Dancing
with Jonas
By Bob Blackman
Copyright © 2007
“Stop
it. Please stop, you’re going to hurt yourself!”
She knew her mother was near hysteric, but the sensation Katie was feeling was
irrepressible. She didn’t know if she could stop, even if she wanted too, and
she didn’t want to stop, not yet anyway.
Katie Plainsong is four years old, her mother is a cleaning lady at the Siuslaw
Arts Center. The center is a huge complex consisting of a two thousand
seat performance theater with a fifty-four hundred square foot, five story
atrium and numerous exhibition rooms. At six o’clock on Sunday morning,
Katie is sleeping on a bench in the atrium while her mother is mopping the floor
in a gallery on the same level. Her mother’s shift began at midnight and when
Katie’s sitter failed to show up by eleven fifteen, Mrs. Plainsong wrapped
Katie in a warm quilt, brought her to the center and made her a comfortable
little bed on one of the large padded benches that decorate the main floor.
There are five other women cleaning various areas in the center but Katie’s
mother is solely responsible for the main floor of the atrium and the adjoining
rooms.
At exactly seven minutes past six, Katie is awakened from a dream about Aslan.
Awakened not by the bright sunlight beaming through the skylights but by the
sound of panpipe music, a trilling melody that seems to bounce from sunbeam to
sunbeam. It’s a happy tune and Katie giggles as she wipes the sleep from her
eyes, slips out from under the quilt and slides gracefully to the floor. She
stands barefoot on the sun-warmed floor, in a pink, cotton, ankle length gown.
She feels the sun on her cheeks as she gazes upward toward the source of the
sound. Her mother hears the music also, and assumes that one of the other
cleaning ladies, one with a radio, is mopping or dusting on the mezzanine level
of the atrium. She welcomes the company of the music and continues her work.
Katie’s eyes focus on the first balcony level where a young faun is perched on
the railing playing an instrument composed of nine short bamboo stalks of
varying lengths. Katie doesn’t know what a faun is but she recognizes
the creature as being the same species as Lucy’s friend Mister Tumnus, in The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She assumes that this is the same
being and instantly decides that they will be friends. She waves. The faun waves
back, without missing a note and Katie begins to dance. It is a whimsical
tune, light and airy. It starts slowly and Katie seems to float across the
floor, captured and controlled by its magic.
The
tempo increases and Katie begins to spin. Her arms are outstretched and her gown
parachutes outward. The pitch of the music increases a quarter of an octave and
Katie’s feet leave the floor. She stops spinning and her feet dance on
air, eighteen inches above the floor. When she spins again, she levitates
even higher. She lowers her arms bringing her hands to her hips and shoots
upwards until she is looking the faun in the eye. She raises her arms
forty-five degrees and levels off just below the second balcony. A little
experimentation revels that she can control her ascent by changing the position
of her arms. She raises her arms another ten degrees and floats back down
to the faun’s level.
Katie dances across the room in tune to the music, which now resembles a waltz.
When she glides back toward the faun, he lifts his head from the panpipe and
says, “Hum,” but as soon as the music stops, she begins to tumble toward the
floor. Instantly the faun begins to play again and Katie levels off just above
the mezzanine. She raises her arms straight out and lowers herself to the
floor standing there just long enough to regain her composure, then the music
captures her again and she begins to dance in unison with the rhythm of the
music. She pulls her hands down and ascends again to the faun’s level.
Their eyes meet and the faun whispers, “Hum, Katie.” The instant the
music stops, Katie begins to fall, but the faun begins again and Katie
re-ascends to his level.
“Are you Mister Tumnus?” she asks.
The faun stopped playing but instead of saying anything he begins to hum the
same song he was playing on the panpipe. Katie starts humming along with
him and while she hums he answers, “My name is Jonas Sedwick, but I have an
uncle, Caleb Tumnus.
Katie opened her mouth to respond and immediately began to fall but Jonas
started humming and she lifted back to his level. “Do you know Aslan, or
his friend Lucy?” She asked, then immediately began to hum so he could answer.
The tune was in the mixolydian mode, almost like an Irish folksong,
serious but cheery at the same time.
“Everyone knows Aslan,” he said, “and we have all heard stories about
Princess Lucy.”
“Do
you live in Narnia?”
“All
my life,” he said, “Just got here this morning.”
“Did
you come through a wardrobe? Can I
see it?” Katie asked, hoping that perhaps she might get to visit Narnia.
“Wardrobe’s
been lost a long time,” he said. “I came by way of the music, a hymn once
sung by the daughters of Eve.”
They talked like this for several minutes, one talking while the other hummed,
until Mrs. Plainsong entered the atrium and noticed that Katie was not on the
bench sleeping. She called for her, “Katie, where are you?”
Katie looked down and saw her mother standing by the bench, folding up the
quilt.
“You
want to meet my mamma?” Katie asked.
“Grownups
can’t see me,” said Jonas.
Katie
called to her mother, “I’m up here…” and immediately began to fall.
Her mother looked up and screamed as Katie tumbled toward the floor. Katie
started humming again and leveled off. She lowered herself to eye level with her
mother, then rose ten feet, just high enough to allow her to say, “Just a
minute,” and begin humming again before hitting the floor. She rapidly
rose to the top of the atrium where she scanned every direction searching for
Jonas, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Stop it. Please stop, you’re going to hurt yourself!”
She could tell her mother was near hysteric, but the sensation Katie was feeling
was irrepressible. She didn’t know if she could stop, even if she wanted too,
and she didn’t want to stop, not yet anyway. She had to find Jonas. She wanted
her mother to meet him. She spun
and waltzed across the atrium, twirling in and out of every niche, alcove, nook
and cranny, searching behind every bit of furniture, plant, statute, and
chandelier rising and descending with the tune she hummed.
The
time Katie spent searching every corner of the atrium seemed an eternity to her
mother but in reality, it was only a few minutes before Katie descended into her
mother’s arms. She stopped humming and began to cry uncontrollably,
“He’s gone, mommy, Jonas is gone. I can’t find him.”
Mrs. Plainsong, clutching Katie tightly in her arms, was crying too but it had
nothing to do with Jonas whom she, of course, had never seen.
End
