Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

“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