“I don’t think Tatiana’s very well, Jena,” said my aunt quietly. “She’s grown so thin, and she often seems . . . not quite all there. I wonder if you should consult an herbalist? I can recommend someone, if you wish.”
“Thank you, Aunt. I’ll consider that.” I realized she was speaking to me as if I were head of the household, as if I were the one in charge. Listening to Cezar’s voice, remembering what he had just said to me—wounding words, the words of a tyrant—I knew that if I had ever been in charge of anything at Piscul Dracului, I was no longer.
The next morning, the landholders of the valley awoke as usual and went out to check their stock. On every farm, on every smallholding, an animal was found slaughtered. There was no consistency in what was chosen, only in the method of killing.
On one farm it was a sheep, on another a pig. One family found a beloved dog lying limp across the doorstep. Some had been luckier, finding only a chicken gone, while some had lost their cow, the standby of every household. The valley’s cows were not simply valued for the milk they provided over spring and summer, or for the calves they bore. Over the warmer months 186
they all went out to graze the mountain pastures together, gathered up by a herdsman in the morning at each gateway, and returned in the evening to be milked again. Each animal knew its own gate and waited there for admittance; each knew its own human family. That morning, eight cows lay in their blood, their throats slit. Eight families had lost an essential part of their livelihood as well as an honored friend.
The news reached us early—Ivan came up to tell us, his face pale. He had been fortunate to lose only one of his ducks. He went out with Petru to check our own stock. Most were housed over the winter in outbuildings near the castle, but we did have a flock of hardy ewes in the sheepfold near the forest’s margin. There was nothing untoward in the barn or the byre or the outbuildings—the animals looked healthy and demanded their breakfast. While the men went off to the upper pasture, I fed the chickens and Iulia tended to the pigs, and Paula and Stela made themselves useful in the kitchen, helping Florica with a batch of bread. Cezar and his friends were still asleep after another long night’s hunting; they would be hungry when they awoke. Tati had not made an appearance.
Ivan and Petru were gone awhile. The upper pasture was covered in snow; for most of the winter, the sheep were dependent on hay carried up to their shelter. I stayed outside the barn, chopping firewood with unnecessary violence. Images of blood and death passed before my eyes. I did not know any longer whether I believed that filling Piscul Dracului with colored lights and music and laughter could have any effect at all on the Night People. Something was happening that seemed far too powerful for that small gesture of defiance to hold any 187
weight. And, though I was filled with dread at the prospect, I wondered whether I should after all take a different path to try to stop it. Tonight was Dark of the Moon. If I crossed over to the Other Kingdom, could I hope to change the way things were? If I looked in Dr?agu?ta’s mirror, would I be given the secrets of the future, so I could make it come out differently?
But maybe I was fooling myself, pretending that my motive was selfless when, underneath, it was dark temptation that drew me.
Gogu had been sitting on a tree stump, wincing every time my ax split a log. I stopped chopping. “What is it, Gogu?” I took him in my hand; he was trembling. It came to me suddenly that it could have been him, that I could have woken to find him stretched out dead beside me on the pillow, slaughtered as callously as those other animals had been.
“I can’t. It will make you angry.”
“I’m afraid. All I really want to do is be a complete coward and hide from all this. We can stop visiting the Other Kingdom so we don’t give away any secrets. We can hold our party and pretend that we’re not afraid of the Night People. But I don’t believe those things are enough to put this right. Ileana’s folk wouldn’t slaughter people’s stock. She said it herself—
This is the work of the Night People. But it’s not vengeance for 188
the dwarf—he wasn’t one of their kind. It’s Tadeusz, playing games. It’s sheer mischief, malicious teasing, designed to stir up unrest. I’m sure it’s my fault. If I hadn’t let him bewitch me . . .”
My head was full of that beguiling voice. Its soft darkness still drew me, despite all common sense.
“Nothing.” But I was lying, and I thought he knew it.
When Petru and Ivan returned to the castle, their faces grave, I expected to be told of a loss. But they had counted the flock three times over, and all our sheep were still alive and well. It seemed that Piscul Dracului had escaped the slaughter.
Maybe, Petru said, other farms had also been spared—some were too far away to have made a report yet.
Before day’s end, Judge Rinaldo called a meeting down in the village. Cezar went, and so did Petru. The news they brought back sent a chill through me. Of all the households in the entire valley, ours was the only one that had not lost an animal to this scourge. Piscul Dracului had been singled out for special treatment. It was not to do with castles and cottages—
one treatment for the wealthy, one for the common folk—for Cezar’s farm at Varful cu Negur?a had lost a breeding ewe.
Cezar was beside himself with fury. Questions had been asked in public as to why our house—situated so close to the edge of the wildwood—should be different from any other.
One very old man had muttered something about Piscul Dracului being a place of mystery, a home of hidden perils and secret doors. Petru had told him he was an addle-pated old fool, but the damage was done. Once one tale came out, other folk had 189
more to add. Someone suggested that the reason the place had stood empty for so long was that it concealed a gateway of some kind—that within its walls was a portal where worlds met.
Our cousin assembled us in the kitchen—all five sisters, with Florica and Petru. R?azvan and Daniel were looking uncomfortable by the door, as if stationed there to keep us from escaping. Perhaps Cezar had forgotten that this was our own house.
“I’m very unhappy,” he said. “Deeply disturbed by what has happened, and by what folk are saying. If I believed
