The Night Dance (Once Upon a Time)

by Mahlon F. Craft Suzanne Weyn

  Staring more closely into the spinning glow, Rowena observed an image of a figure moving inside the ball of light. It was in miniature, like a small, moving painting.

  Straining to bring the blurry image into focus, she saw that the figure was female. If all her sisters had not been standing around her, she might have thought the figure was one of them; the family resemblance was that strong. Could it be some twelfth sister?

  The woman in the glowing ball gestured, as though she wanted to show Rowena something. Why was she so blurry, though? Was she under water? That’s how it seemed to Rowena, but how could she breathe if she were underwater?

  Rowena glanced up at her sisters. “What do you think she’s trying to tell us?” she asked.

  “Who?” Bronwyn asked.

  “Don’t you see the woman in the bowl?” Rowena asked.

  “I only see light,” Mathilde said, and the others nodded in agreement.

  Looking back to the figure in the bowl, Rowena saw that the woman had lain down as if asleep. Then she stood and pointed at the floor. What was she trying to say?

  With the bowl still in her hands, Rowena left the sewing chamber and headed down the wide, turning staircase toward the first floor bedchamber that all twelve girls shared. Her sisters trailed along behind her.

  “What is this strange bowl, Rowena?” Chloe asked. “Where are you taking it?”

  “I want to see something,” Rowena replied.

  They entered the bedchamber with its twelve beds, six on either side of the large room. It was each girl’s favorite place in the whole manor house because it was all that remained of the original cottage before the other rooms and floors had been added. It retained the original wooden walls, rustic beams, and wide, rough-hewn floorboards.

  Once they were all inside, Rowena locked the door and dropped to her knees. Flattening onto the floor, she peered under the rows of beds. Not seeing what she searched for on one side, she did the same thing on the other.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Cecily.

  Rowena picked herself off the floor and sat back on her heels. Glancing down, she saw that the woman in the glow was still pointing to the floor. “What do you see?” Eleanore asked, keenly interested.

  When Rowena told her, a look of sudden inspiration swept across Eleanor’s face. Hurrying to the last bed, the one in which she, herself, slept, she gestured for her sisters to assist her in shoving it away from the wall. As soon as the bed was moved, they saw a trapdoor with an iron handle in the floor.

  The sisters shot questioning looks at Eleanore. “What is it?” Mathilde asked.

  “I discovered it a long time ago,” she explained. “A breeze wafts up from its cracks and the cold air wakes me sometimes in the night. It cools me in summer but makes me shiver in winter.”

  “Why have you never mentioned it before?” Ione questioned.

  “It’s always been there, ever since we moved into this room,” Eleanore explained. “I never gave the door much thought. I assumed it was simply part of the house, an old root cellar or something. This room was originally the back part of the kitchen.”

  The room became alive with nervous anticipation. “You say she’s pointing to the floor?” Gwendolyn checked with Rowena.

  Rowena nodded.

  They all looked to Eleanore as they always did in times of indecision. “Perhaps we should tell father of this,” Eleanore considered.

  The girls scowled at her. “This is no time to be so sensible,” Rowena objected, voicing what they were all thinking. Here was an adventure thrown in their path when they were so absolutely starved for anything new and exciting.

  Eleanore nodded a bit reluctantly and bent forward to grasp the handle. Tugging at it, she managed to pry it up slightly. Her sisters immediately came forward to help her, crowding their hands onto the handle.

  “Now!” Eleanore shouted as they united to give the door a powerful yank. The effort threw them backward onto the floor in a pile.

  As they got up, Rowena was the first to begin moving to the drum and lute music wafting through the open trapdoor. At first she didn’t even know she was swaying in time with it, but then she noticed her sisters doing the same. As if unable to resist, she stepped forward and turned in a full circle, swinging her arms in a graceful arc as she went.

  The drumbeats grew louder, more insistent, moving the sisters faster and faster with their driving rhythms. The sisters laughed with giddy delight, jubilant as they twirled and leapt. The music swelled to a crashing crescendo and, one by one, the sisters climbed down into the opening in the floor.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Morgan le Fey Watches

  Just before the monastery bell sounded, the field mouse finished its run across the rainy courtyard. It darted into the manor kitchen through its usual tunnel under the kitchen wall.

  Helen, the cook, spotted it instantly.

  “Be gone, you mouse! You pest!” Helen beat at the field mouse with the end of her straw broom. The mouse hid behind a chest and waited until a bang told it that Helen had gone out the back door into the rain. It quickly ran to the center of the kitchen. A flash of purple light filled the room.

  A woman dressed as a servant stood where the mouse had been. Sharp features and sunken cheeks were made even more unpleasant by her beady, angry eyes. She peered around the kitchen with a look of disgust, her lip curling in dismay at her surroundings.

  “Ah! Millicent! You gave me a fright!” Helen cried as she came back inside, one hand held over her head against the rain, the other holding something in her apron. “How you do pop in and out! It’s not normal!”

  Onto a table she emptied the damp contents of her apron, fresh herbs from the garden: thyme, rosemary, lavender, and lemongrass. “Gather half the herbs into bundles and hang them to dry. Leave the other half for the chicken tonight.”

  Millicent wandered over to a bowl of fiddlehead ferns and began munching the tender shoots.

  “Mind me, Millicent!” Helen scolded. “If I didn’t need the help so badly I’d boot you back to wherever it is you came from.”

  Millicent sneered at her indolently. If you only knew with whom you were toying, she thought as she lazily gathered up the herbs and tossed them into her apron. She took them out into the wet courtyard letting the back door slam behind her. Letting the herbs drop onto the ground, she stepped back from the building and gazed up at the rain-soaked windows. She couldn’t see Vivienne’s brats, though she knew they must be up there.

  Her face tightened with anger. Why hadn’t she been given the gift of second sight? She, who had so many powers, could shift shape without a thought, yet she could not see any more than the merest of mortals! For her, a scrying pool was no more than a bucket of murky water.

  Ah, but she knew Vivienne, grand mistress of second sight in every way, was trying to contact someone. She felt the increase of energy in the air, felt it in her very bones. She’d been aware of it for more than a month now. That’s why she’d assumed these humiliating forms to come in and have a look.

  At first, she’d thought it would be good enough to come in as a mouse. But she soon discovered that the form didn’t allow her to hear what the prattling girls were saying. Their voices were like banging gongs to her in that tiny form. They hurt her large ears with their screams of laughter and endless blabber.

  So she’d hit upon the idea of transforming into a servant. That way she could observe the girls and also hear the gossip of the other servants—not that there was any good gossip. How could there be with twelve girls shut up in this manor as if it were a convent?

  She’d been aware, of course, that Vivienne had tried to contact them before, that she never really stopped trying. Whatever she was doing wasn’t working, though. These girls seemed completely unaware of their mother’s attempts to contact them.

  But now things were happening.

  She knew that three priestesses from the mystic island of Avalon had gone out in a golden ship to retrieve
Arthur’s slain body. They’d plucked him from a fiery raft and taken him back to Avalon for a proper burial.

  It infuriated her! Where was the royal funeral envoy for her slain son? If she had not spirited his body away it would have lain there on the blood-soaked battlefield along with the rest, unattended and unmourned.

  For Mordred, the priestesses had no time. Only precious Arthur, the great king, merited their attention. She and her son had disgraced the island of Avalon, they said. They wanted nothing to do with Morgan le Fey or her son, Mordred.

  Let them do as they liked. She was Morgan le Fey, the greatest sorceress the world had ever seen, and she could care for herself—more than care for herself.

  Arthur was dead now, but she had learned that Excalibur was not on the burning raft with his body. Nor was it in the hands of the priestesses of Avalon. Where was it? All the soldiers and knights had died that day. Had some beggar or thief come along and taken it?

  A terrible realization struck her. Vivienne must be searching for Excalibur! That was it! Even from her watery prison beneath the ground, she’d discovered—no doubt by means of her powers of second sight—what had happened to Arthur!

  Morgan le Fey could not allow Vivienne to get Excalibur before she did. It might provide her with enough power to break free!

  A line of worry creased Morgan’s brow. That one daughter had gone roaming in the forest yesterday and again today. She didn’t see what difference it could possibly make. Vivienne hadn’t been able to contact them for the last twelve years. Surely it didn’t matter what side of a wall they stood on.

  Still, something was happening. And she was determined to find out what it was.

  PART TWO

  The Night Moves

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vivienne’s Call

  Vivienne was aware of the very moment she contacted her girls. She saw Rowena’s green eyes in her mind with utter clarity.

  The last time Vivienne had seen those eyes they belonged to a baby, but she recognized their distinct color. Even Rowena’s twin sister, Ashlynn, did not have eyes that were the same clear celery green; hers were, instead, flecked with hazel.

  Rowena must have somehow, through some lucky happenstance, come upon the scrying bowl at last!

  Oh, and such clever girls she had! Leave it to Eleanore, always so keenly observant even as a child, to notice and recall the opening in the floor, just as Vivienne had hoped she would.

  In her wild frenzy of enchanted tunneling, Vivienne had created a passageway that cut right into the root cellar under the cottage. It was a passage with a dry path that they would be able to follow all the way to the lake.

  Vivienne began to pace, wishing she could see the girls. Apparently Rowena had put the bowl down, leaving it behind in the bedchamber.

  She’d lost contact with them for now, but if they found her she’d require a way to signal them that she was nearby.

  Gazing upward through the water, Vivienne concentrated on minerals she knew floated in the lake water. “Minerals burn with fiery might; out of watery depths glow with light!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rowena’s Search

  The music drew the sisters through dark passages. Time lost meaning as they traveled farther into the earth. In places, the air became moist, then dry again, then damp once more.

  As they went Rowena had the feeling that they were on a quest of some kind, searching for something. Were they looking for the woman in the bowl?

  They came to a dark, stony ledge running along a stone wall. The tunnel’s music became faint and the urge to dance faded along with it. They had to feel their way along in the dark. Rowena was aware that the rock wall at her side was becoming wet. Soon drops of cold water fell on her nose and cheeks from the rock ceiling overhead.

  In another several yards they came out to a cavern many stories high. Luminous stalagmites jutted up from the earth bathing the cavern in gentle light. Gazing upward, the sisters marveled at the spectacular stalactites, some reaching nearly to the floor. They, too, gave off a phosphorescent light.

  In the center of this cavern was a wide, sparkling lake. Tiny but sharp lights danced just below its crystal clear surface. “What are those lights?” Rowena questioned, her voice echoing off the stony walls.

  She walked with her sisters to the edge of the underground lake. All twelve of them were reflected back to her in its surface. The lights appeared to dance across their hair and clothing, transforming them into magical creatures. “The lights make us look like fairies,” Mathilde observed with a delighted giggle.

  “Or princesses covered in diamonds,” added Ashlynn.

  After they had gazed at their reflections awhile longer, the girls began to settle on the many rocks in the cavern to rest. Looking around, Rowena saw that there were many entrances into the cavern. It made her wonder how extensive the network of tunnels around this cavern actually was.

  Rowena sat beside Eleanore. So much had happened in these few hours just past and Rowena hardly understood any of it.

  “I think the woman whom you saw in the bowl is our mother,” Eleanore said after a few moments of silence.

  Her words caught Rowena’s breath. What Eleanore had said was so unexpected. Then she recalled how she’d noticed the resemblance. “Why do you say that?” she questioned.

  “You were a baby, but I remember her gazing searchingly into a gold-lined bowl such as the one we now have,” Eleanore told her.

  “Why am I the only one who can see her?” Rowena asked.

  Eleanore shook her head. “I don’t know. I always had the feeling, though, that our mother had some kind of power, some gift for seeing beyond regular sight. Perhaps you have it too.”

  “Do you think our mother still lives?”

  Eleanore snorted disdainfully. “What does it matter? If she’s alive she’s proved she doesn’t care about us.” As she spoke, tears welled in Eleanore’s eyes, but she brushed them away brusquely. “Dead or alive, she can’t do us much good so I try not to think about her.”

  Rowena didn’t think much about her mother either because she barely remembered her. Yet the idea that she might have caught a glimpse of her in the bowl was too intriguing to dismiss. “Why would I have seen her in the bowl?” she wondered aloud.

  “Perhaps the bowl holds memories,” Eleanore suggested.

  “I have no memory of our mother, not any clear ones,” Rowena pointed out. “Sometimes I think I recall the smell of her, though. I think she smelled like lake water, although I have never seen, much less smelled, a lake. At least not until right now, and I’m not sure this is a normal lake.”

  “You’ve seen a lake before,” Eleanore corrected her. “There was once a lake next to our home. Our mother let us swim in it with her all the time.”

  Although they couldn’t see over the wall, the girls could peer down past it from the top windows of the manor. Even if she had not gone out, Rowena would have known there was no lake in the forest. “What happened to it?” she asked.

  “It disappeared at the same time our mother left. Father never mentioned it to anyone—as if it had never been there,” Eleanore replied.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that he didn’t question it?” Rowena pressed.

  “The whole thing is strange,” Eleanore agreed. “But isn’t it strange that we are sitting in a huge cavern right now?”

  Rowena smiled at Eleanore’s words. “Incredibly odd, yes.”

  Eleanore stood abruptly as a new worry seized her. “I’m not sure we know the way back,” she said glancing around at the many pathways leading into the cavern.

  “We came in that way,” Rowena said, pointing at the passage directly behind them.

  “I think it was over there,” Gwendolyn called to them.

  The sisters came back together as the seriousness of their situation dawned on them. “Where’s the music?” Rowena asked. “Perhaps we can follow that back.”

  They listened intently until they detecte
d the faintest strains of lute music. The sisters gazed at one another hopefully before realizing that the music was coming from every opening in the cavernous rock wall.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sir Bedivere No More

  Sir Bedivere began walking along the shore, heedless of the effects of the surf on his chain mail armor. He had secured Excalibur in his own scabbard and tucked his sword into his belt. With no thought to a destination, he moved like a sleepwalker. When hunger gripped his stomach, he barely noticed it.

  So deep and complete was his despair that he remained nearly oblivious to the pounding surf or the calling seabirds overhead. He was the walking dead, the last man standing in a battle that had taken every last soul.

  He would have walked into the ocean, confident that his heavy armor would weigh him down beneath its waves, if it had not been for his promise to the dying Arthur. Now he was obliged to stay alive long enough to fulfill his mission—and not a moment longer.

  Would any lake do for completing the task? Did he have to throw the sword into a special lake? How would he ever know if he’d done it right? Why do it at all? Arthur was dead—what difference could this make to him now?

  Still, he had sworn. He’d given his word as a knight of the Round Table. The importance of that might be fast becoming a memory, disappearing from the world altogether, but it was still crucial to him.

  Arthur had taken him on as a groom and valet when he was but twelve and Arthur was a young king. Bedivere had carried Arthur’s armor, readied his clothing, made sure his horse was watered and brushed down properly. The servant had grown to be a companion, confidant, and—in his early teen years, when Arthur felt he’d earned it—knight.