Anna Tipton’s reimaging of the Swan Lake ballet is a rare and compelling work– blurr ing the border between reality and dream to create a gripping twist.

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EXCERPT

It’s almost time. I know because the last rays of sunlight are nearly gone, and I hear the swan call for me. A hush falls over the clearing, and the shadows of the wood move together like one organism. I wonder at the turning of the wind. Through my window I see the fortified walls of the kingdom rise against the velvety fabric of the sky. I shiver.

I make my way down the cold stone steps in the tower house, here on the lake outside the kingdom. I pause to watch blue-green lights flicker from my father’s study. Drops of water slither down the limestone walls. I listen, imagining the dark work of his hands. Perhaps he’s turning himself into a bird of prey for one of his nighttime roamings. Onward through the passageway, I fall into reverie. I lead with my head forward, neck and shoulders sunken like a vulture’s.

The stairs take me into the entrance hall, and I hear an everlasting drip from my father’s study above. On the ground in the cleavage of the stones, where the water pools, I see my reflection twisted with some sour thought. Today, I stop. Then, as if from some power in the water or the stones, my reflection changes, and instead of my face, I see the head of a swan.

Alarmed, I stomp on it. Soon the agitated water settles, and I see my own face once again.
I pull my mantle tightly around me and hurry on, heels clopping, through the hall.

Outside at last, I breathe deeply. I might have come from underwater, for inside the tower house the air is thick and dense. I creep like a lizard toward the lake, like a mouse scurrying through tall grasses and fog. Before me the ancient lake shivers with some secret thought. I stand in the stiff , solid wind, my flaxen hair almost silver in the moonlight.

At the lake I catch my breath. My cloak bellies in the wind. I feel the blood fighting through my limbs, and my gums flare from the cold. I’m the one who feels, a woman, not an animal nor a dream. I sigh in relief. The swan in the puddle was only a trick of the eye. The bite of the wind calls me back to my purpose. I must check on Odette.

An ice wind rushes from the lake, and I shiver. I turn around, my breath the shape of white smoke. Dapples of light twinkle like tiny stars in the thousand dimples of the water’s surface, and I see Odette, a pure white swan. I soften at her arrival. The moon emerges from behind a black cloud, like someone coming out of hiding, and the transformation happens in an instant. A bat screeches and flies out of a tree, stirred by this unnatural displacement. There was a swan, and now, standing in its place, is my twin sister Odette, her white cotton dress and hair luminous from the transformation.