I ignored the question. “Paula, what if someone from the Other Kingdom wanted to stay in our world? Is the rule the same?”
“I don’t know, Jena. Anyway, I suspect the rules can be broken if Dr?agu?ta decides that’s the right thing. I’ve wondered whether the only reason anyone can cross over is her deciding to let it happen.”
I looked at her. “Really? Tati said that, too: that the way we open the portal doesn’t mean anything special; that it’s only because Dr?agu?ta approves that we can go to the Other Kingdom at all. At Dark of the Moon, once we’d gotten back across the Deadwash, we just walked home.”
“Is this about Sorrow?” Paula was astute as ever.
“I can’t say. I have to talk to Tati first. There’s something I need to tell her.”
Cezar had been asking questions of his own. It was clear to me that he did not believe our explanation for being out at night.
But since we maintained our story about strange noises, and Petru managed to back us up without quite telling lies, my cousin made no progress in his search for answers. Cezar was edgy; his ill temper manifested itself without warning, and no-226
body was safe from his sharp tongue. I gathered from Ivan that more and more of the valley men were trying to get out of the hunting party. It had been many days since Ivona’s death. With nothing useful discovered, and not so much as a sniff of a Night Person detected, folk were starting to say they’d rather be safe in bed behind a locked door at night and spend their energies by day looking after their stock and keeping their families fed and warm. Someone had suggested, behind my cousin’s back, that continuing the hunt could only offend the folk of the wildwood further—that Cezar risked bringing down another act of violence on the community. A group of the local men made a formal request that the master of Varful cu Negur?a erect a new crucifix on the slopes above the mill, and Cezar agreed to pay for it. But he was angry, and we crept around the house as if on eggshells, trying to keep out of his way.
With seven days to go until Full Moon and the party, Aunt Bogdana paid us a visit to check on the supper arrangements.
While she was closeted with Florica and her helpers, deep in discussion of pies and puddings, I took Tati up to the tower room. I bolted the door and told her my theory about what I had seen of Sorrow in Dr?agu?ta’s mirror.
“So I owe you an apology, if I’m right about what it means,”
I said at the end of my account. “It seems as if Sorrow isn’t one of the Night People—he isn’t even from the Other Kingdom.
Or wasn’t. But he’s trapped there now, he and his little sister.
I didn’t like seeing her there, Tati. It looked as if they were making her watch: as if she’d been shown so many bad things that she hardly understood what they were anymore.”
“But why didn’t he
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Her eyes were wide with horror. “Why didn’t he tell me? This is terrible, Jena! We have to help them. I must go there at Full Moon. I must talk to Ileana—”
“No,” I said, before she could work herself up any further.
“You’re not going—not this time. We have our own party, remember? We all have to appear at that. Cezar’s suspicious enough already without any of us going missing. Besides, I don’t know how we could help. From what Sorrow said when we were leaving, he’s obliged to do the Night People’s bidding in order to stop worse harm from coming to his sister. And the Night People are powerful. Ileana didn’t even put in an appearance at their revels. You must have felt it, Tati—the way they twist and turn things, and meddle with your thoughts. Against that kind of strength, we’re like little feathers drifting on a stream, carried along wherever it decides to take us.”
“You said yourself ”—Tati was fixing me with her eyes—
“that Sorrow should ask Dr?agu?ta for help. She’s supposed to be the real power of the wildwood. Couldn’t she change things, if we explained how important it is?”
“You make it sound easy. I don’t even know where she is. I don’t think anyone does. Anyway, if she really is so powerful, why has she let the Night People keep Sorrow and his sister prisoner so long? Even if they can never come back to their old lives, at least in Ileana’s world they wouldn’t be . . . well, slaves, or whatever they are.”
Tati’s voice was a whisper. “Are you saying you don’t believe in Dr?agu?ta? Are you saying you don’t believe there’s a power in the wildwood that’s strong enough to defeat evil, Jena?”
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I felt as if I were suddenly teetering on a precipice.
“Of course there is, Tati. We have to believe it.” I thought of the little crown that I had decided, for a reason I did not understand, to leave behind in the forest. “And if it’s safe for us to go across at next Full Moon—the one after the party—I suppose we can ask Ileana what to do.”
The day of the party came, and Piscul Dracului began to fill with guests. Every chamber that was even slightly suitable had been dusted and mopped, bed linen had been borrowed and quilts aired. Space had been cleared in our stables for many horses. Our activities had provided work for almost everyone in the settlement, and I imagined it was costing Cezar a pretty penny. Folk came early—wanting to be safely within our walls before dusk fell—then retired to their chambers to rest before the party began.
I felt sick with nerves. I wished I had never had such a mad idea. How could I make polite conversation with suitable young men and their mothers when I was all churned up with worry about the Night People and Sorrow and what Cezar might do if he found out the truth? He’d been questioning Florica and Petru further, I knew it: I could see the signs of strain on their faces as they went steadily about their work.
At the appointed time, I ran upstairs from the kitchen, where I had been helping with some last-minute baking. I found Tati sitting on our bed, still in her working dress, and 229
Iulia with her shawl on over the gray creation and a forbidding look on her face. Paula had a pair of heavy irons heating on our little stove. She was pressing Stela’s frock with each in turn.
“You’d better start getting ready,” I told Tati. “Aunt Bogdana wants us to help her formally greet the guests as they come down.” I got into the crimson gown, wishing Aunt had not told the seamstress to make it quite so tight
