Wildwood Dancing

by Juliet Marillier

  “What’s wrong with her?” Stela was crying, half in sympathy with Tati, half in sadness and exhaustion. Ildephonsus clung to her, his gauzy wings enfolding her in a kind of cape.

  “She’s fainted, that’s all,” I told her, not wanting to make things any harder. “Paula’s right. We need to go now.”

  “I have to say goodbye,” Stela sniffed. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

  “We’ll meet you down at the boats,” said Iulia.

  “Wait—” The two of them were already gone.

  “Jena,” said Paula, “we need to get her down to the lake.”

  “I’ll take her,” the young man said. “She’s very cold. Is there a spare cloak?”

  “No—!” I began, not wanting him to put his hands anywhere near my sister, but he ignored me, picking Tati up as easily as if she were a doll. Paula and I followed him around the margin of Dancing Glade and down the path to the Deadwash. None of us said a word. I was full of mixed-up feelings, uppermost being a sense of betrayal: how dare Drǎguţa meddle so cruelly? How dare this thing in a man’s guise play with my heart and disturb my mind? Of course he couldn’t be Costi. I’d have known! I’d have known, even when he was a frog. Wouldn’t I?

  By the time we reached the boats, a silent crowd was following us: red-eyed Stela, somber-faced Iulia, and all our usual escorts and hangers-on. There wasn’t a smile among them.

  Grigori took Tati from Gogu and laid her in his boat. She was beginning to stir, putting a hand to her brow and murmuring something. Then Drǎguţa’s great-nephew extended his hand to me. “You, as well,” he said.

  Sten took Iulia, and the dwarf was boatman to Stela. Ildephonsus, refusing to accept her departure until the last possible moment, clambered into the small craft to sit by her, sobbing. A hooded soothsayer ferried Paula, who was now carrying a mysterious bundle. On the shore behind us, the young man with the green eyes stood quietly, watching. He did not ask for a lift, and nobody offered one.

  “Goodbye!” my sisters called. “Goodbye! Thank you!” But I had no heart for farewells; all I could feel was a numb disbelief.

  The folk of the Other Kingdom waved and shouted and sang, and one or two flew over us, blowing kisses and causing the dwarf to curse as he nearly lost his pole. Then the mist came down to cover us. Behind us, the Other Kingdom shrank … and faded … and vanished.

  “All will be well, Jena,” Grigori said quietly. But it couldn’t be. A terrible sense of wrongness was coming over me: the feeling that I had just thrown away my dearest treasure and that I would never, ever get it back.

  I reached out to take Tati’s hand. She seemed fragile as a moonflower—destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall. A whole month until next Full Moon: it was a long time for her to wait. And yet, for me, it was short. Only a month, and my sister might be gone forever. How could I let that happen?

  On the far shore, Ildephonsus refused to be detached from Stela. Both were in floods of tears. Paula disembarked, bundle in hand, and bade her boatman a grave farewell. She moved to Stela’s side.

  “Stela,” she said with remarkable composure, “I’ve been given some books and maps and other things, see? Even if we can’t use our portal anymore, there must be other ways we can find. There are clues in here. We just have to work them out. You can help me. I don’t believe it’s farewell forever.”

  Stela dashed the tears from her cheeks, took a deep, unsteady breath, and stepped away from her friend. “Goodbye, Ildephonsus,” she said, hiccuping. Her expression told me she had suddenly grown up rather more than she wanted to. “We’ll come back sometime. Paula knows these things.” She kissed him on his long pink snout. Ildephonsus wrung his paws and began a high, eldritch wailing. The dwarf bundled him back in the boat and, with a shout of farewell, bore him away.

  Sten lifted Iulia out onto the shore. “Of course,” he said, “we can come across if we’re careful, so it’s not really goodbye forever. But we’ll sorely miss you at Full Moon. You make lovely partners.” He planted a smacking kiss on my sister’s cheek. “Don’t go marrying a heavy-footed man now, will you?”

  “I’ll see you soon, Jena,” said Grigori. He had brought Tati to land. She was conscious again, though shaky—between us, Iulia and I supported her. “I’ll be back with your father’s answer as quick as I can.”

  “Be careful. Cezar’s hunting parties are still going out from time to time.”

  “I will. Farewell, then.”

  “Farewell, Grigori. Thank you for everything.”

  “My advice to you,” he said with a grin, “is to seek out my great-aunt before you go home. I don’t think you’ve asked her all the questions you might.” He stepped back into the boat and dug in the pole. Within a count of three, the vessel had disappeared through the shrouds of mist, and we were alone on the shore. Or not quite alone, for another boat was approaching through the vapor—a flat little craft that bobbed on the surface, the ice shards jingling around it. On it stood a familiar figure: thin arms wielding the pole, green eyes set on the shore ahead, hair tumbling wildly over his brow. His jaw was set tight; he looked every bit as angry and upset as Cezar on one of his worst days. As we watched, he maneuvered his craft to the shore and stepped off it. A raft. A raft made of weathered timbers, bound together with twists of flax and fragments of fraying rope.

  “I’m sorry,” Iulia said, staring. “We should have offered you a lift in one of our boats.”

  “As you see,” said the young man, “I have my own.”

  “You—” I managed. “You—” But my tongue would not deliver the words. I’d been foolish before, letting myself be taken in by Tadeusz and his coaxing. I’d been so foolish that I’d nearly let him take Tati while my attention was all on my own concerns. I would not give way to such foolishness now. “That could have been here all the time,” I said. “Anyone could have found it and used it. You’re lying. You’re not Costi. You can’t be.”

  He looked as if I’d just smacked him in the face. The green eyes went bleak. The thin lips were not humorous now, but set in a tight line. “If you can’t trust, you can’t trust,” he said. “Goodbye. I’m going home now.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked away along the lakeshore.

  The five of us stood in silence, watching him, until he vanished into the darkness of the wildwood. He still had my cloak on.

  “We need to get Tati home, Jena,” said Paula. “It’s cold out here.”

  “You can’t just let him go like that,” objected Iulia. “He was upset. He was really sad. Jena, he does look quite a lot like Cezar. And even more like that old picture of Uncle Nicolae, the one Aunt Bogdana has hanging in her hallway. Are you sure—?”

  “Run after him, Jena.” Stela was shivering with cold.

  “Run after him? In the forest at night? I don’t think so.” My feet were on the verge of doing just that. How could I let him walk off with that expression on his face?

  “Go on, Jena.” Tati’s voice was a thread. “We’ll wait for you at the top of the steps. He can’t have gone far.”

  I ran. I did not allow myself to think of Night People, or of wolves, or of any other dangers that might be lurking in the darkness. I ran along the shore of Tǎul Ielelor, and as I went I spotted something shining in the undergrowth—a little crown of wire and beads, ribbon and braid. Following my instincts, I grabbed it as I passed. “Gogu!” I shouted. “Wait for me!” But there was no response, save the hooting of an owl and the patter of a small creature in the bushes.

  At the spot where the track branched away from the water I halted, my chest heaving in the chill air. I would not attempt the walk through the woods, the long way home to Piscul Dracului. The others were waiting; without me, they could not open the portal. How had he managed to vanish so quickly? Perhaps he had slipped away to Tadeusz’s world—perhaps, if I tried too hard to follow, I, too, would find myself in that dark realm. “Gogu?” I said, my voice shrunk to a little, fearful thing in t
he immensity of the shadowy forest.

  “Gone,” someone said from down below. “Gone for good. Foolish girl. Why didn’t you listen?”

  I looked down. She was there, green cloak wound around her small body, broad hat partly concealing the gooseberry eyes and the wrinkled, canny old features. Not far away, the white snake twined in a bush, its forked tongue flickering.

  “Gone where?” I asked her, my mind searching for the right questions, not to waste the opportunity as I had before.

  “Home. Vǎrful cu Negurǎ. Where else?”

  “You’re talking as if he is Costi. But he can’t be. Costi drowned. Cezar and I saw it. One moment he was swimming, the next he was gone.”

  “Think, Jena. You’re on the raft. You’ve just given up your treasure and received a gift of great power in return. You’re frightened. The raft floats out on the water, far out, beyond a safe margin. What then? Tell me the story. Think hard.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I was there.” The witch smiled; the moonlight glanced off her little pointed teeth. Nothing comes without a price.

  She was right: I really had been stupid. I looked down at the crown in my hands. “A gift of great power,” I said softly. “What are you saying? I couldn’t be queen of the fairies. That was a child’s wish.”

  “You won the nearest thing I could grant you, little brave adventurer that you were: free entry into the Other Kingdom for you and your sisters, for as long as you needed it. Each of you got what she most desired from it: for Paula it was scholarly company, for Stela little friends to love. Iulia’s wishes were simple—to dress up and dance, to enter a world more remarkable and vibrant than your own could ever be. Tati waited a long time for her reward. She is still waiting, but what she most longs for will come soon enough, if Sorrow can win it for her.”

  I could hardly breathe. “And what about me?”

  “The satisfaction of pleasing those you loved. The escape; the freedom; the Otherness. And more, if you learned to recognize it. You had to grow and change, Jena. So did your cousins. I did not act from sheer mischief that day by the lake. For the good of Piscul Dracului, for the wildwood, for the valley, I made a choice. Three choices. Three wishes.”

  “I was on the raft.” I grasped for old memories. “It floated out too far. Costi swam after it to save me. He was scared. Nobody swims in the Deadwash, not if they value their life. But he did. He got his hands on the raft; he got me more than halfway back. Then …” Then he got into difficulties, and I had to rescue you, Jena. I went back in for Costi, but he had disappeared under the water. Hands pulled him down—the witch’s hands. I could still hear Cezar telling the story, coaching me, word for word, so I would get it right when we had to tell our parents. It wasn’t my story—it was his.

  “Go on, Jena.”

  “I was scared. I had my hands over my eyes. I didn’t see anything until I got back to the shore. I know the raft tipped up and I nearly fell in. I opened my eyes when I landed, and it was Cezar pushing the raft, not Costi.”

  “And after that? Did you look out across the water? Did you see Costi?”

  “No,” I whispered, a terrible feeling creeping over me, the cold knowledge that I had misjudged my best friend in all the world. “I ran off into the bushes and hid. I put my little blanket over my head. When I came out, there was only Cezar. Costi was gone. And Cezar told me what had happened.”

  “And you believed him.”

  “I was only five.” It seemed a poor excuse. “Besides, why would you turn Costi into a frog? You said he had to grow and change. How could that help?”

  “He got his wish, as you did yours. He gave up what was most precious to him: his badge of family. He was an arrogant boy—impetuous and exuberant—but he did have duty at heart, and love for his parents and his home. There was a lot of good in him, enough to make his future important. I could not allow that arrogance to go unchecked. He wanted to be King of the Lake, and he got his wish. Isn’t a frog the master of the water, free to go wherever he wishes, lord of all he surveys—as long as he keeps a lookout for large fish?”

  “But he wasn’t,” I said. “When I found him later, he was weak and sick and frightened. He didn’t know how to be a frog, not properly.”

  “Part of his learning, and of yours,” said Drǎguţa, her beady eyes fixed on me from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat. “He learned patience and humility; you learned compassion. You both learned love. At least, that was the intention. Don’t look at me like that, young lady. I have your best interests at heart.”

  I found this very hard to believe. “Then why the magic mirror? Why show me Costi’s face and make it into something hideous that gave me nightmares? Why show him attacking my sisters? I thought the mirror showed the future. I thought it offered warnings. All it’s done is make me hurt him terribly. He’ll never forgive me for this.”

  “He will find it difficult to forgive, yes,” Drǎguţa said. “I saw the anger in his eyes—the sorrow and shock—when I gave him back what he had given up to me, all those years ago. Costi has a difficult time ahead of him. It is unfortunate that he cannot have his heart’s dearest by his side, but this is the path you have chosen, and you must follow it as best you can.”

  “You saw him just now? Gave him back his family ring?”

  She nodded. “And I have sent Cezar back his own treasure,” she said. “A surprise—hell get it tomorrow. Now that Costi is home, his brother can no longer be King of the Land.”

  I stared at her, horrified. “What?” I whispered. “You mean … Cezar becoming the eldest son, and later on getting control of the estate, and taking ours as well, and … You mean that was all part of granting a wish? That he actually wished he could take Costi’s place?”

  “At eight years old, Cezar was not wicked; he was an ordinary little boy who loved his brother dearly. When I asked him what was most precious to him, that was where his eyes fell: on Costi—his hero, his idol. But he did not make his choice in innocence. As he realized what he had been offered, his childhood fell away from him, and he set his feet on a new path. He chose power before love. He could have saved Costi. I offered him that opportunity after he brought you to shore: his brother was still swimming, but was held there by the current, unable to come in. Instead of helping him, Cezar stood and watched his brother go under the waters of Tǎul Ielelor. In that moment, he shaped his future. He has fought that decision over and over as he has grown to be a man. But he could not unmake it. He could not change the fact that when the choice faced him, he took the darker path.”

  “Oh, God.” The strange things Cezar sometimes said began to make a kind of sense: the mutterings about promises that were shams, about gifts that turned to damage those who received them. I understood, at last, his powerful hatred of Drǎguţa. “That was … unspeakably cruel. Without that, he might have grown up to be a good man.”

  “The choice was not mine. It was Cezar’s. Every choice he has made, these ten years past, has been his own. Now he has run out of choices. He has lost his chance to rule the valley. He has lost his brother’s love, and yours. His father is gone. His mother has done her best to love him, but her feelings for this son have always lacked the warmth she turned on Costi, her adored eldest.” She turned her head, snapping her fingers to summon the snake to her.

  “Please don’t go yet,” I begged. “The mirror—why that image in the mirror?”

  “The monster? Not my doing,” Drǎguţa said dismissively. “Hers, I imagine: Anastasia’s. All it would have taken was for you to have a moment of doubt, a moment when you mistrusted your instincts. That moment of weakness would have allowed her control of the image. Such creatures as she take delight in tormenting folk, Jena. She wanted to send you nightmares—to make you squirm.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I imagine she was jealous. She didn’t like the way her brother, if brother he can be called, was looking at you. She didn’t take kindly to his partiality to you.”
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br />   “Tadeusz was never interested in me. She told me so. She told me very plainly that I was beneath his notice.”

  “Exactly. She told you. He never said anything of the kind, I imagine. And since you are bidding the Other Kingdom farewell tonight, you won’t be getting the opportunity to ask him. Perhaps you are not such a plain, unattractive thing as you imagine, Jena. You might consider why, with two eligible young men on one estate and a family of five girls on the next, both men fell in love with the same sister: not lovely Tati or blossoming Iulia, but flat-chested, bushy-haired, opinionated Jena.”

  “In love? Cezar doesn’t know what love is. As for Tadeusz …” I faltered. I had allowed the cruel logic of Anastasia’s words to overrule what I sensed: that the leader of the Night People was indeed drawn to me. I remembered Tadeusz telling me that his kind were misunderstood; that superstition had painted them darker than they really were. I wondered if there was any truth in that. I’d never get the chance to find out now. “And if Costi felt any love for me when he was a frog,” I went on, “it will all be gone after what’s happened. How could he love someone who’s shown such a lack of trust? If only he’d had his voice as soon as he changed back. He could have told me who he was and what had happened to him, and none of this misunderstanding need have happened—”

  The witch cleared her throat, and I fell silent. “You have a short memory,” Drǎguţa said. “Trust your instincts, I seem to recall advising you. But did you listen? It would seem not. He was your dearest friend, and in your heart you knew it. You knew it from the moment you saw him sprawled out on the shore—you knew it as he walked through your dreams and every part of you yearned for his touch. But you wouldn’t let yourself trust those feelings, would you? I couldn’t give the boy back his voice straightaway, Jena. That would have made things too easy for both of you. Even now, you need more time to learn what love really means.”

  “Time to do what?” My voice came out tear-choked and harsh. “He just walked away. I don’t know how to mend things now.”