Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

She cackled. “Easy, eh? A simple set of instructions. Or a spell, one that turns back time. I doubt if your Tati would welcome that. You’ve surprised me, Jena. My great-nephew Grigori told me you were a capable girl.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “These days I seem to be getting everything wrong.”

Dr˘agu¸ta reached out to stroke the fox’s muzzle. Then, with an agility astonishing in one apparently so ancient, she leaped onto the creature’s back. She gathered what I now saw were reins.

“No—please—” I spluttered. “Please wait! I need your help!”

The witch paused, reaching into a pouch at her belt under the voluminous tattered shawl. “Where is the wretched thing—ah, here!” She tossed something straight at me, and I 284

dodged instinctively. The small item bounced on the ice and went spinning away. I slid to retrieve it, keeping Gogu safe in place with one hand. It was a tiny bottle of greenish fluid, tightly corked. “It gives long sleep,” Dr˘agu¸ta said. “Two drops, no more. Almost tasteless in wine, completely so in ¸ tuica˘ . You’ll have no problem with your nocturnal visitors.”

“Thank you,” I managed, desperate to keep her near until all my questions were answered. “Dr˘agu¸ta—Madam—can anything be done for Sorrow and that little girl, his sister? It seems so terrible that they are trapped in that dark place, and perhaps doomed to become Night People themselves. I would like to help them. But Sorrow and Tati, that’s impossible—”

Dr˘agu¸ta regarded me gravely. “Your sister is a grown woman, Jena,” she said. “Let her live her own life.”

“But—”

“Would you challenge me?”

There was something in her voice that stopped further words. Small she might be, but I heard her and trembled. “N-no.

I just don’t want to lose my sister.”

“What will be, will be. I have one piece of advice for you, Jena. Listen well, because it’s all you’ll be getting.”

“I’m listening.”

“Trust your instincts,” Dr˘agu¸ta said. “And remember, nothing comes without a price.” She kicked her little silver boots against the fox’s sides. The creature took off at a brisk trot over the frozen plane of the Deadwash. Within a count of five, the two of them had vanished into the mist.

“Wait—!” My shoulders slumped. She was gone, and all I 285

had was a finger-sized bottle of some dubious potion and a piece of advice I knew well enough already. “Curse it!” I said, stamping my foot in frustration. The ice let out an ominous snapping sound.

C-can we g-go back to shore now?

It seemed Dr˘agu¸ta had decided not to drown us. We reached the shore of T˘aul Ielelor safely, minus our provisions. It was time for the long walk home. I felt desperately tired and utterly despondent. I sat down on a log and found that I didn’t have the energy to get up again.

“She did try to help, Gogu,” I muttered. “But I feel so disappointed, I could cry. What about Sorrow and Tati? And a sleeping potion is all very well, but once he finds out about it, Cezar will use other ways to make me do what he wants. And what’s the point of saying nothing comes without a price? I’d be stupid if I hadn’t learned that. Everyone says it.”

D-don’t be sad. I’m here.

“So you are,” I said, taking Gogu in my hands and holding him against my cheek. “How dare she threaten to have you for her supper? You’re my truest friend in all the world.” I turned my head and kissed him on his damp green nose.

Everything went white. I found myself flying through the air, the sound of a shattering explosion assaulting my ears. I landed with a bone-jarring thump, flat on my back in a scratchy juniper bush. Gogu had been torn from my hands by the blast and was nowhere to be seen. I sat up cautiously as the bright light faded and the lakeshore came back to its gray-green, shadowy self.

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“Gogu?” My voice was thin and shaky. My heart was pounding and my ears were ringing. Distantly, I thought I could hear the sound of an old woman’s derisive laughter.

“Gogu, where are you?”

No response. A terrible, cold feeling began to creep through me. This was Dr˘agu¸ta’s doing. She’d never meant to help me without payment. She’d given me the potion and she’d smiled, and the price she’d wanted was the one she’d asked for in the first place: my precious companion. “Gogu!” I shouted.

“Gogu, if you’re there, come out right now!” I crawled around in the undergrowth, clawing wildly at ferns and creepers.

“Gogu, be here somewhere—please, oh please. . . .”

I was bending to look under a clump of grass when I saw him: a lanky, sprawled figure lying on the shore at some distance from me, as if thrown there. He was pale-skinned, long-limbed, his dark hair straggling down into his eyes. The rags he wore didn’t cover him very well: a considerable amount of naked flesh was on show. He lay limp, perhaps unconscious. Maybe dead. A wanderer, a vagrant. Drunk, probably—

perhaps mad. I was alone out here in the forest. I should run straight home and not look behind me. On the other hand, he might be hurt, and it was freezing. Father had taught us to be compassionate. I couldn’t just leave him.

I crept nearer, my hand gripping the hilt of Petru’s little sharp knife. The young man lay utterly silent. I came still closer, crouching down an arm’s length from him. Not dead: breathing. His face was bony and well formed, a familiar face with a thin-lipped mouth and a strong jaw. No, I told myself.

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No, please. He opened his eyes. Behind the strands of dark hair, they were green as grass. My heart lurched in horror. This was Dr˘agu¸ta’s joke, her cruel joke. This was the lovely young man who had haunted my dreams since Dark of the Moon. Behind that appealing face was the evil creature I had seen in the magic mirror, pursuing and hurting my sisters. And . . .

My skin prickled, my heart felt a sudden deathly chill. Perhaps I had known who it was from the first, although my mind shrank from it. Who else would be there beside T˘aul Ielelor in the middle of winter? There had been nobody—just me and my frog.

“Gogu?” I whispered, backing away with the knife in my hand. “Is it you?” My heart was breaking.

The young man looked at me, not saying a thing. That was cruelest of all: if he had managed even a word or two, some expression of regret, it might have eased the pain just a little. He sat up, wrapping his long arms around his bony knees. Suddenly he was racked with convulsive shivering.

“Here,” I said, taking off my cloak and putting it around his shoulders. “It is you, isn’t it? It has to be. Can you get up? Can you walk?”

I knew I should flee: I should run as fast as I could, away from the Deadwash and out of the wildwood, back home to my sisters. He was a monster. I had seen it with my own eyes. But deep inside me, something wanted to help him—something that could not disregard his beseeching gaze. This was like being ripped apart. I hated Dr˘agu¸ta as I had never hated anyone in my life. If this was the price for a few drops of sleeping potion, it was too high.

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“Gogu?” I ventured again, my voice shaking. If only he would say something—anything—while he was still in this form. How long, I wondered, until that kind, sweet face turned to the mask of hideous decay? How long before this semblance of a human became the thing underneath, an evil being from the world of Dark of the Moon? How long before it turned its rend-ing claws and vicious teeth on me as I fled through the forest? It was a long way home to Piscul Dracului. But how could I turn my back on him? It was cold, and we were in the middle of the forest. And it was Gogu, whom I had promised never to leave behind.

“Have you got somewhere to go?” I asked, hating the way those green eyes were looking at me, full of love and reproach.

“Can you get up and walk?” Despite myself, I held out a hand to help him to his feet. He tried. After a moment, his legs buckled under him and he collapsed in a heap, trembling violently.

“Who were you before?” I asked him. Fear tugged at my feet; sorrow and pity held me still. He wasn’t Gogu anymore.

Surely he could answer the question now, the one he’d never been able to respond to before. “Before you became a frog, were you a man or something else? Tell me, go on. Who were you?”

The young man stared at me without a word. His expression was so sad, it made me want to throw my arms around him and reassure him that everything would be all right. But the words that had come to me at Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror were still in my head: Trust that one, and you will deliver up your heart to be split and skewered and roasted over a fire. It felt as if that were happening right now.

“If you won’t tell me, how can I possibly understand 289

anything?” I burst out. “I don’t want to walk away, but I can’t stay here.” Saying this, I could not look at him. “It’s going to take me a long time to walk home. I don’t think I can fetch help.

There’s only Cezar, and—” I thought of trying to explain this to my cousin; of what would likely be the violent and bloody result: this young man pursued and butchered by a mob of scythe-wielding hunters—or, worse still, turning into his true self and inflicting deadly damage on the men of the valley before he was captured and killed. “I wish you would say something,” I whispered. “It seems terrible to leave you like this. Please tell me who you are.”

Nothing; not a word.

“Then I’m going,” I said, fixing my mind on the vision in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror, the bad part of it. “I have no choice.” I took a step away, but something was holding me back. I turned, looking down, and saw that he was clutching a fold of my gown, his long fingers gripping the woolen fabric, desperate to delay the moment when I would walk away. I made myself meet his eyes; tears welled in mine. He looked forlorn, bereft. His expression was just like the frog’s, those times when I had somehow offended Gogu and he had retreated to the bushes. He’s from the Other Kingdom, I told myself sternly. You’ve seen what he turns into. Don’t let him charm you: he can’t be allowed near Iulia and Paula and Stela.

I reached down and opened his fingers, undoing his grasp as if he were a small child clinging to something forbidden. His fingertips brushed the back of my hand, and I felt his touch all through my body, flooding me with tenderness and longing. I 290

remembered Tadeusz’s chill fingers against my skin, his soft voice and tempting words, and the sensations they had aroused in me. I knew that they had been nothing—nothing at all compared with what I felt now. This was deep and strong and com-pelling, and I needed all my strength to fight it. It was all wrong. It was something I could not have. Yet, cruelly, it felt more right than anything in the world.

“Goodbye, Gogu,” I whispered, then turned my back and fled.

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Chapter Twelve

I arrived home freezing, exhausted, and utterly miserable. Petru smuggled me inside. All around the place there were men with clubs or crossbows or knives, some whom I recognized from Vârful cu Negur˘a and some who were strangers. I spotted Cezar giving them stern instructions. All I could think of was the horrible thing Dr˘agu¸ta had done to me—the cruel trick that had turned my world upside down.

My sisters bundled me out of my damp clothes and into warm, dry ones. Stela brought a stone hot water bottle for my feet. Iulia fetched a jug of tea from the kitchen, with a little dish of bread and pickled eggs, but I could not eat.