Wildwood Dancing

by Juliet Marillier

  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 interlaced 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 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 Tǎul Ielelor had scented spring. I kept my eyes screwed shut, and with each step I thought about why I needed Drǎguţa to help me: Father; Cezar; Tati and Sorrow; … Piscul Dracului; my sisters’ future; the folk of the wildwood …

  “Drǎguţa,” I whispered, pausing to stand completely still, Gogu cupped between my palms. “Drǎguţa, 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. “Drǎguţa,” 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 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 Drǎguţa 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 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 Drǎguţa?” 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 Drǎguţa, 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, cursing 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. Drǎguţa put out a long, pale tongue and licked her lips.

  “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.”

  Drǎguţa 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. Drǎguţa’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.”

  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.”

  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.”

  Drǎguţa 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 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,” Drǎguţa said. “Two drops, no more. Almost tasteless in wine, completely so in ţuicǎ. You’ll have no problem with your nocturnal visitors.”

  “Thank you,” I managed, desperate to keep her near until all my questions were answered. “Drǎguţa—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—”

  Drǎguţa 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,” Drǎguţa 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 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 Drǎguţa had decided not to drown us. We reached the shore of Tǎul 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.

  “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 Drǎguţa’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. No, please. He opened his eyes. Behind the strands of dark hair, they were green as grass. My heart lurched in horror. This was Drǎguţa’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 Tǎul 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 Drǎguţa 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.

  “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 rending 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 ques
tion 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 Drǎguţa’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 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 Drǎguţa’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.