Beside me, Tati had slipped under the quilt, pulling it up almost over her head. “Go to sleep, Jena,” she mumbled. “It’s almost morning.”
“Gogu,” I whispered, “I did slip out and bring her back. It was just a bit farther than I expected. And I’m upset by what I saw—things I wouldn’t want anyone to see, not even you.
Things so bad I can’t even talk about them. But you’re right. I needed you. I knew that as soon as I got there.”
His anger hurt me terribly. I had never seen him like this, not in all the years we had been together. Tears sprang to my eyes. “That’s rubbish, Gogu, and you know it,” I sniffed.
“You’re my dearest friend, my inseparable companion, and my wise advisor. You’ve got as much heart as any knight on horseback.”
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“I mean it. I didn’t take you tonight because I was worried I might lose you. That’s the truth. If that happened, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Couldn’t this wait until the morning?” Tati’s voice was an exhausted whisper.
I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t stop crying. Long after Tati had fallen asleep, I felt Gogu’s small damp form jump onto the linen beside my face, and his tongue came out to lick my tears away.
After our Dark of the Moon journey, the idea of our party—
which I had hoped might be the solution to several problems—
became faintly ridiculous. We were bound to it, nonetheless.
The invitations had gone out and acceptances had begun to come in—more than Aunt Bogdana had expected, for she had wondered whether the rumors that were sweeping the valley about us and our home would keep folk away. It seemed that curiosity outweighed fear.
The castle was being given a top-to-toe cleanup by women from the local area. I heard whispered stories about Night People, and about Dr?agu?ta the witch, as our helpers scrubbed and dusted and polished—and I tried to ignore them. I had a story of my own, and I had not yet told it to Tati.
If I was right about what that vision meant—the two children lost in the forest—I owed it to her to tell her the truth about Sorrow. His parting words had seemed to confirm what I believed: that he was in some kind of servitude to the Night 223
People, with his sister’s safety the price of obedience. I wondered why he had not told Tati himself.
I held back from giving my sister the news. Once she heard that Sorrow was, in fact, a human boy who had strayed into the Other Kingdom and been kept there for years, growing into a man far away from his own people, how would she ever be persuaded to give him up? The cruel thing about it was that even if he was a mortal man, he was still beyond her reach as sweetheart, lover, or husband. It seemed that he and his sister had been living in the Other Kingdom since they were children. One could not stay so long in Dr?agu?ta’s realm without partaking of food and drink. Tadeusz had lured them and kept them; kept them too long. They would never be able to live in our world again. They might both be halfway toward becoming Night People by now, or worse. And if Sorrow could not stay here, the solution Tati might seize on would be for her to go there. I knew her kind heart. As soon as I told her his story, that was what she would want. Even if it meant a future in that shadowy, cruel realm we had glimpsed at Dark of the Moon, I thought she would do it for him.
I could hold back from divulging the story, of course. I did not plan to tell her of my other vision in Dr?agu?ta’s mirror: that of a young man with green eyes whom I had thought for a wonderful moment I could love, until the image revealed the monster beneath. I had no idea what that meant. Perhaps it was a warning not to trust too easily. I had not passed on Anastasia’s crushing words to me, nor the news that it had been my sister 224
whom Tadeusz had wanted all along. Indeed, Tati and I had hardly spoken of our experience since we came home, despite our younger sisters’ volleys of questions.
Paula was our most reliable source of information on just about anything to do with the Other Kingdom. I seized my opportunity to quiz her while we were doing the final hemming on our party gowns. The two of us had taken our work up to a little tower room where the light was good. Our only companion was Gogu, crouched down in a roll of green silk thread, sulking. He still hadn’t entirely forgiven me and, in a way, I could see his point.
“Paula, I want to ask you something.”
“Mmm?”
“When people go to the Other Kingdom and stay there, they can’t ever come back, can they? Not if they’ve been eating the food.”
She nodded. “Everybody knows that.”
“But folk do come back sometimes. I’ve heard stories of people vanishing and being gone for hundreds of years, and then suddenly appearing in the woods again. They’re out of their wits, usually. So it must be possible.”
“Time works differently there,” said Paula, pushing her spectacles higher on her nose and peering closely at her sewing.
“It can be quicker or slower than our time, whatever they want it to be. You might be gone for years and years in our time, but you’d only have been in the Other Kingdom a day or less. You might not have touched the food. That’s why people go mad.
Imagine coming back and finding everyone you knew had been 225
dead for a hundred years. Why do you want to know that, Jena? I wish you’d tell us what happened that night.”
I shuddered. “It was horrible. Dark and cruel. I don’t want any of you even thinking about such things. Be glad you didn’t see it.”
Paula gave me a funny look. “How did you get there?” she asked me.
