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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 281
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 Dr˘agu¸ta?” 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 Dr˘agu¸ta, 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, curs-ing 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.
Dr˘agu¸ta put out a long, pale tongue and licked her lips.
282
“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.”
Dr˘agu¸ta 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. Dr˘agu¸ta’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.”
283
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.”
Dr˘agu¸ta 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 284
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,” Dr˘agu¸ta said. “Two drops, no more. Almost tasteless in wine, completely so in ¸ tuica˘. You’ll have no problem with your nocturnal visitors.”
“Thank you,” I managed, desperate to keep her near until all my questions were answered. “Dr˘agu¸ta—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—”
Dr˘agu¸ta 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,” Dr˘agu¸ta 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.