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 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 compelling, 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.
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 Vǎrful cu Negurǎ and some who were strangers. I spotted Cezar giving them stern instructions. All I could think of was the horrible thing Drǎguţa 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.
“Let’s go through this again, Jena,” Paula said carefully, as if humoring a hysterical child. By this stage I’d stammered out the story, more or less, including a brief account of the young man I had seen in Drǎguţa’s mirror and what he had become. I had not given them details of the scene in which the monstrous figure had pursued and hurt them; there was no need for them to share my nightmares. I had shown them Drǎguţa’s sleeping potion. I couldn’t expect them to understand how I was feeling. If anyone said, Oh well, it was only a frog, I’d scream. “You did actually kiss Gogu? That was what made him change?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe Gogu was just an ordinary boy once,” suggested Stela solemnly. “Until Drǎguţa enchanted him.”
“There’s nothing ordinary about him. He belongs in the world of the Night People. He looks good on the outside and he’s all bad on the inside. I saw it.”
“And you believe it.” Paula sounded doubtful.
“I heard Drǎguţa laughing after she’d done it. Paula, there’s no point in talking about this. He’s gone. I was wrong about him all those years—stupidly wrong. Instead of a friend and companion, I was carrying about some”—I shuddered—“some thing that belonged in the dark, out of sight. How could I have made such a mistake?”
“Or perhaps she changed him,” suggested Iulia. “It’s hard to believe that Gogu was an evil creature, Jena. Maybe she took him and left you this other thing in his place. To teach you a lesson.”
“So it was true, then.” Paula was looking thoughtful. “About you being able to hear Gogu’s thoughts, I mean. When she transformed him into a frog, Drǎguţa probably gave him that voice to make up for not being able to talk. Otherwise he’d have gone crazy.”
Tati had been silent so far. Now she gave the others a particular kind of look, and the three of them retreated to sit on Paula’s bed.
“Jena,” said Tati. “Jena, look at me.”
She hadn’t sounded so sensible for quite a while. I looked at her, and she reached out her fingers to wipe the tears from my cheeks. Her hand was all skin and bone. “Surely this can’t be the first time you ever gave Gogu a kiss,” she said.
“It’s not. I don’t think that’s what made him change. Drǎguţa just wanted a dramatic moment to do it, and that’s the one she chose. Maybe I deserve punishing, Tati. I’ve messed up everything, and now he’s gone, and I don’t have any answers, and Cezar’s down there, putting armed guards all around the castle.” The tears flowed faster. “Sorry,” I hiccuped. “I just can’t believe I’ve lost him. It’s even crueler than it seems.…” No, I would not tell her that the young man with green eyes had appeared nightly in my dreams. That I had considered him far nicer than any of the young men at the party. That I had imagined dancing with him, and had wished he could be real. That meant nothing: every single time, the dream had ended with his changing to reveal the monster beneath.
“Jena,” said Tati softly, “we can go across at Full Moon. Drǎguţa’s potion will put Cezar’s man to sleep. You can ask Ileana about this, and I can ask about Sorrow. Maybe it can still be set right, all of it. I’m going to ask her whether she will let Sorrow and his sister live in her realm, away from the Night People. You’ve done something really brave, getting the potion for us. Don’t cry, Jena, please.”
“Do you think Gogu will remember the way home?” asked Stela, whose mind was dwelling on the fact that, unaccountably, I had left my friend on his own out in the forest. If she had missed the point about exactly what he was, I was glad of it. “I hope he doesn’t freeze to death, like birds that fall out of the trees in winter.”
“Shh!” hissed Tati. “Don’t upset Jena. She did give him her cloak.”
“If this was one of those old tales,” said Iulia, “he’d turn up on the doorstep here, and Jena would have to grovel to get him back.”
“Hush, Iulia!” Tati’s arm tightened around my shoulders. “Don’t make this any worse. Until you lose someone you love, you can’t understand what Jena’s feeling.”
“You know,” Paula said, “it would really be more sensible not to go, this Full Moon—even if there are questions you want to ask. If we never opened the portal again, Cezar couldn’t find it.”
Tati and I both looked at her.
“We can’t not go,” Stela said, all big eyes and drooping mouth.
“You’re saying we should never go to the Other Kingdom again?” Iulia had understood what lay behind Paula’s words, and her voice was hushed. “Not ever?”
“That’s common sense,” said Paula. “I don’t like it any more than you do. Where else am I going to be able to talk about the things I love—history, philosophy, and ideas—now that Father Sandu’s gone? But it’s probably the right thing to do.”
There was a silence. As it drew out, I imagined the sounds that might once have filled such an awkward pause and never would again: Gogu’s wry comments, which only I could detect; his little splashing noises in the bath bowl; the soft thump as he landed on the pillow, ready for good-nights and sleep.
“We do need to go once more, if we can,” I said as tears began to roll down my cheeks again. “I think we have to let Father know what’s happening here. The only way I’m going to get a letter past Cezar is to ask for help in the Other Kingdom.” I would take Grigori up on his offer. I thought he was strong enough to look after himself from here to Constanţa and back. “What will happen after that, I don’t know. Paula may be right. Maybe it is the end.”
As we lay in bed later, Tati reached out under the quilt and took my hand in her own. Hers was cold as a wraith’s. “Jena?” she whispered. “I’m sorry you’re so sad.”
My cheek was against the pillow, on the spot where Gogu always slept. The linen had been almost dry; I was wetting it anew with tears. I said nothing. It troubled me that when we had spoken of ending our visits to the Other Kingdom, Tati had raised no objections. I wondered what she saw in her own future. From where I lay, I could see her hair spread across her pillow like a dark shawl, the pale expanse of her neck exposed. I shut my eyes. If there was evidence there, a mark on her pearly skin, I was not ready to see it—not brave enough to accept what it might mean. The truth was, at Dark of the Moon, Sorrow had seemed to be a good person, as kind and thoughtful as Tati had always said he was. I did not want him to be one of them.
“Jena?”
“Mmm?”
“If Ileana won’t help about Sorrow, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t go on without him. I just can’t.”
It seemed an enormous effort to answer. All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball with my misery. I hated Cezar. I hated fate for making Father ill and for not sending anyone to hel
p us. I hated Drǎguţa most of all, for twisting my dearest friend into a thing to be feared and loathed. I hated myself for still loving him.
“We just might have to go on, Tati,” I said. “There might be no choice.” I thought of a future in which Cezar was master of both Vǎrful cu Negurǎ and Piscul Dracului. That future seemed to be almost upon us. Without Gogu, I wasn’t sure whether I would be strong enough to protect my sisters—strong enough to act as Father would wish.
“There’s always a choice, Jena.” Tati closed her eyes. “Even giving up is a kind of choice.”
As Full Moon approached, Cezar’s mood deteriorated. He could often be heard yelling at the guards, who had evidently been chosen for both their intimidating size and their reluctance to engage in conversation. I wondered that he had anything to chide them about, since they seemed utterly obedient to his rule. They slept out in the barn.
Petru, displeased with the new arrangements, grew still more taciturn. Florica was distracted and fearful. The five of us applied ourselves to helping her in the kitchen and around the castle and to keeping out of Cezar’s way. He was furious, and Petru had his own theory as to the cause. “Can’t find a taker for this job he’s thought up,” he muttered as I passed him in the hallway. “Nobody wants to venture into the other realm. All too frightened of the Night People. A reward’s no good to you if you’re dead.”
Iulia had become unusually quiet and often had red eyes. We were all uneasy at the presence of armed minders in our house, but this seemed something more.
“It’s Rǎzvan,” Paula told me when Iulia had burst into tears over a trivial matter and rushed out of the room for the tenth time in a week. “She’s upset that he left so suddenly.”
“Rǎzvan?” I stared at her. “She liked him that much?” I had noticed the boys’ admiring glances at Iulia, and thought them inappropriate. My sister looked like a woman, but she was only in her fourteenth year—surely too young for such attentions. I had seen, later, how kind Daniel and Rǎzvan were to my younger sisters. All the same, this was a surprise.
“He has a sister Iulia’s age, and his father keeps a stable full of fine riding horses,” Paula informed me. “He half invited her to visit in the summer; she was really excited about it. Now that’s all changed. The boys left without saying goodbye, and Cezar’s not letting us go anywhere, let alone all the way to Rǎzvan’s father’s estate—it’s on the other side of Brașov.”
“Why didn’t Iulia tell me?”
Paula regarded me a little owlishly. “You’ve been wrapped up in your own misery, Jena,” she said. “With you brooding over Gogu, and Tati counting the minutes until Full Moon, Iulia’s got nobody to confide in except me. And Stela’s got nobody to be a mother to her except me. She’s frightened. She can’t understand why all these men are suddenly hanging around. It would actually be quite nice if you went back to taking a bit more notice of the rest of us.”
Her words were a slap in the face. Was this really true? In my misery over Gogu and my concern to keep Piscul Dracului and the Other Kingdom safe, had I forgotten that my sisters, too, were unhappy? “I’m sorry,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “It’s just that I miss him so much.”
“All the same,” Paula said, “you could make a bit of an effort.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Talk to Iulia. Make some time for Stela. Tati doesn’t tell her stories and play with her the way she used to, and Stela thinks that’s somehow her fault. I wish Tati would be herself again. She doesn’t just look thin, she looks really ill. I wish Full Moon was over.”
When I saw Iulia, I told her I thought Father might consider her old enough, next year, to go on a visit by herself, provided Aunt Bogdana approved all the arrangements. The expression on her face was reward enough: her eyes lit up. My little sisters were growing up faster than I had expected. It seemed that the prospect of a summer of riding in the company of an admiring young man was now more enticing to Iulia than the magic of Full Moon dancing. Was it possible to grow out of the Other Kingdom?
I took over the job of teaching Stela her letters—a task that Tati had abandoned when thoughts of Sorrow began to crowd other matters from her mind—and was rewarded by my small sister’s smiles. I made myself available for bedtime stories. There was not much I could do for Tati herself. I could not force her to eat, and the rumors that were going about the valley made me reluctant to send for a doctor. I watched her fade a little each day, and prayed that Full Moon would bring solutions.
Up in our chamber, Gogu’s jug and bowl stood empty on the side table. Eventually I would put them away, but not yet; it seemed so final. Although I knew that beneath the semblance of the green-eyed man there was something dark and terrible, part of me still longed to go out into the forest and search for him, to see whether he was safe and well, to ask him … what? Why it was that Drǎguţa had made him into a frog and put him in my path so I could save him and befriend him and love him and then have him torn away from me and revealed to be a monster? What she had done seemed not only pointless, but unreasonably cruel. I struggled to make sense of it.
On the eve of Full Moon I took ink, quill, and parchment up to the little tower with the starry ceiling and sat on the rug to write a letter. This was one place Cezar’s watchdogs had not discovered. I recalled Gogu sitting on my midriff here and astonishing me by talking about true love. Telling me he liked my soft brown hair and my green gown. Saying he liked sleeping on my pillow so we were side by side. “I love you, too, Gogu,” I whispered into the silence of the tower room, where the rays of the setting sun came low through the seven windows, touching the painted stars to a rosy shine. “At least, I loved you when you were a frog, before I knew the truth. But …” It was unthinkable that I could still feel that tenderness, still remember the good things as if they were not tainted by the horror of his true nature. He had watched me undressing, had traveled everywhere in my pocket, warmed by my body. He had snuggled against my breast and cuddled up to my neck under the fall of my hair. He’d been dearer to me than anyone in the world.
“I wouldn’t mind you being a man, once I got used to the idea,” I muttered. “I could have liked that man, he seemed kind and funny and nice. Why couldn’t he be the real Gogu?” I imagined my friend hopping across the dragon tiles to conceal himself in their green-blue pattern. I remembered his silent voice: You left me b-b-behind.
No more tears, I ordered myself. I’d had enough days of weeping myself into a sodden mess. There was a letter to be written and it must be done just right. Without Gogu to advise me, I must try to think of what he would suggest and do the rest myself.
Dear Gabriel, I wrote, I have addressed this to you, hoping you will read it first, then share it with Father. I have already sent several letters, but we have received only one from you, telling us he was too unwell to have the news of our uncle’s tragic death. I am sending this by a different messenger. Gabriel, if Father is dying, I need to know. My sisters and I would want to be at his bedside to say goodbye. If he is improving, then he should be told that we are having some difficulties at Piscul Dracului.…
I kept it brief. Nothing about Sorrow or our Full Moon activities, of course. I told him what Cezar was doing: from the one-sided decision to take over our finances to the establishment of a force of guards to curtail our freedom. Telling that last part without revealing what we knew of the portal was tricky, but I managed it. I told him Cezar planned to start cutting down the forest as soon as spring came, and that I believed he had sent Aunt Bogdana away so she could not hold him back. I told him there were dangerous rumors in the valley, rumors about Piscul Dracului and about us.
If Father cannot come home, Gabriel, I ask that we be provided with some other assistance. I am afraid of Cezar and his interference, and I want him kept away from Piscul Dracului. I do not know where to turn. Please discuss this with Father. Do not send a reply with Cezar’s usual messengers, the ones employed for the business, as I believe letters m
ay have been intercepted. My own messenger is prepared to wait for your response. You must honor his wish to remain unidentified. You can trust him. I and my sisters send you our respects and our heartfelt thanks for your loyalty to Father. Please give him our love and fondest wishes for a good recovery and a speedy return home. Jena.
I folded the parchment and slipped it into my pocket. Then I lay on the rug, staring up at the ceiling as the sunset moved through gold and pink and purple and gray, and birds called to one another in the dark forest outside, winging to their roosts. I made myself breathe slowly; I willed myself to be calm. It wasn’t easy. As far as we knew, Cezar had found nobody willing to undertake his mission. But I knew he would make it happen somehow, even if he had to do it himself. An elderly servant called Marta had come down from Vǎrful cu Negurǎ earlier in the day, her job to act as our chaperone. We had made up a pallet for her in our bedchamber. It all seemed quite unreal.
I hoped the letter would reach Father before Cezar did anything worse. Tonight, at Dancing Glade, I would ask Grigori to take it to Constanţa for me, and both Tati and I would seek an audience with the queen of the forest. If Ileana had no further answers for us, I thought this might be the very last time we would visit the Other Kingdom. To risk exposing the folk of that realm to Cezar without good reason was something we could not do, not if we loved them and valued the wonderful opportunity they had given us month by month and year by year since we’d first found the portal. Tonight we might be saying our last farewell to Grigori and Sten, to Ildephonsus, to Ileana and Marin and all our friends from the Other Kingdom. I knew I must drink my fill of the colored lights, the exquisite music, the glittering raiment and delicious smells, and store it all up in my memory. The rest of my life might be a long time. When I was an old woman, I wanted to be able to remember every last jewel, every last gauzy wing, every last thrilling moment.
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