress did not respond. She was still hard as ice, but there was something different in her gaze. Just a flicker, some touch of humanity that had long laid dormant. Perhaps she had been waiting, without truly realizing it, for someone to prove her wrong. She might never change her own heart, but perhaps she took solace in knowing that it was possible.

Liana was about to say more, but caught her tongue when Mme. Karina’s hand began to stray toward the ruby pendant. It was no longer glowing, and when she touched it, she did not recoil. She held it firmly, and after a breath, tossed it into the fire behind her. The jewel shattered against the bricks as if it were no more than glass, and a hiss of flames sparked red.

The click of a lock sounded behind Liana. She ran to the door, and this time, neither Mme. Karina or Cecelia made to stop her. It opened smoothly, and Liana was met by cries of joy down the hall.

Liana didn’t rush out at once, but turned back to Mme. Karina. Her hard edges seemed blunted now, her eyes wet as melting snow.

“Thank you,” Liana said. She thought she saw Mme. Karina mouth those same words.

The Palais des Bijoux had lost its jewels and its ambition to be greater than all others. Yet perhaps, as the sun rose a dusty gold across the December snow clouds, it might have gained a heart.

The End

 

This story was inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Red Shoes, first published in 1845.

 

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