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Aravis sighed and stepped back as her feet missed their marks again. “I’m sorry,” she told Cor, distantly noting the sound of Corin’s lute fade out across the room. “I’ve been doing Narnian dances for years, I don’t know why it suddenly seems so difficult, but every time I think I’ve almost got it…”
“It’s alright,” Cor said, tugging her gently back towards him and then slipping his arms around her.
She sighed and let her head rest on his shoulder, breathing in the soft scents of pine and sage that she knew must play some role in the soaps he used.
He ran a hand over her hair. “We’ve got time,” he said. “The wedding’s still three months away. Here, let’s take a break.” He led her over to the open chairs near where Corin was sitting, and poured them both a glass of iced juice from the pitcher there.
“Have you decided what you will dance to first?” Corin asked, his fingers brushing across the strings of his lute.
“Something simple,” Cor said. “A waltz, probably, if we must, and then perhaps some reels…that will get everyone involved, and their eyes off of us.” He glanced over at Aravis, questioning.
She nodded. Reels were nice, friendly, and kept everyone much too busy with their own parts for anyone to be watching anyone else besides the people right next to them. They had quickly become one of her favorite parts of court life in Archenland.
“Are there wedding dances in Calormen?” Corin asked. “Traditional ones, I mean.”
Aravis nodded. “For Calormene noble weddings, there would be a series of dances,” she said slowly. “One with my father, and then three with my husband.”
“Is that what you would want?” Cor asked softly.
Aravis’s face hardened. “No.”
Cor nodded and patted her hand tentatively, then squeezed when she didn’t draw away.
She sighed. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I know those dances, and others -- I was trained in them, and I liked dancing when it was just practice, or just fun. But those dances always carried the weight that one day they would mark my becoming trapped -- more trapped, I mean, than I was already. They were meant to signify ownership -- that my father was passing me off, and that my husband now had control over me., and I loathed them. But they had other dances, other traditions, and some of those I miss.” She looked sideways at Cor. “If we could have some Calormene music, some of the lighter dances, perhaps, or if there was a way we could make the traditional ones feel less like a trap, or the passing off of property…”
“The first part of that-- dancing with your father, I mean -- would be traditional here, too,” Corin said. “Not because you’re supposed to be his property, but because the parents are a part of bringing a person up, and to a place where they can get married. Cor would dance with our mother, too, if she were still…and then you’d meet in the middle, and the parents would bow out so you could dance together, but, well…since neither of those are available options…”
Aravis nodded stiffly. She wondered, sometimes, what her family thought of her vanishing, but she did not want to find out.
“One of us could dance with Father and the other with Corin,” Cor mused. “Or I could dance with my old nurse, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be quite the same. We wouldn’t match.”
“If my brother were still alive, it could be him and Corin,” Aravis said quietly. “That would match.”
Cor nodded. “I wish we had someone else who matched. A pair of someones, that is, say!” He looked up at her, eyes bright.
She smiled despite herself. “What?” she asked curiously.
“Bree and Hwin!” Cor exclaimed. “You could dance with Hwin, or on Hwin, maybe, and I could dance with Bree!”
Corin let out a whoop of laughter. “Horses as your dance partners?” he said through his laughter. “That’s marvelous! I don’t think it’s ever been done before. It’ll be talked about for ages!”
Aravis was nodding slowly. “I like that,” she said. “And like you said, the parents are because they helped to bring us here, normally, and Bree and Hwin…”
“Brought us here,” Cor said, smiling. “I like it, too.”
The horses agreed with amusement but good cheer, and Corin set about drawing up potential choreographies with gusto. Aravis was reluctant to talk about the Calormene wedding dances in much detail, but eventually, to only Cor, she did, sketching out the patterns on a piece of parchment.
Cor hummed as he studied the patterns. They seemed very unbalanced to him, which he supposed was the point. “You don’t like them because it feels like you’re being trapped,” Cor clarified, and Aravis nodded. “But this bit here…” He traced a section with his finger. “It’s got more openness to it than the rest.”
Aravis frowned down at it. “It’s still the husband being very…pushy, though,” she said. “If it were more of a friendly lead, the way non-wedding dances tended to be, I think that’d be alright, but I don’t think this dance would work with that.”
Cor nodded slowly. “What if we took turns?” he asked. “What if you got to push me around as much as I push you?”
“Don’t I do that already?” Aravis asked mildly.
Cor swatted at her shoulder. Aravis caught his hand and pulled, rising as she did. Cor stumbled, but Aravis had braced herself to catch him, and her hands went around him. The position felt odd, the opposite of the one she knew well. Cor also seemed disoriented, but he leaned into her, waiting.
Aravis took off across the floor, her frame and her footwork growing more confident with each step as she led Cor through the first pass of the dance. When they’d reached the edge of the room, she stopped, and after a moment’s thought let go and spun on the spot.
Cor caught her as she came back around to face him, his hands back in the lead position, and Aravis let him lead her back, their steps almost but not quite retracing their earlier path. Back and forth they danced, seeing which moves were easier to do the switch with, and it was some time later that Corin, poking his head around the door, watched in awe as they moved seamlessly across the floor, eyes fixed on each other and trading leads without missing a beat.
Aravis found her nerves unaccountably shaky on the day. Hwin, coming to check on her in the ground floor dressing room King Lune had set aside for her, took one look at her and ordered all of the maids to wait outside. Aravis gulped, but Hwin only picked up the comb the maid had dropped in her teeth and began to run it through Aravis’s hair. Her work was slower and less precise than the maid’s had been, but the feeling of Hwin’s gentle breath on the back of her neck calmed her, and when, after several minutes, Hwin called for the maids to come back in, Hwin came to rest her head in Aravis’s lap, and Aravis found that running her fingers through the horse’s mane continued to steady her, as did Hwin’s steady presence at her side as they walked to the great throne room where the ceremony was to be held.
The ceremony itself was rather a blur; she remembered what was said because they had practiced it so many times, and she knew distantly that everything had gone smoothly. They had made vows to the Kingdom and to Aslan as well as to each other, as their union was not just for themselves but would shape the next era of Archenland’s history.
They left the throne room together, and Aravis let herself slump slightly against Cor, taking advantage of their brief time alone to share another kiss. Cor squeezed her hand, and then Hwin and Bree and a small army of servants emerged from the nearby antechambers to shepherd them off towards the ballroom, where their guests would soon be guided.
Finally, the herald told them they would make their entrance shortly, and Aravis swung up into Hwin’s saddle, trimmed with gold and pearls to match the bridal gown. Aravis had insisted that her dress have a riding skirt, and she was grateful she had. She could ride side-saddle, of course, but it was not nearly so comfortable, and as her nerves returned, she was grateful for every ounce of comfort she could get.
The double doors into the ballroom opened, and Hwin walked through them, while Bree walked through the ones that opened on the other side. This too, they had practiced many times, but Aravis let herself be more present here, letting Hwin’s movement beneath her ground her even as she watched the other horse and his human complete their own steps. Cor met her gaze and held it, and Aravis felt the world blurring around her again, narrowing to that one face, alight as it stared back at her with love and longing and excitement and seemingly everything that she herself was feeling. When the horses stopped, side by side, and their humans slid off, they bowed before retreating to the side of the hall. Cor bowed, too, and Aravis curtseyed, and then they began to dance.
This part, while they had practiced various moves and techniques a great deal, they had not choreographed, and Aravis treasured the thrill of the unknown as Cor whisked her around the floor, their eyes only leaving each other’s when they spun, and never for long. When he ceded the lead to her, she saw the excitement in his own eyes as he plunged after her lead. Twice they ceded only for the other to cede back immediately, but neither of them misstepped. When the song ended at last, Aravis was dimly aware that there was applause, but it seemed far away, because Cor was looking at her, and she was married to Cor at last, and she knew in this moment, this partnership, this beginning of their life together…no matter what challenges, what unknowns they faced, no matter whether it was Cor’s will or Aravis’s that rose up to see them through it, they would face it together, hand in hand and step by step.