Chapter 12: The Dress Fitting

The dress for the Harvest Moon Rite was the color of old silver, and it had no back.

"No," I told the mirror.

"Yes," said Pip, who sat on the fitting stool with a pastry in each hand.

"There's nothing there. It's a front and a tie."

"It's a Rite dress. The dancer's spine has to show. It's how the elders watch the shift come up."

"They'll be watching a lot more than my spine."

"That," Pip said, with her mouth full, "is the whole idea."

The seamstress, a stout woman with pins in her mouth, knelt behind me and tugged the hem straight.

She had been in the Hall's service since Cormick's grandfather and said little.

She stood up now, stepped back, and looked at the dress and then at me.

"You've got the shoulders for it," she said. "Most of them need a corset. Hold still."

I held still.

In the mirror I looked like a dancer.

The silver was cold on my skin, and the cut of it at the hip made me stand straighter than I ever had.

The door opened behind me, and I saw Cormick in the glass.

He had come straight from the council, still in his dark coat, with papers in one hand.

He stopped on the threshold.

Pip dropped a pastry.

The seamstress took the pins out of her mouth and said, mildly, "Heir. We're fitting."

"I see that."

"The dress isn't done."

"I see that too."

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