¸ tuic˘a, with a little dish of pepper and one of sugar. Neither she nor Petru had said a thing.
“Jena,” said Cezar, “I must ask you some questions. I don’t wish to seem distrustful, but in light of these wild tales that have been raised about the house, I’m duty bound to investigate anything in the least suspicious. How was it that you were able to hear something out in the yard when your bedchamber looks over the other side of the castle? Whatever it was you heard, it was not our hunting party. Only the three of us went out tonight, and it was no farther than the innermost fence, to check that the stock were undisturbed. We went as quietly as we always do, the better to apprehend an evildoer should we chance on one. If you roused Petru, how was it that the two of you were already in the yard in your outdoor clothing while he was only just opening the door? This doesn’t add up. I don’t like it. Petru, what have you to say for yourself ?”
Petru was seized by a sudden fit of coughing. It was so severe, he had to excuse himself and leave the room.
“I’d best go and help him, Mistress Jenica,” muttered Florica.
“He’s bad when it takes him like this.” And she, too, was gone.
Tati began to pour the tea, as if this were one of Aunt Bogdana’s polite gatherings. Through a haze of weariness I thought that at times, the human world could be every bit as strange as the Other Kingdom.
“Anyway,” Cezar said, “it’s the middle of the night—you 220
must have been fast asleep. Surely only a commotion would wake you. If there’d been any disturbance I would have heard it myself.”
“Jena’s been sleeping very poorly,” said Tati, sliding a cup across to Cezar. “We’re all upset by what’s been happening.
She didn’t want to worry you.” It was a bold-faced lie and utterly surprising in view of my sister’s wanly dispirited demeanor of late. Her eyes were still bright, and not just with tears. Perhaps that kiss had given her strength.
“Mmm,” grunted Cezar, sitting down beside me, so close his thigh was against mine. I edged away, trying not to be too obvious about it. “I’m sorry, Jena. All the same—”
I yawned; it owed nothing to artifice. “Could we talk about this in the morning?” I asked him in as sweet a tone as I could muster.
“Drink your tea,” Cezar said. “Get warm. You’re shivering—
here.” He took off his thick cloak and put it around my shoulders. It was, in fact, wonderfully warm.
“Thank you,” I said in a small voice. “I’m truly sorry.” And in a way I was; sorry that Tati had taken it into her head to cross a forbidden margin, and sorry that we had not been able to reach home undetected; sorry that such sad things existed as those I had witnessed at Dark of the Moon.
“All right, Jena; don’t distress yourself.” Cezar patted my hand. “I can wait for an accounting. But when it comes, I want the truth.”
Gogu was on my pillow, sitting so still he might have been dead. When I got into bed, he edged away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have taken you with me.”
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Crouched between my pillow and Tati’s, the frog turned reproachful eyes on me. The shutters were closed over his thoughts, but I needed no words to know what he was feeling.
“We are back safely, Tati and I. We didn’t meet some terrible fate,” I told him.
He blinked. There was a whole world of meaning in it.
“Gogu? Will you forgive me? I can’t go to sleep if you’re angry. I truly am sorry.”
A torrent of furious distress came from him. You lied to me. I’ll just slip out and bring her back, you said. And you’d promised never to go away from me again. How can I look after you if you leave me behind?
I struggled for an answer that would not insult him.
Beside me, Tati had slipped under the quilt, pulling it up almost over her head. “Go to sleep, Jena,” she mumbled. “It’s almost morning.”
“Gogu,” I whispered, “I did slip out and bring her back. It was just a bit farther than I expected. And I’m upset by what I saw—things I wouldn’t want anyone to see, not even you.
Things so bad I can’t even talk about them. But you’re right. I needed you. I knew that as soon as I got there.”
You think me worthless. You think because I am a frog , I cannot stand by you.
His anger hurt me terribly. I had never seen him like this, not in all the years we had been together. Tears sprang to my eyes. “That’s rubbish, Gogu, and you know it,” I sniffed.
“You’re my dearest friend, my inseparable companion, and my wise advisor. You’ve got as much heart as any knight on horseback.”
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You say that.
“I mean it. I didn’t take you tonight because I was worried I might lose you. That’s the truth. If that happened, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Couldn’t this wait until the morning?” Tati’s voice was an exhausted whisper.
I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t stop crying. Long after Tati had fallen asleep, I felt Gogu’s small damp form jump onto the linen beside my face, and his tongue came out to lick my tears away.
After our Dark of the Moon journey, the idea of our party—
which I had hoped might be the solution to several problems—
became faintly ridiculous. We were bound to it, nonetheless.
The invitations had gone out and acceptances had begun to come in—more than Aunt Bogdana had expected, for she had wondered whether the rumors that were sweeping the valley about us and our home would keep folk away. It seemed that curiosity outweighed fear.
The castle was being given a top-to-toe cleanup by women from the local area. I heard whispered stories about Night People, and about Dr˘agu¸ta the witch, as our helpers scrubbed and dusted and polished—and I tried to ignore them. I had a story of my own, and I had not yet told it to Tati.
If I was right about what that vision meant—the two children lost in the forest—I owed it to her to tell her the truth about Sorrow. His parting words had seemed to confirm what I believed: that he was in some kind of servitude to the Night 223
People, with his sister’s safety the price of obedience. I wondered why he had not told Tati himself.
I held back from giving my sister the news. Once she heard that Sorrow was, in fact, a human boy who had strayed into the Other Kingdom and been kept there for years, growing into a man far away from his own people, how would she ever be persuaded to give him up? The cruel thing about it was that even if he was a mortal man, he was still beyond her reach as sweetheart, lover, or husband. It seemed that he and his sister had been living in the Other Kingdom since they were children. One could not stay so long in Dr˘agu¸ta’s realm without partaking of food and drink. Tadeusz had lured them and kept them; kept them too long. They would never be able to live in our world again. They might both be halfway toward becoming Night People by now, or worse. And if Sorrow could not stay here, the solution Tati might seize on would be for her to go there. I knew her kind heart. As soon as I told her his story, that was what she would want. Even if it meant a future in that shadowy, cruel realm we had glimpsed at Dark of the Moon, I thought she would do it for him.
I could hold back from divulging the story, of course. I did not plan to tell her of my other vision in Dr˘agu¸ta’s mirror: that of a young man with green eyes whom I had thought for a wonderful moment I could love, until the image revealed the monster beneath. I had no idea what that meant. Perhaps it was a warning not to trust too easily. I had not passed on Anastasia’s crushing words to me, nor the news that it had been my sister 224