Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing
I took off the red gown, knowing that I would never wear it again, and slipped into my night robe. I put Gogu on the side table. Stela was asleep. Tati lay in bed with her eyes open. The others were sitting on Iulia’s bed, conversing in whispers. Nobody looked happy. On some level, perhaps, our party had been a success, but the possibility of finding suitors we genuinely liked seemed farther away than ever. I remembered Tati saying once that the Other Kingdom might spoil us for life in our own world, because nothing could ever match up to it. Tonight I was beginning to wonder whether that was true.
“Jena!” exclaimed Paula as I turned and she caught sight of my face. “You look terrible! It wasn’t as bad as that, was it?”
I cleared my throat. “Cezar just proposed to me,” I said. “I turned him down.” I had not planned to tell them just yet—the hurt of his abusive kiss was still raw. The words had spilled out despite myself.
There was a stunned silence. Even Tati stared at me, getting up on her elbow to do so.
“True,” I said. “He kissed me, and groped me, and it was disgusting. I tried to be nice about refusing, but I lost my temper. I’ve made him angry. Even angrier than he was before.” I poured water into Gogu’s bowl. There was comfort in the small daily routine.
“I bet he thinks you’re a challenge,” said Paula.
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“Yes, like wild boar to be hunted,” I said. “If I married him, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d crushed the last spark of spirit in me. I can’t think how he ever believed I’d say yes.” But, I thought, perhaps underneath the man who seemed hungry for power and dominance—the one who feared the Other Kingdom so much he felt bound to destroy it—a little boy still existed: the solemn child who had idolized his big brother, and had felt responsible for an even smaller cousin since the day tragedy struck the three of them. Perhaps he had always believed that one day he and I would be together. If so, it was sad. I would never marry him—his touch disgusted me, and his anger frightened me.
I snuffed out the last candle and got into bed beside Tati. I could not even begin to talk to her. Curiously, as the image of my sister and her lover wrapped in each other’s arms came to my mind, what I felt most strongly seemed to be envy. To love like that, to be so lost in it that you forgot everything else in the world, must be a wonderful feeling—powerful and joyous.
I wished the green-eyed man in the mirror could be what he had seemed at first. I wanted him to be real, and to love me, and not to be a monster from the Other Kingdom. Why did things have to keep twisting around and going dark when all I was trying to do was keep my family safe and live my life the way Father would expect? Tears began to trickle down my cheeks.
A little later, Gogu hopped across and settled damply on the pillow.
“Jena?”
I had not expected Tati to say anything. “Mmm?”
“Thank you.”
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“For what?”
“You saved Sorrow tonight. If you hadn’t warned us, Cezar would have seen him. Caught him. I didn’t think you would do that.”
“You can’t have thought I’d stand by and let Cezar run him through with whatever was handy.”
“No, of course not,” Tati said in a murmur. “But you still want the problem to be gone, don’t you? You’re still hoping Ileana will send them away and that I’ll never see him again.
You were angry with us.”
“Of course I was angry,” I said. “He must never come here again, Tati. Did you plan this? How?”
“I see him sometimes in the woods.” Her whisper was barely audible. “I told him about the party. I didn’t think he would come, Jena, truly.”
“He shouldn’t have. It’s not just Cezar he has to fear, or the other men of the valley. Coming here to see you might get him in trouble with Tadeusz as well.” I thought of the terrible things I had seen at Dark of the Moon—the imaginative ways the Night People had devised for tormenting those human folk unlucky enough to become their slaves. I remembered Anastasia telling me that Tadeusz wanted Sorrow to see him with Tati.
That would be a very particular kind of torture. “Sorrow must love you very much,” I said, “to take such a risk for you. Please don’t do this again, and please don’t go out into the forest looking for him. Promise me.”
“All right. As long as we go across at next Full Moon.”
“I think,” I said grimly, “that’s going to depend on Cezar.
Good night, Tati. Sweet dreams, Gogu.” I did not tell my sister 250
how much Sorrow’s leap from the wall had troubled me; how it seemed to me that if he could do that, he was no longer so different from the folk who had captured him as a child. I wondered what they ate in the realm of the Night People, he and his poor sister. I fell asleep with dark images in my mind. My dreams were a chaotic jumble of angry voices and violent hands.
Cezar didn’t say a word about what had happened. In fact, he seemed to be on his best behavior with all of us. Still, I was suspicious. It wasn’t like Cezar to forgive and forget.
The conduct of the business had been taken right out of my hands. Cezar claimed Father’s desk and told me, politely enough, that for the rest of winter there would be no figures for me to reconcile since his own people at Vârful cu Negur˘a would deal with everything. In short, there was nothing for me to do, and no reason for me to be in the workroom. He didn’t actually say this last part, perhaps knowing the explosion it would generate, but he made the message clear.
I protested, but not for long. To tell the truth, after the night of our party, I could hardly bear to talk to my cousin. I was finding it hard to sleep. When I did, my dreams were tangled and distressing. I’d be dancing with a young man: not Cezar, or the odious Vlad of the frog experiments, or any of the folk from Ileana’s glade, but a man with green eyes and unkempt dark hair, who held me firmly but gently and smiled his funny smile as he looked at me. I’d feel radiant with happiness, full of a contentment I had never known before, not even on the most thrilling of all our nights of Full Moon dancing. Then the man would bend his head to say something—perhaps Trust me, Jena—
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and his face would change to the grotesquely ugly thing I had seen in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror. Around me, the bright chamber would fade away. The light would become livid, green and purple, and sounds of screaming would fill my ears. My partner’s sweet smile would become a grimace—all long, sharp teeth and pale, flicking tongue. I would wake up covered in cold sweat, my heart racing in terror. Sometimes I shouted and woke my sisters. Sometimes my dream was different: in this one, I was chasing Tati through the forest as someone led her away. Whether it was Sorrow or Tadeusz I could not see. I ran and ran, and the harder I tried the farther ahead they moved, until they reached a cliff top looking out over a great ravine filled with mist. Jump, said the man, and as I tried to reach her, my sister leaped out to be swallowed up by the vapor.
I kept these dreams to myself, but the memory of them was with me even in waking hours. To keep the nightmares at bay, I tried to make plans. I must get a letter to Father somehow, without Cezar knowing. A truthful letter, perhaps addressed to Gabriel, in which I set out what I could about our problems and let them know how badly we needed help. Who would take it? The snow still lay in heavy drifts, piled up against walls, blanketing roofs, burdening trees. Winters were long in the Carpathians. A possible solution presented itself—but I did not write the letter, not yet. Cezar had a habit of reading anything left lying around.
The days passed. The young men helped Petru with the farm chores, which was a good thing. They also accompanied us girls anywhere we went outside the castle, which was not 252
so good. Cezar had tightened his watchfulness, and it became near-impossible for any of us to slip away for a solitary walk. I spent a lot of time in the tower room, a favorite haunt for me and Gogu. Piscul Dracului was full of nooks and crannies. I liked the notion that however long we lived here, there would always be new ones to discover. This particular tower had seven arched windows with views out over snowy wood-land, and the ceiling was blue, with stars on it. A long time ago I had brought an old fur rug up here and a pile of threadbare cushions.
I was lying on my back on the rug, looking up at the painted stars and doing my best not to think of our problems. Gogu was perched on my midriff, unusually still.
“We’re not going to talk about anything bad today, Gogu,”
I told him. “We’re going to discuss only things we like. You start.”
It was your idea. You start.
“Paddling in the stream in springtime,” I said. “Making pancakes. The smell of a wood fire. The sound of a waterfall.”
Gogu made no response.
“Come on,” I said, a little disheartened. “You must be able to think of one good thing.”
Sleeping on our pillow, side by side.
“Mmm-hm.” His choice surprised me. “If I go a long way back, my memory’s full of good things. We used to fill up the day with adventures. Skating in winter—not on the Deadwash, of course—and swimming in summer, though we weren’t actually supposed to, not when we were playing with Costi 253
and Cezar. Aunt Bogdana had the idea that it wasn’t appropriate for boys and girls to strip off their clothes and swim together, even though we were only little.”
She thought you’d catch cold.
“How could you know that? I bet you weren’t even born then.”
No response.
“Actually,” I told him, “you’re probably right. Aunt Bogdana adored Costi. I suppose I was lucky she let him out to play at all.”
Green.
“What?”
Nice things. Green is nice. Your green gown with the deep pocket.
I smiled and stroked his back with my finger. “Gogu,” I asked him, “do you think I’ve been unfair to Cezar? He was all right as a little boy. But he’s grown up so obnoxious and so sure of himself and . . . well, I am actually quite scared of him. He’s so much bigger and stronger than any of us, and people don’t stand up to him when they should.”
A pause, then: I thought we were only talking about things we like.
Your brown hair, so soft—lovely to hide in.
“Hmm,” I murmured, surprised again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this description, which would have been apt for a favorite bit of undergrowth. “Father coming home. That’ll be the best thing of all. Father coming home fit and well—and soon. ”
True love.
I lifted my head off the musty cushion and stared at him.
“True love is looking less and less likely, if it’s my future you’re 254
talking about,” I said. “Or do you mean Tati and Sorrow? That’s not a good thing—it’s a disaster waiting to happen. We weren’t meant to be talking about that.”
True love is the best thing. It’s the thing that makes troubles go away.
“Even for frogs?” I couldn’t help asking.
Gogu’s eyes closed to slits, and he went silent on me.
“Gogu, I was joking,” I said, sitting up and, in the process, dislodging him onto the fur rug. “I know you’re not an ordinary frog. It’s just that . . .”
He hopped off the rug and concealed himself somewhere on the elaborate mosaic floor, which was patterned with tiny dragons. In the muted blues and greens and grays of the tiling, I could see nothing of him.
“Gogu,” I said, “come out, please. There’s enough trouble right now without you and me getting cross with each other. If I upset you, I’m sorry.”
Not a twitch.
“Gogu,” I said, kneeling on the tiles and waiting for him to move so I could pounce, “if you would tell me what you are and where you come from, it might make things between us far easier. You’ve never said. You’ve never given me even the tiniest clue. We’re supposed to trust each other better than anyone, aren’t we? Surely it would be easy enough just to say. I always tell you the truth.” I realized that this was no longer accurate: I had not told him much at all about my visit to Tadeusz’s dark revels. I had not told him about the young man in the mirror, or about what Anastasia had said to me. He’d been too upset and too angry with me to hear it. As for what he 255
really was, I had long ago given up trying to guess. To me he was simply Gogu, and perfect just as he was. It was a shame he was increasingly unhappy with that. “If you don’t like it when I treat you as a frog,” I went on, “maybe you should be honest with me and tell me exactly what you are.”
He made no appearance. His mind remained shut tight against me. Gogu was expert at camouflage. It took a hammering at the door to startle him into moving; I picked him up, my heart thumping, and went to open it. Paula was standing outside, her expression anxious.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “I know you probably came up here to be by yourself. But Florica’s crying. I know Cezar’s been asking her questions. She’s really upset, Jena. I heard her say something about leaving Piscul Dracului. I think you’d better come.”
In the kitchen, Florica was shaping rolls on the table while Stela made little dogs and gnomes and trees out of the scraps.
Our housekeeper’s distress was obvious. Her eyes were red and swollen and she would not look up at me, even when I spoke to her by name. As she lifted a roll from the table to the tray, I could see her hands shaking. Iulia, who was feeding wood into the stove, gave me a meaningful look as I came in. They were all expecting me to put things right. It was alarming that my family still had such faith in my ability to solve problems—thus far, I had been a woeful failure.
“Florica,” I said, coming over to sit at the table, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Mistress Jenica.” The formality of this address told me that something was badly amiss.
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“Come on, Florica, tell me. You’ve been crying. It is something.”
Florica muttered a few words about not getting us into trouble and not making things any worse. A moment later she sat down abruptly, her shoulders shaking.
“He said . . .”
“What, Florica?”
“Master Cezar’s been asking questions around the valley—
trying to find out about things so he can go ahead with these plans of his. Someone mentioned Full Moon to him, Jena—told him that was a time when barriers were open. He’s taken it into his head that you and Mistress Tati know something you’re not telling him.”
“Why would this upset you so much, Florica?” I had taken over the task of forming the dough into rolls while Iulia had started brewing tea. Stela put a small arm around Florica’s shoulders.
