{ lorelei } ::

dance with me

We meet up again just outside the nightclub, our gaze catching for a heartbeat, before your lashes flutter closed and you avert your porcelain doll face. Playing pretend at being strangers, we slide from the doorway into the safety of darkness.

Yes, my darling, it’s time.

Four fifty-nine a.m, and at last we bid farewell to the witching hours: neon lights out, glasses broken or emptied, music dwindling to a sixteen kilohertz memory. Clusters of bodies shorn of their magic, now clad only in velvet, chains and fishnet, nursing dry mouths and melted face paint, spill from the old grey warehouse onto the darkened one-way street. Momentary flashes of cell phones and cigarettes and taxi cabs light up the cobblestones around us, but it’s only a supernova’s dying flare: these strangers who spent their evening close as lovers are now quick to scatter, like dandelion seeds sucked into the bowels of the yawning city. Headlights illuminate a gallery of torn posters and fading graffiti, before the sudden drone of conversation, laughter, and engines melts into the asphalt labyrinth. One empty packet of crisps scuttles over the street, following in their wake, then all is still, all is silent, and so the world rolls over and forgets.

Now just us, side by side, two less ephemeral creatures bound to this ghostly afterimage. Yet as one door closes another creaks open, offering another way through the dregs of the night. You and I, alone at last, an enigma even to ourselves. We’re so innocent in our beginnings, and how I love beginnings for that. So I take your hand, my grip deliberately too tight around your cold and trembling fingertips, and I lead you—not away but up.

In single file we ascend the iron stairwell like last survivors, your fingernails skittering over the fractured brick wall, the echoing clang of our heels creating a new rhythm with every step as the sidewalk blurs far beneath the gaps. Five storeys more and we reach the rooftop, climb onto the uppermost platform, then come to a stop, catching our breath. From this open eyrie the wind’s talons slice straight through me, but you open your arms, offering embrace. Beyond your reach, lamp posts mark each corner of the roof like sentries, impervious to us and the moths practising Icarus-formations around their lights. And beyond these, concrete monoliths with a thousand thousand white or yellow windows surround our own tiny island, afloat in the sleeping city. Beyond them, somewhere, stars…

I stand behind you now, stealing the role of your shadow, and the way the lamplight haloes these naked parts of your body in dabs of silver begs me to touch you. And when you tilt your head to the side just so, in my mind I’m already stroking your long neck, offered to my fingers in the manner of a cat, the ghost of my palm coming to rest on the curve of your shoulder in that spot where black lace ribbons knot together and trickle down your back. There is only you, there has only ever been you: exquisite Lorelei, lovely siren in name and form.

I circle around beside you, watch the way your eyes stare out to the horizon, seeking beyond the city skyline, wistfulness stirring beneath their fatigue. Yes, let’s be far away from here, beyond city and forest and desert and sea. Somewhere the night is cold enough and clear enough to break our very essences in two and put them all back together again as one, somewhere out of all imagination, somewhere without bounds. Do you want this too? Is this what I can read, there in your eyes; is that what I felt in your touch? I know your body aches even as your mind still whirls. But you can’t sleep yet, for when you wake up, the ‘ice’ will have eroded a little bit of your soul, and everything you are may have crumbled to dust. Do you know that so well, the after-effects of the drug? I don't know anything in this moment but your name, your eyes, and the way you move to the heartbeat of synthesised orchestras and electrified drums. I’ve been hunting you from out of the dark corners of the world for so long—too long. So let tomorrow never come.

Your transient smile teases me as I move to stand before you, leaving no more than the space of a caress between our bodies. A hint of frankincense dissolves around me, as you brush one wrist across your forehead, murmuring something lost to the wind, and start to turn away again. This time I’m quick to catch hold of your hand, drawing you close enough that you can’t break the spell of my gaze with fluttering lashes or secret whispers. Let’s dance then, my belle dame sans merci. I am colder than the wind—will you not open your arms and scatter your secrets to my touch instead?

Your eyes are all white fire and sorrow when you stare into my face. From this second onward, I will always know you by those eyes; like a navigator charting a course by the stars, I will always be drawn to you, even from the most distant shores. You’re not afraid, but I can read it: you want to be.

We’re moving together now, though we barely touch—for this is not the wilder dance of the tribe driven by the nothingness buried in broken pulses of a drum, it is dark and fragile and intimate, this entwining of shadows beneath a dying sky. We have not come in search of healing, or redemption. We are glass shards glittering on already open wounds, nightingales giving birth to roses.

And I can hear your song.

With invisible violins and star-spun requiems murmuring in my ears, I reach up to unbind the red ribbon from your hair. Strands of white-gold silk fall against your powdered cheek and down your throat, to settle on my skin. I let my palm slide over your shoulder, across your chest, aware only now of your quick, shallow breathing. You’re so warm, a fey child cocooned in a fever. And you snatch the ribbon from my hand. But you don’t stop dancing.

And then you say, in your deep, husky voice, “This isn’t real. None of this is real.”

And you say it with a smile, and I press my finger to your lips, and whisper, “Hush, my darling…hush.” And we don’t stop dancing.

We’re still dancing when the first rusty stains smear the horizon, and dawn comes creeping across the sky, shamed and unwanted. Hazy sunlight swallows all the little fluorescent stars and moons, and the city rouses from its slumber, dazed from the night that was. The already faint aura of your perfume wilts with the rising smoke and poison belched from the traffic gathering on the roads below. You pull away from me, find the support of a pillar to lean back on, fold your arms across your chest and cast your gaze down at the cement. Spangled threads, gold on black, flash over the wispy fabric of your dress, and I remember you in motion, back down there among the greying world, basking in streaks of candy pink and electric blue, or falling against my arm, translucent and glittering. In this new light you’re still so small and pale, blushing porcelain, but the sun does not wither you, not like so many other self-styled creatures of the dark hours.

Creatures like me.

“Will you walk me back?” Long fingers tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. I notice for the first time a diamond butterfly twinkling against your lobe. You’re still not looking at me.

Lorelei, my darling, don't you dare?

“No,” I say.

No. I do not want to pass through these streets with you today, letting the filthy nails of the mundane world scrape at our heels or claw at your pretty dress. And I don’t want to see you shut up safe in some cosy terraced or tenement prison cell, staring back out at what was from behind its bars, and forever left to wonder if any of the wonder ever existed.

But, for now, the choice is not mine to make. Ah, your hesitation—so this time…I have missed my call for you, then?

You raise your head and stare right at me, all defiance and sorrow in perfect measure. I embrace the shiver that scrapes my skin for the sight of that something dark flickering behind your innocence: glimpses of a black pearl lurking within the flame. How deeply have you seen already, lovely creature? How deeply can you see? And what memories lurk among the embers, waiting to be stirred from your self-imposed oblivion?

“Do you know what you are?” I ask, pacing the roof as the last shadows of night shrink across the concrete.

You shake your head, and that same strand of hair again escapes your ear, brushing the side of your face. “There’s always been a feeling. But never belief.” You glance away, twining the red ribbon around and around your wrist. Like a kitten you are, playing. And I, like a panther stalking: how perfect we might be together.

You bind your hair with the ribbon, and then once more you look at me. How strange that I should be the one to start to wake you, like sleeping beauty’s prince. I’ll part with no kiss—not just yet—but something else to disturb your mortal dreams.

And so I draw up alongside you, reaching into my pocket, pressing a piece of carved onyx against your palm, closing your hand around it. The moment it leaves my grasp, my pulse itself becomes conscious thought, beating hard and fast around the insides of my head. I smile for my own fleeting liberation, and to make for you such a gift….

I believe.

You pull away, gazing down at the key, tracing its smooth edges with a fingertip. Recognition flickers across your face. Kindled by your touch, a faint greeny glow illuminates your palm, bleeding through the many fine lines that spiral over the triangular body. So many deaths for such a rare trinket. If only you knew. You close your eyes; are the memories—is that song—already awakening?

My Lorelei, I need no belief. I know.

“It’s already tomorrow,” I whisper in your ear. “Go back to your bower, then, and dream. Dream the dream is real, and wake, if you will.” I smile without warmth. “But the next time I come for you, you will be ready. Or we both go alone, until even time’s vultures have had done with our corpses.

“I know you understand me.”

I turn to leave. I’ll take nothing from you, not this time. I know you understand me. Words with more than one meaning. The throbbing pulse in my mind dies away as I slink back down the stairs.

But in a world nearby, the stars are still singing. Can’t you feel them?

It will be two years before we meet again.

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