Wildwood Dancing

by Juliet Marillier

  “I don’t care about the mirror.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Anastasia getting restless, impatient. She was examining her long, polished nails and glancing about her. “I’ll say what I need to say now. You’ve brought evil on the valley, you and your people. You offered me something and I didn’t accept the offer, but you took payment anyway—payment in an innocent girl’s blood. You started this. You can’t say just wanting something means I’ve agreed to some kind of bargain; that isn’t fair. The people of the valley were already hungry: it’s winter, and times are hard. Killing their animals isn’t only cruel, it’s unjust. Not everyone is like Cezar. Most people understand the need to share. They understand that humankind and the folk of the wildwood have to live side by side, with proper respect for their differences. Ileana’s folk know that. It seems you don’t.”

  “You promised that I could see Sorrow.” Tati’s voice was uneven. “If he’s here, I want to see him now. Show me that he’s safe and well.”

  “Of course, Tatiana.” Tadeusz’s voice had become kindly, warm; he sounded utterly trustworthy. “I will take you to him. He’s a shy boy, as you know. He won’t come out while so many folk are enjoying themselves. This way.”

  “Wait!” It seemed my night was to be a long sequence of running, clutching, trying to keep up. “Don’t go without me—”

  “This way,” said Anastasia, and I found that she was leading me down a pathway into the woods, and my sister and Tadeusz were nowhere in sight. I tried to pull back, to follow Tati, but my feet were obeying some force beyond me, dragging me along behind my pale-faced guide. I was engulfed by malevolence, in the grip of a fell charm. I tried to call to my sister, but my voice seemed to die in my throat—all I could manage was a strangled gasp. We moved on into the darkness. Behind us, the eerie lights of the glade faded.

  “What is this place?” I managed. “Where are Ileana and Marin? Why is it so different?” A terrible fear awoke within me. Perhaps the Night People had changed the Other Kingdom forever. Perhaps Ileana’s rule was over, and our friends were all gone.

  “You think that within the Other Kingdom there is only one realm?” Anastasia raised her brows at me, as if she found me unbelievably stupid. “Dark of the Moon is our time; we come to celebrate in our own way. It is Ileana’s choice to shun our festivities. That’s of no matter. My brother’s world is stronger than hers. In time, all this will be ours.”

  My heart went cold. Fear seized me, but not quite enough to stifle common sense. “I thought you were from the east,” I whispered. “I thought you were only visiting. And what about Drǎguţa?”

  “Drǎguţa?” She tossed her ebony hair. “A mere mountain witch? She’s no more than a puny local herbalist who reaches beyond her abilities. Why else has she failed to make an appearance in all the days since we came to the forest of Piscul Dracului? The crone dares not set foot in the open now the Night People have put their mark on this place.”

  While my feet carried me along after her, I was thinking hard. “If Drǎguţa has so little power,” I said, “why did your brother hold out her mirror to tempt me here? It must be a tawdry thing of little value. Why did Tadeusz tell me I would find truth in it? Was everything he said to me a lie?”

  “I know one thing,” the scarlet-lipped woman said with a twisted smile. “My brother was never interested in you, plain little thing that you are, with your unkempt bush of hair and your flat chest and your flood of stupid questions. It’s your sister he has his eye on. She’s a choice morsel, all pearly flesh and quivering uncertainty. There’s no need to look like that, Jenica. We’re not so precipitate. He wishes Sorrow to see them together, that is all. He wishes to play a little.”

  Humiliation, confusion, and terror warred within me. I stayed silent, though inside I was screaming.

  “You want to ask questions, don’t you? Look in the mirror, then. You may protest that you are here simply to bring your sister back, but I know the real reason. You are thirsty for knowledge. You must have it whatever the cost—because knowledge allows control, and you do love to be in control, don’t you, Jenica? And you like flattery, poor, silly girl. My brother knew how to manipulate you; it was the easiest thing in the world.”

  For a moment I knew what hate felt like. I knew how Cezar felt in those moments when his face went cold and his eyes dark. Then I saw that we had reached a still pool fringed by ferns, a pool that was perfectly round, with a shimmering to its surface that reminded me of Tǎul Ielelor on the night of Full Moon. Without a doubt, this was Drǎguţa’s magic mirror. The forest around us was hushed. No night bird called, no small creature rustled a path through the grasses.

  The moment she releases this spell, I told myself, I have to run. Run back, grab Tati, go to the lake, and get across any way we can. Even as I thought this, I knew how impossible it would be. I wished with all my heart that I had not left Gogu behind. He would have thought of some way out, I was sure of it. What my stupidity had gotten us into, his sound common sense would have 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 Drǎguţa’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 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, rending, as he made them run, pursuing them throu
gh 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 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 Drǎguţa’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 outrunning 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 Drǎguţa’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 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 hunting 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.

  “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 Drǎguţa’s mirror had shown how cruelly deceptive such daydreams 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 Drǎguţa 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 Tǎul 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 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, drawing her cloak more tightly around her. “I think if we’re careful which way we go, we can get hom
e from here.”

  “What are you saying? If that was true, the whole thing with our portal would be … It wouldn’t be a magical charm at all—it would be meaningless, Tati. What about the shadow hands on the stone at Full Moon? If it’s not magic, it should work anytime we try it, and anyone should be able to do it.”

  “I don’t know. But I think we should start walking. I’m cold. We need to follow the edge of the lake until we find a path; at least the water is a little brighter than the forest.”

  “Tati?” I asked her as we picked our way along the lake-shore.

  “What?”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “I told you. That tall one, Tadeusz, tried to take me off somewhere, and I just bolted into the forest, not even thinking where I was going. A moment later, there was Sorrow. I could hear Tadeusz laughing. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen. As if it was all part of some mad game. He frightened me, Jena.”

  “Here, there’s a way up beside this stream, between the rocks, I remember it.…” It led to the secret hollow where Gogu and I had enjoyed many picnics. That meant the place where we had slipped and staggered to shore was the scene of Costi’s drowning—the sandy beach where my cousins and I had once placed our precious treasures and started a game whose rules none of us understood. I felt the slight weight of the little crown, which I had slipped into the pocket of my cloak. I want to be Queen of the Fairies.… I was missing something. I was on the verge of solving a puzzle, but the pieces would not quite fit.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, and I took the crown out and set it on a flat stone by the stream. “I don’t think I’m ready to take it back yet,” I whispered.