Wildwood Dancing

stayed behind. “It’s our way to let things take their course, that’s all. What was that you were saying about fences?

Sten and I could attend to your heavy work. You should have asked us.”

Sudden tears pricked my eyes. “Thank you,” I said, “but it’s best if you don’t. When you come across to our world, especially if you stay awhile, you put yourselves at huge risk. I won’t have you doing that for us. Cezar’s enough of a threat to you—we mustn’t make it worse by giving other folk the chance to see you on the farm. But I value your offer. Now I’d better go and find Tati.”

“If I may.” A tall, dark form appeared by my side. It seemed that one other had lingered after Ileana’s audience. The pallid Tadeusz reached to cup my elbow without a by-your-leave. His eyes met Grigori’s and, to my surprise, Dr˘agu¸ta’s kinsman backed away.

“You have troubles,” Tadeusz murmured, drawing my arm through his and starting to walk along the sward so I had no choice but to go with him. “I could help you. This cousin is nothing.” He snapped his fingers in illustration. “He can be stopped from interfering in your affairs. That would be an easy matter, Jenica. It would give me pleasure to be of assistance to you. He could simply be . . . removed.” I felt long, bony fingers close around mine; he lifted my hand to his lips. The chill touch of his mouth gave my skin goose bumps. In my pocket Gogu was cringing and silent. “Of course, I would require something in return. Nothing comes without a price.”

I felt sick. “Thank you, but I will find some other solution 120

to my problems,” I said, my heart pounding. “I’m sure I can work something out.”

He looked down at me, his dark eyes assessing. “Really?” he asked me, and lifted a hand to toy with my hair, twisting a brown curl around his finger.

“Really. Now I must go—”

“You should not be afraid, Jenica. My kind are not entirely what you believe of us. The tales your villagers tell give one picture of the truth, a picture distorted by superstitious fear.

But there are many truths in the Other Kingdom. It is a matter of perception. The eyes of each viewer see a different reality.

You would not judge so quickly, would you?”

I swallowed. His voice was a subtle instrument, soft and beguiling. The sound of it seemed to resonate deep within me.

“I don’t trust easily,” I said. “I don’t like violent solutions to problems. And I prefer to know exactly what I’m getting into.”

“Ah. But you come to the Other Kingdom every Full Moon, trusting that you will be safe, that your friends will be here to welcome you, that your night will be spent in innocent enjoyment.”

I stared up at him, wanting to be anywhere but here, yet held by his voice. Despite myself, I was intrigued by what he said. “I’m careful,” I told him. “I look out for my sisters. Anyway, it always has been like that. We’ve always been safe here.”

Tadeusz smiled, and I tried not to look at his teeth. “So young and so ignorant,” he said. “Yet maybe not so young. You watch your sisters, yes—one in particular you watched two 121

Full Moons ago, as she danced with one partner and then another. You made her go home before the dancing was over.

Why was that, I wonder? And again, at last Full Moon—was there perhaps a touch of jealousy in you, Jenica? A desire to be a little older, and to feel a man’s arms around your own waist in intimate embrace?”

I felt myself flush scarlet. “I’m not listening to this,” I said.

“I must go now—”

“Go,” he said airily, but his hand still held mine. “Go—and remain in ignorance, if that is your preference.”

“Ignorance of what?” Perhaps he had something to tell me about Sorrow, something that would help me persuade Tati to let him go.

“All these years you’ve limited yourselves to one visit a month—to one way of entering the Other Kingdom. There is another way. At Dark of the Moon, there is another portal.

With my help it can be opened to you. It will unveil a world of knowledge to you, Jena. At Dark of the Moon, you may look into Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror. If you wish to discover the true nature of your sister’s lover, you will do so there. If you can summon the courage for it, you may see your own future and that of those you love.” His thumb moved against my palm.

“What do you mean?” I croaked, not liking the way his words made me feel, as if I had glimpsed something I wanted badly and knew I should not have. “That if we passed through this portal of yours, we wouldn’t be in Dancing Glade, but somewhere else? In your own realm? I was told you come from the forests of the east.”

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“There are many paths in the Other Kingdom.” He lifted his brows, and his mouth formed a derisive grimace. “I’ll wager you are not brave enough to try this one.”

I knew I should turn my back and walk away. “What if I did want to?” I whispered. “Where is this portal? How can I find it?”

Tadeusz’s teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “There is a price,” he said. “Do not forget that.”

“What price?”

“A price no greater than you can afford, Jena. I will ensure that.”

“You mean you won’t tell me what it is? That is asking me to take a foolish risk. I am no fool.”

“Ah, well. I am unsurprised that you lack the courage for this.”

I swallowed. “If I—if I did decide to try it,” I said, hating myself for asking, “how would I get over? Where would I go?”

“If you would cross over, call to me and I will take you there.” His voice wrapped about me like a soft cloak.

“Call to you? How?”

“Ah. That is a simple matter. You need only want me, Jena, and I will come to you. I am not bound by man’s fences nor fettered by his puny charms of protection. No need of doors or keys, of spells or incantations. I will hear your call in the puls-ing of the blood, in the urgent hammering of the heart.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand; it sent a shiver through me.

“I’ve heard about your kind,” I whispered. “What reason would I possibly have to trust you?”

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Gogu had been getting increasingly agitated. Now he startled me by leaping from my pocket and hopping rapidly away to disappear into a clump of long grass. I realized to my alarm that we had walked some distance from the sward of Dancing Glade—much farther than our rules allowed. Under the dark oaks where we stood, all was shadowy and still. The colored lights were a dim glow, the magical music a dim buzzing.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “My frog! I must catch him—” I wrenched myself away and strode back toward the glade, led by a series of rustling noises in the undergrowth that seemed to mark Gogu’s progress.

Tadeusz’s voice followed me, soft and deep. “Do not leap to judge me on the basis of old wives’ tales. Live your life that way, and you are no better than an ignorant peasant, raised on the dirt of the fields. If you require proof of my good intentions, I will give it, Jena.”

I did not look back. My heart was racing and my brow was damp with cold sweat. What had I been thinking? Gogu moved faster and faster. I ran, and there was a curious sound of derision in my ears: not the full-throated laughter of Tadeusz, but the cackling of an old woman.

I was shocked to find, when I reached the glade again, that the dancing was nearing its end—folk were leaping about in a grand finale. In keeping with the strange quirks of time in the Other Kingdom, my conversation with Tadeusz had swallowed up half the night. Gogu was nowhere to be found; a search of the bushes by the path revealed nothing. I retraced my steps to Ileana’s throne. I looked under and over and all 124

around. I eyed the confusion of skipping, jumping, stamping feet on the sward, some bare, some shod. Tadeusz had returned to stand with his fellow Night People; disconcertingly, his gaze was still on me. I gathered up Stela and Paula. Neither had seen the frog.

“But Tati’s up there,” Paula said helpfully. “They’ve just been sitting there all night.”

Tati and Sorrow had found a little hollow near the edge of the sward, under a stand of leafless birches. Tati’s blue cloak was spread out on the grass, and she sat on it with her back against a pale trunk. Sorrow lay with his head in her lap. She was stroking his hair; he was holding her other hand. They didn’t seem to be talking.

“Go and tell her it’s time to leave,” I told my sisters. “I have to find Gogu.” He’d been trying to warn me; I knew it. He’d heard how I was being lulled and charmed by that insidious voice and had hopped off to lead me back to safety. Now I was safe, and he had vanished.

I went right around the sward, asking everyone I passed:

“Have you seen my frog?” Nobody had. I asked the creatures in the cloak-tree, and they chittered a negative as they dropped my things down to me, the winter boots narrowly missing my head. By the time I got back to my starting point I was crying, and my sisters and their escorts were all waiting for me.

“It’s nearly dawn,” Grigori said. “We must go.”

“I can’t go! I can’t leave Gogu!”

“He’ll be all right, Jena,” Stela said through a yawn. “He should be safe here until next time.”

“I’m not going! I can’t! I can’t leave him behind!” I heard the 125

shrill tone of my own voice, like a frightened child’s. Losing Gogu would be like losing a part of myself—like being ripped apart.

“We must go now,” said Anatolie gently.

“Come, Jena,” said Grigori. “You must leave your friend behind.”

“He probably belongs here anyway,” Iulia pointed out.

“Maybe it’s time to let him go.”

I slapped her. She stared at me a moment, eyes wide with shock, a red mark on her cheek. Then she turned her back and put her hands over her face; I could see her shoulders quivering.

Misery descended on me. I was going to have to leave him. If I didn’t go with them, my sisters couldn’t get home. Besides, I could hardly vanish from my own world for a whole month, even supposing I could get by without eating or drinking anything. That was impossible.

As I followed the others down to the lake, I pictured Gogu as I had first found him: alone in the forest, weak, hurt, frightened. He had been with me for more than nine years. He was used to living in the castle, and eating with us, and sleeping on my pillow. He had no idea at all how to look after himself in the wildwood, even supposing he wasn’t injured, or worse.

He’d get cold; he’d get hungry; he’d be terribly lonely. What if he wandered off and I never saw him again?

Iulia was crying. Paula and Stela were pale and silent. Tati walked hand in hand with Sorrow. They were holding on so tightly that their knuckles were white.

We reached the shore. One by one, my sisters got into their sledges and glided off over the ice. The sky had begun to 126

brighten. Dawn came late in this dark season; we had had a generous night of dancing. My heart was a lump of cold misery in my chest. I pictured the empty sward, after the revelers had departed—and my dearest friend lying there, heedlessly crushed in a desperate effort to find me.

“Jena.” Tati stood right next to me, with Sorrow just behind her. “I don’t want to go.”

A chill ran through me. “What? You have to go—we all do.”

“I really don’t want to go, Jena. I don’t know how I can manage a whole month over there. . . .” Her voice drifted into nothing. She turned and put her face against Sorrow’s chest and his hand came up to the back of her neck.

“I could stay and look for Gogu,” Tati said, her voice muf-fled by the black coat.

“You can’t,” I said, sniffing back more tears. Suddenly I was angry: angry with myself, that my stupidity in listening to Tadeusz had allowed this to happen, and angry that Tati would use my distress to try to win time for herself. “Remember, we can’t open the portal without you. You have to come, and I have to leave Gogu here. As for you”—I glared at Sorrow and saw his hand tighten against my sister’s neck—“you should think twice about what you’re doing. You don’t belong here, and I wish you would go away.”

I turned my back and climbed into the salamander sledge, my eyes blinded by tears. The gnomes struck up a dirge. I was scarcely aware of crossing the Deadwash, or of bidding Grigori a hasty farewell before the sledges sped back, racing the dawn’s first rays. My mind was full of Gogu: abandoned, bereft, shivering with cold and fright—or, worse still, lying dead somewhere—

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because I had allowed myself to lose sight of common sense. I’d never felt so miserable or so guilty in my life.

Tati stood on the shore with Sorrow. He was leaving his departure until perilously late.

“You’d better go,” she said, apparently trying to be strong.

An instant later she flung herself into his arms. He held her, his head bowed against her shoulder, his lips on the white neck exposed by her upswept hair. Then he detached himself, backing toward the sledge with his hand still in hers. They held on as he got in; they held on while the swan sledge began easing away from the bank, with Tati balanced precariously on the ice and Sorrow leaning out at a perilous angle. Then, all at once, the sledge sped off into the morning mist and the clasping hands were torn from each other.

We made our way through the Gallery of Beasts, whose occupants were no more than vague bundles up in the corners.

We climbed the long, long, winding stair.

“Hurry up, Jena!” called Paula. “Hurry up, Tati!”

I was last, walking behind Tati. I did not trust her to bring up the rear and not decide to bolt back down and go crashing away across the ice in search of her pale-faced sweetheart. Up, up, and up . . . I felt each step as a blow to the heart. At last we reached the portal. We stretched out our hands toward the stone wall—but I snatched mine away, without touching it. I had heard something. . . . I strained to catch it again. For a moment all was silence. Then it came once more, a little, weary thud from down the stairs. Plop . . . plop . . .

“Something’s coming up,” Stela whispered, turning as white as linen.

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Plop . . . plop . . . It was getting slower.

“Gogu?” My voice was reed-thin and quavering, an old woman’s. A moment later he came into sight, three steps down.

He was shaking with exhaustion, a rime of frost over his whole body. A big heaving sob burst out of me. I gathered him up and held him to my breast. He was so cold; his skin felt all hard and crackly, as if his damp body had begun to freeze solid. His eyes were half closed.

You left me. You left me b-b-behind.

“Put out your hand, Jena!” snapped Iulia. “It must be nearly sunrise—quick! We might get trapped in between worlds!”

I hardly heard her. A flood of tears was running down my cheeks. I hugged my frog close, trying to warm him against my body.

“Come on, Jena.” Tati had moved up next to me. Her eyes met mine, and some kind of forgiveness passed between us. We each set a hand against the wall. Our sisters placed their fingers beside ours. The portal opened and we went home to Piscul Dracului.

No water bowl this morning. I lay in bed with Gogu on my chest. I had rolled him in a woolen scarf after warming it on the little stove. Monumental shivers still passed through him. Beside us, Tati lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. I know you were trying to rescue me. I promise I’ll never leave you again.”

Gogu made no response, but the shivering began to die down and his eyes took on a brighter look.

“Anyway,” I whispered, “how did you get across the 129

Deadwash? You’re too scared to go anywhere near it by yourself. Did someone bring you?”

D-D-D- . . .

“Never mind,” I said. “You’re safe and we’re together again.

I don’t want to think about anything else right now.” I couldn’t stop crying. Maybe I was making up for all the times I had stayed calm and sorted out other people’s problems. How could I have been so foolish? I had let Tadeusz lull me into forgetting what was right. I’d made it all too easy for him. I must never, ever do that again. His words were still in my mind: the startling revelation that Dark of the Moon allowed a passage to the Other Kingdom; the news of another portal; the tantalizing reference to a way of looking into the future. . . . What if I could see Cezar’s future, and somehow use that knowledge to stop him from going through with his threats? What if I could see what would become of Tati and Sorrow? And what would I see for myself, or for Father? I tried to stop thinking about it, but the images filled my mind—images of what might be revealed to me if I only had the courage to look.

After a while I felt Gogu wriggle out of the scarf and hop up to the pillow. He snuggled close to my cheek. Don’t be sad, Jena. I’m here.

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Chapter Six

A heavy blanket of snow lay over the hillside, making the paths treacherous. The forest had a special beauty in winter: frozen waterfalls like delicate shawls; foliage shrouded in a glittering, rimy coating; blue-white snowdrifts revealing, here and there, a rich litter of darkened leaves in a thousand damp colors of brown and gray. The forlorn, peeping cry of a bird . . . neat imprints in the white, the tracks of a hungry wolf or wildcat. The bears would be sleeping, curled deep in their hollows. My breath made a big cloud as we went, Gogu’s a smaller one.

I’d found it hard to sleep and had headed out early for a walk. I hoped that exercise would clear my mind, which felt as if a dense fog had descended over it. It was all very well for me to lecture Tati about becoming involved with Sorrow. What I had done was almost worse: I had let one of the Night People lead me off the path and whisper his dangerous lies in my ears—and I had felt, just for a moment, the delicious, forbidden 131

sensation of considering what he had offered. In the cold light of the winter morning, I could not believe I had allowed it to happen.

I walked all the way down to the village. Behind the carved gates of each smallholding, cows lowed and chickens squawked. Here and there, a woman swathed in shawls and scarves could be seen on the muddy pathway, carrying a bucket or a bundle. A long cart loaded with logs passed by, pulled by a pair of heavy horses. Red tassels dangled from their bridles, a charm against evil spirits. The logs would be from Cezar’s plantation, and destined for Bra¸sov. I stopped by Judge Rinaldo’s house to offer his wife our regards. She invited me in for a glass of rosehip tea and expressed the hope that Aunt Bogdana would be ready for visitors soon. I did not tell her that even we had been told to stay away.

The village church stood on a little hill, its pointed wooden roof reaching toward heaven. I wavered outside, tempted to seek out Father Sandu, but not sure exactly what I wanted of him. I could not speak of Night People. I could have asked him to pray for Father’s recovery, but in the end I walked past, for it was early and I did not wish to disturb the priest without good reason. The shutters of his little house were closed fast. I headed back past Ivan’s place and his wife gave me a small pot of honey. I suspected that she could ill spare it, but it was impolite to refuse such a gift. Iulia would be happy, I thought—Tati or I could use this to bake something sweet.

Maybe Florica had some nuts hidden away.

Gogu and I made our way back into the castle courtyard 132

under a light falling of snowflakes. I was planning what I needed to say to my sisters. I’d start with an apology to Iulia for hitting her. What she had said to me last night, about letting Gogu go, had made perfect sense. She could not know the mixture of grief and guilt that had made me strike out at her. I would tell them how sorry I was that I hadn’t specified we were not supposed to mix up the funds. I would explain truthfully that we had been quite short on both foodstuffs and silver even before Cezar had walked off with our two coffers, and that I had no intention of begging from him. Then they could give me their ideas on how we might get through the winter. I began to feel a little better. Admitting I was wrong did not come easily to me; I preferred not to make errors in the first place. But today, with the echo of Tadeusz’s soft voice in my ears and his touch fresh on my skin, I knew I must make peace with my sisters and allow them to help me.

Horses.

“What?”

Horses. Visitors.

Gogu was right. Tied up before our front door were my cousin’s black gelding and two other mounts.

“A pox on Cezar!” I lengthened my stride, putting a hand up to balance the frog. “He’s the last person I want to see this morning.”

The morning after Full Moon wasn’t the best time for us to receive visitors. We tended to be tired and cross after too little sleep. In the kitchen Florica was brewing fruit tea and Iulia was slicing a loaf of bread while Paula put out dishes of plum 133

preserve. Stela was setting out glasses and plates—she looked so weary, she could drop something at any moment.

Cezar was talking to Tati, who was pale and drawn and did not seem to be paying much attention. My cousin’s two friends sat at the table. Cezar had met Daniel and R˘azvan during the years of his formal education in Bra¸sov. They were landholders’ sons, the kind of young men deemed suitable to be future husbands for girls like us. I thought Daniel supercilious and R˘azvan rather slow. Both were of solid build, like Cezar, and their interests ran along similar lines: hunting, drinking, and discussing their own exploits loudly and at length.

The kitchen was full of their presence; I felt as if we had to shrink to make room for them.

Stay calm, Jena.

“Cezar.” As I walked in, the eyes of the three young men traveled from the frog on my shoulder down to my wet boots and the sodden hem of my gown. “Another surprise visit?” I saw something on the table next to Tati’s tea glass, and my heart lurched. Instantly, Cezar was forgiven. “A letter! A letter from Father?”

My cousin had risen to his feet as I came in. Now he stepped forward and took both my hands in his. I resisted the urge to snatch them away. “It is from Constan¸ta,” he said. “But this is not Uncle Teodor’s writing. Paula tells me it is that of his secretary.”

“We waited for you, Jena.” Paula was solemn. In her eyes I read the unspoken message: if it was bad news, it would be best if we all heard it together.

“Father often gets Gabriel to address his letters,” I said, 134

picking up the folded parchment and reaching for the bread knife. I willed my fingers not to shake. “Thank you for bringing this, Cezar.”

“I’m at your disposal, as you know. This came with a repre-sentative of my agent in Constan¸ta. The man had not seen your father, only a messenger, who left this with him. I have no further news for you.”

“Excuse me.” I couldn’t ask him and his friends to leave the room, although I dearly wanted to be able to read Father’s letter in private, with just my sisters around me. I went over to the stove, my back to everyone, and slit the seal.

I saw immediately that the message, too, was in Gabriel’s writing. My heart plummeted with disappointment. I scanned the letter quickly. If it was the worst news, I needed a moment to collect myself before I told them. I cleared my throat, swallowing tears.

“ ‘My greetings to you, young ladies, on your father’s be-half,’ ” I read aloud. “ ‘Teodor is still too unwell to write. The cough has deepened and is causing his physician grave concern.

Rest assured that everything that can be done will be done.

“ ‘Your father is not able to send any instructions for the conduct of his affairs while so severely debilitated. I am aware that you have Salem bin Afazi’s consignment in storage. . . .’ ”

As I spoke, my eyes were scanning the next section of the letter, in which Gabriel suggested that I ask Cezar to deal with the selling of Father’s precious goods. I decided I would not read this part aloud. “ ‘A decision was made not to give your father the news of his beloved cousin’s tragic and untimely death as yet. His physician believed that such a blow could well prove 135

fatal. I would ask that if you write to your father, you take care to shield him from this news.

“ ‘I will dispatch this by Cezar’s agent and hope it reaches you safely. Of course, I will remain by your father’s side through this difficult time. As instructed, I have sent word to Dorin that he should not return to Piscul Dracului until he hears from me again, since, in your father’s absence, there will be little employment for him there. Your obedient servant, Gabriel.’ ”

There was a silence after I had finished. Looking from one sister to another, I saw the same look on all their faces. It perfectly reflected what was in my own heart: the cold realization that our worst fears were coming true. Grave concern. Severely debilitated. Could well prove fatal. Those phrases seemed to add up to only one thing: we’d probably never see our father again.

After a little, Florica carried the teakettle over to the table and set it down with a rattle. “Praise God, your dear father is still with us,” she said, raising a hand to wipe her eyes. “Master Cezar, will you take tea?”

“I’ll pour it,” I said, wanting a job to help me stay calm.

“R˘azvan? Daniel? I’m afraid we have only bread to offer you.”

“Ah, how could I forget?” Cezar got up and fetched a capacious basket that had been set by the door. “I’m sorry there isn’t better news to celebrate, but Florica is right—we should be glad Uncle Teodor is still clinging to life. I brought you some supplies, a few little delicacies. I had a feeling you might be running short. Here.” He set the basket on the table and unfolded the cloth that lay over its contents. A delicious smell 136

arose. “Our own store cupboard is amply stocked,” Cezar said.

“My steward attends to it diligently. We can certainly spare this. Nuts, honey, a little wine for you older girls, some preserved fruits . . . And I had our kitchen people make some spice cakes. We could sample those with the tea. You look as if you need a treat.”

I wonder what he wants.

Gogu’s suspicions mirrored my own. I was uncomfortable with Cezar in the role of benefactor. His good deeds were seldom performed without some expectation of gain for himself.

“Oh, Cezar, how lovely!” Iulia’s cheeks were flushed with pleasure. I noticed R˘azvan staring at her in what appeared to be admiration. When she leaned forward to examine the basket’s contents, he was taking in the view down the front of her day dress. I frowned at my sister, but she did not seem to notice.

It was clear that Tati wasn’t going to say anything. Daniel was seated opposite her. She sipped her tea and stared through him.

“Thank you, Cezar,” I made myself say. “I’m sure I speak for all of us when I tell you how welcome these small luxuries are.”

I noticed that he was wearing his father’s gold chain again, the one with the miniature hunting horn—perhaps he wore it all the time now.

“Jena?” The little voice was Stela’s.

“What is it, Stela?”

“Is Father dying? Is that what it means, severely debil—

debili—”

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“Debilitated just means tired and weak.” Paula spoke firmly.

“Father needs more rest, that’s all. He’ll be home in springtime.”

We sat awhile over our feast. Cezar did most of the talking. I had several questions in my mind, questions I could not ask. It seemed to me impossible that Gabriel would have opened my private letters; my father’s secretary was the soul of propriety. Yet, if he had not, how could he have shielded Father from learning of Uncle Nicolae’s death? Evidently Gabriel himself had been given the sad news. Had Cezar had a hand in censoring my correspondence? Gabriel had said, if you write to your father—if, not when. Was it possible that my letters had never reached Father in Constan¸ta? And who had decided that we didn’t need Dorin back? An able-bodied young man to help Petru would be worth his weight in gold right now.

I waited for an opportunity to ask Cezar about this, but he was holding forth on the perils of the wildwood, one of his pet subjects, and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Nobody was arguing—today, none of us sisters had the energy or the heart to challenge him. After a while my attention drifted, my thoughts going over the events of last night: the look in Tadeusz’s eyes, the honey in his voice, the things he had told me. I could not think why I was the one he had singled out, nor what he hoped to gain by it. In the ancient tales of Transylvania, Night People were not known for doing people favors.

“You’d do well to let me deal with the lower reaches of the Piscul Dracului forest as well, Jena,” my cousin was saying.

“Since I’ll be hiring men to fell the trees around my own house, 138

they may as well be put to work on Uncle Teodor’s land straight afterward. We could have the immediate area fully cleared by the end of spring. And the timber would fetch you a tidy profit.”

“What?” I must have sounded stupid. I had only just realized what he was talking about.

“My project, Jena.” Cezar’s tone held exaggerated patience.

“Rendering my property, and Uncle Teodor’s, safe from the ma-lign presences that haunt these woods.”

Your cousin wants a hand in everything. He wants control.

“You can’t do that, Cezar. Folk may be afraid of the beings that dwell in the wildwood, but I doubt very much that the people of the valley would support what you suggest.” I glanced at Florica; she had gone extremely pale. “Felling the trees over a wide area would only anger those presences. It could bring down retaliation on everyone in our community.”

Then, seeing the way Cezar was looking at me: “At least, that’s what most folk will believe. As Florica said once, if you give respect, you get respect back. If you offend, you get . . . retribution. Nobody will be prepared to work for you on this. Anyway, you can’t do anything here at Piscul Dracului without Father’s permission.”

Cezar’s mouth went thin, his eyes turned cold. “It offends me to hear such sentiments issuing from your lips, Jena. I will do you the favor of putting it down to your innocence.”

He means ignorance.

“Since you speak of offense and of retribution,” my cousin went on, “I must point out to you that there could hardly be a 139

greater offense than robbing a boy of a beloved brother. I’ve waited years to dispense due punishment for that. The trees are only the first step. As for workers, a man whose family is starving cannot afford to refuse employment on the basis of superstitious fear. Besides, it’s easy enough to bring in labor from farther afield: men who don’t know the peculiarities of this particular forest.”

The atmosphere in the kitchen had turned decidedly chilly.

Nobody else was saying a thing, though I could see that Paula was bursting to speak. I gave her a warning glance. We were all tired and upset; this was the time not for challenges, but for wise silence. Cezar’s friends had the grace to look a little embarrassed as they applied themselves to the food.

“Enough of this,” Cezar said abruptly. “Jena, I want to look over the accounts while I’m here. I trust that your sisters can keep my friends entertained?”

“Of course,” said Iulia, who had seated herself between R˘azvan and Daniel. Now that she had had her treat, she was in the best of tempers and making the most of her position—

smiling shyly, batting her eyelashes, and plying the young men with cakes. I did not like this new behavior at all; I preferred her childish bursts of giggling. Even Cezar was stealing glimpses at her.

“Well,” I said, rising to my feet, “let’s get on with it. I don’t imagine Daniel and R˘azvan will be wanting to stay too long. Florica, perhaps you could make more tea for our guests?

Paula, please come with Cezar and me. Bring a book.”

“Oh, by the way,” Cezar said as the three of us made our way up the narrow stairs to Father’s workroom, “I noticed on 140

the ride here that you’ve had all the fencing repaired up by the top pastures. I imagine you’ll be needing some funds to pay your workers. Who helped Petru with the job? It’s been expertly done— Jena? Is something wrong?”

“Oh—oh, no, nothing.” My head was in a whirl, my stomach churned. The fencing all done between last night and this morning? It was not possible. Petru had been working in the barn when I left on my walk. He had still been there when I returned. Besides, even with two or three men, the fencing job would have taken several days. Grigori? No, I had asked him not to risk his safety, and I knew he would not act against my wishes. My heart sank. Tadeusz. It was the only explanation.

But I had never asked for his help. I had not accepted his offer.

In the back of my mind, I heard his deep, dark voice: If you require proof of my good intentions, I will give it, Jena. “I don’t need funds, Cezar. Some travelers came by and offered to do it for food. I’m glad it was a good job; I haven’t had the opportunity to go up and check it yet.”

Once in the workroom, Paula seated herself at Gabriel’s desk in the corner, while Cezar and I took opposite sides of the table.

“What is it you want to see?” I asked him, reaching for the current folder of receipts and payments. My hands were shaking. I thought of Tadeusz and his pallid crew up on our fields, walking in our world, setting their elegant hands to straighten-ing withes and tying up fencing twine on our very own land, a stone’s throw from where I and my sisters were sleeping. I thought of them prowling around our sheepfolds. What if someone had seen them?

141

“Are you sure you’re quite well, Jena?” Cezar was regarding me closely. “You look very pale.”

“I’m fine. There’s no need for this, Cezar. The ledgers are up-to-date and everything balances. There’s absolutely no reason for you to check on me. Especially now you’ve taken away the funds. There will be nothing for me to record until you give control of them back to me.”

He smiled indulgently, as if I were a precocious infant.

Then, as quickly, he was serious again. “I have something to tell you, Jena,” he said. “It concerns the priest’s visits to this house.

I imagine you can guess what it is.”

He had my full attention now. “What have you done?” I asked him, and heard the frost in my own voice. I could not look at Paula.

“I took action, as I advised you I would. I had a word with Father Sandu’s superior. Were you aware that these lessons were never officially approved by the priory? That your father made a private arrangement with this priest to tutor young Paula? Even you must have been aware of how unconventional such behavior was.”

“What do you mean, behavior?” Paula was on her feet, shaking with rage. “Father Sandu tutors the sons of many families in the district, you know that. How dare you imply there’s something illicit about this? All he does is treat me the way he’d treat a boy student.”

Cezar gave a patronizing smile. His eyes were cold. “Exactly,” he said.

Arrogant fool.

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“Tell us!” I was holding on to my temper by a thread, and willing the frog to keep his thoughts to himself. “What did you do?” In my mind I saw the closed shutters of Father Sandu’s little house.

“I have not done as you seem to believe. I did not request that the priest cease his visits to Piscul Dracului. All I did was let his superior know what was going on.”

“You must have realized that would have the same result,”

I said.

Now the little smile was turned on me. “Well, yes, in fact, the good Father will not be coming here any longer.” Cezar’s tone was rich with self-satisfaction. “A decision was made to recall him to the priory near Sibiu. It happens sometimes: a priest working alone—in a remote corner of the country, out of touch with his brethren—can lose his way a little. I believe they’re sending a replacement to the district as a matter of urgency.”

Paula got up and, clutching her book to her chest, walked out of the room in total silence. Her face was sheet-white, her jaw clenched tight. If she planned to shed tears, it would not be in our cousin’s presence.

“How dare you!” My rage burst out of me. “You don’t even realize what you’ve done, do you? This isn’t just about Paula, Cezar. Father Sandu’s been here far longer than we have. He’s married people and baptized their babies and buried their dead in this community for years and years. People trust him. They rely on him. You’ve done this without even thinking about what it will mean for the valley!”

143

“The valley is better off without folk who disregard rules and conventions set up for their own protection. Besides, it was not I who relieved this priest of his position.”

“Of course it was! Cezar, your father was deeply respected here. Folk looked up to him as a leader of the community. That’s what the master of Vârful cu Negur˘a is supposed to be. You’re walking in Uncle Nicolae’s shoes now. You must go and visit this Church authority straightaway and ask him to bring Father Sandu back. And speak to Judge Rinaldo while you’re about it.

Your father would never have dreamed of robbing our community of its beloved priest.”

“I’ve upset you.” For a moment, I heard genuine contrition in his voice.

“Promise me you’ll make them reverse this, Cezar. Show what you’re made of—do what’s right.” And, when he scowled at me, I added, “At least promise me you’ll think about it.”

The scowl changed to an expression I could not read.

“There might be room for some negotiation,” he said. I heard, in the back of my mind, a different voice saying, Nothing comes without a price. “You seem tired, Jena.”

“I didn’t sleep very well. Now, what is it you need to see in these accounts?”

We spent some time going through the latest ledger, which balanced perfectly and was entirely up-to-date. I kept waiting for Cezar to find fault, but he simply perused the figures in silence, asking an occasional question. Once or twice his hand brushed mine on the table and I withdrew my fingers. Once or twice he gave me a particular kind of look that made me wish Paula had not departed so abruptly.

144

Just as we were nearing the last entries in the ledger, Cezar seized my hand in his, turned bright red, and began, “Jena—”

Uh-oh.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” I said hastily, jumping to my feet. “Have you been opening my letters to Father, Cezar? How would Gabriel know to shield Father from what was in them otherwise?”

Cezar dropped my hand like a hot coal.

Nice work, Jena.

“Of course not! What do you take me for?” The flush faded.

He put up a good show of looking bitterly offended.

A man who wants what he can’t have.

I drew a deep breath. “I thought I knew you,” I said. “There was a time when you used to listen to me. But the boy who was once my friend seems to be disappearing fast. In his place there’s an autocratic bully, deaf to any opinion but his own. I know that’s impolite, but it would be worse to lie to you. All you want is control. You shouldn’t seek to rule over what isn’t yours, Cezar.”

There was a silence. Cezar’s mouth was clamped into a tight line. He closed the ledger and passed it to me, and I replaced it on its shelf. He held the door open; I went through.

As we made our way down the narrow stairs, Cezar said quietly, “It must run in the family.”

“What?” I was desperate to be back with the others and for him to go away.

“You said all I want is control. That sounds more like you, Jena. A woman who seeks to have her hands on the reins day and night has a lonely future ahead of her.”

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Wretch. Mongrel.

“You misunderstood me,” I said, pausing on the step below him. I was surprised at how hurt I felt—I had thought nothing he could say would touch me. “Being in control is good if one is running a business or a household. It’s seeking to extend that control where it’s neither needed nor wanted that offends me.”

“Are you saying I offend you, Jena?”

Finally he gets the message.

“I don’t like your hate and your anger. It’s time to let all that go—to relinquish the past. I don’t like what you’re doing at Piscul Dracului. Taking over. Trying to show we can’t cope.

You should at least allow us the chance to prove ourselves.” I went on down the steps.

“Ah,” came his voice behind me, “but you’ve had that chance. It’s not been so very long since your father left, but in that time I’ve seen your funds squandered, your elder sister failing utterly to support you, Paula spouting dangerous nonsense, and Iulia making a spectacle of herself like a cheap flirt—”

Hit him, go on.

“Don’t say that!” I was within a whisker of carrying out Gogu’s suggestion. “You were ogling her just as much as your wretched friends! Iulia’s only thirteen, and she’s a good girl—”

“Maybe so,” Cezar said weightily. “But without proper guidance, how long will she remain so? Jena, I value your sense of duty. I admire your attempts to look after your home and family in this difficult time. But—unpalatable as it may be to you—

the fact is that the best person to look after business, farm, and household is a man. In Uncle Teodor’s absence, that man should 146

be your closest kin: myself. The sooner you acknowledge this simple truth, the sooner the rose will return to your cheeks and the furrow disappear from your brow.”

My fingers rose automatically to my forehead. What furrow? I’d been so busy, I couldn’t remember when I’d last looked in a mirror.

Is that all?

“Are you quite finished, Cezar?”

“Don’t be angry, Jena, I—”

“Are you finished?”

“For now. I simply ask you to think about this. You judge me too harshly.”

“All things considered,” I said, “I think I’ve shown remarkable self-restraint. You can forget about my making little trips to your door through the snow to grovel for money. You can forget about sending men over to help on the farm. As you can see, I’m perfectly capable of making my own arrangements. And I’ll find someone else to take my letters to Constan¸ta.”

He did not reply. Both of us knew there was nobody else.

Few people had the means to travel such difficult ways in wintertime. Our position was so isolated that I’d have no opportunity to seek out other merchants or traders before the spring. When Father was home, much of the business was conducted through his agents in the towns, using Dorin as a go-between. But Dorin had been asked to stay away. If I wanted to send letters to Father, Cezar was my only means of delivery.

That meant I could not write the truth—not all of it.

“I’d advise you not to come here for a while,” I said, struggling 147

to keep my voice under control. “You’ve made me quite angry and you’ve upset Paula. Please take your friends and go home.”

Go, go, go, odious man.

“I think—” said Cezar, but I never heard what he thought.

We opened the kitchen door on an uproar. In the center of the room stood small, wizened Petru, and by the hearth a younger man of similar build: his grandson, Ivan. Petru was telling some kind of tale, stumbling over his words as Daniel and R˘azvan and my sisters bombarded him with questions. Florica, pale as bread dough, was muttering and crossing herself. Tati alarmed me most of all, for there were hectic red spots on her cheeks and she was clutching her tea glass so tightly I expected it to shatter at any moment.

“What—” I began, but Cezar’s bigger voice boomed over mine.

“Sit down, all of you, and speak one at a time. Tatiana, what has happened here?”

Tati turned her big violet eyes on him, but did not speak.

“Iulia?” I queried. “What is it?”

“Petru has a terrible story,” Iulia said, her lip quivering.

“A killing.” Petru’s voice was as grim as his seamed and creviced face. “Ivona, daughter of Marius the miller. Only fifteen years old. Her mother went in at dawn, and there was the girl, sprawled across the quilt like a rag doll, white as snow: a bloodless corpse.”

“What are you saying?” I whispered, not prepared to acknowledge, even to myself, that I already knew the answer.

“She had puncture wounds on her neck,” said Florica heavily. “A bite.”

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“You know what that means.” Petru tightened his lips.

And although nobody actually said it aloud, our blanched faces and shocked eyes spoke the words for us, into the silence of a shared terror. Without a shred of doubt, this was the work of the Night People.

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Chapter Seven

Cezar took charge immediately. He would head straight down to the village to meet with Judge Rinaldo. The able-bodied men of the district must arm themselves however they could in readiness for going out into the forest at dusk to hunt down the evildoer. They would bring him to justice or they would kill him. Even as Cezar spoke, Petru and Ivan, R˘azvan and Daniel were donning cloaks and gathering their belongings to leave.

Tati had fled upstairs. After a little, my other sisters followed, leaving me to deal with the situation.

“Jena,” Cezar said gravely, “I will be advising all households to install appropriate defensive measures—not just on their dwellings, but on barns and outhouses as well. I want Florica to do the same: garlic, iron nails, amulets—whatever you can manage.”

“Marius’s place was well protected,” Petru said, pulling his 150

sheepskin hat down over his ears. “That didn’t stop the creature from coming in.”

Tadeusz’s words rang in my head: I am not bound by man’s fences or fettered by his puny charms of protection. Cezar’s eyes were full of dark purpose. Disgust, guilt, and fear churned inside my belly.

“I don’t want any of you girls going outside,” Cezar said.

“Nor you, Florica, unless you absolutely must. You’ll need to tend to the work of the farm, I know, at least until we can spare Petru. But keep it to what is essential, and be always on your guard. Come back inside and bolt your doors and windows well before dusk.” He was looking at me closely. “It’s all right, Jena,” he said in a different tone. “We’ll catch this beast—

I give you my promise.” He took my hand. “I think, after all, one of us should remain here with you. R˘azvan, will you stay at Piscul Dracului in my absence? Make sure the young ladies are not frightened. You should keep your crossbow at hand at all times.”

R˘azvan gave a curt nod. He looked annoyed. It was plain that the task of guarding a household of women was less to his liking than a manly mission of vengeance.

“Remember my warnings. Keep the doors locked,” said Cezar. “Be watchful, all of you. This is a dark time.” And he was gone.

“I have a confession to make,” I said to my sisters a little later as we sat in our bedchamber, shocked and quiet. “I don’t want to tell you, but I think I have to. This is probably all my fault.”

They sat in total silence as I recounted my conversation with 151

Tadeusz. I did not include quite everything he had said, but by the end of my account they were staring at me, incredulous.

“Jena!” exclaimed Paula. “You’re supposed to be the sensible one! What on earth possessed you to listen to him? Have you forgotten everything you know about the Night People?”

“He said that was old wives’ tales,” I told her miserably.

“That we didn’t really know what they were like. And that could be true. It sounds as if someone walked right past the charms of ward at the miller’s house. So much for all those stories about garlic and silver crosses.”

“That’s if it was one of them who did it,” said Tati. She was shivering even though she had her thick woolen shawl wrapped around her, and her face was pinched and pale.

“Of course it was, Tati,” said Iulia. “You heard what Petru said. You just don’t want to believe it because of Sorrow. You don’t want to admit that he could have been the one responsible.”

Tati was on her feet, eyes wild. “He wasn’t! Sorrow would never do something wicked like that—he couldn’t!”

“We can’t know that,” put in Paula calmly. “We can’t really know much about the Other Kingdom, even though we’ve been visiting Dancing Glade for so long. It’s full of tricks and traps, masks and mirrors. Tati, I know you won’t like this, but Sorrow could be anything at all. The face he shows you may be only the one he wants you to see.”

Relieved to have my younger sisters’ support on the issue of Sorrow, I risked a new suggestion. “There is one way to see the truth about the Other Kingdom,” I said. “We could go across 152

at Dark of the Moon and look in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror, as Tadeusz told me. We could see the future. And if we could do that, we could change it—take action to prevent the bad things from happening.”

There was a silence.

“Jena,” said Paula, “I’ve spent a lot of time with the soothsayers and wizards of the Other Kingdom. We’ve talked about tools for divining the future. We’ve talked about portals and the way that time and space work between their kingdom and ours. Nobody ever said a thing about a magic mirror.”

“Maybe they only tell you what they want you to know.”

My voice was a little sharp. I felt as if I were walking on a knife edge. A girl had died horribly. The men would be out there tonight with their crossbows and cudgels, their pitchforks and scythes, hunting the Night People down. Yet something still drew me toward Dark of the Moon. It was not so much Tadeusz’s beguiling voice, though I knew that was part of it.

Even after this—even after innocent blood had been spilled—

I felt its pull. But far more powerful was the thought that Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror might provide the answers we so badly needed.

So easily, I could know whether Father would come home again; I could know whether Tati would get over her foolish in-fatuation and be safe. And if I went there, I could confront Tadeusz with what he had done. I could tell him that this vile act of bloodletting was not what I had wanted; that the price for mending a few fences should not be the life of an innocent young woman. I could make it clear that I had never asked for such offerings and that there were to be no more of them.

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“You wouldn’t actually go, would you, Jena?” Iulia was looking at me with a mixture of alarm and admiration. “After what’s just happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said. In my pocket Gogu was still, as if frozen. I could feel his horror. No, Jena. No. “Maybe I won’t have to think about it. Maybe Cezar and the other men will catch the killer. Maybe Ileana will banish the Night People from her realm, and this will be all over.”

“It might not be your fault, Jena,” Paula said. “It’s possible that the girl’s father did something to make the Night People angry, like setting fires in the forest or felling an oak. You can’t know.”

“I do know.” I took Gogu out and held him between my hands for comfort. “I can feel it. I can feel things turning dark.

It started when the Night People came. It got worse when Tati encouraged Sorrow. Now I’m responsible for someone’s death. I have to put it right somehow.”

“I told you, this is not Sorrow’s doing, Jena.” Tati was huddled on the bed now, hugging the shawl around her. “He’s the kindest of men, gentle and good.”

“To you, maybe,” I said.

A small voice spoke. “Tati wouldn’t fall in love with a murderer.”

Stela’s words hung in silence for a little, then Iulia cleared her throat. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “Love makes people do some odd things. I mean, Jena loves Gogu best in the world, doesn’t she? A frog. That’s just about the weirdest thing you could imagine.”

Gogu twitched as she spoke his name. Then, abruptly, a 154

sort of cloud fell over his thoughts, as if he were deliberately hiding them from me. “That’s not the same kind of love,” I said.

“Anyway, Tati hardly even knows Sorrow.”

Tati said nothing.

“Love at first sight,” put in Paula. “If it happens in stories, why shouldn’t it happen in real life?”

“It’s a mistake to let your head get full of stories about true love,” I said. “It just means you’ll be disappointed. There are no handsome heroes in the real world—only boring young men like R˘azvan and Daniel. That’s probably the best any of us can hope for.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it, Gogu,” I said later in the day, as I threw out grain for the chickens under a leaden sky. “I owe it to that girl, Ivona, to cross over and speak to Tadeusz again, to tell him to stop. What if Cezar’s hunt actually kills one of the Night People, and then Tadeusz seeks vengeance for that, and so on, until the whole valley is awash with blood? I can’t wait until next Full Moon. It’s too long. Think how much damage they could do.”

Brave. Brave, but foolish. You can’t go.

“The Night People must leave this forest—they have to go home. I don’t know why they came here in the first place. If they left and took Sorrow with them, that would remove the danger and solve the problem of Tati, as well.”

No response from Gogu. On the far side of the courtyard, R˘azvan was shoveling away snow, clearing paths to the barn and outhouses. In Cezar’s absence he had surprised me by offering his help with whatever needed doing. It was clear he 155

would rather have work to keep him occupied than stand about with crossbow in hand, trying to look fierce.

“What else am I supposed to do?” I asked the frog. “Stop looking at me like that!”

I could see by Gogu’s expression that he thought I’d over-reached myself this time, and it wasn’t helping. I set him down to explore the woodpile by the hen coop.

Don’t go at all. Full Moon, Dark of the Moon, keep well away.

“You think Tati’s going to agree to that? Sorrow’s all she can think about. In her eyes he’s incapable of an ill thought, let alone an evil deed.” At that moment an idea came into my head.

In one way it was ridiculous, given what had happened. In another it made perfect sense. “Unless,” I mused, thinking aloud,

“she met someone else, someone nice and suitable—the kind of young man she could like and Aunt Bogdana would approve of.

If I could get her interested in a real man, maybe she would realize how hopeless her attachment to Sorrow is. It might break whatever spell he’s put on her. I don’t suppose we could give a grand party. It’s too soon after Uncle Nicolae’s death, and the whole valley’s going to be consumed by the hunt for the Night People. Besides, our money’s gone; we can hardly feed guests on

˘ ˘

mamaliga˘. But . . .”

I sat down on a stone wall, wrapping my arms around myself. Gogu had begun to forage in some old decaying wood. I averted my gaze. If he planned on eating beetles, I didn’t particularly want to watch. “It’s not just Tati,” I said. “Iulia’s been behaving strangely, too. Cezar accused her of flirting, and I think he did have some cause for it. She’s too young for that. I hate to admit it, but Aunt Bogdana has a point about manners 156

and deportment. We all need opportunities to meet suitable young men. Like it or not, if we don’t want Cezar in complete control of Piscul Dracului and making all our decisions for us, we need to take this first step. We have to accept that Father may not be coming back.” I shivered. “Gogu, I can’t imagine Cezar as master of Piscul Dracului. He doesn’t love the place as we do. It would be just . . . wrong. Almost anyone would be better than him. Perhaps Aunt Bogdana’s friends have sons we could like, given time. Young men who would look after the castle and the forest. Men with good judgment and kind hearts.”

Gogu was pursuing a small scuttling creature. His thoughts were held tight.

“All right, then,” I grumbled. “If you don’t want to talk, don’t. Leave me to sort out my problems all by myself. We need an heir for Piscul Dracului. One of us has to marry. If Tati won’t do it, I think I’ll have to. I’d always planned to do other things with my life—have adventures, go on voyages, become a merchant in my own right. And if I did marry, I’d hoped it would be for love. I used to dream about how I’d meet an exotic stranger in a foreign port and know instantly that he was the one. Of course, anyone wanting to marry one of us would need Father’s permission. But—” I choked on the words. If Father should die, Cezar would instantly gain control of everything. It was unthinkable. A man with such anger in his eyes should not be allowed to decide the fates of others. “Gogu,” I said, “I need to go and visit Aunt Bogdana. Will you stop crunching those things? It sounds disgusting.”

He hunkered down in the woodpile, abruptly silent and 157

near-invisible. I reminded myself that not long ago I had almost lost him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “The thing is, I’m so close to you I forget sometimes that we’re separate people. I just say what I think, and don’t realize I’ve hurt you until the words are out of my mouth. Gogu?”

I peered down between the logs. All I could see were his eyes—wide, unwinking, desperately serious.

“Gogu, I’m sorry. Come out, will you? I really need your advice.”

He made me wait long enough to realize how badly I had wounded him. Then he hopped onto the seat beside me, holding something in his mouth. He dropped it into my lap.

“What’s this?” A gift, clearly. He’d never made such a gesture before. It was a little seedpod, mousy brown and shaped like a heart. “Thank you! How sweet!”

He cringed. Maybe my tone had been a little patronizing.

“Gogu, I value your gift,” I said, taking off my glove to stroke his head with my finger. “On the first day of spring, I’ll cook you the finest pondweed pancake you ever tasted, and too bad if people say I’m behaving like a child. Unless there’s something else you’d like in return.”

I caught something bright and strange in his thoughts, gone so quickly I could not begin to interpret it. After a little, I sensed a more hesitant approach.

You could . . .

“I could what, Gogu?”

You could . . . Nothing.

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“You’re in a very strange mood today. I wonder whether that trip across the Deadwash on your own has scrambled up your head a little. Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

Silence.

“That’s a no, I take it.” Now I was hurt. We had always shared our secrets, the two of us. Ours had been a friendship of perfect trust.

Jena?

“Mmm?”

A party. You will marry a man you meet at a party?

“I don’t even know if we can do it yet, Gogu. It depends on what Aunt Bogdana thinks is right. This will be the first time

˘

I’ve spoken to her since the pomana, and I have no idea how she’ll react. If she’s still terribly upset, I may not even get as far as suggesting this. Anyway, it wouldn’t be a party, more like a polite gathering—though I’m hoping we can have music and good food. As for the marrying part, the idea of going about that as if it were a business transaction makes me feel sick. But I’ll do it if I must.” I slipped the seedpod into my pocket. A number of hurdles lay before me: the fact that Cezar had said his mother wanted no visitors; the possibility that my request might offend her deeply; the need to ask my cousin for funds; the snow lying heavy on the paths around Piscul Dracului, making travel by cart difficult; the Night People. Everything suggested that my idea was foolish and impractical. But with Father in such fragile health, I did not want to wait for springtime. “In the morning I’ll go up and see Aunt Bogdana. If she says yes, I’ll tell the girls we’re not going to the Other Kingdom again until the 159

Night People have left the valley. So you see, Gogu, I am being sensible. I’m following your good advice.”

I’m sorry, Jena.

“Sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?”

I’m sorry I cannot protect you.

Unease was plain in the frog’s hunched posture and the forlorn tone of his voice—the voice only I could hear. Abruptly, I was on the verge of tears. “Don’t be silly,” I told him, sniffing.

“Why would I expect that? It’s ridiculous. Friendship and good advice, that’s all I need from you.”

Put me on your shoulder now. I want to go inside.

“Jena! How lovely to see you!” It seemed that Aunt Bogdana was no longer too distressed to receive visitors. Her severe black dress accentuated her pallor and she was looking thinner, but her smile welcomed me as Daniela showed me into the sewing room. “Daniela, we’ll have some coffee, please. Come and sit down, Jena. I’m sorry I have not been out and about. It seems such an effort without Nicolae. Everywhere I go, I feel his absence.”

“I’m so sorry, Aunt Bogdana. I can’t imagine how it feels. If there’s anything we can do . . .” I seated myself on a little chair with an embroidered cushion. From the shelf nearby, Costi’s painted eyes watched me.

“And now there’s this terrible news of the miller’s daughter. . . . It’s as if a curse has fallen over the valley, a kind of darkness. It makes me wonder what we have done to deserve such ill fortune. And Father Sandu is gone. That was a blow.

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It is at times such as these that a community sorely needs its priest.”

I refrained from mentioning her son’s role in Father Sandu’s departure. “Cezar seems to be doing his best to hunt down the offender,” I said. “They didn’t succeed last night, but I think he will keep going until they do. He’s very determined.”

Aunt Bogdana sighed. “To be quite honest with you, Jena, I’m not at all sure that is the way Nicolae would have gone about it. A blessing on the settlement and on the margins of the forest, the erection of a crucifix, those things he would have done. But this . . .” She shuddered. “It’s answering blood with blood. I fear for Cezar. I fear for all those men. One does not meddle lightly with the forces of the forest.” She cleared her throat; her eyes were on Costi’s picture. “Cezar, of all men, should know that. Ah, here’s Daniela with the coffee. Allow me to pour for you, Jena. How are your sisters?”

“They’re well, thank you. Upset by what’s happened, of course. Aunt Bogdana, there’s something I need to ask you. You must tell me if you think it’s inappropriate.”

“Go on, Jena.”

I stumbled through my proposition, hoping I would not reduce my aunt to tears or make her angry by trespassing on her grief. Aunt Bogdana regarded me over her coffee cup, not interrupting. She did not seem upset, only intrigued. “And so,” I said eventually, “I did wonder if we might have a small gathering, perhaps just a few carefully chosen guests. I know it’s not the best time, but actually it might lift people’s spirits. In fact, I thought the folk of the valley might see it as a good thing to 161

do. A gesture to show we are not afraid, that we are prepared to light lamps against the darkness. You wouldn’t need to do anything, Aunt, just advise me on how to go about it and suggest whom we might invite. I realize we should perhaps wait until spring, but—”

Aunt Bogdana lifted a hand, and I halted in midsentence.

She sipped her coffee, her eyes thoughtful. Waiting, I gulped mine down. Daniela hastened to refill my cup. Gogu had escaped my pocket and was on my knee. He made a sudden leap, landing on the arm of Aunt Bogdana’s chair.

“Oh, I’m sorry—” I began.

“Not at all,” Aunt said absently. “Now, Jena, this is a matter of balancing what is right for you and your sisters with community expectations. It happens that an old friend of mine, a lady with extremely good connections, is staying near Bra¸sov over the winter and is likely to have a significant number of houseguests. I think it is possible we might do something, as long as it is kept sedate. The season being what it is, we cannot expect folk to travel far. And with this new threat, it will be necessary to offer guests a night’s accommodation at Piscul Dracului—nobody will be wanting to be outside after dusk.

You’ll need to clear out your storeroom. It’s the only place where you can entertain so many guests.”

“So many?” I had imagined we might put people in the formal dining room.

“Jena,” declared Aunt Bogdana, evidently warming to the challenge, “there’s no point in doing this if you don’t do it properly. While you cannot expect to find suitors in one evening, if folk see you at your best, they’ll talk. Word will get about, 162

even in winter, believe me. By springtime there will be invitations flooding in for you.”

She had astonished me. I realized I had been expecting a flat refusal. “You think the guests will come?” I asked her. “Even with the Night People in our forest?”

“We can only try, Jena. As long as movement in and out is by daylight, I think we can achieve something. You’ll all need new gowns. My seamstress should be able to do the job, with a little assistance. When did you plan to do this?”

“I thought maybe at next Full Moon.” I imagined explaining this to Tati. “If that allows sufficient time to organize everything. I’ll work hard, Aunt Bogdana.”

“This is quite a change of heart for you, Jena.” My aunt’s eyes were shrewd. “If anyone had asked me last summer whether I would ever persuade you to show interest in such activities, I’d have said I thought it an impossibility until you grew up a little. What has prompted this?” She had crumbled a dainty biscuit at the edge of her plate; Gogu was investigating.

I gave her as much of the truth as I could. “Uncle Nicolae’s death; my father’s illness. We do need to look ahead. And . . .

I do believe in what I said before, about giving the appearance of being strong and brave. I’m as much afraid of the Night People as anyone is. But I think this would be good for the village, especially if we get folk involved. I would need quite a bit of help getting things ready.” I wondered how I might approach the delicate question of payment.

“No dancing, of course,” Aunt Bogdana said. “That’s a shame, really. Nicolae did so love to dance, and I know he 163

wouldn’t mind, yet it would be inappropriate so soon after. . . .

But I think we could invite the village band, just for some quiet tunes in the background. The men could do with a few extra coppers to tide them over the winter. And we’ll ask the women to come up and help Florica with the supper. That way we do everyone a favor, and if they’re all together they will feel safer after dark.”

“Aunt,” I ventured, “I’m not sure whether Cezar will think this a good idea. He has all our funds at present. He’s approving our expenses one by one.”

Her brows shot up. “Really? He can hardly raise any objections to this, as long as it has my approval. Don’t worry about the cost, Jena. Nicolae would have been happy to do this for you. Think of it as his farewell gift.” Abruptly, her brisk manner turned to tears, and I got up to put my arm around her shoulders. “You’re a good girl, Jena,” my aunt said. “Perhaps a little unusual, like poor dear Teodor, but your heart is in the right place. I’m all right, my dear. This will give me something with which to occupy myself. We can start the guest list now.

Daniela, make a note of this, will you? Judge Rinaldo, of course, and his son Lucian . . .”

I had never seen Tati so angry. When I told her we weren’t going across at next Full Moon, at first she thought I was joking. Then, when she saw I meant it, she shouted at me. I had closed the bedchamber door; I’d warned the others to stay away. Tati paced up and down, using all the arguments she could think of, one by one. We couldn’t have a party now, she 164

insisted, it was too soon since Uncle Nicolae’s death. I told her that both Aunt Bogdana and Cezar had agreed to it, as long as we kept it sedate. Then she said, “But we always go. The others will be upset.”

“I’ve already told them, and they’ve accepted this. It makes perfect sense after what happened to Ivona. It’s logical for us to stay away until we know the valley is safe again.” I struggled to sound calm and controlled. I would not let her know the compulsion I felt to cross over at Dark of the Moon, to confront Tadeusz and make him understand that I did not want his help—not at such a cost. “And we don’t always go.

What about the times when one of us was ill or away from home? We’ve certainly missed a few over the years. Ileana and the others are unlikely to be upset if we don’t make an appearance. It’s not their way to trouble themselves about such things.”

“What about Sorrow? He’ll be upset. He’ll think I’m staying away because I believe he did it—that he’s capable of killing someone in cold blood. I must go, Jena. I must explain it to him!”

“He mightn’t even be there anymore,” I told her. “Ileana’s probably sent the Night People away by now. Their crimes must put her own people in danger. You weren’t there when Cezar and the others stormed out of Piscul Dracului with their pitchforks and crossbows.”

“Sorrow won’t go,” Tati declared. Her pale cheeks were flushed a hectic red; she looked as if she had a fever. “Not even if Ileana banishes them. He won’t leave me.”

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“This is stupid! You’ve only seen him a couple of times, Tati!

You know what it means for a human woman to ally herself with someone from the Other Kingdom. You’d go and you’d never be able to come back. You’d get older and he wouldn’t. One day you’d be an old woman, all wrinkles and toothless gums, and he’d still be a lovely young man. You’d never see any of us again.

Is that really what you want?”

“It might not be like that.” Her voice was very quiet. She bowed her head; her ebony hair hung down like silken curtains, shielding her face. “Stories don’t tell the whole truth.”

“It might be worse. If he’s one of the Night People, you might not last beyond a single bite.”

“Don’t say that, Jena!”

“I’m sorry. But it’s true. I’m not asking much. Only that you miss one Full Moon visit.”

“That’s not really all you’re asking, Jena.” Tati turned her big eyes on me; their expression was cool now. “Anyway, you aren’t asking, are you? You’re telling. I can’t go through the portal if you won’t help open it. What you really want is that I never see Sorrow again. You think the moment I get up and dance with some fellow Aunt Bogdana’s dredged up for me, I’ll forget all about him. Well, I won’t. And I won’t go to your stupid party. You don’t understand.”

She was right. Whatever Tati was feeling, it was something new to me, something I couldn’t comprehend: powerful, mysterious, and frightening. I began to wonder whether I had this all wrong—whether I had meddled in something I could not hope to control.

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“Tell me, then.” I sat down beside her on the bed. “It might help if I did understand.”

“You’re just trying to be nice to wheedle me into agreeing.”

“No, I’m not. I’m finding it hard to believe this has happened so quickly and made you change so much. I feel as if you’ve gone away from me—that I can’t rely on you anymore.”

“You know how you felt last time, when you lost Gogu?

When you really thought he’d been trampled to death, but you wouldn’t say so?”

I nodded, surprised that she had noticed: she had seemed entirely wrapped up in her own woes.

“Multiply that by a thousand, and you know how I feel when I think about never seeing Sorrow again. It’s the most awful feeling in the world—like having part of your heart torn away.”

“A thousand? Isn’t that rather extreme?” I thought the way I’d felt that night was about as wretched as I could possibly get. Gogu had been my constant companion—an unusual one, true, but no less loved for that—for more than nine years. She barely knew Sorrow.

“Well, after all, Gogu’s a frog. Sorrow is a man.”

It was just as well I’d left Gogu with Paula while I spoke to Tati. I was certain he’d have been offended by this, even though it was half true. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Sorrow isn’t a man. I want you to answer a question, Tati.”

“What?”

“Have you asked him straight out if he’s one of the Night People?”

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“We’ve talked about it, of course. He couldn’t tell me.”

“Couldn’t? What do you mean?”

“It’s something he can’t talk about. I don’t know why. It seems to be somehow forbidden. He wants to, but it’s not allowed. He seems so alone, Jena.”

“They’re all like that. Tadeusz said, ‘We all walk alone.’

Maybe Sorrow’s mother was a human woman.” I shivered. “A victim. Only instead of dying, like that girl, she changed into one of them.”

“He’s not at all like the other Night People, Jena. He’s so sweet and thoughtful.”

“Just a ploy to win your affections.” Sweet and thoughtful would work with Tati. For me, Tadeusz had held out the heady prospect of perception beyond my wildest imaginings.

He had flattered me, too, and I was forced to admit that I had liked that. His words of admiration had stirred something in me—they’d made me realize I would have liked to be a beauty.

Tadeusz had known how to tempt me, and Sorrow knew how to work his wiles on my sister.

“Tati,” I said, “what do you and Sorrow talk about? Do you actually have anything in common?”

Tati stared into space, smiling. “We talk about everything.

And nothing.”

“Everything. And you still can’t tell me what he is. How about his teeth? You’ve had a good chance to see those up close.

Are they like yours and mine?”

Tati hesitated.

“Well?”

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“Not exactly.” She spoke with some reluctance. “They are a little odd. He’s very self-conscious about it. But they’re not fangs.”

“Nor are Tadeusz’s teeth,” I said. “And he makes no secret of what he is.”

“Jena, I’m not just playing at this, you know, and neither is Sorrow. Do what you like. Have your party. Let Aunt Bogdana trot out her eligible young men. Bar me from Full Moon dancing. I’ll find Sorrow anyway, somehow. Or he’ll find me.

Whatever you do, we’ll be together. You can’t stop us.”

“Ileana can,” I said, chilled by my sister’s certainty. “If she banishes the Night People, you’ll have no way of finding him.”

“I will find him,” Tati said. “Wherever he goes, however far away she sends him, we’ll find each other.”

It was then that I noticed what she was wearing around her neck: a very fine cord, black in color—just a thread, really—

and on it, a tiny amulet that caught the light. I was certain I had never seen it before.

“What’s that?” I asked her, intrigued. Tati’s hand shot up to cover it. “Show me, Tati.”

Slowly she drew her fingers away, revealing the little charm, dark against her creamy skin—a piece of glass shaped like a teardrop, and red as blood.

“Did he give you this?” I hardly needed to ask. Such an item had Sorrow written all over it.

“We exchanged.”

“You exchanged? What did you give him?”

“My silver chain,” Tati said in a whisper.

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“Mother’s chain? You gave it away?” It had been a gift from our father to his sweetheart on the day she agreed to marry him.

It had never left Mother’s neck, until death took her from us. I suppose my horror sounded in my voice. Tati flinched away from me, but her eyes were steady.

“I’m the eldest,” my sister said. “It was mine to give.”

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Chapter Eight

My idea grew sudden wings and drew the whole community along in its wake. Aunt Bogdana worked behind the scenes.

Subtly, she made it evident that I was in charge, under her guiding hand, and that the purpose of the evening was to give heart to the valley in time of trouble. She bullied Cezar into releasing sufficient funds for an excellent supper: the band was hired and helpers recruited for the occasion. As my aunt had anticipated, the folk were all too willing to assist in return for a payment in coppers, fuel, or leftover food—provided that they were not expected to cross open ground between dusk and dawn.

Meanwhile, alongside the cleaning of chambers to accommodate our houseguests, the planning of a menu, and the dispatch of invitations, the grim work of hunting down the Night People went on. Cezar had assembled a ferocious-looking band of helpers for his nightly sorties. Many of them were men from 171

beyond our area. Petru had come back to tend to the farm, muttering one morning over breakfast that he’d had enough of hunting. We did not speak about the fences.

There had been no further word from Father; nothing even from Gabriel. I sat in the workroom with Gogu, staring at Father’s empty chair, wondering whether the whole idea for a Full Moon party had been a ghastly mistake. Was it conceived only to keep myself from the peril of wanting? Even one wrong thought might bring Tadeusz to me at Dark of the Moon: a wondrous temptation with a hideous price. That had been the most disturbing part of his invitation—the idea that simply wishing something to be, even for one unguarded moment, might make it happen. My instincts told me it was all wrong, yet I could not keep his voice out of my head.

I had a new concern as well. Cezar had moved himself into Piscul Dracului. He had ordered Florica to prepare Father’s bedchamber for him and to accommodate R˘azvan and Daniel, as well. It was far easier, he declared, to coordinate his hunting parties from here—and besides, he was worried about us. We needed men in the castle: strong protectors. Aunt Bogdana had a houseful of loyal servants. He thought she could do well enough without him.

“There’s no privacy, Gogu,” I said, crossing my arms on Father’s desk and laying down my head. “Everywhere I turn, there’s one of them in the way. And it’s making extra work for Florica, on top of the party. I want to write to Father again, but I can’t tell him a bunch of lies. And I can’t tell Father that Cezar’s gradually easing himself into his place, that the valley 172

is full of fear, that I no longer have control of his business interests, and that Tati’s fallen in love with a . . . whatever he is. I could hardly have done a worse job of looking after things.”

You’ve left something off your list of disasters. You listened to that person in the black boots. You let him flatter you. You want to see him again, I know it.

I lifted my head to glare at the frog. “All right,” I growled,

“go on, make me feel even worse. I almost fell for an invitation to do something really stupid. And probably someone died because of that. Just because I don’t say it out loud doesn’t mean I don’t think of it every day, Gogu. If I could make time go backward, I’d erase that night completely.”

Gogu did not respond. Maybe he realized I was having to work hard not to think about Dark of the Moon, now only days away.

“We’ll have to clear out the storeroom,” I told him. “That means Salem bin Afazi’s shipment must go out to the barn until after Full Moon. We must move everything as soon as there’s a fine patch in the weather. I wonder if Aunt Bogdana has some tapestries she would lend me to cover the worst cracks in the storeroom walls? It’s going to be cold in there.”

You’re worried. But not about tapestries.

“No. I’m worried about myself. How weak I’ve been. What I might get wrong in the future. How much depends on me.”

Isn’t your grand party supposed to make everything right?

I stared at him, sudden tears welling in my eyes. His silent voice had sounded almost bitter. “You could be a bit more supportive, Gogu,” I said.

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Don’t mind me. I’m only a frog. Wallow in self-pity all you like.

“What’s this I’m only a frog? You’re my best friend in all the world, you know that.”

Go and try on your finery. Prepare your grand chamber.

Sighing, I got up. Gogu had been acting very strangely of late. I could not tell whether he thought the party a good idea or not. Something had certainly stirred him up. Perhaps the talk of marriages had made him uneasy about his own future.

“If I could avoid this cold-blooded search for suitors,” I told him, “believe me, I would. And I’d never marry anyone who didn’t like frogs. You’ve got a home with me forever. I swear it, Gogu. Stop looking so mournful.”

He did not reply. Increasingly, he had taken to going suddenly silent, as if he drew down a little shutter over his mind.

It worried me.

Go and try on your finery. Finery was a whole issue on its own.

Aunt Bogdana had insisted on new gowns for everyone. We had not told her that each of us already possessed a dancing dress, for fear of arousing suspicion. So we’d agreed to use the services of her household seamstress and allowed our aunt to select fabrics from her own substantial store. Our first fitting had not gone well.

“There’s no need to be critical about our getting dressed up, Gogu,” I told him now as we descended the stairs from the workroom. “Aunt Bogdana is making us wear what’s suitable.”

It was a pity that none of us liked our gowns, but we could hardly quibble when Cezar was paying for everything. Stela’s was to be a lacy white creation with a red sash. My youngest sister had declared it to be “a baby dress.” Paula’s was pink, 174

which made her look sallow. Iulia’s natural beauty would be dimmed by Aunt’s choice of a soft gray—the cut extremely demure, with a high neckline and long, narrow sleeves. Iulia called it drab, and I had to agree.

It was clear that our aunt intended for Tati and me to be the sisters who shone at this particular event. Tati’s gown was pale blue with silver thread. It had a high waistline and a long, trailing skirt. With every fitting the seamstress, frowning, took the bodice in further. Tati had little appetite these days—at mealtimes she would move her food around her platter, eyes distant. She did not conceal her lack of enthusiasm for the gown, the party, and everything to do with it.

Aunt Bogdana had decided to put me in dark crimson. The fabric was sumptuous and the cut flattering, though it put more of me on show than I felt comfortable with. It was a suitable choice for attracting men, but it was wrong for me. I knew Gogu didn’t like it; perhaps that was the reason for his sharp comment. There was no such red in the natural hues of the forest, not even in the most brilliant autumn foliage. I favored russet-brown, shadowy blue, a thousand shades of green. Never mind. It was only for one night. I’d need to make sure we were allowed to do the finishing touches ourselves so I’d have time to sew in a Gogu-pocket. I had a feeling I would need my wise advisor by my side more than ever this Full Moon.

I made my way down to the storeroom, planning how best we might move the many crates, bundles, and rolls of carpet that we had so painstakingly put away there. As I rounded a corner in the passageway, I halted abruptly. The big double doors were propped open. A crew of men was busy lifting 175

Salem bin Afazi’s precious cargo from the shelves and carrying it out into the courtyard.

“What are you doing?” I challenged them, striding forward. “Who gave you permission to move those?”

The men glanced at me but kept on working. I followed them out into the courtyard, where fine snow was falling. If the fabrics were allowed to get wet, they would lose most of their commercial value. We had been so careful.

A long cart was standing just beyond the entry, a team of patient horses harnessed before it. The burly figure of Cezar could be seen giving sharp directions as still more men loaded each item onto the conveyance. I saw that the goods were being layered with oiled cloth for protection; Cezar was a merchant and appreciated the value of such a consignment. That did not alter the fact that he was taking it away and had not consulted me. Why had I spent so long sitting upstairs, stewing over my problems?

“Cezar, what is this?” My tone was sharp. “The things only need to go as far as the barn. Why the cart? Why wasn’t I told about this?”

My cousin went a little red and hastened to draw me aside.

“Jena, please refrain from speaking to me in that tone in front of my workers,” he said. “Save your shrill comments, if you must make them, for a private situation.”

Shrill. That’s offensive.

“This is my father’s house, Cezar, and that is my father’s shipment. I’ll say whatever I want. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Your manner offends me.”

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“All I want is a truthful answer.”

“I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve been looking so pale and tired. This entertainment you’ve set your heart on for Full Moon is creating too much work for you, especially at such a frightening time.”

“Answer my question,” I said, through gritted teeth. They were bringing out the breakable items now—the little scent bottles, the porcelain cups in their padded boxes. Everything was going onto the cart.

“I only want to help you. You do need this chamber cleared for your party, don’t you? The goods will be stored at Vârful cu Negur˘a. I have plenty of dry space for them there. That will make it far easier for me to sell them when the weather improves. I will deal with the entire venture from this point on. I can get good prices for you, Jena.”

He was behaving as if Father were already dead; he was acting like some kind of patriarch. I wasn’t going to put up with it. “I’m not at all sure I trust you to get the best price,” I said, “or to pass the full profit back to us if you do. Father trusted me to look after these things. It’s a very special cargo. I know he’d prefer the goods not be sold until he comes home.”

“I’m a merchant, Jena.” His lips had tightened; it was clear I had offended him. “Do me the courtesy of recognizing that I know what I’m doing. You can accept my help with this matter. It must be to your advantage, and mine, if you learn cooper-ation. Not that I don’t enjoy a good spat with you once in a while, but you are a young woman now. Concentrate on your party. I hear from Mother that you are proving quite able at organizing it. I look forward to seeing you in your finery.”

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He makes me sick.

“This is very high-handed, Cezar. I was left with the responsibility for Father’s business, and I expect at the very least that you will consult me before making any major decisions. I think the hunt for the Night People must have addled your brain a little. Maybe you should concentrate on that, and leave Father’s business affairs to me.” Before I reached the end of this speech, I was wishing I hadn’t started. Cezar had narrowed his eyes—his irritation had turned to something far more alarming.

“Since you seem to have taken it upon yourself to point out deficiencies in my behavior,” he said, lowering his voice as the workers began to fasten ropes over the neatly packed contents of the cart, “let me return the favor, Cousin. There’s a small matter of some fencing you had mended, which you advised me was done by folk traveling through the area. I spoke to Petru about it the day after you told me, and congratulated him on finding such efficient workers. He knew nothing about it. As far as he was concerned, the job was still waiting to be done. It all happened rather quickly, Jena. It seems the repair was carried out overnight, so to speak. Someone was here at Piscul Dracului—someone you didn’t want to tell me about.”

I prayed that my expression would not give anything away.

I was unprepared for this, and could think of no satisfactory answer. Petru had not quizzed me about who had done the job. I had taken that to indicate it was a question the old man thought better not asked, and had offered him no explanation. “Petru was busy when the workers were here,” I said, knowing I must say something. “Then you all rushed off after the Night People.

I didn’t get the chance to tell him.”

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“Rushed off. Are you implying that my pursuit of these bloodsucking fiends was in some way too precipitate?”

“No, Cezar.” I was shaking; I stuffed my hands into my pockets, not wanting him to see how nervous he was making me. “They did something terrible. I know you believe it’s the right thing to hunt them down. Many people would agree with you.”

“But you do not?” His tone was incredulous.

“I wouldn’t attempt to pass judgment on such an issue. I understand the desire for vengeance—I imagine that Ivona’s family is feeling that right now. But folk say it’s dangerous to meddle with the powers of the wildwood. That it’s wiser simply to set up wards and take preventive measures. If Father Sandu had been here—”

“Oh, it’s that again, is it? Your resentment at my action regarding the wayward priest clouds your judgment once more.

This is petty, Jena.”

“I’m not a child, Cezar, as you yourself seem keen to point out whenever you get the opportunity. I think taking violent action may only make things worse. That’s all I’m trying to say to you.” I could not tell him what I really believed: that the miller’s daughter had died as payment for the mending of my fences, and that in the accounting of the Night People, the ledger was now balanced. That made a hideous kind of sense.

“If we waited and all worked together to protect the settlement, in time this menace would pass us by. The Night People would move on. That’s what they do.”

He looked at me. Seeing another question in his eyes, I made a desperate attempt to fend it off. “I’m worried about you,” I 179

told him, putting a hand on his arm. “You’re not safe out there after dark.” That was not a lie, either; none of them was safe.

Though my cousin was a bully, I had no wish to see him fall victim to Night People or anything else that might be out in the forest by night. That this was a minor worry against so many more weighty problems, I did not say.

Cezar’s hand came up over mine. I remembered, vividly, the touch of Tadeusz’s chilly fingers and the feeling that had aroused in me. I could not help shivering.

“I’m sorry I upset you, Jena.” My cousin’s voice had changed. I liked this softer tone even less than his hectoring one. “Believe me, it gives me no pleasure at all to have to reprimand you. Your distress troubles me. As for the Night People, have no fear for me. I’m an expert hunter. We’ll track this villain down, believe me. If fortune favors us, we’ll have him before Full Moon.”

It was a strange time at Piscul Dracului. On the one hand, preparations for our party were in full swing. A stream of women came up the hill each day to help Florica with cleaning and cooking, to lend a special jug or a strip of embroidered linen to cover a bare shelf. The kitchen was full of chatter.

Down in the village, the band could be heard seizing any spare moment for a little practice. Against this, every dusk saw Cezar’s group of grim-faced hunters setting out up the track toward the forest in their woolen cloaks, their fur-lined hats and heavy boots—some armed with such weapons as a crossbow or knife, others shouldering the implements of farm or 180

forge; it was known that the folk of the Other Kingdom feared iron. The hunters would return at dawn, frozen, exhausted, and thus far, empty-handed. I feared to see them come back triumphant, for my heart told me that more spilling of blood might well plunge the whole valley into chaos and darkness.

Perhaps that was what the Night People had wanted all along: to set their terrible mark on Ileana’s court and on our peaceful community.

Cezar and his friends snatched sleep in the mornings. It was the only time we did not have their large presences dominating our house and stifling natural conversation. The party and the hunt did not seem like things that could exist comfortably in the same world, yet both were designed to keep the valley safe.

I hoped our celebration would be seen by Tadeusz and his dark henchmen for what it was: a gesture of defiance, of independence. A message that I would not listen to them, and that I de-spised what they had done.

Tati had become eerily quiet. Her appetite had vanished; she found all kinds of excuses not to eat, and I was deeply concerned. She had never been a big girl, and I saw how her clothes hung on her now, as if they had been made for someone far healthier. She made no further attempts to argue with me about going across to the Other Kingdom. Instead, she wandered about the narrow hallways and crooked staircases of Piscul Dracului like a pale ghost. When she managed to evade the watchful eyes of Cezar and his friends, she disappeared for long, solitary walks in the forest. She would come home trembling with cold, with boots and hemline soaking wet and eyes 181

full of a desperate emotion that was somewhere between grief and fury. I took to looking out for her return so I could smuggle her in without Cezar noticing.

Two days short of Dark of the Moon, Aunt Bogdana visited Piscul Dracului with her seamstress, and we gathered in the formal dining room after breakfast for another fitting. Iulia stood on the table in her stockings while the seamstress pinned up the hem of the decorous dove-gray creation. My sister was scowling. She plucked at the high-cut neckline, experimenting to see whether it could be rendered just a little more revealing.

“Iulia, I can see you don’t care for this,” Aunt said, not un-kindly. “Believe me, it’s not the young men you need to impress, it’s their mothers, and you won’t do that if you’re falling out of your bodice, dear. Leave that alone, it’s the appropriate cut for you at thirteen. We might add a bow at the back: that will look girlish while showing off your pretty figure. I wonder if we can have just a little dancing. . . . It seems rather silly to refrain on Nicolae’s account, when he enjoyed it so much himself. . . .”

“We’ll do whatever you think proper, Aunt Bogdana,” I said.

The seamstress straightened up; she had finished adjusting Iulia’s hem.

“Very well, Iulia, you’re done,” said Aunt Bogdana. “Step down. Carefully—mind those pins. Stela! You’re next!”

I heard a commotion, voices, footsteps, from the hallway outside. One of the voices was Cezar’s. “A celebration!” he was saying, his words loud and uneven, as if he was too excited to control it. “Florica, we’ll have hot ¸ tuica˘ and some food. We 182

won’t stay here long—this news needs to go straight down to Judge Rinaldo. Who’d have thought it, eh? To feel the wretch’s skinny neck in my own hands!”

“Jena,” Aunt Bogdana said quietly as she helped Stela up onto the table, “go out and ask my son what has happened.”

Heart thumping, I did as she asked. None of my sisters offered to go with me. In the kitchen, Cezar, his two friends, and several other men were shedding their outdoor clothing, their layers of wool steaming in the warmth from the big stove, while Florica busied herself with platters and cups, obeying Cezar’s demand that she serve them. I halted in the doorway.

Cezar turned from hanging his cloak on a peg and met my eye.

His face was flushed with what seemed to be triumph. He strode across and seized both my hands in his.

“Congratulate me, Jena! We made a capture last night!”

I thought of Tadeusz, so cool and controlled; I thought of somber-faced Sorrow, holding Tati’s cloak for her. My voice would not oblige me by framing an intelligent question.

“Sit down, Jena. I can see I’ve shocked you. I should have broken the news more gently. Florica, some water for Mistress Jena, please.”

“What’s happened?” I croaked. “You caught one of the Night People? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not one of them, ” said Daniel. “Another one of the forest folk, an accomplice. He was hanging about in the woods, up to no good. Cezar thought he might lead us to the Night People.

Give us useful information.”

“He would have done.” It was clear that Cezar wanted to 183

tell this story himself. “If the wretch hadn’t decided to fight us, we could have locked him up and got what we wanted out of him.”

Every part of me had turned cold. “An accomplice. What kind of accomplice?”

“A dwarf. No doubt where he was from. I offered the fellow freedom in return for information, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Fought like a little demon. Bit Daniel on the hand; nearly took my eye out with his boot. Didn’t have a chance, of course.”

Anatolie. I could not ask, What color was his beard? Did he have diamond studs in his teeth? Was he an old friend of mine? “You mean you took him prisoner?” I asked, thinking that any dwarf could escape from human custody, given time. What had he been doing out in our world by night at such a time of risk?

Cezar’s features were suddenly grave. “No, Jena. These folk are not so easily taken. We used various methods to try to make the little devil talk, but he had nothing to say about Night People or about ways in and out of their realm. In the end, he perished for his silence. There was no alternative. We could not let him go free. These vermin must be cleared from our forest.

Those who cover for the perpetrators of crimes are, in their way, just as guilty as the criminals.”

They’d killed him. Just like that, he’d lost his life for something he’d had no responsibility for. The dwarves were peace-able folk; they could have played no part in Ivona’s death.

Various methods . . . Surely Cezar didn’t mean torture?

“It doesn’t sound like cause for congratulation,” I found myself saying. My voice wobbled. “You caught, hurt, and killed someone without knowing if he had any responsibility for the 184

murder. And you didn’t get any information. You spilled more blood, and for nothing.”

There was a sudden silence. All the men were staring at me.

By the stove Florica stood utterly still, the kettle in her hands.

“Jena,” Cezar said in a dangerous, quiet voice, “I think it’s best if you leave us now. We men are weary; it’s been a long night’s struggle. You need a little time to digest this news. Distress is making you irrational.”

“A long night’s struggle? A pack of—what—ten or eleven men against one dwarf ?” I was on my feet, so angry that I let the words spill out without caution. “Forgive me if I cannot agree that this is some kind of victory.”

“Leave the room, Jena.” Now Cezar spoke sharply; it was a command. “I will not have words of that kind spoken here in the valley, not while I am master of Vârful cu Negur˘a. Please curb your tongue. Florica, where’s that ¸ tuica˘?”

One of the hardest things I had to do was break this news to my sisters in Aunt Bogdana’s presence, not knowing how each of them might respond. I was quivering with rage and humiliation after Cezar’s reprimand, and full of horror over what he had done. All I wanted to do was run away somewhere by myself with Gogu and cry like a child. But the voices of my cousin and his friends were loud and excited as they went over their exploits; it could only get worse as the ¸ tuica˘ flowed. I needed to be first with this news, to render it gently. I did try.

“Cezar killed a dwarf ?” Iulia found her voice first.

Stela, halfway through taking off her party dress, was staring round-eyed, her chin beginning to wobble.

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“Aunt Bogdana,” said Paula, her own voice less than steady,

“I might take Stela upstairs.”

“Of course, dear—your gown doesn’t have much work left to do. This is odd news. I did not think Cezar . . . It’s quite disturbing.” A loud gust of laughter reached us from the kitchen.

I was watching Tati. She stood by the wall, white and staring, as the sounds of hilarity filtered through the door.

Then she turned and left the room without a word.

“I don’t think Tatiana’s very well, Jena,” said my aunt quietly. “She’s grown so thin, and she often seems . . . not quite all there. I wonder if you should consult an herbalist? I can recommend someone, if you wish.”

“Thank you, Aunt. I’ll consider that.” I realized she was speaking to me as if I were head of the household, as if I were the one in charge. Listening to Cezar’s voice, remembering what he had just said to me—wounding words, the words of a tyrant—I knew that if I had ever been in charge of anything at Piscul Dracului, I was no longer.

The next morning, the landholders of the valley awoke as usual and went out to check their stock. On every farm, on every smallholding, an animal was found slaughtered. There was no consistency in what was chosen, only in the method of killing.

On one farm it was a sheep, on another a pig. One family found a beloved dog lying limp across the doorstep. Some had been luckier, finding only a chicken gone, while some had lost their cow, the standby of every household. The valley’s cows were not simply valued for the milk they provided over spring and summer, or for the calves they bore. Over the warmer months 186

they all went out to graze the mountain pastures together, gathered up by a herdsman in the morning at each gateway, and returned in the evening to be milked again. Each animal knew its own gate and waited there for admittance; each knew its own human family. That morning, eight cows lay in their blood, their throats slit. Eight families had lost an essential part of their livelihood as well as an honored friend.

The news reached us early—Ivan came up to tell us, his face pale. He had been fortunate to lose only one of his ducks. He went out with Petru to check our own stock. Most were housed over the winter in outbuildings near the castle, but we did have a flock of hardy ewes in the sheepfold near the forest’s margin. There was nothing untoward in the barn or the byre or the outbuildings—the animals looked healthy and demanded their breakfast. While the men went off to the upper pasture, I fed the chickens and Iulia tended to the pigs, and Paula and Stela made themselves useful in the kitchen, helping Florica with a batch of bread. Cezar and his friends were still asleep after another long night’s hunting; they would be hungry when they awoke. Tati had not made an appearance.

Ivan and Petru were gone awhile. The upper pasture was covered in snow; for most of the winter, the sheep were dependent on hay carried up to their shelter. I stayed outside the barn, chopping firewood with unnecessary violence. Images of blood and death passed before my eyes. I did not know any longer whether I believed that filling Piscul Dracului with colored lights and music and laughter could have any effect at all on the Night People. Something was happening that seemed far too powerful for that small gesture of defiance to hold any 187

weight. And, though I was filled with dread at the prospect, I wondered whether I should after all take a different path to try to stop it. Tonight was Dark of the Moon. If I crossed over to the Other Kingdom, could I hope to change the way things were? If I looked in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror, would I be given the secrets of the future, so I could make it come out differently?

But maybe I was fooling myself, pretending that my motive was selfless when, underneath, it was dark temptation that drew me.

Jena.

Gogu had been sitting on a tree stump, wincing every time my ax split a log. I stopped chopping. “What is it, Gogu?” I took him in my hand; he was trembling. It came to me suddenly that it could have been him, that I could have woken to find him stretched out dead beside me on the pillow, slaughtered as callously as those other animals had been.

Tell me what you are thinking.

“I can’t. It will make you angry.”

Tell me. I am your friend.

“I’m afraid. All I really want to do is be a complete coward and hide from all this. We can stop visiting the Other Kingdom so we don’t give away any secrets. We can hold our party and pretend that we’re not afraid of the Night People. But I don’t believe those things are enough to put this right. Ileana’s folk wouldn’t slaughter people’s stock. She said it herself— That is not our way—when she spoke to me about punishing Cezar. Her folk respect creatures; they don’t perform arbitrary killings.

This is the work of the Night People. But it’s not vengeance for 188

the dwarf—he wasn’t one of their kind. It’s Tadeusz, playing games. It’s sheer mischief, malicious teasing, designed to stir up unrest. I’m sure it’s my fault. If I hadn’t let him bewitch me . . .”

My head was full of that beguiling voice. Its soft darkness still drew me, despite all common sense.

What are you planning?

“Nothing.” But I was lying, and I thought he knew it.

When Petru and Ivan returned to the castle, their faces grave, I expected to be told of a loss. But they had counted the flock three times over, and all our sheep were still alive and well. It seemed that Piscul Dracului had escaped the slaughter.

Maybe, Petru said, other farms had also been spared—some were too far away to have made a report yet.

Before day’s end, Judge Rinaldo called a meeting down in the village. Cezar went, and so did Petru. The news they brought back sent a chill through me. Of all the households in the entire valley, ours was the only one that had not lost an animal to this scourge. Piscul Dracului had been singled out for special treatment. It was not to do with castles and cottages—

one treatment for the wealthy, one for the common folk—for Cezar’s farm at Vârful cu Negur˘a had lost a breeding ewe.

Cezar was beside himself with fury. Questions had been asked in public as to why our house—situated so close to the edge of the wildwood—should be different from any other.

One very old man had muttered something about Piscul Dracului being a place of mystery, a home of hidden perils and secret doors. Petru had told him he was an addle-pated old fool, but the damage was done. Once one tale came out, other folk had 189

more to add. Someone suggested that the reason the place had stood empty for so long was that it concealed a gateway of some kind—that within its walls was a portal where worlds met.

Our cousin assembled us in the kitchen—all five sisters, with Florica and Petru. R˘azvan and Daniel were looking uncomfortable by the door, as if stationed there to keep us from escaping. Perhaps Cezar had forgotten that this was our own house.

“I’m very unhappy,” he said. “Deeply disturbed by what has happened, and by what folk are saying. If I believed for a moment that any one of you was hiding something, that information existed which could help me apprehend these murder-ers and that you were holding it back, I would—” He stopped, then turned on Florica. “You’ve been here for years, since the days of the old owner. What’s all this talk of secret passageways and hidden entrances? Don’t try to tell me you don’t know.”

His tone was intimidating: Florica paled and shrank away from him. Petru put his hand on her shoulder.

“Cezar,” I said, “you can’t interrogate Florica as if she were a criminal.”

His brows creased into a ferocious scowl. “I’ll do whatever is required to drive this menace from our forest, Jena. Personal bonds and old loyalties must be set aside when people’s lives are at stake. You didn’t see that fellow we caught. These folk are evil, through and through. And I will not be the target of vicious tongues in the community. I will not allow accusations of this kind to taint my reputation. If there’s any truth in them, 190

I want it out in the open, right now. In your father’s absence, I speak as head of the family. Perhaps you girls lack a full understanding of the danger we are facing. But you must know what these rumors could do. Let folk associate such tales with the five of you, and your chances of making advantageous matches will be reduced to nothing. Nobody wants a wife with the taint of the wildwood about her.”

Paula made as if to speak—I silenced her with a look. Any comment she might make was likely to inflame the situation still further. In my pocket, Gogu was vibrating with anger.

“Cezar,” I said, “since you are so keen on propriety, may I suggest that we discuss this in private, just you and me, with one of my sisters as chaperone? I will not have Florica and Petru bullied.”

Cezar’s face was calm, the anger suppressed now, but I could see the dangerous look in his eyes. “My intention was to address you all together,” he said. “But I’ve changed my mind.

I’ll see you one at a time, starting with Stela. Alone. And we’ll do it now, before you can concoct a set of matching stories.”

“Are you accusing my sisters of lying?” We all looked at Tati in surprise. These days she rarely contributed anything to general conversation. She had certainly got Cezar’s attention.

He looked at her and his eyes narrowed. It was, perhaps, the first time he had noticed how pale and thin she was—how much she had changed.

“I cannot answer that until I hear what they have to say,”

he said.

“You’re not talking to Stela without one of us there,” I told 191

him. “She’s only five. And this is still Father’s house. You are not head of anything, Cezar, not while he’s still alive and no farther away than Constan¸ta.” I drew a breath, fighting for calm. “It’s after Stela’s bedtime. It’s completely inappropriate to subject her to this so late. You can talk to her tomorrow with me present—or, better still, with Aunt Bogdana there as well.

Let us see how prepared you are to bully and intimidate us in your own mother’s presence—”

He lifted his arm; his hand was poised to strike me. As one, my sisters drew in their breath in a shocked gasp. Then, surprising all of us, Daniel took two long strides across the kitchen and interposed his large body between my cousin and me. Cezar lowered his arm and I stepped back. Nobody had uttered a word.

“Tati,” I said, “will you take Stela up to bed, please? Florica, Petru: you are excused for the night. It’s been a long day, and you need your rest. Paula, Iulia: please clear away these platters and glasses before you go upstairs. Florica will want everything tidy for the morning.”

Cezar had turned his back; his shoulders were tight.

“Thank you,” I said to Daniel. He had retreated to the doorway, his eyes wary. I imagined that not even a strong young man would gladly cross Cezar. “I don’t know if the hunting party is going out again tonight, but I would ask you and R˘azvan to give me a little time to speak to my cousin in private.

You can wait outside the door.”

They obeyed. My sisters cleared the table rapidly, bearing cups and platters away for washing and drying in the scullery.

While they were close at hand but out of earshot, I took the opportunity to speak, addressing myself to Cezar’s back.

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“You would have hit me.” I could hear how cold my voice sounded, not at all the best thing to placate him. I couldn’t help it. “Any man who attempts that loses my respect immediately, Cezar. My father would never have raised a hand against a woman. Nor, I’m certain, would Uncle Nicolae. What is it that makes you hate so?”

“I don’t hate you, Jena.” His tone was constrained. He did not turn. “Quite the contrary. But you try me hard sometimes. I know you want to protect your sisters and your servants—that is admirable, as a general sentiment. But if one of them is concealing something . . . if one of them is in league with these de-structive powers . . . I cannot believe that’s true, but I have to investigate the rumors. If the worst comes to pass, and someone in my own household has assisted these demonic folk, I must use what information they can give me to root out the evil—to destroy it once and for all.”

I was so angry I could hardly speak. “If you’re not careful,”

I said, “your hatred will eat you up, Cezar. I don’t understand it. It has changed you so much that I hardly recognize you anymore. I know how terrible Costi’s death was for you. But it was so long ago. You have your own estate to look after, your community to watch over, your life to lead. It is frightening to have the Night People in our forest. It is terrible that Ivona died, and troubling that folk have lost livestock. But you’re a leader—

you should be setting an example, not charging forward with the scent of blood in your nostrils and blind hatred in your heart. No matter how cruel the blow of losing your brother, it should never have made you lose your sense of what is right.”

He did not answer for a long time, just turned to stare at 193

me. It was as if I were the one who had almost struck a blow.

Eventually he said, “You can’t understand. You can’t know what it’s like to be offered something and for it to seem as if you’ve been given it, and then to find out it’s all a sham—that what you believed was a wonderful gift is worthless, cold, a dead promise. To pay an impossible price and get dross disguised as treasure; that is the cruelest thing. A leader, me?

Hardly. Folk follow me because I’m the best they’ve got. That’s not saying much in a place like this. Yes, I’m angry. I want the truth—and when I have it, I’ll use it to destroy those who tricked me, those who played the most evil joke in the world on me. I will tear them apart, limb from limb, and then I will destroy their forest so that they can never return to haunt me. I will drive them even out of my dreams.”

“Evil joke?” I asked, my voice diminished to a thread. “What joke? What are you talking about?”

“Forget it, Jena,” said Cezar. “I don’t want to discuss this further tonight. In the morning I’ll hear what you have to say, each of you in turn. I’ll know if anyone’s lying. I won’t have the community intimidated by the forces of the forest, and I won’t have my household cursed and polluted by association with Dr˘agu¸ta the witch and her henchmen. Night People or not, she’s the one who is behind all this. She did it. She drowned Costi. She’s never let me forget that, not for one instant. People think life goes on after these things, that folk recover and get over it, that everything doesn’t change. That’s wrong, Jena. It never goes away. It won’t go away until I make it go. It won’t leave me until I crush it completely.”

Iulia and Paula had finished putting away the dishes; now 194

they hovered in the doorway, waiting for me. Thank heaven for my sisters. I could forgive their small failings instantly, as long as they were there when I needed them. I put my hand around Gogu, inside my pocket. He was tensed up into a little ball, deeply distressed. “I don’t think I understand,” I told my cousin. “I’ve always believed we should try to put bad things behind us—not to forget them, but to learn from them and make the best use of that learning in our lives. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t blame Dr˘agu¸ta or the folk of the forest. It’s your life—the only one who can live it is you. Now I’m going to bed, Cezar. If you ever try to hit me again, I will tell my father. And I’ll tell Aunt Bogdana, as well. Once I might possibly come to forgive. Twice will ensure you never regain my good opinion.”

In the quiet of our bedchamber, Stela was tucked under her quilt, almost asleep. There was no sign of Tati.

“Stela?” I crouched down by my little sister’s bed. “Where did Tati go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jena.” Paula turned solemn eyes on me. “Her outdoor cloak’s gone.”

My stomach dropped; I felt sick. I thought of Tati’s wan, desperate appearance over these last days; her odd trips out into the forest; the way she seemed to drift along on the edges, as if she were not really part of our family anymore. I had told her about Tadeusz. I had told her about Dark of the Moon. “I think I’d better go and see if she’s all right,” I said as calmly as I could while my heart raced with terror. “I’ll just settle Gogu down first.”

195

I poured water into his bowl. My hands shook so much that the stream spilled over the rim.

“Jena,” said Iulia, “where do you think she’s gone? Why are you looking like that?”

“Like what?” I fished Gogu out of my pocket and set him by the water dish.

No, Jena! No.

“You look terrified,” Iulia said.

“I don’t want her to get in Cezar’s way. You saw what kind of mood he’s in. I’ll just slip out and bring her back.”

Jena, don’t go. Don’t do this.

“It’s Dark of the Moon,” Paula said. “You don’t think she might be planning to—?” She was not quite prepared to put my worst suspicion into words.

“Of course not,” I lied. “She doesn’t even know where to go; none of us do.” Call to me and I will take you there. “I’d better go now. Keep an eye on Gogu for me, will you?”

Take me with you. Jena! Don’t go without me!

I made for the door before the frog could leap onto my shoulder. I knew that if I picked him up again, I would find it impossible to leave him behind. “I shouldn’t be long,” I said, snatching my cloak from the peg where it hung. “Just go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I imagined I could feel the horrified eyes of my sisters on my back as I went out. I heard a little thud as Gogu leaped from the table and made to follow me. I shut the door before he could reach it. If Tati was doing what I suspected, my only choice was to follow her, but I would not risk the safety of my little wise friend as well as my own.

196

I wanted to run, to find her as quickly as I could before it was too late. But I went cautiously, sidling from one corner to another, constantly watchful. If I drew Cezar’s attention, I would have to find an excuse for creeping about at night in my outdoor cloak, and then retreat to the bedchamber without my sister. There was no map to follow, no logic to choosing where I might look. An instinct I had not known I possessed drew me down one staircase and up another, past Father’s workroom, along a creaking gallery, then down the back way to the chamber that had once been our storeroom and was now swept bare and clean, waiting for the night of Full Moon.

The castle was dark. I had grabbed a candle before I went downstairs, but its feeble flickering did little to illuminate the cavernous spaces and shadowy corners of Piscul Dracului. I walked the length of the big chamber, the pillars rising into darkness on either side, the floor faintly gleaming as my small light passed over it. I went up a set of stone steps at the far end.

From here it was possible to enter a musicians’ gallery set above the main chamber, or to climb still further to an open terrace looking out over dense forest. With the moon hidden, there would be nothing to see tonight. “Tati,” I whispered, “where are you? Don’t be gone already—please, please. . . .”

The door to the terrace was ajar, its chain unfastened and dangling. So much for Cezar’s precautions. I crept through and ascended another flight of steps to emerge on the stone terrace.

The night was pitch-black and cold enough to freeze the breath the moment it left the body. I hugged my cloak around my shoulders, lifting the candle in a feeble attempt to light the darkness. “Tati? Are you here?”

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There was a sudden movement by the parapet wall. She was standing close to the barrier, her face a pale oval in the fit-ful light, her eyes big and wild. The blue cloak shrouded her figure completely; her feet were in soft slippers. My sister was not alone. Beside her stood a tall, black-caped figure. It was not Sorrow. It was not Tadeusz. Those ruby lips, that snow-white skin, that elegant bearing, belonged to the woman of the Night People: the haughty Anastasia.

“Tati,” I gulped, “come inside. You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.” My voice sounded tiny—a child’s, ineffectual and meaningless.

Anastasia smiled, showing her unusual teeth. The effect was deeply troubling. “Take my arm, Tatiana,” she said, and her voice was as musical and as haunting as her brother’s, if brother he was. “I will lead you across. Sorrow is waiting for you just beyond the margin. Your sister is wrong. It’s perfectly safe. You’re women now—you are entitled to this.”

“No!” I cried out. “Tati, don’t!” I could see the longing in my sister’s eyes; Sorrow’s name had brought it sharply to life.

As for me, I felt the urge to move forward, to obey the coaxing voice and follow wherever Anastasia bid me. I yearned to go. I needed knowledge. What she had said about being entitled warmed me. In her world, there were no men like Cezar to dismiss my aspirations and scorn my quest for independence.

“Come with us, Jenica,” Anastasia purred. “My brother waits to show you the mirror. It’s just on the other side. Come, take my hand.”

I hesitated, remembering the small, wise voice of Gogu 198

raised in desperate protest. No, Jena! When had he ever been wrong?

“You waver,” the red-lipped woman said dismissively. “You are too cautious, like an old woman. Come, Tatiana.” And, as I watched, Tati slipped her arm through Anastasia’s. They moved away, beyond the small circle of light my candle cast on the cold stones. The portal could be anywhere. They might simply vanish; my sister might never come back. I imagined her pale and lifeless like Ivona, with the livid mark of a bite on her neck. I drew one long, uneven breath and launched myself after them.

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Chapter Nine

The candle went out, and I was blind. I stumbled along the terrace, hoping I would catch them before they escaped my reach.

Surely this was too far—there should be a wall. . . . Groping before me in the darkness, I touched something chill as winter: a thin-fingered, long-nailed hand. I clutched it, reminding myself to breathe. A moment later we were falling, falling, so far down that I knew our landing would be in a tumble of crushed flesh and broken bones. I screamed, but my voice drifted into nothing; instead, the cold air was full of the cries of strange birds, an eldritch music of night. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, waiting for the ground to slam into my body.

I landed gently, my feet on a soft surface, my eyes still closed. From the distance came a sound of faint music. I opened my eyes.

We were by T˘aul Ielelor, on the path to Dancing Glade.

There was the avenue of tall trees that led up to the sward; there was the little sandy shore where our boats would glide 200

in to let us out. The lake was frozen over. Tonight its surface did not glimmer, but lay sullen and dark beneath the willows.

Up in the trees, lanterns still hung, but their forms were changed: in place of beetle, bird, and butterfly were twisted forms of things not quite right—a cockroach with elongated teeth; a child with grimacing features and stunted limbs; a death’s-head; a worm-infested apple. The light they cast was dim and odd, rendering the landscape a greenish purple. Anastasia’s pale face was skull-like and my sister’s a terrified mask.

I swallowed and released Anastasia’s chill hand, struggling for words. I could not berate Tati for her weakness. I had felt the same urge to come here. It was in my blood now as I walked after my sister and her guide up the pathway toward Ileana’s glade.

I willed myself to be silent. I would not ask, Where is Tadeusz? Where is Dragu¸

˘ ta’s mirror? It seemed far wiser not to give the Night People the impression that I cared greatly for anything they might have to offer. I hoped Ileana would be here as usual and that I might petition her again, since it seemed the whole valley had now fallen under a malevolent shadow. I would simply ask her to send the Night People away. And if the queen of the forest laughed at a human girl for seeking influence in such grand matters, so be it.

I tried to grasp my sister’s arm so she would stay by my side, for I could see in her eyes that she would not listen to words of caution tonight, but Anastasia hurried her on. I would need to remain on my guard constantly to be certain I could bring Tati home safely. Home. I did not even know how we would get there. Anastasia did not seem like the kind of being 201

who would snap her fingers and transport us back as soon as we grew tired. There were no boats on the lakeshore tonight.

Never mind that: there would be folk I knew at Dancing Glade, folk who would help me if I needed them.

“Where’s Sorrow?” Tati asked. “You said he was just on the other side. He’s not here.” Her voice rose. “You lied to me!

Where is he?”

Anastasia was walking briskly, her booted heels sinking deep into the damp soil. “Patience, patience, Tatiana. He will be here. He waits for you. He longs for you. I will take you to him.” And she drew Tati on, so fast that I had to break into a run to keep up. The trees seemed to reach out long fingers as we passed beneath, sharp and greedy; they clawed at my cloak and tangled in Tati’s long hair. She brushed them away, shuddering. “Keep up!” snapped Anastasia, her voice no longer beautiful. “You are too slow!”

On the edge of Ileana’s glade, we halted. The sward was full of dancing figures, as at Full Moon, but there was nothing familiar about it. I could not see tall Grigori, or big, blocky Sten, or diminutive Ildephonsus. I could not see the elegant form of the forest queen or the golden hair of her consort. Instead, a company of beings writhed and cavorted on the grass; Night People were among them, but there were also many that seemed part creature, part man or woman—a person with the head of a boar, a lady whose skin was all scales—and, here and there, stunted beings whose bodies were squashed up on themselves, hobbling in a grotesque mockery of a formal dance. Most disturbing of all, I saw human folk among the motley throng—

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men and women whose faces were not those of happy revelers but who bore trapped expressions, grimacing or fearful or plain mad. I saw a girl of around Paula’s age—pale-faced, solemn, delicately built—her dark hair tied back in a bow of black silk, her gown a small replica of Anastasia’s. She stood under the trees by the sward’s edge, watching gravely. Two tall women of the Night People flanked this slight figure; I could not escape the impression that they were acting as guards. The girl looked vaguely familiar. There was something deeply unsettling about the sight of her in this unlikely place; her frail innocence surely did not belong here. I saw that she was looking at a group of folk playing some kind of game with long barbed poles.

They were throwing high, competing to reach a trussed-up bundle that hung on ropes from a willow bough. The bundle was wriggling, struggling—there was something alive inside it. A stick found its mark; a cry of pain came from the target.

Anastasia was already drawing Tati away. “Over here,” she commanded, making her way around the edge of the sward. I followed, my eyes drawn to a circle of Night People who were not dancing, merely standing and watching a figure that capered in the center. It was a man, a human being of middle years, dressed in the ragged remnants of a shepherd’s garb—

long felt cape, conical hat—performing a crude kind of dance that jerked and contorted his body, as if a mad puppeteer were moving him against his will. I saw the agony in his eyes. He stared wildly at me, and his lips moved in a silent entreaty: Help me! Then Anastasia grabbed my arm and moved me on.

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“Wait,” I protested. “That man—what are they doing to him? And what was that hung from the tree?”

Anastasia’s red lips curved in a smile entirely without mirth. “That man, and a woman of your kind, wandered a little too far,” she said. “Why would you protest? We have spared their lives: like many other foolish folk, they have become part of our revels.”

“But it looked as if that man couldn’t stop—as if he was forced to dance on and on, just so they could mock him.” I glanced back over my shoulder, but a frenzy of dancing creatures had moved between me and that sad, capering figure.

“Do not judge us, Jenica. Your own cousin tore one of Ileana’s folk apart, limb from limb. And for no good purpose, as it came about. Dwarves are ridiculously loyal.”

I made myself ask. “Can you tell me which one it was? Was it Anatolie?”

She laughed. The sound of it rang in my ears, derisive and harsh. “What would I care? They all look the same to me.”

“Where’s Sorrow?” Tati had stopped walking, and there was a new look of determination on her face. “I’m not going a step farther until I see him.” She reached back and grasped my hand. “Nor is Jena.”

“That’s right,” I said, fixing Anastasia with an attempt at a glare. “If you can’t make good on your promises, we’re going straight back home.”

She laughed again, and this time the folk who were dancing close beside us halted and fell silent. Suddenly we had an audience—an audience in which not a single figure was familiar. Where were our friends from Ileana’s glade?

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“Home?” It was Tadeusz’s voice. I whirled, letting go of Tati, and there he was, right behind us. “That could prove difficult, Jenica. You will not cross the Dark Between without one of us as your guide. Don’t look like that—we mean you no harm. A little insight, some entertainment, then we will take you safely back again. You have surprised me.” He moved forward, his hand coming up to touch my hair. “I had believed you lacked the courage for this.”

“I’m not here because I want to be,” I said through chattering teeth. “I’m here to make sure my sister comes home safely.

And to tell you—” I halted. To come right out with a request—

no, a demand—that they leave the valley alone, in front of such an audience, did not seem particularly wise. “There’s something I need to explain to you,” I told him. “I would prefer to do so in private.”

Tadeusz gave a knowing smile; it reminded me of the way Cezar sometimes looked.

“I didn’t mean—” I blurted out, mortified.

“Oh, but I think you did.” The voice was at its velvety best, insinuating itself into the deepest recesses of my mind.

“Without wanting, you could not pass over. You and your sister both.” The dark eyes flicked to Tati and back again. “There will be time enough for private dalliance later. The night is long. Don’t you want to look into Dr˘agu¸ta’s magic mirror?

When you have done so, we will have a hundred new things to talk about, Jena.”

“I don’t care about the mirror.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Anastasia getting restless, impatient. She was examining her long, polished nails and glancing about her. “I’ll say 205

what I need to say now. You’ve brought evil on the valley, you and your people. You offered me something and I didn’t accept the offer, but you took payment anyway—payment in an innocent girl’s blood. You started this. You can’t say just wanting something means I’ve agreed to some kind of bargain; that isn’t fair. The people of the valley were already hungry: it’s winter, and times are hard. Killing their animals isn’t only cruel, it’s un-just. Not everyone is like Cezar. Most people understand the need to share. They understand that humankind and the folk of the wildwood have to live side by side, with proper respect for their differences. Ileana’s folk know that. It seems you don’t.”

“You promised that I could see Sorrow.” Tati’s voice was uneven. “If he’s here, I want to see him now. Show me that he’s safe and well.”

“Of course, Tatiana.” Tadeusz’s voice had become kindly, warm; he sounded utterly trustworthy. “I will take you to him.

He’s a shy boy, as you know. He won’t come out while so many folk are enjoying themselves. This way.”

“Wait!” It seemed my night was to be a long sequence of running, clutching, trying to keep up. “Don’t go without me—”

“This way,” said Anastasia, and I found that she was leading me down a pathway into the woods, and my sister and Tadeusz were nowhere in sight. I tried to pull back, to follow Tati, but my feet were obeying some force beyond me, dragging me along behind my pale-faced guide. I was engulfed by malevolence, in the grip of a fell charm. I tried to call to my sister, but my voice seemed to die in my throat—all I could manage was a strangled gasp. We moved on into the darkness. Behind us, the eerie lights of the glade faded.

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“What is this place?” I managed. “Where are Ileana and Marin? Why is it so different?” A terrible fear awoke within me. Perhaps the Night People had changed the Other Kingdom forever. Perhaps Ileana’s rule was over, and our friends were all gone.

“You think that within the Other Kingdom there is only one realm?” Anastasia raised her brows at me, as if she found me unbelievably stupid. “Dark of the Moon is our time; we come to celebrate in our own way. It is Ileana’s choice to shun our festivities. That’s of no matter. My brother’s world is stronger than hers. In time, all this will be ours.”

My heart went cold. Fear seized me, but not quite enough to stifle common sense. “I thought you were from the east,” I whispered. “I thought you were only visiting. And what about Dr˘agu¸ta?”

“Dr˘agu¸ta?” She tossed her ebony hair. “A mere mountain witch? She’s no more than a puny local herbalist who reaches beyond her abilities. Why else has she failed to make an appearance in all the days since we came to the forest of Piscul Dracului? The crone dares not set foot in the open now the Night People have put their mark on this place.”

While my feet carried me along after her, I was thinking hard. “If Dr˘agu¸ta has so little power,” I said, “why did your brother hold out her mirror to tempt me here? It must be a tawdry thing of little value. Why did Tadeusz tell me I would find truth in it? Was everything he said to me a lie?”

“I know one thing,” the scarlet-lipped woman said with a twisted smile. “My brother was never interested in you, plain little thing that you are, with your unkempt bush of hair and 207

your flat chest and your flood of stupid questions. It’s your sister he has his eye on. She’s a choice morsel, all pearly flesh and quivering uncertainty. There’s no need to look like that, Jenica.

We’re not so precipitate. He wishes Sorrow to see them together, that is all. He wishes to play a little.”

Humiliation, confusion, and terror warred within me. I stayed silent, though inside I was screaming.

“You want to ask questions, don’t you? Look in the mirror, then. You may protest that you are here simply to bring your sister back, but I know the real reason. You are thirsty for knowledge. You must have it whatever the cost—because knowledge allows control, and you do love to be in control, don’t you, Jenica? And you like flattery, poor, silly girl. My brother knew how to manipulate you; it was the easiest thing in the world.”

For a moment I knew what hate felt like. I knew how Cezar felt in those moments when his face went cold and his eyes dark. Then I saw that we had reached a still pool fringed by ferns, a pool that was perfectly round, with a shimmering to its surface that reminded me of T˘aul Ielelor on the night of Full Moon. Without a doubt, this was Dr˘agu¸ta’s magic mirror. The forest around us was hushed. No night bird called, no small creature rustled a path through the grasses.

The moment she releases this spell, I told myself, I have to run. Run back, grab Tati, go to the lake, and get across any way we can. Even as I thought this, I knew how impossible it would be. I wished with all my heart that I had not left Gogu behind. He would have thought of some way out, I was sure of it. What my stupidity had gotten us into, his sound common sense would have 208

extricated us from. Run. Run. I stood paralyzed, waiting for her to release my feet. I looked anywhere but at that circle of bright water, for it seemed to me that once I let my eyes fall on it, I would be trapped: caught by the vision, a victim of my own hunger for knowledge. I looked up into the elder tree that grew by the pond, and in its drooping branches I caught a glimpse of something small and bright—something that reflected the gleam from the water and shone it into my eyes. I blinked, disbelieving, then reached up a hand and lifted it down. It was a tiny crown made from wire and fabric, beads and braid. I want to be Queen of the Fairies.

Anastasia gave a hiss. The spell was abruptly undone, my feet freed from what had rooted them to the ground, my throat released from the tight grip that had held my voice to a whisper. I took a step back, ready to flee. The crown slipped through my fingers, and as I reached to catch it, I looked into the water of Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror.

I saw a pair of children, pale-skinned and dark-eyed, each as somber-faced as the other. He was perhaps eight years old, she a mere babe. Brother and sister, no doubt, and I was sure I knew them. That sad-looking boy was Sorrow, and the other the fragile girl I had seen not long ago with her minders. The water showed them in the forest, wandering, probably lost—the boy was holding his sister in his arms, trying to make a way through ever thicker undergrowth as the light faded. They came to a clearing as dusk fell, and there, under the trees, was Tadeusz in his black boots and swirling cloak. Do not be afraid, he said, and then the vision faded.

Before I could begin to think about what that meant, a new 209

image appeared in the mirror. I saw myself, dancing with a young man clad in rags. He was tall and lanky, his dark hair hanging wild and unkempt over eyes as green as beech leaves.

He was looking at the girl in his arms as if she were his whole world, and the Jena of the vision was gazing back with her heart in her eyes. It made me feel hot and cold and confused—

I longed for the vision to be real, and for love at first sight to be a true thing after all. His face was everything I liked: the mouth quirky and sweet, the features strong and well defined, the eyes deep and thoughtful. He seemed in some way familiar, though I was certain I had never seen him before. As I gazed, the man in the mirror turned to look out at the world of Dark of the Moon, and the tenderness in his eyes made my heart turn over. Be sensible, Jena, I warned myself. You are in the Other Kingdom; nothing is as it seems.

Then, before my eyes, he changed. As I stared, horrified, the pleasant, clever features became a distorted mask. The eyes went from green to red, the skin puckered and blistered and broke out in festering sores. He lifted a hand, and the fingers were tipped with nails so long, they had grown into yellow curls. He opened his mouth, and what came out was a terrible howl, the cry of a savage thing from the darkest places of the forest. The other Jena was gone from the mirror, but my younger sisters were there, all three of them. I stood frozen with terror as the monstrous figure turned on them: slashing, tearing, rend-ing, as he made them run, pursuing them through the wildwood without mercy. I heard Stela screaming in pain. I heard my own voice, a little, pathetic thing, whimpering, No, no!

Trust that one, someone said, and you will deliver up your heart to be 210

split and skewered and roasted over a fire. The vision dissipated on the water’s surface. All that remained was a leaf or two floating there and a drift of weed below.

I dashed the tears from my face and fought to get my breathing under control. I was free to go; it seemed these cryptic and horrifying glimpses were all Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror had to show me.

Anastasia had fallen strangely silent. She was a tall woman and her grip had been strong. I wondered if I had any chance of out-running her. I turned and saw that her eyes were on the little crown in my hands, the trifle of bits and pieces that, at five years old, I had thought the most wondrous thing in the world.

It was fraying and crumbling and falling apart.

“Throw that away,” Anastasia said, staring at the crown and clutching at her throat as if something hurt her. “It’s an evil charm, one of hers. A human girl cannot hold such a talisman—

it will kill you, Jenica. Cast it aside.”

“Hers? You mean Dr˘agu¸ta’s? A mere mountain witch?” I edged away from her. If, startling as it seemed, this childhood creation gave me some kind of advantage here where the Night People held sway, I would not hesitate to use it.

“Give it up, Jenica!” Anastasia lunged toward me. As her fingers reached for the little crown, there was a whirl of white between us and we both flinched back. A moment later an owl landed on the bending branch of the elder tree, its plumage snowy, its eyes an odd, cloudy blue-green. Anastasia’s hands moved in a complicated gesture before her, like a ritual charm.

It reminded me of the sign the folk of the valley used to ward off evil spirits.

Run, said my inner voice, and I obeyed, the little crown still 211

clutched tight in my hand. “Tati!” I shouted, careless of who could hear me or what they might decide to do. It seemed to me I had been given a second chance and that I must use it quickly.

“Tati, where are you?”

I ran back up the path to the sward, my heart pounding, my breath coming hard. In my head I was five years old again and the oak tree I had been told to reach moved farther and farther away the faster I drove myself. I could hear Costi’s footsteps behind me, closer and closer, but this time it was Anastasia chasing me, and after a while her steps grew fainter, though I still heard her calling me: “Jenica! Stop!”

I reached the turning where I had lost Tadeusz and my sister, and paused, not knowing which way they had gone. I might take a wrong turn and keep blundering through the woods until I was lost forever—as lost as those children in the vision had been. Human children: an ordinary boy and girl who had been captured by the wildwood and now could never be set free again.

The owl flew over my head, making me duck. I ran after it, trying to keep the bird in sight as I brushed past thorny bushes and crept under tangling briars. Surely this was not the way I had come? Where was this creature leading me, into the heart of the wood? “Wait,” I panted, but the bird flew on, uttering an eerie hoot as it winged its way down a steep, overgrown hill. At the bottom of the slope, I glimpsed the strangely glowing waters of the Deadwash, brighter now than before. I forced a way through the prickly undergrowth—my cloak tearing on thorns, twigs catching at my hair. Behind me, at a distance, I could hear sounds of pursuit: a howling arose, like that of hunt-212

ing hounds. And close by me, along the bank, someone else was making a crashing descent. Anastasia—had she caught up with me? I glanced through the bushes and caught a flash of a white, terrified face and a stream of dark hair. Tati—and with her someone in dark clothing, a man leading her along at breakneck speed. He still had her. Tadeusz would get there before me, he would stop me. . . .

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.

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“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 Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror had shown how cruelly deceptive such day-dreams 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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 T˘aul 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 214

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, 215

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 lakeshore.

“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 216

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?”

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“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. R˘azvan 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.”

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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 vibra-tion 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 R˘azvan 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 219

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

¸ tuic˘a, 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 220

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.”

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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.

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.”

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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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 223

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 Dr˘agu¸ta’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 Dr˘agu¸ta’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 224

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 225

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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 no-226

body 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 Vârful cu Negur˘a 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 Dr˘agu¸ta’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.

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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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 Dr˘agu¸ta? Are you saying you don’t believe there’s a power in the wildwood that’s strong enough to defeat evil, Jena?”

228

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 229

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 Vârful cu Negur˘a 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 230

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 delight-ful 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.

Next down was Iulia. There was a ripple of disapproval as she came along the line, and I heard a whistle, sotto voce, from one of the young men. Now the shawl was gone, I saw that the neckline of the gray gown had been drastically altered and a generous expanse of winter-pale flesh was on view. The kind of bodice our aunt had deemed acceptable on me was decidedly immodest on Iulia, with her far more womanly figure. For a thirteen-year-old, the gown was shockingly inappropriate. As if to have the last laugh on Aunt Bogdana, Iulia had sewn a tiny frill of fine lawn across the plunging décolletage, a wisp of transparent fabric that only served to emphasize what was on 231

show. Her shoulders were back; she held her head high. Cezar was staring, and so was every other young man present. Aunt Bogdana’s cheeks went scarlet.

“Good evening, Aunt,” said my sister. “Good evening, Cezar.” Her smile was sweet, her eyes sparkling. I saw that she felt like a woman—she felt beautiful.

Cezar’s eyes raked over her. He did not smile. “Go back upstairs and fetch a shawl,” he said. “Cover yourself up before your guests.”

Iulia went white. It was as if he had hit her. She turned without a word and fled. Perhaps Cezar thought this had been a prank; I recognized it as simply a misguided attempt to be more grown-up. Paula excused herself and made for the stairs.

“Jenica,” said Aunt Bogdana loudly, pretending that nothing had happened, “this is Raffaello, son of my acquaintance Maria Cataneo and her husband, Andrei.”

Raffaello was tall and pimply. He bowed over my hand and introduced his friend Anghel, who was short and had a weak chin. Gogu stuck his head out of the pocket for a better look, and I squashed him back in. The music began—something not too lively, out of respect for the family’s recent loss. I wished Uncle Nicolae were here tonight, with his twinkling eyes and bluff humor.

“They say your elder sister is a rare beauty,” said Raffaello.

Evidently this was his idea of starting a conversation.

“Yes, they do,” I said. “She’ll be down soon, I expect.”

There was a little silence. Anghel cleared his throat.

“You enjoy hunting?” Raffaello asked, his eyes scanning the crowd.

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“Not much,” I said. “And since my uncle’s recent death, even less.”

“Mmm-hm,” he responded, proving that he was not listening.

A fool. An idiot. Strike him off the list.

“I’m so sorry,” said weasel-faced Anghel, who was paying marginally more attention. “A terrible tragedy—”

Before I could say a thing, Cezar was beside me. “Mother seems to think that dancing is in order,” he said. The look in his eyes made the two young men step backward. “Jena, will you honor me with the first?”

“I suppose that would be appropriate, Cezar.” This was going to be the longest night of my life. “You upset Iulia.”

“Your sister requires discipline. Lacking your father’s presence, and in view of the evident inability of Tatiana and yourself to provide strong guidance, the job falls to me. Iulia must learn not to make a spectacle of herself.”

I thought of poor Iulia’s stricken face and the fact that even in the unseemly gown, she had looked remarkably pretty. “Discipline,” I echoed, with my heart full of resentment—not least because, in part, he was right. “Maybe so. But discipline should be administered kindly, don’t you think? Girls of Iulia’s age are so easily hurt.”

“I’ve no interest in talking about your sisters tonight, Jena,”

Cezar said, drawing me closer as the dance began. “Let us enjoy the evening. Mother tells me you’re all novices at dancing. Do you know any of the steps to this one?”

I looked into his eyes and shook my head.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m expert at leading.”

Do we have to put up with this?

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“You haven’t brought that wretched frog, I hope?”

“I always bring him, Cezar. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him in my pocket, out of sight.”

But not out of earshot. Why are you dancing with him ?

Grimly I danced, trying to ignore Gogu. As Cezar and I moved about the room—and as I discovered how hard it is to dance badly when the skill of doing it well comes naturally—

my sisters returned to the party: Iulia, red-eyed, with an embroidered silk shawl artfully draped across her cleavage, and Paula by her side. And Tati. I faltered, stepping hard on Cezar’s foot. Tati, not in the blue and silver of Aunt Bogdana’s choice, but ethereal in the pale butterfly gown, the gown that had been made to wear for Sorrow. It revealed a startling change in her appearance: she had lost more weight than I had realized.

Her back was all bones, her arms fragile, her waist tiny. The pallor of her garb drew the eye to the strange pendant around her slender neck, a crimson drop of blood on the white skin. Her hair was newly washed—it hung, dark and lustrous, across her shoulders. There was not a trace of color in her face, save for the vivid violet-blue of her eyes.

“Tati’s looking very unwell,” observed Cezar, leading me through a complicated maneuver that turned me away from her.

“Mmm,” I murmured, thinking I had better do as Aunt Bogdana had suggested and consult the herbalist. Under the bright lights of the party chamber, Tati looked not so much ethereal as wasted. It frightened me.

“A brighter color would have been more appropriate,” he went on. “She looks quite washed-out. And it’s important that she present herself at her best.”

234

“Oh?” I would not help him through this particular conversation.

“Well,” Cezar said, putting his hand on my waist as we made our way down the line, “isn’t that what tonight is all about? Beginning the search for possible partners?”

“More or less,” I said. “It’s not something I particularly relish, Cezar. But I’m happy that your mother has enjoyed helping. And I suppose I should thank you for paying for everything.

I don’t imagine you actually wanted to.”

He grunted some kind of response, and his hold on me tightened, brushing me up against him. In the formal line of the dance, I could not wriggle away. “You hope that Tatiana will attract the interest of these young men? You think any of them eligible?” He ran his eyes over those closest at hand; his expression was one of disdain.

“Aunt Bogdana chose them. They’re all eligible. If Tati doesn’t snare one, maybe I can.” I attempted an insouciant laugh, without a great deal of success.

“You far outshine your sister tonight, Jena.”

I stared at him, full of suspicion. His expression alarmed me. It was deadly serious.

“Besides,” said Cezar, “for you, there is no need to go through this exercise—this fishing for suitable husbands.”

“Really?” I remembered a conversation with Aunt Bogdana.

“Because I’m the one destined to stay at home and tend to Father in his old age, you mean?”

“Don’t tease, Jena,” Cezar said. “You know what I mean.”

I hate him. The frog was trembling with fury.

A horrible possibility suddenly occurred to me. I recalled 235

that awkward conversation with my cousin in the workroom, the one in which he had seemed on the point of some declaration. I thought of certain other things he had said recently, certain other gestures he had made. Surely I must be wrong. I was the sensible sister, not the beautiful one. Besides, even Cezar must see it was ludicrous. The two of us did nothing but argue.

The music came to an end. Across the room, I spotted Tati sitting quietly beside Aunt Bogdana and a group of older women. She looked like a grieving young widow. Shockingly, she looked as if she belonged there.

“You must dance with each of my sisters,” I told Cezar.

With Gogu in my pocket vibrating with ill will and my cousin’s conversation troubling me more than I wanted to admit, I decided I would avoid Cezar for the rest of the evening. “And make sure you’re nice to Iulia,” I added. “Remember, she’s only thirteen.”

Cezar smiled at me. Then the pimply Raffaello asked me for the next dance, and my cousin let me go. I could feel the imprint of his hand on my waist, like a brand of ownership. Perhaps that had been what he meant: he and I. The look in his eyes had frightened me. It had been a look of utter certainty.

I danced with Raffaello, whom Gogu had already dismissed as an idiot. I danced with Anghel.

I can’t see from in here. Put me on your shoulder.

Anghel glanced down: the wriggling form of the frog was clearly visible under the close-fitting skirt of the red gown.

“My pet frog,” I muttered. “He would insist on coming.”

Pet. The tone was accusatory.

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“A frog?” Anghel struggled for words. “Or did you say a dog?”

“Er, no—although it’s not unlike one of those little dogs, the kind ladies carry about . . . ,” I babbled, hating myself.

“Yes, my mother has one,” Anghel said, holding me at arm’s length lest he come in contact with Gogu, even through a layer of fabric. “Hideous little thing. It sheds everywhere. One can’t wear black.”

“What a trial for you,” I murmured, calculating how soon I could politely excuse myself.

Looks like a stoat. Gogu’s head was out of the pocket. Sounds even sillier than the first one. You can do better.

I danced with Vlad, whose uncle was a voivode. Vlad was better-looking than the others—tall and broad-shouldered, with thick dark hair. His manners were exemplary. We chatted about the weather and the music. We talked about his home near Bra¸sov and his horse and his hunting dogs. He complimented me on my hair and on the party, which Aunt Bogdana had told him I organized all by myself, and on the red gown. He asked me for a second dance and I accepted. He fetched a little platter of pastries, which we sat down to share. Gogu had retreated to the depths of the pocket. Quite against logic, the sense I was getting from him now was: No. No. No.

“I have to ask,” said Vlad, smiling to reveal perfectly even white teeth, “whether it’s true you have a pet frog. Someone told me you carry it around everywhere.”

“Well, yes,” I said cautiously. “His name’s Gogu. I rescued him a few years ago.”

I waited for the nice young man to shrink away, to make 237

an embarrassed comment, or to fall silent. Instead, he leaned forward.

“May I see?”

I was charmed. I got Gogu out and held him on my palm, where he embarrassed me by cowering in abject terror. “He’s usually quite friendly,” I said. “I don’t know what’s come over him.”

Vlad reached out to touch, and such was the shock emanat-ing from Gogu’s small body that I drew my hand away.

“Oh, yes, I find them fascinating,” Vlad enthused. “I have a big collection myself, you know. It’s a special study of mine.”

“Really?” I began to wonder whether it was possible that there might be a man who was not only eligible, but genuinely suitable—someone I could actually come to like. From over by the hearth, Cezar was staring at us with an expression dark as a thundercloud.

“Yes, I have one of every species to be found in the Carpathian region, and a number of more exotic ones as well. But nothing quite like your little fellow. I can’t tell exactly what he is. You realize how very unusual it is for him to be active in winter. A scientific curiosity of the first order.”

“Yes, well, I think Gogu’s one of a kind,” I said.

“I can see that we have a great deal in common, Jenica,” said Vlad. “I’ll ask Mother if she can arrange a return visit in the spring—I could show you my laboratory. I’ve devised a wonderful new method for preserving my specimens. They keep more or less indefinitely, you know. I start with a few drops of ether on a cloth, and then—”

238

“Excuse me.” I felt sick. In my hands, Gogu was trembling like a leaf. “I think I hear Aunt Bogdana calling me.”

I fled to the safe company of my aunt and her friends. Tati was no longer with them. I scanned the crowded room, wondering whether she had gone back upstairs already.

“Tatiana is such a lovely dancer,” observed my aunt’s friend Elsvieta. “And what an exquisite gown . . .”

“If it’s possible to obtain something similar,” said another woman, “I think your son will be flooded with orders after tonight, Bogdana.”

“You’re a nice little dancer, too, Jenica,” Elsvieta went on, smiling at me. “I could see my son was enjoying himself. Vlad is rather too fond of his own company and his experiments. I hope you may come to visit us in the spring. A little riding, perhaps, and some music. It would be so good for him.”

“I’m sure Jena would welcome that,” said Aunt Bogdana, alarming me. “If her father approves, of course. We hope very much that Teodor will be home by springtime. Jena, who is that young man dancing with your sister?”

I looked across the room and froze. Maybe there was no black coat tonight, but I knew instantly who it was, and my heart filled with terror. Tati was in a trance, moving in his arms like a graceful bird. Sorrow wore a mask—black, of course—which didn’t do much to disguise his snow-pale skin and burning dark eyes. He had made some concessions to the nature of the gathering. His hair was tied back at the nape of the neck, and he wore a white shirt under a traditional waistcoat: black, embroidered with red flowers. Black trousers and boots 239

completed the outfit. Around his neck was our mother’s silver chain. He held Tati reverently, as if she were the one thing he valued in the world. Their eyes remained locked as they went through the steps of the dance—there might as well have been nobody else here.

“He dances well,” commented Elsvieta. “But he does look rather . . . intense. Who is he, Jena?”

I thought frantically. “Er—I think he came up with Judge Rinaldo’s son, Lucian,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure what his name is.”

“The mask is too much of an affectation,” said another woman. “But he’s quite striking, isn’t he, with that very dark hair and the pale complexion? Your sister certainly seems to think so.”

I looked around wildly for Cezar and saw him near the passageway to the kitchen, talking to Iulia. He looked distracted and she looked miserable. I muttered an excuse and dived into the crowd. What was Sorrow thinking? Did the man have a death wish? And how could Tati have encouraged him? They’d planned this—the butterfly dress proved that. I had to get rid of him now, immediately. If Cezar realized where Sorrow had come from, our sedate party would descend into violent, bloody tragedy.

They had left the hall before I reached the spot where I had seen them—close to the steps up to the terrace from which Tati and I had made our terrifying passage to the Other Kingdom at Dark of the Moon. The door stood slightly open. Through the gap, the freezing air of the winter night seeped into the crowded chamber.

240

I went halfway up the steps before I called. “Tati?” I glanced back over my shoulder. Beyond the half-open door, the music played on—nobody had followed me. I went higher.

“Tati, where are you?”

At one end of the parapet, a long black coat lay neatly folded on the wall. At the other end stood my sister and her lover. Tati’s arms were wound around Sorrow’s neck, her body pressed close to his, as if she would melt into him. His hands were enlaced in my sister’s long hair as he strained her slight form against him, white on black. Their eyes were closed; their lips clung; they were lost in each other. It was beautiful and powerful. It was impossible. I cleared my throat, and they opened their eyes and turned to look at me.

“If Cezar sees you, he’ll kill you,” I said bluntly, picking up the black coat. “You must leave now, right away. How could you risk yourself like this? Tati, come inside.”