Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

There were plenty of things I could have said, but all I did was mutter, “I’ll find Petru for you,” and head back indoors as folk began, at last, to spill out of the castle to see what was going on. I did not know what I was feeling, only that my heart was being torn in all directions at once. Furious tears welled in my eyes. Those words about trust had been cruel. It sounded as if he’d decided he wouldn’t even try to forgive me. Perhaps we would live our lives a stone’s throw from each other, never exchanging so much as a friendly greeting.

I sent a bemused Petru to sort out guards and horses. As briefly as I could, I told my sisters and Florica what had happened. I could see that they were bursting with questions, but instead of asking them, the girls tiptoed around me, eyeing me warily as I helped set the table for supper, crashing plates and jangling cutlery. Whatever story my face told them, it didn’t have a happy ending.

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Chapter Fifteen

A strange quiet settled over Piscul Dracului. Cezar was gone.

He had not waited to talk further to Costi or to bid Aunt Bogdana farewell, but had left the valley that very night. Nobody knew where he had gone. The guards had departed, leaving our household at seven once more: we sisters, Florica, and Petru.

The earliest traces of spring were touching the forest, cautious yet, for the winters were long in our mountains: a clump of tiny wildflowers, a bird bearing a beakful of dry grasses for its nest.

Insects on a pond; the hens starting to lay again.

From Ivan, who traveled to and fro, we heard news of Costi in those first weeks after his return. He was working hard to establish himself as master of Vârful cu Negur˘a, and to take the reins of Uncle Nicolae’s business affairs. Aunt Bogdana was torn between joy and sadness. She had found one son, only to lose the other. She did not invite us to visit, and we did not walk up to her house. All the same, we could not be unaware of Costi’s presence so close to Piscul Dracului. Small reminders 357

kept coming. One day not long after Cezar’s departure, two men rode into our courtyard bearing our strongboxes: one for the family expenses, one for the business. A third man brought a stack of ledgers, which he obligingly carried up to the workroom for me. Everything Cezar had taken was being scrupulously returned.

The business coffer was entirely in order, containing both ample funds and full receipts for Salem bin Afazi’s goods. The household box had more silver in it than it had when Cezar took it, but not enough to embarrass me. I judged that Costi had calculated an amount that would see us comfortably through the next three months or so, well past the time we hoped Father would be home. The gesture was generous and sensitive. It was just what I would have expected from Gogu—and from Costi—and it made me feel both relieved and ashamed.

“You can’t go on blaming yourself forever,” Iulia told me bluntly one morning as we were feeding the chickens. “So you didn’t trust him straightaway. I can understand why he was upset, but you did have a very good reason for it.”

“Evidently Costi doesn’t think so,” I said, throwing out a handful of grain. “He remembers when he was Gogu, and the way the two of us trusted each other more than anything. We were so close, and now that seems to be gone, gone as if it never was.”

Iulia glanced at me sidelong. “Didn’t you say he threatened to kill Cezar if he hurt you again? He loves you, Jena. It’s obvious to the rest of us. All you need to do is go up there and say you’re sorry.”

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“I can’t.” The very idea of it made my stomach tie itself in knots. If he spoke to me again the way he had that day in the courtyard, it would be more than I could bear.

“So you plan to be enemies for the rest of your lives?” Iulia asked me. “That could be awkward, with him living next door.”

“I don’t plan anything,” I said. “I’m too worried about Tati even to think about Costi.” Not true, of course; I thought about him all the time—and if I could have rewritten the past, I would have.

As for Tati, we were all worried about her. She had barely spoken a word since Full Moon, and she was eating scarcely enough to keep a bird alive. Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes looked too big for her face. I thought she was living the quest with Sorrow, that she was attuned in some way to his journey and his struggle, every part of her fixed on bringing him safely back, his mission complete. As the moon had gone from full to gibbous to dark, she had retreated gradually into a shadowy world of her own. It seemed to me she was letting go, slipping away to a place where we would not be able to reach her.

I heard from Ivan that there was talk in the valley about which sister had kissed the frog back into a man and what the likely outcome might be. He said nothing about a portal or nocturnal journeys, and neither did folk in the village, although we did attract some curious looks. Whatever version of events Costi had told Judge Rinaldo, it seemed that the full truth had not come out, and I was glad of it.

At Dark of the Moon I dreamed not of a young man who 359

turned into a monster, but of Tadeusz, with his cynical smile and wandering fingers. He was saying to me, You missed your opportunity, Jena. Now what? Marriage to some worthy young landholder, and a baby in your belly every spring? You can do better than that. I’m not far away.

Just wish for me, and I’ll be there. I woke in a cold sweat.

Tati’s side of the bed was empty, and the door ajar. Heart in my mouth, I threw on my cloak and ran through the darkened house, straight up the steps at the end of the party room and out onto the terrace.

She stood there in her night robe, looking out over the dark forest. Alone: no cloaked figure by her side. I breathed again.

“Tati, what are you doing? It’s freezing out here. Come back inside.”

She said nothing. I went up to her, taking off my cloak to put it around her shoulders. I felt a deep shivering in her. Her eyes were blank.

“Come on, Tati. Step by step, that’s it. Come with me.”

Back in the bedchamber, I put the quilt around her and sent Iulia, who had awakened at our return, down to the kitchen for dried berries so we could make fruit tea. I set the small kettle on our stove. After a while, Tati’s trembling subsided. She said in a whisper, “I had a terrible dream, Jena. I think Sorrow’s hurt. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Tell me. Remember, dreams aren’t always true.”

“He was fighting some kind of monster, like a wild boar, only much bigger, and he . . . he fell, and the thing gored him with its tusk. . . . He was bleeding, Jena. He was just lying there in the mud. He looked so pale, as if he was already dead. . . .

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And I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t even say goodbye. . . .”

“Shh . . . shh . . . Don’t think about it anymore. It doesn’t mean anything, Tati, just that you’re worried about him.”

“He’s not coming back,” my sister said flatly, staring into space.

After that she stopped eating altogether. Already she was skin and bone, her appetite whittled away to a nibble of fruit here, a morsel of bread there. Now she refused to touch anything. I could hardly get her to swallow a sip of water. Logic got me nowhere. I told her again that what she had seen was only a dream, not reality, that with half the month still to go, Sorrow had a good chance of getting back in one piece with all the required items. I had scant grounds for such confidence, after what Paula had said about the quest. But I knew the importance of hope. If there was a decision somewhere in what I was saying, I did not acknowledge it even to myself.