Twirling Book Princess

The baby seemed asleep with its head on her should,er but even it was swaying its hands gently in time to the music.
And then the music stopped and there was silence in the square, a muffled silence, like the silence of falling snow, all noise swallowed by the night and the bodies in the square, no one stamping or shuffling, scarcely even breathing.
A clock began to strike somewhere close at hand: the chimes of midnight, and they came.