Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

I still couldn’t see Tati. “Where is she, Gogu?” I muttered.

“Jena?” My sister’s voice came from just behind me and I jumped as if I’d been struck.

“Tati! Where were you?” I bit back more words: I was worried about you, I thought you’d gone off. . . . “You still have your cloak on,” I said, surprised. “Why aren’t you dancing?”

“Maybe later.” It seemed to me that her smile was evasive.

“I saw you looking for me. I’m fine, Jena. Just go on and enjoy the party.”

It was then that I saw, over her shoulder and at some distance—but clearly waiting for her—the young man in the black coat. His features bore their usual forlorn look, like that of a loyal dog unfairly reprimanded. The dark eyes belied that expression: I saw a message there that scared me. Gogu shifted 73

on my shoulder. He’s trouble. I swallowed and found my voice.

“Are you going to introduce me to your new friend?” I croaked.

“Oh. You mean Sorrow? I don’t think he’s quite ready for that, Jena.”

“Who?” I couldn’t have heard her correctly.

“Sorrow.” She glanced at Black Coat, her lovely features softening in a way that set a chill premonition in my heart.

“I bet that’s not his real name,” I snapped, anxiety making me cruel. “His parents probably called him something plain and serviceable, like Ivan. Ah, well, pretentious coat, pretentious name.”

Tati stared at me. She looked as if she might burst into tears or slap me. We never argued.

Now you’ve done it.

“Shut up, Gogu,” I muttered, furious with myself. “Tell him you can’t talk to him,” I hissed to my sister under my breath. “He’s one of them. Don’t you understand how dangerous that is?” Then I turned on my heel and plunged back into the crowd.

I didn’t dance much after that. I watched the two of them as they went back into the shadows under the trees—she in her night-blue cloak, he in his long black coat—not touching, not even so much as fingertips, but standing close, so close each might have felt the whisper of the other’s breath on half-closed lids or parted lips. They were talking. At least, Tati was talking, and Sorrow was doing a lot of listening and putting in a word or two, here and there, though he was certainly not given to opening his mouth very far.

I watched them as the night drew toward dawn and the 74

jigs and reels and high-stepping dances of the earlier hours gave way to slower tunes, music for lovers. Iulia sat on the bank, watching, her eyes full of dreams. Stela was stretched out with her head on Ildephonsus’s stomach, half-asleep. A couple of hedge sprites were making nests in her hair. At Paula’s table, the arguments raged on; did scholars never grow weary?

Tati took off her cloak. Sorrow folded it and laid it among the roots of an oak, his eyes never leaving her. A shaft of moonlight illuminated my sister in her delicate gown—her hair tumbling down her back as dark and shiny as a crow’s wing, the curves of her body revealed through the sheer, floating silk. She reached out a hand; Sorrow took it in his as if it were something precious. There was no longer a shred of doubt in my mind that Tati had worn the butterfly gown for him. It was a gift—a gift for his eyes only.

They danced. All by themselves, beyond the farthest fringe of the crowd, they circled and swayed, met and parted, turned and passed. Even when the steps of their dance drew them apart, their heads turned to look, and look, and look, as if they would drown in each other’s eyes.

“What is she thinking of, Gogu?” I whispered. “She must have gone mad!”

I’m cold. Gogu gave an exaggerated shiver. Can we go home now?

Why didn’t it surprise me that Tati was the last sister to come down to the boats? I saw where Sorrow had beached their craft at some distance along the shore, half concealed by reeds. I stood with Sten as my other sisters stepped into their boats and headed off across the lake with their escorts. The mist wreathed the water thickly in this predawn hour: in the 75

swirling white I could see strange shapes—wyvern, dragon, manticore. Gogu’s trembling felt about to dislodge him from my shoulder. I tucked him into the glove and into the pocket. “It’s all right, Gogu.”

Dawn, I thought. Since last Full Moon, I had asked Paula a lot of questions about Night People. She’d told me they lost their powers with the rising sun. If I could get Tati out of here safely, she’d come back to herself. Once home, I would be able to make her see sense. Just as long as she could drag herself away in time.

“Ready?” Sten had one big foot in the boat, one on the shore, and a hand extended to help me aboard.

“I’m waiting for my sister.”

“She’s there.” The troll jerked his head. It was true. In the moment I had turned away, Tati and Sorrow had emerged from the trees, a discreet distance apart: he with her cloak over his arm, she a vision in the sheer embroidered gown. Once she set foot on the home shore, she would be freezing.

“Good,” I said grimly. “Let’s go.”

Sten was in fine form. We crossed the Bright Between in a trice, leaving a pathway of roiling water and splintered ice behind us. Next in was Iulia with Grigori, followed by Paula and then Stela. The air on this side was so chill I could feel my face going numb. Deep in the pocket, Gogu was immobile.

We waited, huddled into our cloaks and hats and mittens, trying to escape the cold.

“Hurry up, Tati,” muttered Paula. “It’s hardly a morning for a leisurely boating expedition.”

We waited longer. Sten picked his teeth. The dwarf 76

tapped his foot, sighing loudly. Grigori put his arms around Iulia to keep her warm.

“He’d want to make haste,” said the dwarf. “The sun will soon be up.”

The boat’s high prow broke the mist then, coming slowly.

It touched the shore a little way from us. Tati alighted, still without cloak, hood, or boots. Sorrow got out after her. She turned her back to him; he unfolded her blue cloak and placed it around her shoulders. He did not touch my sister an instant longer than was necessary, and yet there was something in the way his hands lingered above her shoulders, as if he would embrace her if he dared, that was as tender as any caress might be.

Tati turned to thank him. He bowed his head, then took her hood and boots from the boat and gave them to her. We waited while she put them on, balancing with one hand on Sorrow’s shoulder to take off her dancing slippers. He stood immobile, pale face set, eyes bleak. The name he had chosen was apt enough; I had never seen anyone with so many different ways of looking sad.

“Goodbye,” I heard Tati say, but Sorrow said nothing at all. His eyes spoke for him.

“Come on, Tati,” mumbled Iulia through chattering teeth.

“It’ll be time to get up before we even go to bed.”

Above us, beyond the swirling mist that blanketed the water, the sky was beginning to lighten. The other boatmen were climbing aboard their craft. None wished to be on this shore at sunrise.

Tati reached up a hand. She brushed Sorrow’s cheek with her fingers, as lightly as the touch of a butterfly on a flower. He 77

closed his eyes, and the ashen pallor of his cheeks warmed with the faintest of blushes. An instant later Tati was by my side and, to the tinkling music of ice fragments shifting in the water and the solitary hoot of an owl, five little boats slipped away through the mist to the Other Kingdom.

We’re safe, I told myself as always. But it seemed to me that although we had crossed the margin to our own world and were on our way home once more, this was no longer true.