The Ram Rebellion(62)

Amongst the clothes we were given were quite a few colorful bridesmaids' outfits. The sheer fabrics and vivid colors were perfect for costumes. Most of them had been sitting in their plastic wrappers since their one and only outing, having been buried deep in the darkest recesses of the bridesmaids' closets, and their owners were only too happy to sacrifice them to a good cause.





Shoes, and more importantly, pointe shoes, had been solved over a year earlier. My uncle Mark had owned a local shoe shop for years. He had done a lot of shoe and boot repairs while he had the shop, and when he sold out, he spent his retirement repairing and making boots and shoes in his workshop. Of course I had taken advantage of the connection, and Uncle Mark had made and repaired dance shoes for my students and me for years. He hadn't made pointe shoes of course, just the common dance slipper.





When I started teaching dance again after the Ring of Fire I asked him about making pointe shoes. He tried, he really did try, but they were little better than the torture devices I had worn when I was performing. They were better than nothing, but not by much.





Fortunately, Uncle Mark and Auntie Mary had taken in a refugee family. Either someone was thinking when they made the allocation, or God was watching. Hans Bauer and his son were shoemakers. The family had been on the run from marauding mercenaries when they stumbled into Granville with all their worldly goods and the tools of their trade piled into a handcart.





Not only did Hans and his son Jacob adapt easily to the uptime machines in Uncle Mark's workshop, but also Jacob was a bit of an innovator. He worked out a way to make a pointe shoe that lasted longer than the classical shoe, and gave the foot more support. They weren't as good as the latest uptime pointe shoes, but they were much better than the torture devices I had danced in.





As we hit late September, things threatened to go to hell in a hand basket. There had been a major naval battle that had sunk most of the Dutch fleet, and we were now at war with France, Spain, Denmark and England. Nobody seemed to know what it all meant, but there were rumors of an upcoming battle raging through the town.





I was starting to worry what this could mean for my elder son Joel, so I made arrangements to visit the newlyweds. After their marriage in August, Joel and Alice had moved in with Casey Stevenson. There was no way Joel and Alice could afford to buy a house on their salaries, and renting their own place would have been crippling.





But anyway, there I was, walking down the road to visit Alice, when what did I see coming out the drive? That damn son of mine was actually riding a horse. The fool, didn't he realize what damage he was doing? I just about sprinted after him, but first things first. Alice was expecting me, so I would see Alice first. Joel could wait.





It got worse. At the door, one of Alice's friends, Noelle Murphy, literally dragged me into the house and frog marched me through to the lounge, where she pushed me towards the emotional mess that was my daughter-in-law before making her escape.





Alice was bitterly denouncing the army as the tears ran down her face. I had just missed Joel, she explained between sobs. He had just been around to tell her they were sending him to Fulda until further notice. This was a disaster. My worst nightmare was coming true. I'd been banking on having Joel available for the Nutcracker performance. Carl had been even less available than expected, often going missing for weeks at a time. Now it looked like I was going to lose Joel as well.





As Alice cried in my arms, I pondered the options. Either I rewrote the production without an en pointe Sugar Plum Fairy, or I bit the bullet, and ran my nephew Joe Calagna, as the Sugar Plum Fairy's Cavalier. Either way, the dual parts of Soldier Doll and Mouse King would have to be redistributed.





Neither option was attractive. I really needed to have an en pointe dancer as the female lead. But to do that I needed someone strong enough to support, lift, and carry her. The trouble was there was only one male left in the company with sufficient technical ability who could lift Staci or Alice. And he made a statue look dynamic. Well, okay, my nephew, Joe isn't really that bad. He could make the lifts look effortless, but I couldn't hang a performance on his ability, not like I could Joel or Carl. I was just about in tears myself as I pondered what to do.





As if that wasn't enough, I received a letter from Magdeburg, from Her Ladyship herself. Mrs. Admiral Simpson had apparently heard that I was planning on putting on a full-length performance of Nutcracker. Mary Simpson was suggesting that wouldn't it be nice if, instead of only the one performance, I was to put on a short season in the high school auditorium. No more than a weekend's worth of performances of course. She had already talked to any number of important people in Magdeburg, and they were all indicating a desire to see a live performance of a modern ballet.