Dark and Deepest Red(76)

Though no one knows exactly on which street la fièvre de la danse began, I’m writing this from a patch of cobbled stone likely not far from where that first woman started to dance, and not far from where the city’s most powerful men would have decided Lala and Alifair’s fate. I live in a very different time, in a very different world from the two of them.

But I’m walking this ground, a girl of color alongside the trans boy she loves.

So this is where I leave you, dear reader, five hundred years after la fièvre de la danse, five centuries after Lala and Alifair would have left these city gates for the last time. It’s probably appropriate that we part here, among this city’s living and its ghosts.

Thank you for following me deep into a fairy tale that has long frightened and enthralled me, and a moment in history that grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. I leave you on these cobbled lanes, with my own pair of red shoes on my feet, and my heart full of gratitude for every one of you who came with me this far.





Acknowledgments


“So I have this idea for a ‘Red Shoes’ reimagining about the 1518 dancing plague.” Those words were all it took for my agent, Taylor Martindale Kean, to be fearlessly behind this novel before I even wrote it.

I have Taylor and many others to thank for this book’s existence. Here I’ll name a few:

Full Circle Literary, for making a wonderful home for authors.

My editor, Kat Brzozowski, for believing in this book and for refining it in ways only she could.

Jean Feiwel, for having me as part of the Feiwel & Friends family.

Brittany Pearlman, for her tireless work and encouraging spirit.

Rich Deas, for his phenomenal art direction at MacKids; Liz Dresner, for giving this story an absolutely stunning cover; Cat Finnie and Mike Burroughs, for such gorgeous cover elements.

Everyone at Feiwel & Friends and Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group: Jon Yaged, Kim Waymer, Allison Verost, Liz Szabla, Angus Killick, Molly Brouillette, Melinda Ackell, Kerianne Okie Steinberg, Teresa Ferraiolo, Kathryn Little, Julia Gardiner, Lauren Scobell, Ashley Woodfolk, Alexei Esikoff, Mariel Dawson, Romanie Rout, Mindy Rosenkrantz, Emily Settle, Amanda Barillas, Morgan Dubin, Morgan Rath, Madison Furr, Mary Van Akin, and Jessica White; Katie Halata, Lucy Del Priore, Kristen Luby, Melissa Croce, and Cierra Bland of Macmillan Library; and the many more who turn stories into books and get them to readers.

Taryn Fagerness and the Taryn Fagerness Agency, for helping my stories travel the world.

The writers who helped me refine this book: Robin Talley, who lent me every medieval history reference she had on hand and talked me through how she does research. Tehlor Kay Mejia, who waded through an early draft. Michelle Ruiz Keil, who helped me focus in on this story’s themes.

Thank you to Robin LaFevers for helping me work through the sexism, morality, and, ultimately, the transcendent feminism within the original story of “The Red Shoes.”

Thank you to Jessica Reidy, for her editing and guidance with bringing out Lala’s and Emil’s Romanipen and strengthening their emotional journeys. Thank you to Parrish Turner, for helping me enrich Alifair’s story and illuminate his life as a transgender young man in sixteenth-century Alsace.

There were many scholars and researchers whose work helped me understand the history and context of that summer in 1518: John Waller, who answered questions about the Holy Roman Empire. Kélina Gotman, whose scholarly work proved an invaluable source. Cecile Dupeux of the Musée de l’?uvre Notre-Dame, who was generously willing to talk to me despite my very middling French and who helped me access the text of firsthand sources, and the Musée staff, who kindly helped me find my way. The City of Strasbourg, in particular those who run and maintain its spectacular museums; so much of this book would be inaccurate or absent without your help.

My mother, for keeping up my faith in happy endings, and my father, whose reaction when I told him about this book’s topic was similar to William Shawn’s reaction to John McPhee wanting to write about oranges.

My husband, for hunting down oak apples with me, for putting up with la fièvre de la danse I fell under while researching this book, and for being my traveling companion, and sometimes translator, in the museums, libraries, and landscapes of the Bas-Rhin and the Schwarzwald.

Readers, for seeing both the brutal truth and the hope held within fairy tales. Thank you.