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 296
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 help us.
I hated Dr˘agu¸ta 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 Vârful cu Negur˘a 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.”
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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 R˘azvan,” 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.”
“R˘azvan?” 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 R˘azvan 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 R˘azvan’s father’s estate—it’s on the other side of Bra¸sov.”
“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 298
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 299
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 Dr˘agu¸ta 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 300
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.