Free The Midnight Dancers: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman Page B

Sallie’s—that remotely resembled the dress she was envisioning.  Such dresses were common enough in the outside world, but not in the cotton-print fabric of their church and family life.
    The other girls would need dresses, too. Dresses to dance in.  Because they would go dancing, somehow. She felt the island would be a perfect place for a midnight dance.
    She counted up dollars on her fingers. Last week she had gotten paid for several hours of filing at the church office. Perhaps next time she went into town, she could go to the Mission store—or better yet, the bargain-price clothing store that sold slightly defective brand name clothes. Next time she and Prisca went grocery shopping, they could arrange to split up and have one of them go to the store while the other went clothes shopping. Yes, that might work.
    Turning over, she sighed, and gazed lazily over at the juggling class. She could see Linette tossing a club in the air and dropping it, while Paul stood in front of her, coaching her. Debbie was working with two clubs, and seemed to be doing just fine.
    She wished she could get two sweet dresses for the younger girls as well, something still girlish and not too alluring. Part of her regretted that Debbie and Linette had found out about the secret.  They were really too young, even though Debbie was a tremendous flirt in her Sunday school class, attracting and casting off boys like an unusually pugnacious flower. No doubt she was more interested in Paul and his juggling than in any boy near her age.
    “Rachel,” Cheryl’s voice called. Rachel groaned and rolled over in the hammock, wishing she had stayed asleep. The insistent note meant she was needed for something. She closed her eyes until her stepsister was standing right by the hammock, shaking her by the shoulder.
    “What?” Rachel moaned pathetically.
    “Mom wants you. You’re supposed to make bread today. For the Sabbath.”
    “A pox on the Sabbath day,” Rachel murmured.
    Cheryl, shocked, said reprovingly, “You really shouldn’t say that.”
    Rachel opened one eye and saw Cheryl’s hand hanging down by her side, holding a book, her finger keeping her place. It was an older cloth-covered volume with scrolled black writing and an ominous title: Babylon Mystery Religion.  Beneath the words was a lithograph of a rather crude statue of a woman holding a baby.
    “What are you reading?” she asked.
    “One of mom’s books. It’s all about the Roman Church.”
    “You mean the Catholic Church?”
    “It’s not really a church, Rachel. It’s a satanic system. See the statue on the front? Doesn’t it look like the statue of the Virgin Mary with Jesus you see in Catholic churches? But it’s actually a statue of the Babylonian goddess Ishthar with her son, Nimrod the sun god. She was the moon goddess. Catholics are really just pagans under another name, worshipping the sun and moon.”
    Rachel regarded the suggestive title with some amusement. “So Paul is an agent of Satan, trying to get us to…worship idols or something?”
    “I hope not,” Cheryl said, her eyes worried. “This book is old, Rachel, and Mom said it’s still in print. It’s possible that not everything that it says is true, but there’s so much the author says that you just can’t argue with. It’s actually frightening.”
    “Cheryl, you read too much,” Rachel blew her hair out of her eyes. “Just because a book is in print doesn’t mean anything. I mean, isn’t the Satanic Bible old? And that’s probably still in print.” She was irritated and got to her feet.
    But as she stalked towards the house, she couldn’t help casting a furtive glance in Paul’s direction, picturing him as Cheryl’s agent of the devil, horns sprouting out of his short-cropped curly hair. The picture didn’t fit. Everything about Paul screamed “Wholesome.” What a simply tremendous disguise, she marveled sarcastically. You would never guess.
    Paul turned a full somersault and