Mr. Robichaux could hear his wife rummaging through the pots and pans just inside the house. He stood at the gate at the end of the walk, hand on the latch. Behind him the hedges were trimmed and the Louisiana summer had browned spots in the sod. Down the block, Mr. Robichaux’s three children stepped off the school bus, back packs dragged behind them as the yellow vehicle rumbled into movement again.

He pushed the gate open for them as they came and greeted them with a half-hearted smile and a pat on the back. As always, they went to help their mother with dinner. Mr. Robichaux remained at the gate, his eyes watching off into the distance. Just beyond the mechanic’s shop, he could see a blur growing. A quarter of an hour later, the blur had grown enough that Mr. Robichaux could see there was someone moving surrounded by what seemed to be a ball of dust. His wife called him in to dinner, but he kept his post at the gate. Before dusk, the flurry had stopped in front of Mr. Robichaux’s home.

“How was the border, Morgan?” he asked, releasing the latch on the gate to allow the figure in the midst of the dust to pass by. The girl shook her head, signaling that she would not speak until they were inside. She was desperate to remove her shoes after such a long journey. Morgan slipped her feet from her shoes, the soft sound of calloused skin on animal hide filling the small shack. The scene had played out many times in this small Cajun home, and Morgan looked the same each time despite the years that passed. She held the shoes in her hands for a moment, examining the worn patches where the sole met the top. She would need a new pair, but that could wait.

Mr. Robichaux took this as his moment to speak. “They will not let just anyone in and out,” he said slowly. “They are afraid of burglars invading.” He knew that there was talk about detaining the radicals now, those who looted the dozens of half-empty homes. New Orleans was hit the hardest by this fear, but the little towns surrounding the area were also devastated by crime. “I fear for you.”

Morgan shook her head and smiled. “There is no need to, brother. I will stay awhile and then find my way out. They cannot keep me here forever,” she said, confidence rising with very note of her voice. She clasped her hands behind her back and Mr. Robichaux resisted the urge to take her by her delicate shoulders and shake her. She didn’t understand. “After all, I’m just a dancer?” And to prove her point she twirled out into the room once more, presenting to her family the best pirouette she could manage in such confined space. Her nephews and niece clapped their hands, delighting in the beauty of such movement.

She set her shoes beside the fireplace and drifted to the center of the room, nudging past the roughly worked table that only seated three and the trundle mattress that her brother’s children shared. She didn’t notice the lack of space; instead she closed her eyes and leaned her head back, her long dark hair grazing the small of her back. Her arms rose up to drift into a loose arrow toward the ceiling, swaying gently as she turned on the spot. After dancing for miles, her body could not manage to be still.

“Where have you come from today, sister?” Mr. Robichaux asked.

“I don’t know. Here and there, I guess. Not too far. A dozen miles perhaps?” she shrugged and let her arms part in the air. Mr. Robichaux’s wife stopped her clattering of pots and pans and fell silent as she sat at the table with her children, transfixed by the grace portrayed by Morgan’s youthful body. Mr. Robichaux turned away.

“Oh, come now. I won’t be a burden, I promise. Just for the night and then I’m off again. They tell me the council three towns over desire a performance again,” she smiled, her hips still swaying musically though she abandoned her dance to stand beside her brother. With the floods and the poverty, traveling dancers were one of few forms of entertainment nowadays.

“What makes you think they will just let you leave again? Things are different here, Morgan,” Mr. Robichaux kept his eyes away from his sister’s gaze.

“What could they possibly want with me?” She took his hand from behind, coaxing him into turning to face her.

“What they want with any of us. Our lives,” Mr. Robichaux muttered. He looked away from her again, watching his children as they set the table for dinner. “Why do you not just stay with us, sister? We would be glad to have you until you are ready to marry. You belong here with us,” he said, the offer easily slipping from his mouth. Just as it had every time he had offered when she came home. She had denied him twenty-four times. Each refusal had come with the same naïve smile and shake of her head.

Morgan met his expectations, shaking her head so the long tresses that fell down her back shake, the light filtering in the window glossing over the age-defying strands.

“They need me elsewhere, brother. I will move on at the end of the week,” she said, opening the cupboard beside her sister-in-law to bring out six bowls that soup would be ladled into it. “Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow I will see Miss Rose.”

---

Rose hummed lightly as she swept, moving slowly around the room. Her feet moved heavily in her old age, but the steps were still recognizable as a waltz. Rose and her sisters had been trained in the European ways of dance while they were young, before their father had moved the family back to the small town just outside of New Orleans where he had lived as a child. Now, as an old woman with her two sisters long gone as ashes scattered in the wind, she is content as a teacher of etiquette to the young girls of the village.

But the girls have stopped coming. It became unnecessary for a girl to know how to dance. But Rose knew that it was not simply that there was no necessity for dancing. Instead, it became too risky to send their daughters out after school, to pass the potential burglars and soldiers as they leered at the pretty little girls. Dance slippers became too costly, a luxury for families who were starting over after the floods.

Rose settled the broom handle against the wall and felt the sunlight’s warmth lessen on her back.

“Are you well, Morgan?” she asked. She could hear the soft pad of the girl’s feet and knew the presence of their delicate steps, knew there was a shadow falling over her cracked linoleum floor.

“Yes, Miss Rose.” Morgan stood respectfully at the door, head bowed as she stared at her bare feet. She never could dance with shoes on. Rose turned from the broom and beckoned Morgan into her house. “I meant to come for your birthday… but there was trouble at the borders.”

“Yes, I know of the difficulties of travel these days,” Rose said. She watched Morgan place a short wooden stool beside the large chair in the corner and took the girl’s hand before allowing herself to be led to the chair. Morgan perched on the stool. “Your brother has asked you to stay?”

“Of course,” Morgan answered. “He wants me to marry.”

“And you cannot?”

“You know that I—”

“You will not,” Rose corrected herself.

“Would it be fair, Rose? To find a man that I will never truly love, to settle and give him children while he slowly dies?” Morgan knew that if she married now, it would be a never-ending cycle. She’d always seem younger than every husband she married and every child she bore. She would never be content to grow old and dwindle away in a man’s kitchen.

No, it was easier for her to flit from village to village performing and smiling for the masses. Her body would never show the wear of such physical work, her face would never sag from the years. Dancing kept her young, and her youthful nature made it hard for even her brother to remember her age. She would always be able to perform, and it did not occur to her that any other force could stop her dancing.

“You could love a man, Morgan.” Rose knew even as she spoke it that it was not in the girl’s nature. She was too nomadic; she ran too quickly and breathed too deeply. She was too young, eternally blessed with oblivion concerning old age. Morgan could not settle.

“Never as much as I love dance, never half as much.” Morgan glanced heavily out the doorway as she shook her head. Outside the thick tree trunks showed sign of rot, but no one had time yet to cut them down and prevent further mishap.

“You know that within the year, all the young women will be paired off,” Rose said after a moment’s pause. “Where will you be with all the eligible men married? The township looks down on the old maids. I should know,” Rose advised.

“Content. Free?”

““Who will protect you from burglars? When you finally must make your home here and looters come in the middle of the night. What then?”

“I will dance for them, charm them into behaving,” Morgan answered with a laugh.

Rose shakes her head at the girl’s hopeful doubt. “No, those kind of men are not fooled by your beauty, Morgan.”

“Then maybe it is time I go. By the end of the week,” Morgan stands up from the stool, her feet instantly finding third position as she offers Rose a plié out of habit.

“You will always have refuge here,” Rose said in acknowledgment of the girl’s signal of exit. “And there is always Samuel.” The name itself was enough to make Morgan pause in her step.

Morgan shook her head as she left Rose’s home. She did not want to believe in Samuel as a last resort. She did not want to have a last resort.

---

“Home by dusk, you know the rules,” a soldier on the streets said as Morgan walked by. She scowled at him, remembering previous years when she and Mr. Robichaux were children. They would run the streets late into the night until their mother scolded them, but then it had been their mother, not the soldiers.

“I follow the old customs,” she said, stopping to turn back toward him.

“Ay, but there are new customs. Best be following them, miss.” The soldier’s accent was unidentifiable to Morgan. She hadn’t heard it in any of the neighboring towns she danced in. The people in other parts of the country all sounded like her friends here.

“No one I’ve spoken to claims them,” she said. A line of frustration etched itself into the soldier’s forehead and he stepped forward.

“Then no one around here has much sense. Best be getting home before I report you,” he said, his hand going to rest on the club at his belt. “Such a pretty thing. Young girl like you wouldn’t survive long caged in.” Morgan stood defiantly, making no move to be on her way. He tightened his grip on the club.

“More sense here on this street than in your regime.”

She didn’t even flinch as her body fell to the dirt road, as the soldier’s club met the back of her shoulder or his boot met her stomach. She just closed her eyes and tried her best to push against his constricting limbs.

---

Samuel leaned over Morgan’s bruised body. He had found her in a heap, left for dead on the side of the road, and brought her home to Mr. Robichaux’s.

“Will she be alright?” Mr. Robichaux asked as he paced the room. He had sent the children outside to play when Samuel had shown up this morning, Morgan in his arms.

“I think she will be. If she rests and stays out of sight, if she does not offer them any more trouble,” he glanced meaningfully at Mr. Robichaux, as if to remind him of Morgan’s nature. As teenagers, everyone had expected Samuel and Morgan to marry. Before the flood, before the soldiers, before Morgan discovered there was more freedom in traveling. “She must learn that there are rules to follow now, Mr. Robichaux.”

The brother nodded.

“They are looking for her. Other towns have spoken of her dancing and they think she may be spreading her ideas to the younger generation,” Samuel said. Mr. Robichaux reached across the cot to hold his sister’s hand. “You are hiding a fugitive, Mr. Robichaux,” Samuel said after a moment. Mr. Robichaux turned and the two men met each other’s eyes.

“She cannot always hide, can she? She dances like no other, there is such… such youth in her body yet that she must be free from these people we have let take our lives,” Mr. Robichaux’s voice rose as he defended his sister. There must be some loophole. It was not the dancing alone that threatened her existence. It was her refusal to take these new ways without question. She did not seem to understand that precautions had to be taken now. She did not want to understand.

“She is a beautiful dancer, Mr. Robichaux,” Samuel replied. “I know that well, more than any other man, maybe. But she must stop dancing. She will have to settle down and marry if she wants to remain here.”

Mr. Robichaux shook his head before he saw the hesitation in Samuel’s demeanor.

“You are my friend, Samuel,” Mr. Robichaux said slowly. “You are her friend.” But Morgan’s rescuer did not reply. Instead he bowed his head stiffly and left the house.

---

The following week, Morgan was well enough to leave her brother’s house. While he was off working in the fields, she crept from her sister-in-law’s distracted care to roam the streets of New Orleans. At mid-day, Morgan expected the women to be crowded at the market, gossiping as their children tugged to be free of their motherly grips. She expected to have to avoid being run down by a cart and horse or men peddling their wares from the baskets on their bicycles. But she only passed three people on the streets, and all had solemn faces and rushed from one doorway to the next.

She walked openly in the street, stopping at the corner to remove her shoes so she could twirl across the dirt road. The dust swirled up around her, stinging her eyes and collecting in her hair. After three turns she felt it hard to breathe and paused. In the distance, she could see a mass walking toward her. She squinted, attempting to get a better view. What was it?

As they neared, Morgan realized they were soldiers. Two dozen of them, maybe more. They had rifles leaned against their shoulders, and behind them three men and a woman were shackled together as they half-walked and were half-dragged.

They approached her calmly, though their faces were stern. One of them stepped out from the group and unrolled a parchment.

“You have been identified as a conspirator and an enemy of our country,” the man said. He had more stripes on his sleeve than the rest of them. Morgan was more distracted by his stripes than his words. She heard him, but did not understand his meaning.

“A conspirator?” she laughed. “I am only standing in the streets. They told me I cannot be out after dusk. What now? Must I also hide my face at noon?” She shook her head and turned on the man, her hair swinging out behind her.

She began to hum lightly as she walked away from the soldiers. And, now that the dust had settled from before, she let the normal sache of her walk rise in the movement of her hips. Morgan believed the men had moved on after a case of mistaken identity and began again to twirl childishly. The soldiers gazed at her for a moment, the youth of her nature perhaps reminding them of their children back home. Morgan continued to hum the slow song they had played for her at her last performance until she felt the clasp of hands around her wrists and chains being set to her ankles.

“Morgan Robichaux of New Orleans, you are under arrest for refusal to comply with the laws of the land,” the man from before stated. He made the entire ordeal sound dignified – proper, even. But the hands tore at her wrists and as she struggled, as she tried to fight her way out of these human constraints, the men grew more annoyed with her disobedience. Finally one of them had the sense to push her to the ground and another delivered a quick, sharp blow to her head with the butt of his rifle.

---

Mr. Robichaux brought Morgan’s body back this time, shaking his head and holding his youngest child by the hand as the family watched another grave added to the family plot.

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