Let the Dance Begin (11 page)

‘I don’t think we need to stoop to her level to beat her, that’s all,’ Lexie commented.

Mrs Sandskrit appeared at the door to call them back into the room.

‘The hard work is beginning to pay off,’ she said to them all. ‘I am seeing some glimmers of commitment and discipline.’

There was a big sigh of relief around the room. Lexie squeezed Cassie’s hand and Shell winked at her friends.

Then Madame Rosa spoke. ‘There are some sand sprites who are performing well below their best. I am not going to send anybody home, but there is no room at Sandringham for dancers who
cannot give everything.’

Cassie could barely believe it; she had passed the tests. She swallowed hard to stop the tears from coming.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Dance, dance on the edge of the dune,
by the light of a large and kind harvest moon.’
The Sands of Time

In the dining hall
the next day Mrs Sandskrit clapped her hands for quiet. ‘Tomorrow the eight best sand dancers will be chosen for the dancing
display at the Harvest Moon Festival. You have until then to perfect your dance routines.’

There was an excited flutter around the room.

Madame Rosa smiled and added, ‘Those of you who do not get picked will be allowed to come along to Silica City to support the others.’

There was a loud cheer. The Harvest Moon Festival was lots of fun, with all kinds of celebrations, games and cake stalls.

‘Be warned! I have a special medicine for sand dancers who eat too much cake!’ Miss Youngsand Snr said, taking out a large bottle filled with purple liquid from her pocket.

‘Your families are, of course, welcome to attend,’ Miss Youngsand Jnr continued.

Madame Rosa stopped smiling and looked serious. ‘This will be a good experience, as it will help us decide who should be picked as the principal dancers for learning the dune dances next
term. The prima dune dancer will probably come from one of this group.’

Cassie’s heart beat faster. She thought about her mother, the last prima dune dancer, and suddenly it mattered more than anything to be picked. She knew her dancing had not been so good
lately, but if she concentrated and tried really hard she might just scrape a place. She had to be one of the dancers! That meant she had to push down all thoughts of the missing pages and finding
out what happened to her mother.

‘Now eat up your breakfast and we will see you in the practice room in one hour!’ Mrs Sandskrit said.

As they were clearing away their plates, Shell came over to Cassie. ‘Lexie is going to help me go over the dance steps. Do you want to come?’

Cassie shook her head. ‘I just want to go over the steps in my head.’ She needed some time alone to try and focus her mind.

‘It feels like the entrance auditions all over again,’ Lexie whispered as they moved to their starting positions.

‘At least we don’t have Sandrine staring down at us,’ said Cassie. ‘When I saw her there my heart sank.’

‘I thought she’d always be coming to Sandringham to check up on us,’ Lexie added.

‘Thank goodness she hasn’t,’ Cassie muttered.

‘Sandrine is not that bad,’ Shell said.

Cassie laughed. ‘You have changed your tune. When we met you were full of complaints about Sandrine and how miserable you were at the palace.’

‘Now that I have a bit of distance from Sandrine and the palace, I can see that you do need discipline and structure to help you be the best you can,’ Shell sighed.

The audition began and Cassie struggled to keep up. Unlike in the test, when they had had to show how they had mastered the steps separately, here they were integrating the steps into dance
routines. Each of them had been working on individual dances over the weeks, and they had the chance to display these, too. Cassie caught Mrs Sandskrit looking at her a few times and she tried even
harder.

At the end everyone waited to find out who had been selected, but Mrs Sandskrit simply said, ‘I need some time to consult with Madame Rosa. We will let you know our decision after
supper.’

‘Come on, let’s go for a swim,’ Cassie suggested to Ella. ‘We’re all wound up after the audition. We need to do something to take our minds off it.’

‘I don’t think my character can stand up to being tested much more,’ Ella said and everyone laughed as they ran down to the pool.

Splashing about in the water did help them relax.

Shell rubbed her hair with a towel. ‘My braids are all soggy’

‘I’ll re-do them for you,’ Lexie offered.

Shell shook her head. ‘I think I can manage. I’ve been practising. It’s about time I did things for myself

Lexie’s name was one of the first, along with Calluna’s and Shell’s. There was a ripple of surprise around the room when Ella’s name was called out.

Cassie carried on listening out for her name for a long time after Madame Rosa had finished, but gradually realisation dawned on her. She had not been chosen.

‘There must be some mistake,’ she said to herself. ‘I thought I would just scrape a place.’

Shell gave her arm a sympathetic squeeze. She looked hurt when Cassie pulled away.

‘What about Cassie?’ Ella asked.

Lexie said, ‘They’ve missed you out! They must have forgotten to call out your name.’

All the colour drained from Cassie’s face. ‘I just wasn’t good enough,’ she said sadly.

She didn’t hear the knock but felt a hand on her shoulder. She was about to shrug it off when a voice said, ‘Drink this.’ Madame Rosa handed her a cool drink.

Cassie sat up and wiped away her tears as Madame Rosa asked, ‘Why are you crying? Is it just a tantrum because you haven’t been picked?’

‘No!’ Cassie wiped away her tears. ‘I wasn’t picked because I wasn’t good enough. But I know I can be. Truly I know I can be . . .’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Madame Rosa looked serious.

Cassie stood up. ‘First of all I’m going to go on to the beach and perform a Rage Stomp. That will make me feel better. And then I am going to grit my teeth and practise and
practise! I will show everyone that I
am
good enough to be a dune dancer.’

Madame Rosa smiled. ‘That’s the Marramgrass spirit! When it comes to passion and expression in your dancing, you are one of the best. That is a talent that cannot be taught. But a
sand dancer needs to be technically excellent as well. That only comes with practice – and you seem to have been distracted recently’

Cassie’s eyes met Madame Rosa’s. ‘There have been some important things on my mind, but nothing matters more to me than to become the best sand dancer that I can be. I want my
mother to have been proud of me.’

She kept watching out for opportunities to return to Madame Rosa’s study, but it was not easy. Madame Rosa worked very hard and, when she was not taking classes, she was always in her
study – and once when Cassie sneaked down, she discovered a late meeting was taking place, and she was lucky not to be caught.

Cassie spent a lot of time going over the basic dance moves. When she wasn’t practising them she would draw the moves into the sand and then try to work out the best way to perform them
properly. She decided that she would show everyone – one day she would perform the Triple Silica Jump and prove herself! For the first time in a while Cassie thought about her Aunt Euphorbia. Of
course, she had written to her and had letters from her, but she was longing to see her too. Cassie hoped she was well and not working too hard at the sand factory. What was the advice she had
given her for performing a Triple Silica Jump? Cassie tried to remember.
It is simply a matter of taking three jumps, and making a turn of the hips as you take a very deep breath
and
believe!
It helped take her mind off things. It was hard at first to put all the instructions together. Sometimes she felt confident, but her hips would not twist at the right point no matter
how hard she tried.

She did not just try to be a model student in her dance lessons. She really paid attention in mathematics and aerodynamics. She even listened very carefully to Miss Youngsand Jnr’s long
lectures about the science of dunes.

Calluna had made a point of coming over to Cassie after one of those lessons and saying in a superior voice, ‘We are having special dresses made for the festival and we can sew shells and
ribbons on to our dance slippers to make them unique.’

Cassie took a deep breath. ‘That sounds wonderful. I hope it all goes well. You deserve your place as you have worked hard. It can’t be easy keeping us all under control’

Calluna looked taken aback. The hard look in her eyes softened ever so slightly.

‘No, it’s not. It is a very responsible job being the senior sand dancer. I can’t let the dance school down, or my family. My mother expects me to be the best. It’s like
having a big sandbag on my shoulders all the time.’ For the first time Cassie thought that there was a reason why Calluna felt she had to be so mean all the time. It also made her think about
her own mother. What would Marina expect of her?

Chapter Fifteen

‘Two wrongs can sometimes make
the right thing happen.’
The Sands of Time

One night Cassie waited
on the balcony for Rubus. Madame Rosa had told them the previous week that she was going to be away for a couple of days, and
Cassie knew she had to take this opportunity to read what was on those missing pages. However, the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it would be safer to have someone on
look-out for her – and that someone had to be Rubus. But Rubus was taking an age coming back. In desperation, she had begged Thassalinus to try to contact him, and the old gatekeeper told her that
she could expect him that evening.

It had been a long and emotional day, and soon Cassie’s eyelids were heavy and she found herself asleep. Her dreams took her back to Madame Rosa’s study. Once again she was watching
the images of her mother as she stretched her arms and crossed her feet, once, twice and again into the Triple Silica Jump. Cassie could almost feel her mother close to her, twirling, swirling,
leaping and turning in the flickering light. It seemed that the light was following her. She woke with a start. Even with her eyes open she still saw the light. She closed her eyes tight and opened
them again.

‘Cassie?’ a voice called.

Through her half-opened eyes she saw Rubus. In each hand he held a small glass jar that gave off a green glow.

‘Glow-bug jars!’ He held one out to her. ‘I thought they’d help you to see better in the study’

‘That’s a great idea. So much better than the last idea you had about kicking down Madame Rosa’s door!’ she joked as they crept down the rope ladder and made their way
along the outside of the school towards the main gate. When she teased Rubus she felt less scared.

Rubus pointed to a small leather pouch attached to his waist. ‘I’ve brought a large flask of mollusc mead. A few drops of this should loosen Thassalinus’s tongue. I may not be
a reader, but I’m a very good listener!’

Cassie hid behind a rock as Rubus called out to the night sprite. He was so distracted with the fuss Rubus made of him and with the mead that Cassie easily slipped past him.

This was a much faster and safer route to the study as Cassie did not have to pass the sleeping kutches. But the school was not as empty as she expected, and on three occasions Cassie had to
hide the glow-bug jar under her skirt. As she tiptoed past the kitchen she spotted Mrs Sandskrit having a late-night sea pasty snack. Calluna was in the practice room going over and over the dance
moves with a determined and frightened look on her face and Miss Youngsand Jnr was in the science lab testing sand samples.

Cassie felt calm this time as she carefully picked the lock.

The glow-bug jar made it so much easier to move around the room. Cassie made straight for the window. She placed her light on the floor and used both hands to feel along the window seat for the
catch.

The soft clicking and her breathing were the only sounds. Cassie’s hands trembled as she reached inside and pulled out the pages.

She took a long, deep breath, and began to read.

The sand farers are coming back with reports of similar things happening in all the dunes they have visited across the globe.

We sat in silence for a long time. There was a storm brewing, but Sandrine told the meeting that another visitor was expected. She arrived a few minutes later, apologising for her lateness –
she had to put her daughter to bed.

Marina Marramgrass is the finest sand dancer the school has ever produced and the most excellent interpreter of the dune dances. She is the perfect sand sprite for the secret mission.

We all performed the Loyalty Dance:

Hoping, daring, dreaming,