Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

“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