Wildwood Dancing (24 page)

The owl cried out again. I saw it alight on a branch down the hill, where the forest opened up to the lakeshore. I was running so fast that I could not stop. I stumbled between sharp-leaved holly bushes and out onto the open ground, the little crown still clutched in my hand.

“Jena! Quick!” my sister was saying, and when I looked up, I saw that the person with her was not haughty, black-booted Tadeusz, but the slighter form of the young man in the black coat: the man about whom, it seemed, I had been quite wrong.

“Are you all right?” I asked Tati, sure that I could hear the sound of running footsteps and of barking not far behind us.

“I’m fine. I ran away and hid, and Sorrow found me.” In her chalk-pale face, my sister’s eyes were shining bright. “But he says we have to go.”

“You should not have come here.” Sorrow’s voice was muted; he, too, was glancing over his shoulder. “You put yourselves in peril. If I aid you, I break a vow and endanger the innocent. You must go quickly.”

His sister
, I thought. He must be bound to obey the Night People, or she would be hurt. That was cruel.

“I only wanted to see you,” Tati said in a whisper.

“I know that, dear heart, and the sight of you fills me with joy. But you must go now, quickly, before they reach the shore. Do not come here at Dark of the Moon. Promise me you won’t come again.”

“I promise.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Sorrow enfolded her in his arms, and I had to look away, for he held her with such tender passion that it made my cheeks burn. I felt like an intruder. I remembered Tadeusz’s insinuating talk about
wanting
. And I remembered the young man with green eyes who had looked at me in just the way Sorrow looked at Tati—as if I were the sun, moon, and stars, all wrapped into one. For a moment I had believed that might be real for me, too, until Drǎguţa’s mirror had shown how cruelly deceptive such daydreams could be. I gazed over the lake and saw the owl fly out to land in a birch that grew on the first of many small islands there. The Deadwash was hard frozen. With sinking heart, I knew what we must do.

“Farewell,” Sorrow said, and his voice was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

“When will I see you?” Tati asked him as I drew her away, down toward the frozen lake. “I can’t bear this!”

“Wouldn’t Drǎguţa help you?” I looked back at Sorrow as I stepped out onto the ice. “Couldn’t you approach her?”

“Go!” whispered Sorrow. “Go before they see you.” And he vanished under the trees.

The white owl led us all the way across Tǎul Ielelor. The ice was slick—by the time we reached the other side we were bruised, exhausted, and freezing. Tati was crying. I was oddly
dry-eyed, my heart still pounding with fear and exertion, my mind busily trying to make sense of all that had happened. I had not looked back once. The sounds I had heard behind us suggested that pursuit had come only as far as the lakeshore. Something had helped us, something that was not simply a friendly bird from the Other Kingdom.

I looked at the owl now; it was perched on a tree stump, coolly preening its feathers like any ordinary creature. “Thank you,” I said, inclining my head in a gesture of respect. “I don’t know why you helped us, but I honor you for it. I don’t suppose the usual portal’s going to open—not tonight. Can you show us how to get home?”

With a screech, the bird unfolded its wings and flew off. Within moments it was gone. The only light was the faint gleam from the lake’s surface. On this moonless night, the path we usually took up to the castle and the long winding stair would be impossible.

“It’s all right, Jena,” Tati said, surprising me, for I had thought her beyond rational speech. “We can simply walk home through the forest.”

“How could that work? We’d probably go around and around in circles and never get home. We might be like that …” My voice trailed away. If she had not seen that pathetic puppet on the sward, capering before his tormentors, I would not tell her about him. As for the pale child in her black gown, it seemed that she and her brother were not so different from us.

“I don’t think so, Jena. It’s the Bright Between that separates the two worlds, and we’re already across.” She shivered,
drawing her cloak more tightly around her. “I think if we’re careful which way we go, we can get home from here.”

“What are you saying? If that was true, the whole thing with our portal would be … It wouldn’t be a magical charm at all—it would be meaningless, Tati. What about the shadow hands on the stone at Full Moon? If it’s not magic, it should work anytime we try it, and anyone should be able to do it.”

“I don’t know. But I think we should start walking. I’m cold. We need to follow the edge of the lake until we find a path; at least the water is a little brighter than the forest.”

“Tati?” I asked her as we picked our way along the lake-shore.

“What?”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“I told you. That tall one, Tadeusz, tried to take me off somewhere, and I just bolted into the forest, not even thinking where I was going. A moment later, there was Sorrow. I could hear Tadeusz laughing. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen. As if it was all part of some mad game. He frightened me, Jena.”

“Here, there’s a way up beside this stream, between the rocks, I remember it.…” It led to the secret hollow where Gogu and I had enjoyed many picnics. That meant the place where we had slipped and staggered to shore was the scene of Costi’s drowning—the sandy beach where my cousins and I had once placed our precious treasures and started a game whose rules none of us understood. I felt the slight weight of the little crown, which I had slipped into the pocket of my cloak.
I want
to be Queen of the Fairies.…
I was missing something. I was on the verge of solving a puzzle, but the pieces would not quite fit.

“Wait a minute,” I said, and I took the crown out and set it on a flat stone by the stream. “I don’t think I’m ready to take it back yet,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Come on, then. We should go as quietly as we can; Cezar and his hunting party might be out again. I’ll tell you my story when we’re safely home, with the door locked behind us.”

She was right about the portal—at least, right in her guess that we could walk back to Piscul Dracului without the need to pass between worlds once more. We had still more cuts and bruises by the time we came up the track past the barn toward the main entrance to the castle. Our boots were sodden from tramping through the snow and the hems of our skirts coated with forest debris. My ears ached; my nose streamed; I’d never felt so cold in my life. Within the castle, lights still burned. Despite the need to conserve fuel, Florica would not have the place in total darkness on a winter night. One lamp shone over the big iron-hinged doorway.

“It’s going to be locked,” Tati said. “Everything will be locked, except the door up on the terrace.”

If we’d been birds or bats, we could have reached that entry. As it was, I could think of only one solution. “We’ll have to take shelter in the barn,” I said. “We can slip indoors when Petru comes out in the morning. With luck, he won’t see us.”

“What if he does?”

“I know whom I’d rather answer to, out of Petru or Cezar,” I said grimly. “Come on! At least there’s warm straw in there, if you don’t mind sharing it with a cow.”

If we had reached home just a little earlier, if we’d walked just a little faster, this makeshift plan might have worked. If I hadn’t stopped—from some instinct I hardly understood—to leave the crown behind, Cezar wouldn’t have seen us. As it was, we were only halfway over to the barn when we heard voices. A moment later he and his two friends came around a corner of the house and stopped dead, staring at us. Rǎzvan was carrying a lighted torch. Daniel had a crossbow in his hands, with a bolt already in place. Cezar was in front, the ferocious expression on his dark features changing as he saw us to shocked incredulity. He was speechless.

My mind went completely blank.

“Cezar!” exclaimed Tati. “We—we were just … We thought we heard something out here.…”

My cousin’s eyes went from the two of us—shivering and pathetic in our muddy clothes—to the doorway of the house. At that moment, the bolts were slid aside and the door opened to reveal Petru in his nightshirt, with his sheepskin jacket over it. He had an iron poker clutched in one gnarled hand. The knot in my tongue undid itself. I ran across to him.

“Nothing to worry about, Petru. It turned out that it was only Cezar coming back,” I babbled, praying that the old man would understand we needed help. “I’m sorry we woke you up. We can all go back inside now. I really am sorry to have caused such a fuss.”

Petru didn’t say a thing, he just looked at me, then backed into the house. He muttered something about Florica and hot drinks and vanished in the direction of the kitchen. Cezar seized my arm and marched me indoors. I could feel the vibration of anger in his touch, and as soon as we were in the hallway, I wrenched my arm away.

“What have I told you, over and over?” he shouted. “You girls must never go out after dusk, especially on your own! I can’t believe you were so foolish as to venture outside at night. It could have been anything out there! And why in God’s name didn’t you wait for Petru? You must leave these things to me, Jena. I thought you’d grasped that basic fact.”

He grabbed me by the arm again and pulled me along after him in the direction of the kitchen. The others had gone ahead without a word.

Florica was boiling a kettle, bleary-eyed, a big coat of Petru’s partly covering her night attire. Her silent husband was setting cups on the table. Tati stood shivering convulsively by the stove, her face drained of color. Daniel and Rǎzvan were standing about, looking awkward.

Cezar was still holding on to me. I made a decision: before he began to pick holes in our account of ourselves, I must take preemptive action. “I need to sit down,” I said, finding it all too easy to buckle at the knees and put my other hand on my cousin’s arm for support. I had judged him correctly—he put his arm around me and guided me to a chair. I looked up at him. His eyes were full of suspicion. “I’m really sorry, Cezar,” I said, hating myself, but unable to think of any other way out of
this. “We’ve been stupid, I can see that now. I promise never to do such a thing again.”

Maybe I had overdone it. He narrowed his eyes at me. Florica set a pot of fruit tea on the table, and beside it a flask of warm ţuicǎ, with a little dish of pepper and one of sugar. Neither she nor Petru had said a thing.

“Jena,” said Cezar, “I must ask you some questions. I don’t wish to seem distrustful, but in light of these wild tales that have been raised about the house, I’m duty bound to investigate anything in the least suspicious. How was it that you were able to hear something out in the yard when your bedchamber looks over the other side of the castle? Whatever it was you heard, it was not our hunting party. Only the three of us went out tonight, and it was no farther than the innermost fence, to check that the stock were undisturbed. We went as quietly as we always do, the better to apprehend an evildoer should we chance on one. If you roused Petru, how was it that the two of you were already in the yard in your outdoor clothing while he was only just opening the door? This doesn’t add up. I don’t like it. Petru, what have you to say for yourself?”

Petru was seized by a sudden fit of coughing. It was so severe, he had to excuse himself and leave the room.

“I’d best go and help him, Mistress Jenica,” muttered Florica. “He’s bad when it takes him like this.” And she, too, was gone. Tati began to pour the tea, as if this were one of Aunt Bogdana’s polite gatherings. Through a haze of weariness I thought that at times, the human world could be every bit as strange as the Other Kingdom.

“Anyway,” Cezar said, “it’s the middle of the night—you
must have been fast asleep. Surely only a commotion would wake you. If there’d been any disturbance I would have heard it myself.”

“Jena’s been sleeping very poorly,” said Tati, sliding a cup across to Cezar. “We’re all upset by what’s been happening. She didn’t want to worry you.” It was a bold-faced lie and utterly surprising in view of my sister’s wanly dispirited demeanor of late. Her eyes were still bright, and not just with tears. Perhaps that kiss had given her strength.

“Mmm,” grunted Cezar, sitting down beside me, so close his thigh was against mine. I edged away, trying not to be too obvious about it. “I’m sorry, Jena. All the same—”

I yawned; it owed nothing to artifice. “Could we talk about this in the morning?” I asked him in as sweet a tone as I could muster.

“Drink your tea,” Cezar said. “Get warm. You’re shivering—here.” He took off his thick cloak and put it around my shoulders. It was, in fact, wonderfully warm.

“Thank you,” I said in a small voice. “I’m truly sorry.” And in a way I was; sorry that Tati had taken it into her head to cross a forbidden margin, and sorry that we had not been able to reach home undetected; sorry that such sad things existed as those I had witnessed at Dark of the Moon.

“All right, Jena; don’t distress yourself.” Cezar patted my hand. “I can wait for an accounting. But when it comes, I want the truth.”

Gogu was on my pillow, sitting so still he might have been dead. When I got into bed, he edged away from me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have taken you with me.”

Crouched between my pillow and Tati’s, the frog turned reproachful eyes on me. The shutters were closed over his thoughts, but I needed no words to know what he was feeling.

“We
are
back safely, Tati and I. We didn’t meet some terrible fate,” I told him.

He blinked. There was a whole world of meaning in it.

“Gogu? Will you forgive me? I can’t go to sleep if you’re angry. I truly am sorry.”

A torrent of furious distress came from him.
You lied to me. I’ll just slip out and bring her back, you said. And you’d promised never to go away from me again. How can I look after you if you leave me behind?

I struggled for an answer that would not insult him.