perhaps, beyond being shocked.
A few weeks after that eventful night, we had the most welcome of surprises. Father rode into the courtyard, much thinner but undoubtedly in good health. Gabriel was by his side, with two baggage ponies bringing up the rear. The letter brought to them by a certain preternaturally tall messenger had been the only one of mine to reach them. Father had received several from Cezar during the winter, assuring him that all was well with us. He was much relieved to find that this was 398
indeed so, and that everything was as it should be at Piscul Dracului. Almost everything.
Father went very quiet when we told him about Tati, and for a little I feared a relapse. But the fact that Costi was alive, and that he and I wished to marry, was a powerful force for healing. We reassured him that Tati would be well and happy, and that she was among good friends.
As for Costi and me, Father’s return home gave us a little longer to enjoy getting to know each other as girl and boy, rather than girl and frog, before we needed to organize a wedding and start work on producing the male heir required for Piscul Dracului. More time: more walks in the forest as spring slowly crept back to our valley, more campfires, more adventures. More kisses. We were getting better at those all the time. We talked a lot about the future, a future in which we would work together in the business and travel together to those exotic places I had dreamed of.
Aunt Bogdana invited Iulia up to Varful cu Negur?a to help with planning a betrothal party. R?azvan and his sister would be invited. Paula and Stela worked on the papers Paula had brought home from the Other Kingdom. I had told them about the King of the Lake game, and how my taking back my little crown meant our portal would be closed to us from now on.
They were trying to find another crossing human folk could use. Paula was sure the secret was hidden somewhere in those documents.
I wished them luck. In my heart I knew that for me and for Costi, the visits to Dancing Glade were over. We had moved 399
on to a new adventure, one that belonged wholly in our own world, and the prospect of it was so joyful and so exciting that I had few regrets. Only Tati: my lovely sister, destined to fade from human memory and become a princess in a fairy tale, captured by a dark suitor from the realm beyond, sacrificing all for love. I hoped they were truly happy, she and Sorrow.
I did not think I would ever see my elder sister again. But Piscul Dracului was a place of unexpected corners, of eccentric ways and sudden surprises. In time, a new generation would play here, would climb the crooked stairways and run along the galleries and make daring forays out into the great mystery that was the wildwood. Perhaps a pair of children would one day stumble upon a secret portal, and open it by accident to find a wondrous world of magic beyond. They might see the glowing lights and hear the beguiling music of Ileana’s glade. And if they dared to cross over, perhaps they would dance with Tati’s children.
400
Transylvania is a region rich in mythology and folklore, with a long and tumultuous history. Traveling there, I found that it lived up entirely to its reputation, with visible links to an ancient past as well as uglier remnants of more recent times. Villagers scythe hay in the shadow of crumbling Communist-era factories; horse-drawn carts traverse roads leading to clusters of concrete apartment buildings.
During my time there, I visited such well-known attrac-tions as the walled medieval city of Sighi?soara, but also strayed off the beaten track to meet some of the extraordinary people of the Transylvanian villages. From the protective red tassels on the harness of draft horses to the many crucifixes by the way-
side, from the delights of
mented cheese to the first toe-curling mouthful of home-brewed plum brandy, I had a rich and unforgettable taste of life on the Transylvanian plateau, surrounded by some of the grandest mountains and wildest forest in the world.
On hearing the name Transylvania, many people think of vampires and werewolves. Bram Stoker has a lot to answer for!
His novel
There is a whole “vampire tourism” industry in Romania, which encourages the (incorrect) belief that the fifteenth-century 401
prince Vlad ?Tepe?s was the original Count Dracula. Vlad inherited the right to use the name Dr?aculea (son of Dracul) from his father, Vlad III, who was a member of the chivalric Order of the Dragon.
In Romanian, the word
Stoker’s novel is a work of imaginative fiction. But his story does owe something to the original myths, legends, and beliefs of Transylvania. In
Crucifixes stand all over the rural landscape of Transylvania. They are erected to deflect not only the powers of the devil in this mostly Romanian Orthodox region, but also other entities that may live in the forest—ancient forces that may threaten those who do not respect them.
This is a land where bears and wolves come close to human settlements, a place where snow can lie heavily for up to six months of the year. To survive in such a harsh environment requires a particular understanding of the balance between humankind and wild nature. Certain rituals in which animal masks 402
are worn take place in the more isolated villages at appropriate times of year. These may go back to the practices of the Transylvanians’ ancient ancestors, the tribe of the Dacians, among whom there were both shaman-healers and a warrior caste dedicated to the wolf.
As Paula explains in
