Wildwood Dancing (25 page)

Beside me, Tati had slipped under the quilt, pulling it up almost over her head. “Go to sleep, Jena,” she mumbled. “It’s almost morning.”

“Gogu,” I whispered, “I did slip out and bring her back. It was just a bit farther than I expected. And I’m upset by what I saw—things I wouldn’t want anyone to see, not even you. Things so bad I can’t even talk about them. But you’re right. I needed you. I knew that as soon as I got there.”

You think me worthless. You think because I am a frog, I cannot stand by you
.

His anger hurt me terribly. I had never seen him like this, not in all the years we had been together. Tears sprang to my eyes. “That’s rubbish, Gogu, and you know it,” I sniffed. “You’re my dearest friend, my inseparable companion, and my wise advisor. You’ve got as much heart as any knight on horseback.”

You
say
that
.

“I mean it. I didn’t take you tonight because I was worried I might lose you. That’s the truth. If that happened, I couldn’t bear it.”

“Couldn’t this wait until the morning?” Tati’s voice was an exhausted whisper.

I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t stop crying. Long after Tati had fallen asleep, I felt Gogu’s small damp form jump onto the linen beside my face, and his tongue came out to lick my tears away.

After our Dark of the Moon journey, the idea of our party—which I had hoped might be the solution to several problems—became faintly ridiculous. We were bound to it, nonetheless. The invitations had gone out and acceptances had begun to come in—more than Aunt Bogdana had expected, for she had wondered whether the rumors that were sweeping the valley about us and our home would keep folk away. It seemed that curiosity outweighed fear.

The castle was being given a top-to-toe cleanup by women from the local area. I heard whispered stories about Night People, and about Drǎguţa the witch, as our helpers scrubbed and dusted and polished—and I tried to ignore them. I had a story of my own, and I had not yet told it to Tati.

If I was right about what that vision meant—the two children lost in the forest—I owed it to her to tell her the truth about Sorrow. His parting words had seemed to confirm what I believed: that he was in some kind of servitude to the Night
People, with his sister’s safety the price of obedience. I wondered why he had not told Tati himself.

I held back from giving my sister the news. Once she heard that Sorrow was, in fact, a human boy who had strayed into the Other Kingdom and been kept there for years, growing into a man far away from his own people, how would she ever be persuaded to give him up? The cruel thing about it was that even if he was a mortal man, he was still beyond her reach as sweetheart, lover, or husband. It seemed that he and his sister had been living in the Other Kingdom since they were children. One could not stay so long in Drǎguţa’s realm without partaking of food and drink. Tadeusz had lured them and kept them; kept them too long. They would never be able to live in our world again. They might both be halfway toward becoming Night People by now, or worse. And if Sorrow could not stay here, the solution Tati might seize on would be for her to go there. I knew her kind heart. As soon as I told her his story, that was what she would want. Even if it meant a future in that shadowy, cruel realm we had glimpsed at Dark of the Moon, I thought she would do it for him.

I could hold back from divulging the story, of course. I did not plan to tell her of my other vision in Drǎguţa’s mirror: that of a young man with green eyes whom I had thought for a wonderful moment I could love, until the image revealed the monster beneath. I had no idea what that meant. Perhaps it was a warning not to trust too easily. I had not passed on Anastasia’s crushing words to me, nor the news that it had been my sister
whom Tadeusz had wanted all along. Indeed, Tati and I had hardly spoken of our experience since we came home, despite our younger sisters’ volleys of questions.

Paula was our most reliable source of information on just about anything to do with the Other Kingdom. I seized my opportunity to quiz her while we were doing the final hemming on our party gowns. The two of us had taken our work up to a little tower room where the light was good. Our only companion was Gogu, crouched down in a roll of green silk thread, sulking. He still hadn’t entirely forgiven me and, in a way, I could see his point.

“Paula, I want to ask you something.”

“Mmm?”

“When people go to the Other Kingdom and stay there, they can’t ever come back, can they? Not if they’ve been eating the food.”

She nodded. “Everybody knows that.”

“But folk do come back sometimes. I’ve heard stories of people vanishing and being gone for hundreds of years, and then suddenly appearing in the woods again. They’re out of their wits, usually. So it must be possible.”

“Time works differently there,” said Paula, pushing her spectacles higher on her nose and peering closely at her sewing. “It can be quicker or slower than our time, whatever they want it to be. You might be gone for years and years in our time, but you’d only have been in the Other Kingdom a day or less. You might not have touched the food. That’s why people go mad. Imagine coming back and finding everyone you knew had been
dead for a hundred years. Why do you want to know that, Jena? I wish you’d tell us what happened that night.”

I shuddered. “It was horrible. Dark and cruel. I don’t want any of you even thinking about such things. Be glad you didn’t see it.”

Paula gave me a funny look. “How did you get there?” she asked me.

I ignored the question. “Paula, what if someone from the Other Kingdom wanted to stay in our world? Is the rule the same?”

“I don’t know, Jena. Anyway, I suspect the rules can be broken if Drǎguţa decides that’s the right thing. I’ve wondered whether the only reason anyone can cross over is her deciding to let it happen.”

I looked at her. “Really? Tati said that, too: that the way we open the portal doesn’t mean anything special; that it’s only because Drǎguţa approves that we can go to the Other Kingdom at all. At Dark of the Moon, once we’d gotten back across the Deadwash, we just walked home.”

“Is this about Sorrow?” Paula was astute as ever.

“I can’t say. I have to talk to Tati first. There’s something I need to tell her.”

Cezar had been asking questions of his own. It was clear to me that he did not believe our explanation for being out at night. But since we maintained our story about strange noises, and Petru managed to back us up without quite telling lies, my cousin made no progress in his search for answers. Cezar was edgy; his ill temper manifested itself without warning, and nobody
was safe from his sharp tongue. I gathered from Ivan that more and more of the valley men were trying to get out of the hunting party. It had been many days since Ivona’s death. With nothing useful discovered, and not so much as a sniff of a Night Person detected, folk were starting to say they’d rather be safe in bed behind a locked door at night and spend their energies by day looking after their stock and keeping their families fed and warm. Someone had suggested, behind my cousin’s back, that continuing the hunt could only offend the folk of the wildwood further—that Cezar risked bringing down another act of violence on the community. A group of the local men made a formal request that the master of Vǎrful cu Negurǎ erect a new crucifix on the slopes above the mill, and Cezar agreed to pay for it. But he was angry, and we crept around the house as if on eggshells, trying to keep out of his way.

With seven days to go until Full Moon and the party, Aunt Bogdana paid us a visit to check on the supper arrangements. While she was closeted with Florica and her helpers, deep in discussion of pies and puddings, I took Tati up to the tower room. I bolted the door and told her my theory about what I had seen of Sorrow in Drǎguţa’s mirror.

“So I owe you an apology, if I’m right about what it means,” I said at the end of my account. “It seems as if Sorrow isn’t one of the Night People—he isn’t even from the Other Kingdom. Or wasn’t. But he’s trapped there now, he and his little sister. I didn’t like seeing her there, Tati. It looked as if they were making her watch: as if she’d been shown so many bad things that she hardly understood what they were anymore.”

“But why didn’t he
say?
” It was clear she believed my theory.
Her eyes were wide with horror. “Why didn’t he tell me? This is terrible, Jena! We have to help them. I must go there at Full Moon. I must talk to Ileana—”

“No,” I said, before she could work herself up any further. “You’re not going—not this time. We have our own party, remember? We all have to appear at that. Cezar’s suspicious enough already without any of us going missing. Besides, I don’t know how we could help. From what Sorrow said when we were leaving, he’s obliged to do the Night People’s bidding in order to stop worse harm from coming to his sister. And the Night People are powerful. Ileana didn’t even put in an appearance at their revels. You must have felt it, Tati—the way they twist and turn things, and meddle with your thoughts. Against that kind of strength, we’re like little feathers drifting on a stream, carried along wherever it decides to take us.”

“You said yourself”—Tati was fixing me with her eyes—“that Sorrow should ask Drǎguţa for help. She’s supposed to be the real power of the wildwood. Couldn’t she change things, if we explained how important it is?”

“You make it sound easy. I don’t even know where she is. I don’t think anyone does. Anyway, if she really is so powerful, why has she let the Night People keep Sorrow and his sister prisoner so long? Even if they can never come back to their old lives, at least in Ileana’s world they wouldn’t be … well, slaves, or whatever they are.”

Tati’s voice was a whisper. “Are you saying you don’t believe in Drǎguţa? Are you saying you don’t believe there’s a power in the wildwood that’s strong enough to defeat evil, Jena?”

I felt as if I were suddenly teetering on a precipice.

Of course we believe. Every morning, when I wake up on your pillow, I see that certainty in your eyes, Jena
.

“Of course there is, Tati. We have to believe it.” I thought of the little crown that I had decided, for a reason I did not understand, to leave behind in the forest. “And if it’s safe for us to go across at next Full Moon—the one after the party—I suppose we can ask Ileana what to do.”

The day of the party came, and Piscul Dracului began to fill with guests. Every chamber that was even slightly suitable had been dusted and mopped, bed linen had been borrowed and quilts aired. Space had been cleared in our stables for many horses. Our activities had provided work for almost everyone in the settlement, and I imagined it was costing Cezar a pretty penny. Folk came early—wanting to be safely within our walls before dusk fell—then retired to their chambers to rest before the party began.

I felt sick with nerves. I wished I had never had such a mad idea. How could I make polite conversation with suitable young men and their mothers when I was all churned up with worry about the Night People and Sorrow and what Cezar might do if he found out the truth? He’d been questioning Florica and Petru further, I knew it: I could see the signs of strain on their faces as they went steadily about their work.

At the appointed time, I ran upstairs from the kitchen, where I had been helping with some last-minute baking. I found Tati sitting on our bed, still in her working dress, and
Iulia with her shawl on over the gray creation and a forbidding look on her face. Paula had a pair of heavy irons heating on our little stove. She was pressing Stela’s frock with each in turn.

“You’d better start getting ready,” I told Tati. “Aunt Bogdana wants us to help her formally greet the guests as they come down.” I got into the crimson gown, wishing Aunt had not told the seamstress to make it quite so tight in the bodice or so low in the neck. In this dress, I certainly didn’t look flat-chested. “Iulia, would you mind doing my hair?”

When the time came, I went downstairs alone. Tati muttered that she would come later. I thought she would put in an appearance, if only for the sake of avoiding Cezar’s attention, but it was clear that she intended to play as small a part in the festivities as she could get away with. Since Iulia was refusing to come down early in the gray gown and Paula was occupied with helping Stela get dressed, it fell to me to stand beside Cezar and my aunt to greet the first arrivals. In the crimson gown I felt as though everyone was staring at me. Iulia had pinned my hair up high, exposing my neck and upper chest, and Cezar’s eyes had gone straight to me the moment I appeared in the party chamber. I would have felt very much alone in the crowd if I had not had Gogu nestled safely in my pocket. After Dark of the Moon, I hadn’t dared suggest he stay upstairs.

The weather was bitterly cold. Outside, men from Vǎrful cu Negurǎ were leading horses away to the shelter of the stables and setting chocks under the wheels of carts. The kitchen was full of women from the neighborhood, putting finishing touches to pastries and sweetmeats under Florica’s supervision. In the grand room with the pillars, where a fire on the broad
hearth was smoking more than was quite desirable, the air was chilly. The village band sat in the little gallery, blowing on their fingers.

“It will warm up when everyone’s down,” Aunt Bogdana whispered in my ear. “Now, be especially sweet to that lady in the purple, Jena—her son stands to inherit a very grand estate near Sibiu, and the uncle’s a
voivode
. Ah, Elsvieta, how delightful to see you! Paul, how are you? And this is your son? Vlad, is it? Allow me to introduce my niece.…”

One by one, my sisters came downstairs to join the increasing crowd. Paula—uncomfortable in her pink—had a forced smile on her face as she greeted Aunt Bogdana’s friends. Stela, who did in fact look charming in her lacy dress, glanced desperately around for anyone her own age. No Ildephonsus here; no friends for dances and daisy chains. If these folk had younger sons and daughters, they had left them behind, in the care of servants. At least Stela could plead weariness and go to bed early.