Part 8

They skated the moves THEY liked best, in the ways THEY liked best.

And. . .as each Wonderlander finished his or her part of this show, they took off their skates, put on their shoes, and picked up their candles, and walked out back into the forest, stating they hoped to be back next weekend for their next performances, but they knew the hope was in vain, that no one would let them skate for themselves.

Because this was most likely their final public performance, effort was not spared, and many jumps and leaps and spins were carried out in ways never seen before or since.

Finally, there were only a few Wonderlanders left, and these gave a few performances that actually told stories; one of which suggested that the skater was running off into the woods to live as suggested by the use of a Pan flute as a prop and since the skater's name was Peter, it is possible, given the nature of these performances, with the faerie-like use of the candles, that this was the origin of the story of Peter Pan.

After Peter had flown off with his candle, there was a girl, Belle, who had a bell tied to her wrist, and tinkled as she skated, which, is certainly possible was the origin of Tinkerbell, as it was known she had affections for Peter, and was of a jealous nature.

When Belle had tinked off into the distance, there was no one left, except Dimbovitsa. . .who was a different kind of skater than most, leaving most of the leaps and jumps to the more athletic of ability and inclination. . .and followed her heart more in the direction of art and sculpture. . .concentrating on long graceful glides over an expanse of ice. . .and on exquisite positioning of arm and leg in a graceful combination further accentuated by her motion.

And she could spin. . . .

Sometimes she was such a blur you would think no force on Earth may ever be able to stop her, trying to count the number of times round and round she went was as much a topic for people such as scholarly mathematicians and philosophers as for those who actually saw spins that night that actually left them dazed.

Her balance that night was such that she could hold a spin from one position to the next, only slightly pulling in one arm or leg to do enough conservation of momentum to even further the illusion of the spinning lasting forever.

Since this was the last performance of the year, temperatures would be naturally rising, and the sun would be rising earlier every day, which had been calculated by the Wonderlanders, who had now lived a decade or more in these woods, and could tell you to the day if the ice would melt or not.

And today turned out to be a very special day indeed, moreso than I would bet any of the Wonderlanders actually knew.

They had all stayed up so long, and it was so late in the Spring, a sure thing was that some of this audience would not be getting home before dawn, and most would at least see the lightening sky.

But this day was special. . .for so many reasons. . . .

The Wonderlanders had placed their torches and candles is just such a way that each of them melted most of the ice used by each of them in their performances, so that by the time they had waited out each final applause, and then taken their candle with them into the edge of the darkness, their own patch of ice was very much melted away.

As Dimbovitsa spun and spun, she melted away each of the last edges of ice remaining. . .until she was spinning on the only piece left, and as her candle grew shorter and shorter, she took on more of the appearance of a faerie, apparently flying over the ground suspended just a little. . .by her skates.

Finally she entered her last spins, designed to take her over those few remaining patches of ice that remained, lit only by her single, very low candle. . .and each set of spins reduced one more piece of ice to slush. . .a slush that would look like mud in the sunrise.

And so. . .as she completed her performance, put on her shoes, went off in the darkness, it appeared the sun would be coming up shortly . . .so many of the audience simply waited for the sunrise to start their trip home. . .the Eastern sky lightened. . .but the sun would not appear for more than an hour. . .it was the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, that were lighting up the sky, and which, even more than the Wonderlanders had planned, made their illusion a very much greater success than they had planned.

From inside the shade grove of their practice pond, the sky was not terribly visible, even in the daytime, so it is not hard to realize how much the northern lights looked brighter than the darkness of a grove of trees.

By the time the sun really did come up the pond had totally melted.

And the illusion was complete. . .where there had been ice skating, now was a lake. . .the lake they now call Lake Dimbovitsa. . .after the last of the Wonderlanders who skated their that night.

***

So many people came and went in so many directions that night and a period of the first few hours of the following morning, that it was impossible to follow any tracks a week later, when people began the realization that the Wonderlanders were not coming back.

Lots of things were done to find them, but nearly all had been well prepared for, and the addition of spring rains, a quick thaw, a lot of mud travelled by a lot of people, made it even more impossible a task to find someone who had already gone to great pains not to be.

Who, in a camp of gypsies might recognize that the hooks from which pots of stew were hanging looked something like skate blades? Who, in their right might thinks of skate blades being any other than in bright, shiny silver? These black sooty hooks were on all of these fires, all looked the same. . .just black sooty hooks.

There were some efforts to follow the major bands of gypsies for an extra year or two, but these were in such a small band, that anyone would know an entire band of ice-skaters could not hide within. It would have been just too obvious. No one considered that the whole band of dark-skinned gypsies might be ice-skaters. But they were.

***

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If you want to see where I live in Romania, just find a decent map-- look to the upper left very near Bucharest, and there is the lake.