The January Dancer

An Craic

The harper has grown steadily more impatient, and when the scarred man pauses for another drink, she strikes the table with the flat of her hand. “Is this to be all beginnings and no ends? Who is the Fudir? What is this story of the Twisting Stone?”

But the storyteller taunts her with his smile. “All things in their season, harper. You do not strike all your chords at once or it would be naught but noise. How can there be ends without beginnings? Besides there are more than seventeen different versions of that Twister story, and not all of them support the Fudir’s plans.”

“This Fudir, who was he? What was his interest in the Dancer? Why did he favor Little Hugh over Handsome Jack?”

The man looks into a distant corner of the room, and perhaps beyond it. “The Fudir cared nothing for either,” he says finally. “He told the Committee that the Dancer would regain them their lost Earth. He told Little Hugh that it would regain him New Eireann. What he told himself, he never told another; and that was the egg from which much later hatched. Perhaps he hoped to regain a world, too; or maybe his hopes were more modest than that.”

“You speak of him in the past tense. Is he one of those who died?” The harper’s fingers trace the beginnings of a goltraí, but the scarred man stops her.

“Don’t mourn him yet. There will be mourning enough when that time comes. After all, we are all dead men. Our younger selves have died, and yet we live. If some of them live on in my stories or your songs, why, that is the greater immortality. For now, ‘let them have their moment.’ Little Hugh escaped the assassin. The Fudir secured his “ticket outta here.” Perhaps the Committee had their moment, as well, for the Fudir was not to their taste, we think, and they may have been happy to see the back of him, fables and a madman’s chance notwithstanding.”

The harper considers his words while aimless notes drift off her strings. She wonders if the scarred man is making the whole thing up in the hopes of cadging more drinks. But if he is, what recourse has she? Against what other touchstone might she rub the tale to test it? Her one other source is gone. Finally, she asks, “Are all the players in place now? I’ve heard other names mentioned. When does this thing finally start?”

“Oh, the ballet is already begun. The dancers are whirling and turning, but they do not all step off at the first bar. What sort of dance would that be? Yet the prima ballerina is halfway to her goal. There is a telos, if you’ve been following. There is a direction. And it all lies implicit in January’s initial error.”

“January’s error…You’ve mentioned that before. What was it?”

“We need to bring another dancer in. You’ve met him before, but have forgotten him already.”