Beastly's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The next morning, someone knocks on the studio door before Beastly has finished his first warm-up sequence. He stops mid-movement and walks to the entrance. A woman stands outside, her hand clasped around the fingers of a young girl who cannot be older than six. The girl wears a tutu over her clothes and holds a pair of slippers close to her chest. The mother meets his eyes and says she saw him dancing yesterday. She asks if he has room for one more student. Beastly steps aside and gestures toward the floor. The woman leads her daughter inside, but the girl stops just past the threshold. She looks at the mirrors, at the empty space, at Beastly's ears and the formal jacket he has not removed since opening day. Her mother squeezes her hand and whispers something Beastly cannot hear. The girl does not move. Beastly walks to the center of the room and extends one hand, palm up. He does not smile or kneel or soften his voice. He simply waits. The girl takes three steps forward and places the slippers on the floor between them. She does not take his hand. Instead, she watches as he moves into first position, then second, then third. He repeats the sequence twice, slowly enough that she can see each shift of weight and angle. On the third repetition, the girl mirrors him. Her feet are wrong and her arms drift too high, but she completes all three positions without looking away. Her mother exhales and sits down against the wall. Beastly moves into a simple plié and the girl follows. He corrects her stance with a single gesture — one finger pointed toward her back heel. She adjusts. They repeat the movement four times in silence. When the girl glances at her mother, Beastly does not stop. He continues into the next combination and she turns back to match him. By the time the lesson ends, the slippers are still on the floor and the girl's name is written in Beastly's ledger. The mother pays for a month in advance with bills folded in her coat pocket. Beastly takes the money without counting it and tells them to return on Thursday.