Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing
Everything went white. I found myself flying through the air, the sound of a shattering explosion assaulting my ears. I landed with a bone-jarring thump, flat on my back in a scratchy juniper bush. Gogu had been torn from my hands by the blast and was nowhere to be seen. I sat up cautiously as the bright light faded and the lakeshore came back to its gray-green, shadowy self.
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“Gogu?” My voice was thin and shaky. My heart was pounding and my ears were ringing. Distantly, I thought I could hear the sound of an old woman’s derisive laughter.
“Gogu, where are you?”
No response. A terrible, cold feeling began to creep through me. This was Dr˘agu¸ta’s doing. She’d never meant to help me without payment. She’d given me the potion and she’d smiled, and the price she’d wanted was the one she’d asked for in the first place: my precious companion. “Gogu!” I shouted.
“Gogu, if you’re there, come out right now!” I crawled around in the undergrowth, clawing wildly at ferns and creepers.
“Gogu, be here somewhere—please, oh please. . . .”
I was bending to look under a clump of grass when I saw him: a lanky, sprawled figure lying on the shore at some distance from me, as if thrown there. He was pale-skinned, long-limbed, his dark hair straggling down into his eyes. The rags he wore didn’t cover him very well: a considerable amount of naked flesh was on show. He lay limp, perhaps unconscious. Maybe dead. A wanderer, a vagrant. Drunk, probably—
perhaps mad. I was alone out here in the forest. I should run straight home and not look behind me. On the other hand, he might be hurt, and it was freezing. Father had taught us to be compassionate. I couldn’t just leave him.
I crept nearer, my hand gripping the hilt of Petru’s little sharp knife. The young man lay utterly silent. I came still closer, crouching down an arm’s length from him. Not dead: breathing. His face was bony and well formed, a familiar face with a thin-lipped mouth and a strong jaw. No, I told myself.
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No, please. He opened his eyes. Behind the strands of dark hair, they were green as grass. My heart lurched in horror. This was Dr˘agu¸ta’s joke, her cruel joke. This was the lovely young man who had haunted my dreams since Dark of the Moon. Behind that appealing face was the evil creature I had seen in the magic mirror, pursuing and hurting my sisters. And . . .
My skin prickled, my heart felt a sudden deathly chill. Perhaps I had known who it was from the first, although my mind shrank from it. Who else would be there beside T˘aul Ielelor in the middle of winter? There had been nobody—just me and my frog.
“Gogu?” I whispered, backing away with the knife in my hand. “Is it you?” My heart was breaking.
The young man looked at me, not saying a thing. That was cruelest of all: if he had managed even a word or two, some expression of regret, it might have eased the pain just a little. He sat up, wrapping his long arms around his bony knees. Suddenly he was racked with convulsive shivering.
“Here,” I said, taking off my cloak and putting it around his shoulders. “It is you, isn’t it? It has to be. Can you get up? Can you walk?”
I knew I should flee: I should run as fast as I could, away from the Deadwash and out of the wildwood, back home to my sisters. He was a monster. I had seen it with my own eyes. But deep inside me, something wanted to help him—something that could not disregard his beseeching gaze. This was like being ripped apart. I hated Dr˘agu¸ta as I had never hated anyone in my life. If this was the price for a few drops of sleeping potion, it was too high.
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“Gogu?” I ventured again, my voice shaking. If only he would say something—anything—while he was still in this form. How long, I wondered, until that kind, sweet face turned to the mask of hideous decay? How long before this semblance of a human became the thing underneath, an evil being from the world of Dark of the Moon? How long before it turned its rend-ing claws and vicious teeth on me as I fled through the forest? It was a long way home to Piscul Dracului. But how could I turn my back on him? It was cold, and we were in the middle of the forest. And it was Gogu, whom I had promised never to leave behind.
“Have you got somewhere to go?” I asked, hating the way those green eyes were looking at me, full of love and reproach.
“Can you get up and walk?” Despite myself, I held out a hand to help him to his feet. He tried. After a moment, his legs buckled under him and he collapsed in a heap, trembling violently.
“Who were you before?” I asked him. Fear tugged at my feet; sorrow and pity held me still. He wasn’t Gogu anymore.
Surely he could answer the question now, the one he’d never been able to respond to before. “Before you became a frog, were you a man or something else? Tell me, go on. Who were you?”
The young man stared at me without a word. His expression was so sad, it made me want to throw my arms around him and reassure him that everything would be all right. But the words that had come to me at Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror were still in my head: Trust that one, and you will deliver up your heart to be split and skewered and roasted over a fire. It felt as if that were happening right now.
“If you won’t tell me, how can I possibly understand 289
anything?” I burst out. “I don’t want to walk away, but I can’t stay here.” Saying this, I could not look at him. “It’s going to take me a long time to walk home. I don’t think I can fetch help.
There’s only Cezar, and—” I thought of trying to explain this to my cousin; of what would likely be the violent and bloody result: this young man pursued and butchered by a mob of scythe-wielding hunters—or, worse still, turning into his true self and inflicting deadly damage on the men of the valley before he was captured and killed. “I wish you would say something,” I whispered. “It seems terrible to leave you like this. Please tell me who you are.”
Nothing; not a word.
“Then I’m going,” I said, fixing my mind on the vision in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror, the bad part of it. “I have no choice.” I took a step away, but something was holding me back. I turned, looking down, and saw that he was clutching a fold of my gown, his long fingers gripping the woolen fabric, desperate to delay the moment when I would walk away. I made myself meet his eyes; tears welled in mine. He looked forlorn, bereft. His expression was just like the frog’s, those times when I had somehow offended Gogu and he had retreated to the bushes. He’s from the Other Kingdom, I told myself sternly. You’ve seen what he turns into. Don’t let him charm you: he can’t be allowed near Iulia and Paula and Stela.
I reached down and opened his fingers, undoing his grasp as if he were a small child clinging to something forbidden. His fingertips brushed the back of my hand, and I felt his touch all through my body, flooding me with tenderness and longing. I 290
remembered Tadeusz’s chill fingers against my skin, his soft voice and tempting words, and the sensations they had aroused in me. I knew that they had been nothing—nothing at all compared with what I felt now. This was deep and strong and com-pelling, and I needed all my strength to fight it. It was all wrong. It was something I could not have. Yet, cruelly, it felt more right than anything in the world.
“Goodbye, Gogu,” I whispered, then turned my back and fled.
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Chapter Twelve
I arrived home freezing, exhausted, and utterly miserable. Petru smuggled me inside. All around the place there were men with clubs or crossbows or knives, some whom I recognized from Vârful cu Negur˘a and some who were strangers. I spotted Cezar giving them stern instructions. All I could think of was the horrible thing Dr˘agu¸ta had done to me—the cruel trick that had turned my world upside down.
My sisters bundled me out of my damp clothes and into warm, dry ones. Stela brought a stone hot water bottle for my feet. Iulia fetched a jug of tea from the kitchen, with a little dish of bread and pickled eggs, but I could not eat.
“Let’s go through this again, Jena,” Paula said carefully, as if humoring a hysterical child. By this stage I’d stammered out the story, more or less, including a brief account of the young man I had seen in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror and what he had become. I had not given them details of the scene in which the monstrous figure had pursued and hurt them; there was no need for them to share 292
my nightmares. I had shown them Dr˘agu¸ta’s sleeping potion. I couldn’t expect them to understand how I was feeling. If anyone said, Oh well, it was only a frog , I’d scream. “You did actually kiss Gogu? That was what made him change?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe Gogu was just an ordinary boy once,” suggested Stela solemnly. “Until Dr˘agu¸ta enchanted him.”
“There’s nothing ordinary about him. He belongs in the world of the Night People. He looks good on the outside and he’s all bad on the inside. I saw it.”
“And you believe it.” Paula sounded doubtful.
“I heard Dr˘agu¸ta laughing after she’d done it. Paula, there’s no point in talking about this. He’s gone. I was wrong about him all those years—stupidly wrong. Instead of a friend and companion, I was carrying about some”—I shuddered—“some thing that belonged in the dark, out of sight. How could I have made such a mistake?”
“Or perhaps she changed him,” suggested Iulia. “It’s hard to believe that Gogu was an evil creature, Jena. Maybe she took him and left you this other thing in his place. To teach you a lesson.”
“So it was true, then.” Paula was looking thoughtful.
“About you being able to hear Gogu’s thoughts, I mean. When she transformed him into a frog, Dr˘agu¸ta probably gave him that voice to make up for not being able to talk. Otherwise he’d have gone crazy.”
Tati had been silent so far. Now she gave the others a particular kind of look, and the three of them retreated to sit on Paula’s bed.
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“Jena,” said Tati. “Jena, look at me.”
She hadn’t sounded so sensible for quite a while. I looked at her, and she reached out her fingers to wipe the tears from my cheeks. Her hand was all skin and bone. “Surely this can’t be the first time you ever gave Gogu a kiss,” she said.
“It’s not. I don’t think that’s what made him change.
Dr˘agu¸ta just wanted a dramatic moment to do it, and that’s the one she chose. Maybe I deserve punishing, Tati. I’ve messed up everything, and now he’s gone, and I don’t have any answers, and Cezar’s down there, putting armed guards all around the castle.” The tears flowed faster. “Sorry,” I hiccuped. “I just can’t believe I’ve lost him. It’s even crueler than it seems. . . .”
No, I would not tell her that the young man with green eyes had appeared nightly in my dreams. That I had considered him far nicer than any of the young men at the party. That I had imagined dancing with him, and had wished he could be real.
That meant nothing: every single time, the dream had ended with his changing to reveal the monster beneath.
“Jena,” said Tati softly, “we can go across at Full Moon.
Dr˘agu¸ta’s potion will put Cezar’s man to sleep. You can ask Ileana about this, and I can ask about Sorrow. Maybe it can still be set right, all of it. I’m going to ask her whether she will let Sorrow and his sister live in her realm, away from the Night People. You’ve done something really brave, getting the potion for us. Don’t cry, Jena, please.”
“Do you think Gogu will remember the way home?” asked Stela, whose mind was dwelling on the fact that, unaccountably, I had left my friend on his own out in the forest. If she had missed the point about exactly what he was, I was glad of it. “I 294
hope he doesn’t freeze to death, like birds that fall out of the trees in winter.”
“Shh!” hissed Tati. “Don’t upset Jena. She did give him her cloak.”
“If this was one of those old tales,” said Iulia, “he’d turn up on the doorstep here, and Jena would have to grovel to get him back.”
“Hush, Iulia!” Tati’s arm tightened around my shoulders.
“Don’t make this any worse. Until you lose someone you love, you can’t understand what Jena’s feeling.”
“You know,” Paula said, “it would really be more sensible not to go, this Full Moon—even if there are questions you want to ask. If we never opened the portal again, Cezar couldn’t find it.”
Tati and I both looked at her.
“We can’t not go,” Stela said, all big eyes and drooping mouth.
“You’re saying we should never go to the Other Kingdom again?” Iulia had understood what lay behind Paula’s words, and her voice was hushed. “Not ever?”
“That’s common sense,” said Paula. “I don’t like it any more than you do. Where else am I going to be able to talk about the things I love—history, philosophy, and ideas—now that Father Sandu’s gone? But it’s probably the right thing to do.”
There was a silence. As it drew out, I imagined the sounds that might once have filled such an awkward pause and never would again: Gogu’s wry comments, which only I could detect; his little splashing noises in the bath bowl; the soft thump as he landed on the pillow, ready for good-nights and sleep.
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“We do need to go once more, if we can,” I said as tears began to roll down my cheeks again. “I think we have to let Father know what’s happening here. The only way I’m going to get a letter past Cezar is to ask for help in the Other Kingdom.”
I would take Grigori up on his offer. I thought he was strong enough to look after himself from here to Constan¸ta and back.
“What will happen after that, I don’t know. Paula may be right. Maybe it is the end.”
As we lay in bed later, Tati reached out under the quilt and took my hand in her own. Hers was cold as a wraith’s. “Jena?”
she whispered. “I’m sorry you’re so sad.”
My cheek was against the pillow, on the spot where Gogu always slept. The linen had been almost dry; I was wetting it anew with tears. I said nothing. It troubled me that when we had spoken of ending our visits to the Other Kingdom, Tati had raised no objections. I wondered what she saw in her own future. From where I lay, I could see her hair spread across her pillow like a dark shawl, the pale expanse of her neck exposed.
I shut my eyes. If there was evidence there, a mark on her pearly skin, I was not ready to see it—not brave enough to accept what it might mean. The truth was, at Dark of the Moon, Sorrow had seemed to be a good person, as kind and thoughtful as Tati had always said he was. I did not want him to be one of them.
“Jena?”
“Mmm?”
“If Ileana won’t help about Sorrow, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t go on without him. I just can’t.”
