Private Aim

Lebeda shifted her stance, shoulders squared, feet apart. She drew and nocked a practice arrow. A breath. In one smooth motion she drew the bow, took aim and fired. The blunt arrow flew through the air and landed just short of the target twenty meters away. 'So close', she thought and readied the next arrow. Valerian's words echoed through her thoughts, reminding her to breathe and how to aim. Her second arrow fired, short and to the left. She went through the motions. Adjust, nock, fire. The repeated motions soon fell into a rhythm and her thoughts began to wander.

You cannot help.

Useless.

A goddess unable to help her maidens. Her vow broken. Why? Why must she always be too weak? Cursed to watch those around her suffer.

Lebeda fired another arrow and thought of The Chaban Academy of Dance.

The school was an old, remodeled manor home. With three ballrooms, a grand entrance, two giant kitchens and many many rooms once full of opulence and splendor. Some fifty to sixty years ago the manor was abandoned, then bought by Nikolai Chaban and turned into a girl’s school of dance. The school rose to prominence after several graduates found fame after school and soon parents across the nation sent their daughters off to become prima ballerinas.

It was perfect for poor families with unwanted girls. Or for a family who wished to wash their hands of the girl who replaced their real daughter. Lebeda arrived by bus to the near-by town, and picked up an hour later by a maid in a horse drawn carriage. Though the carriage was old and rickety, and the horse very much the same, it felt magical. She was ten years old.

Lebeda imagined herself as a princess riding to her castle filled with other princesses. Together they will dance and learn and could be comforted that they will have a career after graduation. She was hopeful. Excited.

The headmaster, great-grandson of Nikolai Chaban met her upon the manor steps. The very moment she stepped out of the carriage he leered as he examined her from head to toe. “Your father did not lie. You are quite fetching.” Just like that the dream was shattered. He led her inside then passed her off to a teacher. The teacher gave her a brief tour of the main building, then lead her back outside and across a law to a large outbuilding.

“This is where you will sleep.” The teacher explained. She threw upon the doors and walked into a wide entrance room. Girls of various ages were hard at work. Some practiced dance in a cleared-out corner, others bent over sewing projects. Others were folding laundry and through an open door Lebeda could see more girls cleaning a dinning room full of tables. The teacher watched the girl’s with a critical eye, then left Lebeda there without another word.

At once an older girl with her hair tied up into a messy bun approached Lebeda. She looked to be fourteen or fifteen at least.

“Can you cook?” She asked.

“N-no.” Lebeda said.

“Can you do laundry?”

“No.”

The girl huffed, “Can you do anything at all? Sew? Garden? Math? Reading?”

Lebeda shook her head. “I can read. And I know addition and subtraction.”

“Useless!” The girl sighed. She grabbed Lebeda’s hand and took her into the dinning room. There she shoved a bucket and cloth into her hands and said, “Start scrubbing the floors. And I better not find any dirt left behind.” She left a shocked and dazed Lebeda who clutched the bucket like it was lifeline. After a moment another girl shouted for her to get to work.

Lebeda dropped to her knees and scrubbed the floor.

She scrubbed her area once, then once again when a girl shouted that she did it wrong. She worked until her hands and knees bled and had to wait for an older girl to wrap them up so she could keep going. Hours later the girl with her hair in the bun said they could stop and to line up for food.

Almost a hundred girls got into line and Lebeda was shoved into the back as she had not realized that the oldest girls went first. Standing felt like torture after hours of floor srubbing, and when it was her turn to receive food one girl gave her a slice of bread and a bowl of brown soup. Lebeda paused, waiting for the rest of her food.

She was shoved out of line by the girl behind her and another said that was all she would get and to get over it. Lebeda took her food to an empty table and ate her first meal alone. Tears rolled down her eyes as she dipped stale bread into her soup. Later, a girl led her to where she would sleep.

The room was too small for the number of beds inside it. Narrow beds with thin sheets were pushed together and lined in tight rows with barely a foot of space between them. Lebeda cried again that night, packed like a sardine besides two girls. The room was so hot from all the bodies, loud from the sounds of their breathing. Alone with the realization that this would be the next eight years of her life. Never to return to her home again.

A heady thud snapped Lebeda from her thoughts. A dozen practice arrows littered the ground around her target, and one embedded within the rings. She blinked, then cheered, throwing her arms up into the air.

She hit! She hit the target all on her own. Encouraged, Lebeda retrieved her arrows to start again.

Lebeda strung her bow and performed several test pulls. She was strong from eight years of intensive dance instruction. The weight of the bow now felt as natural as breathing. Lebeda practiced twice every day. First before her morning run, then again in the evening after dinner and before her remedial classes. The training paid off, and she improved by leaps and bounds. She nocked a practice arrow, drew, and fired. The arrow whistled through the air and landed on the outer edge of the target rings.

She smiled, and loaded her next arrow as her thoughts drifted off once more to the school.

By the age of eleven Lebeda understood how the school worked. There were two classes of girls. The Medovik and the Khleb.

The vast majority of the girls at the school, the ones who lived crammed together in the old servant's home were the Khleb. They were the bread that provided the foundation of the school. The girls who practiced dance above all else, the ones who practiced until their feet bled and they collapsed. The ones auctioned off to dance companies after graduation to bring more fame to the school.

Then there was the Medovik. The girls from rich, well-to-do families. The cakes lived in the school, with private rooms and a maid. They were the ones who attended full classes, and who could practice ballet as they pleased. Their parents see the prestige of the dancers who graduated, and paid for the honor of allowing their daughters to attend. The cakes and the breads worked together in that sense, but that was all either would have with the other.

Lebeda's days were as followed: morning ballet lessons until lunch, two hours of English lessons, then more ballet practice until dinner. Some days the afternoon practice was skipped in favor of basic classes in math and reading, but it was uncommon.

Within her first few months at the school, her teachers fawned over her. "You were born to dance." They told her. She was the natural. Whatever technique, whatever sequence, Lebeda mastered each with ease. Halfway into her first year her teachers let her leave a little earlier than the other girls of her age. “You don’t need it,” they said.

Lebeda was young, blind to the darker ways of the school. While her peers were pushed to practice over and over. To keep going until their feet hurt, her teachers told her she did not need too. Girls who excelled were allowed to leave early. The girls who could dance perfectly could take it easy.

All spoken in loud, clear voices where her classmates could hear. Young Lebeda had craved the attention of the adults. Her teachers praised her like she always hoped her family would.

Lebeda returned to the girl's house long before the others and it did not go unnoticed. The Khleb had a social structure of their own in the form of Girls-In-Charge. There was a Girl-In-Charge of all girls of a certain age, and she was responsible for their daily chores, where they slept and their dance performance.

Alice was Lebeda's Girl-In-Charge, the one who spoke to her on her first day. "You will do kitchen duties." Alice told her. "Since you are back so early you can help prepare meals. Listen to the senior girls and I better not hear a peep about you slacking off.

"No kitchen work, no food and we don't do that to each other here." Alice said other things, laundry-lists of all the chores that went with kitchen duty and the names of the dozen girls who performed them. It was a conversation that always stuck with Lebeda.

Lebeda fell into a new schedule. Waking up early in the morning to start the bread for dinner. She ran back and forth from school to the girl's house to serve meals, and stayed up late with the other kitchen girls cleaning. It was hard, sweaty work. Those first few weeks her arms felt like jam from kneading bread and scrubbing pans and dishes.

She endured. She became strong. She learned everything the kitchen girls could teach. Lebeda survived her first year as other girls faded away. Some were collected by the carriage and taken away. She was foolishly proud to have survived that long, first year.

Lebeda's hand grasped at empty air. Her quiver was empty. Across the lane of smooth grass she counted the arrows within the target. Every one had landed within the rings, and several were clustered together around the center. Lebeda swelled with pride. This was good.