The Night Dance by Suzanne Weyn Page A

a whirl of activity as they threw off their shawls and pulled off their dresses, tossing them to the floor. The sisters donned the nightgowns, and the delicate slippers were tucked under each bed.
    The stolen lamps were shoved together and covered with a blanket in the corner before the sisters hopped into their beds, pulling the covers high.
    Morgan, her whiskers twitching with anticipation, hid behind a chest and watched. Mary entered and behind her were maids carrying chamber pots. “Do you young ladies have everything you require?” she asked as the maids left.
    Brianna yawned and stretched. “Everything, thank you, Mary.”
    “Good night, Mary,” the other sisters sang out, almost in one voice.
    “Good night, girls. Sleep well,” Mary bade them. She left and the sound of the heavy bolt being slid shut echoed in the quiet room.
    First one of the small oil lamps was lit, then the other. Then Morgan heard the scratching of the heavy bed against the floor as they pushed it away from the trapdoor.
    They spoke eagerly, but their voices were too loud, their tones too distorted by the intense volume for her to decipher what they were saying even though they whispered.
    They put on their slippers and then pulled up the trapdoors. Drum beats and whistles floated up out ofthe opening. The young women began beating their feet to the lively tune, swaying and twirling to the vibrant music.
    One at a time, they descended into the hole in the floor. Morgan seized her moment and scampered down into the dark space along with them.
    In her mouse form, Morgan was blasted by the music in the passageways, just as she had been the night before. That was why, when the sisters found her, she had been in such a hurry to get out of the tunnel. Now her ears ached again and, letting the sisters get ahead of her, she transformed into her own form—neither Millicent, the hag of a servant, nor a mouse, but Morgan le Fey, the sorceress.
    That was better. Pressing her palms to her aching ears to soothe them, she hung back behind the sisters. Since they now carried lamps, it wasn’t difficult to keep them in sight as they wound their way through the passages.
    She followed them until they came out to the high cavern of softly glowing stalactites and stalagmites. There, the sisters went to the edge of the large underground lake. Morgan hung back in the shadows of a tunnel as the one named Ione took off her slippers and stuck her foot in the shimmering water. “It’s not cold at all,” she told her sisters. She impulsively pulled her nightgown over her head and plunged, naked, into the water.
    Tossing off their slippers and nightgowns the other sisters followed her example and were soon allswimming in the glittering lake. Only Rowena stayed behind, draped on a rock, deep in thought.
    Morgan drew in a sharp breath of realization. She knew where they were, what this place was! Why hadn’t she recognized it immediately?
    This was the place where Vivienne’s lake had settled to, deep in the earth’s depths, when she, Morgan, had cursed it to be hidden below ground forever. These foolish girls were swimming right over their mother’s head as she languished below them, trapped in a magical bubble!
    “It’s not as deep as I would have thought,” said the sister called Mathilde. “I can touch the bottom.”
    Ione and Chloe both dove under. Morgan wondered if Vivienne was able to see them from below. Was it possible for them to see her?
    Morgan didn’t really know, for certain, and she shifted uneasily from foot to foot, suddenly worried that these young women were so close to their mother.
    At least Rowena had stayed out, probably mooning over her Bedivere. Of them all, she seemed to be the one who had inherited her mother’s talent for second sight. She’d be the one most sensitive to Vivienne’s presence.
    Thinking of their mother reminded Morgan of how resourceful and gifted Vivienne had been in the days before her entrapment. If she knew