Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan

then and light the candles, and slowly, with a circular, swaying motion in her torso, go into a trance, letting the spirits enter her body. Her voice would change. Sometimes she was Rasmus, her spirit guide, and other times she was the dearly departed. I would watch the way her skin turned yellow and her eyes rolled slowly forward before she opened them wide and focused on some unseen face.
    Later, when Gigi had gotten used to my being there, I became her assistant. She didn’t ask me to help her, I just offered to get her coffee one day and she let me. I was so pleased to get a chance to show her I could be useful that I began to rush about, helping her clean up in the evening, running out to the diner down the road to fetch her lunch, and bringing the footstool to her between clients so she could prop up her swollen feet.
    I figured she must have been really pleased with me, because after a while she began to let me help her get ready for her ceremonies. I got to select the ingredients for the incense, choosing from rose, cedar, citron, aloe, cinnamon, sandal, camphor, amber, lily, benzoin, mace, saffron—she had so many jars and vials, and each combination of herbs, flowers, spices, and oils had a special meaning, was meant for special ceremonies. I learned them all.
    I got to select the appropriate robe from Gigi’s closet and help her slip into it, and I brought messages to Mrs. Hewlett at the front of the shop and led clients to their seats in the back.
    One time Mrs. Hewlett said to me that maybe I would become a medium like my grandmother, and I thought maybe I would. Maybe that would be my special gift. Maybe if I could do a good enough job, Gigi would see this and declare that I was a prodigy as a medium! Then she would forgive me for making Dane melt, and she would want me again, and Dane would come back, and everything would be right once more.
    One day, after months of helping at the shop, I suggested to Gigi that I could do the dances for warding off evil while she concentrated on going beyond and reaching the dearly departed.
    Gigi shook her head. “No, I’ll do the dances.”
    â€œBut I can do it,” I told her. “I can help you. I can do the dances for you so your legs won’t get tired. Watch, I can do it.”
    Then, before she could say anything, I started dancing around the table. I swept my arms up above my head and circled the table, two times, two representing social communion. My arms swung down, then up again. I leaned over the table, sweeping my torso in a low circle. In my mind I was a great ballerina. I pretended a crowd had gathered in the shop; all the kids from school who teased me about wearing Dane’s bathrobe and who slammed dirt balls in my ears were watching. They stared wide eyed, stunned by my beauty and skill. I circled back in the other direction, my arms waving gracefully above my head. Someone was breaking through the crowd of kids. A man. A man was straining to see me over the heads of my audience. Dane! It was Dane! He had come to see my great performance.
    â€œMiracle! I said to stop it!” Gigi caught one of my arms in midilight and gripped it in her hands, pulling it down to my side.
    â€œI do the dances,” she said. “Anyway, you look ridiculous. From now on you had better just sit on that pillow over there and keep out of the way!” Gigi pointed to the large tiger-skin pillow that sat on the floor beneath a fan of swan feathers. “Go on.”
    I backed away. I didn’t know what I had done, what evil spirit I had conjured up with my dance. I sat down on the pillow and closed my eyes and drifted far away, leaving behind the noise of Gigi’s swishing robe, the clinking jars of incense, and Rasmus’s murmurings. I went to a special place, a safe, new place. There were green fields and wildflowers there, and fairies and gnomes and distant castles poking through swirls of pink and white clouds. A blanket of