Juliet Marillier - Wildwood Dancing

“Pay?” asked Cezar. “What with? You mean silver?”

There was a little silence. Then the old woman said, “You must pay with what is most precious to you in all the world.

The thing you love best. Put that on the cloth. Give it up willingly, and the title will be yours to take and to keep. If it were I, I would give these mushrooms, for they will keep starvation from my door for one more day, and what is more precious than life? What will you give?”

We were all impressed. The boys’ faces looked very serious. Costi slipped the chain holding his silver ring over his head and laid it on the cloth. “There,” he said. “I want to be King of the Lake.”

“Are you sure?” the old woman asked him, and the look she gave him was searching.

“I wouldn’t have offered it if I wasn’t sure,” Costi said.

I was only five. Yet I knew I must be brave and give up my treasure. I took off my beautiful crown, which I’d made with such labor and such love. “I want to be Queen of the Fairies, please,” I whispered, setting it down beside the ring.

The old woman favored me with a gap-toothed smile. “Are you sure, little girl?” she said with quiet intensity.

Her voice frightened me even more than her beady eyes. Costi had shown no fear; I felt I had to match him. “Yes,” I said.

The old woman’s gaze moved to Cezar. “King of the Land,”

she said thoughtfully. “That’s the only one left.”

Cezar was pale. He looked as if he was about to faint, and 51

he was staring at his brother. He didn’t seem to be able to think what to offer. I was about to suggest that he give up his cloak when the crone said, “Are you sure?”

Something changed in Cezar’s face, and a chill went up my spine. It was as if darkness itself was looking out through those eight-year-old eyes. I dropped my gaze; I could not look at him.

I heard him say, “I’m sure,” in a voice that sounded like someone else’s. Then the crone spoke again.

“It’s done,” she said. “Play your game. Don’t forget, next time: nothing comes without a price.” She picked up her basket, turned her back on us, and shuffled away into the woods.

Costi was on his feet, solemnity forgotten. “I’m King of the Lake!” he shouted. Seizing my hand, he ran down to the water, pulling me behind him. “Come on, Jena! I’ll give you first turn on the raft. I’ll ferry you over to the magic island. The Queen of the Fairies needs her own special realm where she can hold court.”

He was so quick. My heart pounding, I let him guide me onto the precarious craft, constructed of willow poles tied with twists of flax and lengths of fraying rope. It rocked in the water as he stood knee-deep beside it, unfastening the line that moored it to the willow. I teetered and sat down abruptly, swallowing tears of fright. My big cousin had allowed me to play his grown-up game. I wasn’t going to give him the chance to call me a crybaby. Besides, I’d paid for this with my best thing in the world. It must be all right. And I really did want to be on that island, the dear little one with the flowers. If I looked closely enough, I might find real fairies there, tiny ones, hiding inside the blooms. I was a queen now; I must be brave.

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“Ready?” asked Costi. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pushed the raft away from the shore. The pole for guiding it lay across the weathered boards by my feet. Probably he had planned to jump on with me, but somehow, the raft went out too quickly. As I grabbed for the pole, it rolled across the boards and into the waters of the Deadwash. Costi was left standing in the shallows, staring after me.

The raft floated out. Eddies and swirls appeared on the surface around it, carrying the pole farther and farther away. I passed the little island with the flowers. I passed another island thick with thornbushes, and a third all mossy rocks. The figures of my cousins got smaller and smaller. I thought I could see dark figures on the islands, hands reaching out to grab me.

The mist seemed to swirl closer, as if to draw me into the mysterious realm beyond. I began to cry. The raft moved on, and I began to scream.

“Hold on, Jena!” Costi shouted. “I’m coming to get you!” He stripped off his shirt and waded into the lake. He was a strong swimmer. On the shore behind him, Cezar stood in shadow.

His face was a white blob, his figure no taller than my little finger. He was utterly still. My screams subsided to hysterical sobs, then to sniffs, as Costi came closer. Around him, I saw the lake waters swirling and bubbling. The raft began to move in circles, making me dizzy, carrying me away from his grasp.

There was nothing to hold on to. I felt another scream welling up in me, and sank my teeth into my lip. Then Costi was there, his hands clutching the edge of the raft, his face even whiter than Cezar’s. His dark hair was streaming water and his teeth were chattering.

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I was too scared to speak. The raft began to drift back slowly toward the shore, Costi’s strong legs kicking us forward. We moved past the rocky island and the thorny one.

Costi was struggling to hold on, fighting the current. His eyes had a fierce look in them, like someone in a fight. His fingers were slipping. I put my hands over my face, listening to him gasping for breath. I felt the raft spin around, then tilt up; I heard splashing. Then someone grabbed my arm, pulling me, and I struck out wildly.

“Stop it, Jena, it’s me. You’re safe now.” The voice was Cezar’s. As I opened my eyes, the raft beached itself, and my cousin’s hands dragged me onto dry land. My head was spinning. My nose was running. My heart was beating madly.

I fled. I pelted past Cezar, past the cloth where we had laid our offerings, past the clothing Costi had shed, and into the shelter of the bushes, where I crouched down with my colored blanket over my head and surrendered to hiccuping sobs of fright and relief.

Maybe I wasn’t there long—to a five-year-old, a few minutes can seem an age. I heard Cezar calling my name, but I ignored him. This was the boys’ fault. They had made me play the game, they had made me come to the lake, and now it was all spoiled. And I hadn’t gotten to be Queen of the Fairies, even though I’d given away my lovely crown. Now my cousins would tease me for being afraid and for crying, and they’d never ask me to play with them again.

“Jena! Come out! Jena, please!”

Something in Cezar’s voice made me get up and walk back 54

to the shore. The square of cloth still lay on the sand, but the silver ring and my little crown were gone. I couldn’t see the raft. I couldn’t see Costi.

“Where were you?” Cezar seized me by the arms, hard—

I thought he was going to shake me. “Where did you go? Did you see what happened?”

“Ow, let go!” I protested. “See what? What do you mean?

Where’s Costi?” Then I noticed that, although he was three whole years older than me, my cousin was crying.

Cezar sat me down on the sand and told me what had happened. His nose was running because of the tears, and his eyes were swelling up and going all red. I gave him back his handkerchief. He told me that as the raft was passing the fairy island, Costi had lost his grip. As Cezar had stripped off his own shirt and boots, ready to go to his brother’s aid, hands had reached up from under the water, pulling at Costi’s arms and rocking the raft as if to capsize it. Cezar had swum out to rescue me, grabbing the raft just in time. He’d propelled it, and me, safely to shore. Then he’d gone back in for his brother. But when he returned to the fairy island, the water was calm and clear. And Costi was gone.

“He’s dead.” He said it as if he couldn’t believe it, even though he’d seen it with his own eyes. “Costi’s dead. The witch took him. Dr˘agu¸ta, the witch of the wood. She pulled him under and drowned him.”

I was too little to find words. Perhaps I did not yet quite understand what death was.

“We have to go home.” Cezar’s eyes were odd, shocked and 55

staring. He looked more angry than sad. “We have to tell them.

You’re going to have to help me, Jena.”

I nodded, misery starting to settle over me like a dark blanket. Costi was gone. Costi, who was so alive—the most alive person I knew. Costi, whom everybody loved. Watching the light sparkle on the lake water, I thought I could hear someone laughing.

“Come on, quick,” Cezar said. “We should get our story straight. We’d better practice on the way.”

I remembered that part even now: walking along the forest paths, my small hand in his not much bigger one, and the way he talked me carefully through what had happened—hoping to calm me down, I suppose. Even after ten years, I could still see the expression on Cezar’s face as he gave his account to his father. It was a heavy load for a boy just eight years old. I helped all I could, telling the same version of events as Cezar. What had happened was all jumbled up in my head, so it was good that he had explained it to me so clearly. He did not mention the game, nor did I. We confessed that we had been at the forbidden lake, playing with a raft. We told them about the tricky currents and the hands in the water. Uncle Nicolae and Aunt Bogdana were so distraught at the loss of their beloved firstborn, their shining star, that after a certain point in the story they ceased to listen.

My mother came to take me and my sister home to Piscul Dracului. After that, I did not see Cezar so often. He had become the eldest son. He worked hard at it: learning the business; accompanying Uncle Nicolae to village meetings; getting to know the running of the farm. He finished his education, 56

going away to Bra¸sov for several years and returning unrecog-nizable: a young man. I became shy of him—so tall, so big, so alarmingly solemn. So full of ideas and theories that clashed utterly with mine. All the same, I owed Cezar my life, and I had never forgotten that.

“The problem is,” I said now to Gogu, who was sitting on a leaf, practicing being invisible, “that Cezar is so difficult to be a friend to. If I could get closer to him, maybe I could persuade him to give up his talk of vengeance. But he thinks girls are an inferior breed, not suited to anything except cooking and cleaning. This winter I plan to prove him wrong on that count, at least. I’ll look after Father’s affairs so well that neither he nor Uncle Nicolae will need to do a thing.”

What’s that old saying: Pride comes before a fall?

“Don’t say that, Gogu! I thought you, at least, had faith in me.”

I do, Jena. Complete faith. Be careful, that’s all. Everything’s changing.

You said as much yourself. Change can be frightening.

“That’s why I’m glad I’ve got you,” I said. “You keep me sane, Gogu. You stop me from making stupid mistakes. Cezar had better not make any more suggestions about terriers. I simply couldn’t do without you.”

Nor I without you, Jena. We are a pair, you and I. It’s getting cold. . . .

Winter’s close. Can I ride home on your shoulder?

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Chapter Three

Dearest Father, I wrote, we have been very busy since you went away. I will dispatch the consignment for Sibiu as soon as Uncle Nicolae can spare some men to load it onto the carts for us. I’d have preferred to arrange this myself, but the men who usually came up from the village were all occupied with shoring up the banks of the Grimwater, which recent rains had swollen to a frothing brown torrent. A river in spate was as dangerous as Dr˘agu¸ta the witch at her most malevolent—it could consume a whole village in one gulp.