Wildwood Dancing

“Oh, was I meant to be cutting up vegetables?” I tried to ask her about Sorrow. I tried to explain that things were difficult, that I needed her help. She did not seem to hear me. She was drifting in a little world of her own, her lips curved in a secret smile, her eyes seeing something that was invisible to me.

I signed and sealed Father’s letter, wondering whether it was fair to ask Petru to take it over to Varful cu Negur?a. I didn’t want to go myself. I would never be able to walk in there again without seeing Uncle Nicolae’s blood, without hearing Aunt Bogdana’s scream.

Someone’s coming. Gogu made a leap in the general direction of my pocket. I managed to catch him and scoop him in as the door to the workroom opened and Paula appeared, looking apolo- getic. “Cezar’s here,” she said, and a moment later he was marching into the room, where he sat himself down opposite me at the small square table on which my writing materials were laid out. He was neatly dressed, all in black, and around his neck he wore an ornament that had belonged to Uncle Nicolae: a gold chain with a medallion in the shape of a hunting horn.

“Oh,” I said. Then: “Cezar, I wasn’t expecting you. Paula, 91

will you fetch Tati, please?” Whether my cousin was here for business or for family matters, I knew I did not want to deal with him alone, not now that his father’s death had changed things so much. Besides, to do so would be considered unseemly under the rules of polite conduct that were so important to our aunt.

Paula fled. Cezar was looking at the sealed document on the table before me. I seized on a topic of conversation. “I was just writing to Father. I’m hoping you may have someone who can deliver it to Constan?ta for me.”

“Of course, Jena.” He took it and slipped it inside his jacket.

“You realize that it may not be possible for a while. The roads are unreliable at the best of times. And it looks like a bad winter—”

“Yes, I know.”

There was an awkward silence. I willed Tati to hurry up.

“How are you, Cezar?” I made myself ask. “How is Aunt Bogdana coping?”

His jaw tightened. His eyes took on a distant expression.

“My mother is as you might expect. Women lack the resilience to deal with such losses and move forward.”

Such a statement could not be allowed to go unchallenged.

“I can’t agree with you,” I said, twirling the quill pen in my fingers. “I’ve always believed women to have great strength of endurance. In times of war, for instance, it is they who bear the loss of their men and the disruption to their lives. It is they who keep their communities together. But I do understand how sad and shocked Aunt Bogdana must be.”

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Cezar stared at me. I had no idea what he was thinking.

“You, I should imagine, would be different from Mother in such circumstances,” he conceded.

If that’s meant to be a compliment, we’d prefer an insult. Gogu circled inside the pocket, his mood indignant.

“Have you had any word from Father since we last saw you?

Anything at all from Constan?ta?” I tried for an unconcerned, businesslike tone, though his last comment had struck me as quite odd.

“I’m afraid not, Jena. You must not distress yourself.” His hand crept out and laid itself over mine on the table.

I snatched my fingers away; something about his gesture felt entirely wrong. “I’m not distressed, Cezar,” I snapped. “I realize not much gets through in winter.” I made myself take a deep breath.

Cezar gave a small, knowing smile. That irritated me even more than his ill-advised gesture of comfort. I reminded myself that he had lost his father only a month ago, that he must still be grieving. If his behavior seemed a little out of place, that was probably why.

“It’s kind of you to pay us a visit,” I said, trying to act as Aunt Bogdana might expect under the circumstances. “I’m hoping your mother may be able to receive visitors in return—”

A tap at the door—Paula again. “I can’t find Tati anywhere,” she said. “And there’s a man at the door, his clothes are all ragged, and he says he has no work, no food, and no money, and his wife and children are starving. Florica said to ask you if we can give him something.”

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“Some food, of course,” I said, getting up and going to the shelf where our store of silver and copper coin for household expenses was kept in a locked box. There had been a steady stream of travelers to the door of Piscul Dracului since the start of winter, and it did not seem right to send them off without a coin or two in their pockets. The pinched features and tattered garb of these wayfarers worried me. For every man we saw, there would likely be a woman and a gaggle of children out in the woods, trying to survive on what they could get from one landowner’s door to the next. I wondered how many died between one grand house and another. The fields were thick with snow.

“You are overgenerous,” Cezar commented, eyeing the iron-bound box as I placed it on the table and turned the key.

“A package of food, a kind word—even that is more than many of these folk deserve. They are wanderers because they don’t know the meaning of hard work, because they have squandered their opportunities. You shouldn’t waste your money— What is it, Jena? What’s wrong?”

I was gaping into the box. Last time I had opened it, to make a small payment to Ivan, it had been three- quarters full, copper well balanced with silver. Now the contents barely covered the bottom, and there were only five silver pieces left.

Almost overnight, our winter funds had disappeared.

“Jena?”