Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

I went in. This was the first test of the day. “Florica, Petru, 276

I need a favor. I must go out on my own, without Cezar knowing. Please . . .”

Two pairs of dark old eyes regarded me shrewdly. “You’d want to hurry,” Florica said. “The boys will be down early today. Daniel and R˘azvan. They’re leaving.”

“Really? Isn’t that rather sudden?”

“There was a lot of shouting last night, after you girls were in bed,” Petru said. “They didn’t like what Master Cezar planned to do. The two of them told him they wouldn’t have any of it. Packed up to go home.”

“Oh.” I would once have been glad to see those two gone, but now their departure felt like bad news. They had willingly performed a hundred and one tasks on the farm. I thought their presence had gone a certain way toward moderating Cezar’s behavior.

“What are you planning, Jena?” Florica muttered. “It’s not safe out there, you know that—especially for a girl on her own.”

“I do have to go, Florica. It’s really important. I’ll be safe, I promise. The folk of the forest don’t harm people who show them respect. You said that yourself. And I’m not alone, I’ve got Gogu. I’ll be safer out there than I am here in the castle, with Cezar in his current mood. All you need to do is keep quiet.

Please?”

“Off you go,” Petru said. “We never saw you. Or the frog.

Here, take this.” He put his little knife into my hand, the one he used for a thousand jobs on the farm. It had been next to him on the table, ready to cut the bread Florica would give him for his breakfast. “It’s sharp,” he warned me. “Keep it in the sheath until you need it. And make sure you bring it back.”

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Florica sniffed, wiping her floury hands on her apron. “May all the saints watch over you, Jena. Take this, too.” She reached into one of many capacious pockets in her apron, fished out a little figure made of garlic cloves, and pressed it into my hand.

“Go on, now. The boys will be here any moment; I’m just making them a little something for the road. Jena, you’ve had no breakfast. Let me—” She was already rummaging on the shelves, finding the crust of yesterday’s bread, a wedge of hard cheese, an apple, and wrapping them in a cloth. “Take these. Petru will be in the barn—find him first when you come back, and he’ll see you safely into the house.”

“Thank you,” I said, and moved to hug them, each in turn.

“I don’t know what we’d do without the two of you. I’ll be back before dusk. If anyone asks, you have no idea where I am.”

At first I didn’t even try to work out where Dr˘agu¸ta’s lair might be, or how to reach it quickly. My main aim was to disappear into the forest, somewhere Cezar could not readily track me. That wasn’t easy with the paths all thick with snow. If the imprints of my boots didn’t give me away, I thought, Cezar only needed to send the farm dogs after me and they’d find me by smell. So I did what I could to make my scent difficult to follow. I tried to walk along frozen streams, and Gogu and I sustained bruises. I clambered up a steep rock wall, and came close to a fall that would have broken an arm or a leg or worse, if I hadn’t grabbed on to a prickly bush just in time. Unfortunately, I had removed my gloves so I could climb better. My palm was full of thorns; at the top of the wall, I sat down to remove the 278

worst of them with the numb fingers of my other hand, and Gogu licked the sore places better.

Poor Jena. Is the hurt gone now?

“Yes,” I lied, thrusting the aching hand under my cloak.

“We’d better go on. I don’t think he’ll track us here. Now what? Which way do we go?”

The D-Deadwash.

“Do you want to go back in the pocket? It’s freezing out here.” In there, I thought, he could shut his eyes and pretend he was somewhere else.

No. I will ride on your shoulder.

“Gogu, are you sure? You sound strange. Sad. You didn’t have to come, you know.”

I know, Jena.

So we went to the Deadwash: not just as far as the little stream where we’d made pondweed pancakes in autumn, but right down under the dark trees to the shore itself. The water was sheeted with ice; the mist hung close, a shifting gray shroud. There was an odd stillness about the place. Not a bird called in bare-limbed willow or red-berried holly, not a creature rustled in the undergrowth. Above the canopy of inter-laced branches, the morning sky was a flat gray. It would snow again by nightfall.

Now what?

“I don’t know,” I whispered, my heart hammering. “Calling out to her seems wrong. Praying would be blasphemous.

Searching for her might take all day and be no help at all. I wonder what it meant, what Grigori said. If you truly want to find 279

her, you’ll find her. . . . ” I hugged my cloak around me. “Gogu,” I said in a very small voice, “I think what we need to show is . . .

well, blind faith. Do you trust me?”

With my life.

“All right, then.” I took the frog in my hands, drew a deep, shuddering breath, closed my eyes, and stepped onto the frozen lake. I walked, unseeing, step by step. The ice made moaning, cracking sounds under my boots. The hard freeze of Dark of the Moon was beginning to weaken; the waters of T˘aul Ielelor had scented spring. I kept my eyes screwed shut, and with each step I thought about why I needed Dr˘agu¸ta to help me: Father; Cezar; Tati and Sorrow; . . . Piscul Dracului; my sisters’ future; the folk of the wildwood . . .

“Dr˘agu¸ta,” I whispered, pausing to stand completely still, Gogu cupped between my palms. “Dr˘agu¸ta, can you hear me?”

Get rid of the man.

“What?” I hissed. Drat Gogu, he had completely broken my concentration.

Throw away the little garlic man.

I dug into my pocket, fished out Florica’s tiny charm, and threw it as far as I could across the frozen lake. Maybe the folk of the Other Kingdom feared garlic or maybe, as Tadeusz had said, that was a myth. Better safe than sorry. I shut my eyes again. “Dr˘agu¸ta,” I said, “I love the forest. I love the Other Kingdom. I love my family, and I love Piscul Dracului. Please help me to save them.” My heart was drumming hard, and so was Gogu’s. Hadn’t my cousin Costi been drowned right here where I stood? I tried not to think about the probability that if 280

the ice broke and I fell through, I would freeze so fast I wouldn’t have time to drown.

We waited. I felt the cold seep under my cloak and my warm gown and my woolen stockings and into the core of my bones. My nose was numb, my ears ached. I thought I could feel ice forming on my eyelashes. Gogu was shivering in great, convulsive spasms. I refused to believe she wasn’t coming. Allow that thought in and she probably wouldn’t. Faith was required, and faith was what I planned to demonstrate, for as long as it took.

It’s hard to stand still with your eyes shut for a long time: eventually you start to lose your balance and feel faint and dizzy. I kept it up a good while, listening to the silence of the forest and willing Dr˘agu¸ta to put in an appearance before I was frozen through. But it wasn’t the witch of the woods who finally made me open my eyes, it was Gogu. He started so violently that I almost dropped him on the ice. As I bent to grab him, I found myself looking into the face of someone very small, who had been standing quietly in front of me, right by my feet.

That’s her.

“What?”

That’s her. Cupped in my hands, Gogu buried his head against my palm, trembling.

I took another look. White shawl, more holes than fabric.

White hair, long and wild. Cloudy green eyes, like ripe gooseberries. Wrinkled face, beaky nose, fine parchment skin. A little staff of willow wood, with a polished stone like a robin’s egg set at the tip. Little silver boots with pointed toes, glittering 281

against the ice where she stood. In the hand that did not hold the staff, she had a delicate silver chain, and at the end of it sat a white fox in a jeweled harness. The woman herself stood not much higher than my knees.

“You stink of garlic!” she said sharply, eyes fixed on mine.

“Can’t stand the stuff, myself. What have you brought me?”

“Ah . . . are you Dr˘agu¸ta?” I could not believe this tiny, frail-looking creature was the feared and fabled witch of the wood.

“What do you think?”

I couldn’t afford to waste even one question. If she was Dr˘agu¸ta, she might decide to vanish at any moment. I had to get this right.

“I think you are, and I offer you my respectful greetings,” I said, giving her a curtsy. She sniffed, but stayed. The fox was pawing at the ice, wanting to dig.

“I have some good bread and some tasty cheese,” I said, curs-ing myself for not thinking of bringing gifts. “And a red, rosy apple. You are welcome to those.” Putting Gogu on my shoulder, I undid Florica’s cloth from my belt and knelt down to offer it.

“Hm,” the tiny woman said, prodding at it with her staff.

“Anything else?”

I thought frantically. “My gold earrings? A nice silk handkerchief?”

“Are you afraid of me, Jenica?” the witch asked suddenly.

And suddenly I was, for she stretched her mouth in a smile, revealing two rows of little pointed teeth. She was looking straight at Gogu, who was trying to hide under my hair.

Dr˘agu¸ta put out a long, pale tongue and licked her lips.

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“You do have something I want,” she purred. “Something juicy. Something tasty. Something green as grass.”

“You can’t have Gogu!” I gasped, horrified. “Anything else, but not him!”

“Oh, Jena, you disappoint me. All this way in the cold, and such a heartfelt plea, and you give it all up for a mere morsel like that? Perhaps you don’t quite understand. Give me the frog, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know. The solutions to all your problems. It’s easy. Just pass him over. It’ll save me from having to decide what’s for supper.” She grinned.

Gogu went suddenly still. I thought his heart had stopped beating from sheer fright. “Gogu!” I hissed. “Don’t give up on me now, I need you!” He moved just a little and I drew a breath for courage. “I won’t do it,” I said, staring the witch straight in the eyes. “I can’t give up my dearest friend. We’re a team, Gogu and I. We do everything together. Do take the bread and cheese, they’re Florica’s best. And the apple’s from our own orchard at Piscul Dracului. They’ll make a much nicer supper.

Trust me.”

Dr˘agu¸ta stared at me a moment, then threw her little head back and burst into peals of laughter. Her laugh was so loud it made the trees all around the Deadwash shiver. The white fox laid back its ears. “Florica, eh? She’ll be an old woman now, just like me. I remember her when she was a mere slip of a thing, with the young men all dancing after her. Ah, well. Me, I was old even then. Dr˘agu¸ta’s always been old.” She gathered up the bundle and stuffed it into one of the silver bags the fox wore behind its miniature blanket saddle. “Tell me your story, then, and be quick about it.”

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I told her everything, starting with Father’s illness, going on with the catalog of Cezar’s misdeeds, and throwing in Tati and Sorrow and the prospect of young men being locked in our bedchamber every Full Moon until we gave up our secret. “And I’ve tried and tried to keep control of things, but it keeps on getting worse,” I finished miserably. “Now I think Tati may be in danger soon, from folk who think . . . who think she’s changing into something else.” It was hard to get the words out, for to give voice to this most terrifying of possibilities seemed to make it real. “She’s so pale and distant, and so thin. . . . It could be true that Sorrow—that he—” I couldn’t bring myself to say that he might have bitten her—that he might have drawn her into his own darkness. “I’m hoping you can tell me what to do.”