I looked at the owl now; it was perched on a tree stump, coolly preening its feathers like any ordinary creature. “Thank you,” I said, inclining my head in a gesture of respect. “I don’t know why you helped us, but I honor you for it. I don’t suppose the usual portal’s going to open—not tonight. Can you show us how to get home?”
With a screech, the bird unfolded its wings and flew off.
Within moments it was gone. The only light was the faint gleam from the lake’s surface. On this moonless night, the path we usually took up to the castle and the long winding stair would be impossible.
“It’s all right, Jena,” Tati said, surprising me, for I had thought her beyond rational speech. “We can simply walk home through the forest.”
“How could that work? We’d probably go around and around in circles and never get home. We might be like that . . .”
My voice trailed away. If she had not seen that pathetic puppet on the sward, capering before his tormentors, I would not tell her about him. As for the pale child in her black gown, it seemed that she and her brother were not so different from us.
“I don’t think so, Jena. It’s the Bright Between that separates the two worlds, and we’re already across.” She shivered, 215
drawing her cloak more tightly around her. “I think if we’re careful which way we go, we can get home from here.”
“What are you saying? If that was true, the whole thing with our portal would be . . . It wouldn’t be a magical charm at all—it would be meaningless, Tati. What about the shadow hands on the stone at Full Moon? If it’s not magic, it should work anytime we try it, and anyone should be able to do it.”
“I don’t know. But I think we should start walking. I’m cold. We need to follow the edge of the lake until we find a path; at least the water is a little brighter than the forest.”
“Tati?” I asked her as we picked our way along the lakeshore.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“I told you. That tall one, Tadeusz, tried to take me off somewhere, and I just bolted into the forest, not even thinking where I was going. A moment later, there was Sorrow. I could hear Tadeusz laughing. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen. As if it was all part of some mad game. He frightened me, Jena.”
“Here, there’s a way up beside this stream, between the rocks, I remember it. . . .” It led to the secret hollow where Gogu and I had enjoyed many picnics. That meant the place where we had slipped and staggered to shore was the scene of Costi’s drowning—the sandy beach where my cousins and I had once placed our precious treasures and started a game whose rules none of us understood. I felt the slight weight of the little crown, which I had slipped into the pocket of my cloak.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and I took the crown out and set it on a flat stone by the stream. “I don’t think I’m ready to take it back yet,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Come on, then. We should go as quietly as we can; Cezar and his hunting party might be out again. I’ll tell you my story when we’re safely home, with the door locked behind us.”
She was right about the portal—at least, right in her guess that we could walk back to Piscul Dracului without the need to pass between worlds once more. We had still more cuts and bruises by the time we came up the track past the barn toward the main entrance to the castle. Our boots were sodden from tramping through the snow and the hems of our skirts coated with forest debris. My ears ached; my nose streamed; I’d never felt so cold in my life. Within the castle, lights still burned.
Despite the need to conserve fuel, Florica would not have the place in total darkness on a winter night. One lamp shone over the big iron-hinged doorway.
“It’s going to be locked,” Tati said. “Everything will be locked, except the door up on the terrace.”
If we’d been birds or bats, we could have reached that entry. As it was, I could think of only one solution. “We’ll have to take shelter in the barn,” I said. “We can slip indoors when Petru comes out in the morning. With luck, he won’t see us.”
“What if he does?”
217
“I know whom I’d rather answer to, out of Petru or Cezar,”
I said grimly. “Come on! At least there’s warm straw in there, if you don’t mind sharing it with a cow.”
If we had reached home just a little earlier, if we’d walked just a little faster, this makeshift plan might have worked. If I hadn’t stopped—from some instinct I hardly understood—to leave the crown behind, Cezar wouldn’t have seen us. As it was, we were only halfway over to the barn when we heard voices. A moment later he and his two friends came around a corner of the house and stopped dead, staring at us. R?azvan was carrying a lighted torch. Daniel had a crossbow in his hands, with a bolt already in place. Cezar was in front, the ferocious expression on his dark features changing as he saw us to shocked incredulity. He was speechless.
My mind went completely blank.
“Cezar!” exclaimed Tati. “We—we were just . . . We thought we heard something out here. . . .”
My cousin’s eyes went from the two of us—shivering and pathetic in our muddy clothes—to the doorway of the house.
At that moment, the bolts were slid aside and the door opened to reveal Petru in his nightshirt, with his sheepskin jacket over it. He had an iron poker clutched in one gnarled hand. The knot in my tongue undid itself. I ran across to him.
“Nothing to worry about, Petru. It turned out that it was only Cezar coming back,” I babbled, praying that the old man would understand we needed help. “I’m sorry we woke you up.
