Once upon a time, tucked away on a high wood shelf in a charming antique store, lay a blood-red musical jewelry box with carved veins throughout the skin. The box seemed to gently beat, but one couldn’t be too sure, for the subtle movement was as faint as a whisper, seemingly to beckon the music box to be wound up and opened. Inside, sinewy carved wood, fragrant as if it had just been cut, lined the box and held a mirror in the soul of the lid. A timeless, willowy dancer posed as if she was anything but frozen in time.
This was no ordinary dancer, but a ballerina made from delicate bone china encapsulated in the box after wishing she would never grow old but remain a prima ballerina forever.
Lovely Angelina, made from just bone and paint, held within her a spirit conducted by music, the kind of rhythms that bring life to even the driest of bones. With each turn of the small crank on the music box, a metronome inside with all the gears would start to tick, tock, tick, tock, preparing the lyrical cadence for Angelina, but the box needed to be open, much like a heart ready to receive the beauty of the ballerina’s dance. It’s then a twinkling lullaby lets its tendrils unfurl and crawl through the air—soft, tender reveries awakening Angelina to her life as a dancer.
She stepped into the rhythm of existence, folding her body and unfolding, bending her limbs and spinning, straightening and pointing her toes, gracefully gliding through the air with grace in a dance of so much more than mere being but a dance of life in motion.
But so seldomly did anyone open the music box and turn the crank.
One Summer evening, the door jingled when an elderly couple visited the quiet antique store with their granddaughter who tried not to look bored in the old shop. When the aged woman’s crinkled face saw the jewelry box, her face lit up and she brought it down to the child’s level. “Here, watch what happens when you wind up the box,” she said and she wound the crank and opened this new world to the little girl.
As Angelina pirouetted to the beating metronome, the girl found herself spirited along with the dancer, keeping time with the music that vibrated all around her. They were in a world not entirely of their own with swirls of warm air pulsating through the night, encouraging each movement with beams of moonlight spotlighting their paths. The starlight was an intricate chandelier casting shimmering patterns all around and the echo of ballet slippers sliding across and thumping against the floor punctuated the evening sounds.
Lovely Angelina no longer danced alone and the silence of the closed music box was forgotten. With arms swaying in the night air and feet gliding across the dusty shelves, Angelina and the girl danced with flowing grace, leaping over a chipped teacup and around an old, brass spyglass, bowing to the shadows where the moonlight did not reach. With all the passion in Angelina and the wonder in the girl, they danced in a whirling storm through a blurred, magical world.
Their freedom ballooned throughout the quick tempo of the dance, and even as the melody gradually slowed, Angelina and the girl’s movements became more precise, as if the ticking of the metronome still brought life to Angelina and the girl’s now elevated spirits. As the tempo slowed to a lullaby and the steady beat twirled the dancers back through the shelf and to the jewelry box, they breathed in the night air and felt the mystical prickle of sweat and magic glistening on their skin.
And just like that, the tiny metronome stopped, and silence followed with Angelina holding an arm overhead with the other pointing to the girl, a slightly lifted leg, frozen in mid-pose. The glowing light from the shop reflected against her porcelain-colored face and the new smile now appearing on the ballerina’s lips. Darkness swallowed the box as the grandmother gently lowered the lid.
The girl blinked up at her grandmother in the stillness of the evening, brought back to the antique store with its own muted tune of shop life. “It’s time to go. Your grandfather and the shopkeeper are done with their business,” said the grandmother. Before turning to go, she turned to the girl and pointed at tiny tracks that trailed along the dusty shelf near a chipped teacup, around an old spyglass and looping back to the musical jewelry box. “What do you think caused that?” she asked with a knowing smile.
Angelina, watching from the half-closed lid, stiffly glanced at the dust on her raised foot while the girl smiled back at her grandmother ready to leave the shop. “Maybe we can keep this?” asked the granddaughter.
With the purchase of the music box, the small family left the shop closing the door behind them as the door creaked shut with a gust of wind and age that rattled the windows and chilled the atmosphere. The shopkeeper wondered briefly if a special magic that had once been poised in the shop had just swirled away. He shrugged and turned to go about his business.
From time to time, a spirited gust of wind would blow through the propped open shop doorway and the shopkeeper would remember and almost hear the tick tock of a metronome and the melody of the music box. He could almost swear even the soft shuffle of slippers danced across his hearing as if lovely Angelina were still there.
But she was not as the ballerina was now where she belonged—weaving a love for dance in a small girl.