Role

Chapter 9

The dancer rises to his feet and staggers rhythmically across the stage.
If you were counting you would have noticed nine passes, but you weren't.

Suddenly, the flames are bright again and he lunges and lurches and
withdraws...something from his mouth.

It is a tiny facsimile of a person made out of what appears to be,
though it's hard to tell in this light, human hair. The dancer cradles
the thing to his breast and skips about.

Then, again! the invisible assailants are there, he fights, the horns are
back, his hands are claws, but they cannot hold the child, he swipes and
swats, and butts, and pecks, but in a flash his hands are empty and he is
again alone on the stage.

He trudges as the flames burn low, his head low on his chest, the music
has stopped, all you hear is the crackling of the flames.

He trudges for an uncomfortably long time until the music starts again,
by now he is walking, not proudly, but with purpose. At far stage-left
the dancer perceives something large, whatever it is he sees you can tell
dwarfs the theater. He dances around this thing. You blink and he is
larger now, clearly enlarged. He dances into the thing. You can still
smell smoke, but also now jasmine and forest smells.

The flames grow bright again, as bright as you've seen them, and where
the dancer was is now an enormous lion, he is fighting against his unseen
tormentors and taking ground.

In the cacophonous animal sounds of the song you now hear, or think you
hear, the screams of men. The theater smells of blood. The lion dances.

You see that in between battles the beast is snuffling the ground,
searching for something.

The battle and the music reach a crescendo. With a mighty roar all the
enemies are bested.

We are back to only the beat.

The beast paws slowly to the downstage center edge of the stage, the
closest it has been to you.

It is now a man and it picks something up from the edge of the stage, the
child.

The flames leap to life, it is nearly blinding, the man is now a gigantic
eagle with the child gripped gently in its claws. With a single beat of
its wings it rises out of sight.

The beat stops, the flames go out, and the curtain falls.

The house lights come up.