Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

extricated us from. Run. Run. I stood paralyzed, waiting for her to release my feet. I looked anywhere but at that circle of bright water, for it seemed to me that once I let my eyes fall on it, I would be trapped: caught by the vision, a victim of my own hunger for knowledge. I looked up into the elder tree that grew by the pond, and in its drooping branches I caught a glimpse of something small and bright—something that reflected the gleam from the water and shone it into my eyes. I blinked, disbelieving, then reached up a hand and lifted it down. It was a tiny crown made from wire and fabric, beads and braid. I want to be Queen of the Fairies.

Anastasia gave a hiss. The spell was abruptly undone, my feet freed from what had rooted them to the ground, my throat released from the tight grip that had held my voice to a whisper. I took a step back, ready to flee. The crown slipped through my fingers, and as I reached to catch it, I looked into the water of Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror.

I saw a pair of children, pale-skinned and dark-eyed, each as somber-faced as the other. He was perhaps eight years old, she a mere babe. Brother and sister, no doubt, and I was sure I knew them. That sad-looking boy was Sorrow, and the other the fragile girl I had seen not long ago with her minders. The water showed them in the forest, wandering, probably lost—the boy was holding his sister in his arms, trying to make a way through ever thicker undergrowth as the light faded. They came to a clearing as dusk fell, and there, under the trees, was Tadeusz in his black boots and swirling cloak. Do not be afraid, he said, and then the vision faded.

Before I could begin to think about what that meant, a new 209

image appeared in the mirror. I saw myself, dancing with a young man clad in rags. He was tall and lanky, his dark hair hanging wild and unkempt over eyes as green as beech leaves.

He was looking at the girl in his arms as if she were his whole world, and the Jena of the vision was gazing back with her heart in her eyes. It made me feel hot and cold and confused—

I longed for the vision to be real, and for love at first sight to be a true thing after all. His face was everything I liked: the mouth quirky and sweet, the features strong and well defined, the eyes deep and thoughtful. He seemed in some way familiar, though I was certain I had never seen him before. As I gazed, the man in the mirror turned to look out at the world of Dark of the Moon, and the tenderness in his eyes made my heart turn over. Be sensible, Jena, I warned myself. You are in the Other Kingdom; nothing is as it seems.

Then, before my eyes, he changed. As I stared, horrified, the pleasant, clever features became a distorted mask. The eyes went from green to red, the skin puckered and blistered and broke out in festering sores. He lifted a hand, and the fingers were tipped with nails so long, they had grown into yellow curls. He opened his mouth, and what came out was a terrible howl, the cry of a savage thing from the darkest places of the forest. The other Jena was gone from the mirror, but my younger sisters were there, all three of them. I stood frozen with terror as the monstrous figure turned on them: slashing, tearing, rend-ing, as he made them run, pursuing them through the wildwood without mercy. I heard Stela screaming in pain. I heard my own voice, a little, pathetic thing, whimpering, No, no!

Trust that one, someone said, and you will deliver up your heart to be 210

split and skewered and roasted over a fire. The vision dissipated on the water’s surface. All that remained was a leaf or two floating there and a drift of weed below.

I dashed the tears from my face and fought to get my breathing under control. I was free to go; it seemed these cryptic and horrifying glimpses were all Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror had to show me.

Anastasia had fallen strangely silent. She was a tall woman and her grip had been strong. I wondered if I had any chance of out-running her. I turned and saw that her eyes were on the little crown in my hands, the trifle of bits and pieces that, at five years old, I had thought the most wondrous thing in the world.

It was fraying and crumbling and falling apart.

“Throw that away,” Anastasia said, staring at the crown and clutching at her throat as if something hurt her. “It’s an evil charm, one of hers. A human girl cannot hold such a talisman—

it will kill you, Jenica. Cast it aside.”

“Hers? You mean Dr˘agu¸ta’s? A mere mountain witch?” I edged away from her. If, startling as it seemed, this childhood creation gave me some kind of advantage here where the Night People held sway, I would not hesitate to use it.

“Give it up, Jenica!” Anastasia lunged toward me. As her fingers reached for the little crown, there was a whirl of white between us and we both flinched back. A moment later an owl landed on the bending branch of the elder tree, its plumage snowy, its eyes an odd, cloudy blue-green. Anastasia’s hands moved in a complicated gesture before her, like a ritual charm.

It reminded me of the sign the folk of the valley used to ward off evil spirits.

Run, said my inner voice, and I obeyed, the little crown still 211

clutched tight in my hand. “Tati!” I shouted, careless of who could hear me or what they might decide to do. It seemed to me I had been given a second chance and that I must use it quickly.

“Tati, where are you?”

I ran back up the path to the sward, my heart pounding, my breath coming hard. In my head I was five years old again and the oak tree I had been told to reach moved farther and farther away the faster I drove myself. I could hear Costi’s footsteps behind me, closer and closer, but this time it was Anastasia chasing me, and after a while her steps grew fainter, though I still heard her calling me: “Jenica! Stop!”

I reached the turning where I had lost Tadeusz and my sister, and paused, not knowing which way they had gone. I might take a wrong turn and keep blundering through the woods until I was lost forever—as lost as those children in the vision had been. Human children: an ordinary boy and girl who had been captured by the wildwood and now could never be set free again.

The owl flew over my head, making me duck. I ran after it, trying to keep the bird in sight as I brushed past thorny bushes and crept under tangling briars. Surely this was not the way I had come? Where was this creature leading me, into the heart of the wood? “Wait,” I panted, but the bird flew on, uttering an eerie hoot as it winged its way down a steep, overgrown hill. At the bottom of the slope, I glimpsed the strangely glowing waters of the Deadwash, brighter now than before. I forced a way through the prickly undergrowth—my cloak tearing on thorns, twigs catching at my hair. Behind me, at a distance, I could hear sounds of pursuit: a howling arose, like that of hunt-212

ing hounds. And close by me, along the bank, someone else was making a crashing descent. Anastasia—had she caught up with me? I glanced through the bushes and caught a flash of a white, terrified face and a stream of dark hair. Tati—and with her someone in dark clothing, a man leading her along at breakneck speed. He still had her. Tadeusz would get there before me, he would stop me. . . .

The owl cried out again. I saw it alight on a branch down the hill, where the forest opened up to the lakeshore. I was running so fast that I could not stop. I stumbled between sharp-leaved holly bushes and out onto the open ground, the little crown still clutched in my hand.

“Jena! Quick!” my sister was saying, and when I looked up, I saw that the person with her was not haughty, black-booted Tadeusz, but the slighter form of the young man in the black coat: the man about whom, it seemed, I had been quite wrong.

“Are you all right?” I asked Tati, sure that I could hear the sound of running footsteps and of barking not far behind us.

“I’m fine. I ran away and hid, and Sorrow found me.” In her chalk-pale face, my sister’s eyes were shining bright. “But he says we have to go.”

“You should not have come here.” Sorrow’s voice was muted; he, too, was glancing over his shoulder. “You put yourselves in peril. If I aid you, I break a vow and endanger the innocent. You must go quickly.”

His sister, I thought. He must be bound to obey the Night People, or she would be hurt. That was cruel.

“I only wanted to see you,” Tati said in a whisper.

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“I know that, dear heart, and the sight of you fills me with joy. But you must go now, quickly, before they reach the shore.

Do not come here at Dark of the Moon. Promise me you won’t come again.”

“I promise.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Sorrow enfolded her in his arms, and I had to look away, for he held her with such tender passion that it made my cheeks burn. I felt like an intruder. I remembered Tadeusz’s insinuating talk about wanting. And I remembered the young man with green eyes who had looked at me in just the way Sorrow looked at Tati—as if I were the sun, moon, and stars, all wrapped into one. For a moment I had believed that might be real for me, too, until Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror had shown how cruelly deceptive such day-dreams could be. I gazed over the lake and saw the owl fly out to land in a birch that grew on the first of many small islands there. The Deadwash was hard frozen. With sinking heart, I knew what we must do.

“Farewell,” Sorrow said, and his voice was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

“When will I see you?” Tati asked him as I drew her away, down toward the frozen lake. “I can’t bear this!”

“Wouldn’t Dr˘agu¸ta help you?” I looked back at Sorrow as I stepped out onto the ice. “Couldn’t you approach her?”

“Go!” whispered Sorrow. “Go before they see you.” And he vanished under the trees.

The white owl led us all the way across T˘aul Ielelor. The ice was slick—by the time we reached the other side we were bruised, exhausted, and freezing. Tati was crying. I was oddly 214

dry-eyed, my heart still pounding with fear and exertion, my mind busily trying to make sense of all that had happened. I had not looked back once. The sounds I had heard behind us suggested that pursuit had come only as far as the lakeshore. Something had helped us, something that was not simply a friendly bird from the Other Kingdom.

I looked at the owl now; it was perched on a tree stump, coolly preening its feathers like any ordinary creature. “Thank you,” I said, inclining my head in a gesture of respect. “I don’t know why you helped us, but I honor you for it. I don’t suppose the usual portal’s going to open—not tonight. Can you show us how to get home?”

With a screech, the bird unfolded its wings and flew off.

Within moments it was gone. The only light was the faint gleam from the lake’s surface. On this moonless night, the path we usually took up to the castle and the long winding stair would be impossible.

“It’s all right, Jena,” Tati said, surprising me, for I had thought her beyond rational speech. “We can simply walk home through the forest.”

“How could that work? We’d probably go around and around in circles and never get home. We might be like that . . .”

My voice trailed away. If she had not seen that pathetic puppet on the sward, capering before his tormentors, I would not tell her about him. As for the pale child in her black gown, it seemed that she and her brother were not so different from us.

“I don’t think so, Jena. It’s the Bright Between that separates the two worlds, and we’re already across.” She shivered, 215