“don’t you know me?”
I stared at him. In my head, the mask of sweetness peeled back and I saw the monstrous reality beneath it.
“Jena, I’m Costi. Your cousin. You must recognize me.”
“But Costi’s dead.” That was Stela.
“I’m not listening to this,” I said shakily. How dare he!
How dare he come up with something so outrageous and offensive? “You can’t be Costi—he drowned. Cezar saw it with his own eyes. You’re just saying that to . . . You’re just—” I could not look at him: I could not bear the look on his face, wounded, disbelieving.
“I’m not dead! I’m here. I am Costi—can’t you see? I’ve been 326
with you all along, since the day you found me in the forest.
Waiting—waiting until she lifted the spell, and I could be myself again, and tell you.”
“A spell of silence,” Iulia breathed. “Like Sorrow—a ban on talking about who he was and what had happened to him. But Jena’s right. Cezar saw what happened. So did she. They saw Costi dragged under the water. He couldn’t have survived.”
Despite her words, there was a note of wonder in her voice, as if she would be all too easily convinced.
“The audience is concluded,” Ileana said. “Young man, I wish you well. Strike up the music! The queen wants to dance!”
But for us, there was no more dancing. As the queen and her retinue headed back onto the sward, Tati crumpled to her knees. “Jena . . . ,” she whispered, “my head hurts. . . . I don’t feel very well. . . .” A moment later she fell to the ground in a dead faint.
“She’s hardly eaten a thing since the last time she saw Sorrow,” Paula said, crouching down to feel for Tati’s pulse. “And she’s overwrought. We should go home, Jena.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Stela was crying, half in sympathy with Tati, half in sadness and exhaustion. Ildephonsus clung to her, his gauzy wings enfolding her in a kind of cape.
“She’s fainted, that’s all,” I told her, not wanting to make things any harder. “Paula’s right. We need to go now.”
“I have to say goodbye,” Stela sniffed. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”
“We’ll meet you down at the boats,” said Iulia.
“Wait—” The two of them were already gone.
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“Jena,” said Paula, “we need to get her down to the lake.”
“I’ll take her,” the young man said. “She’s very cold. Is there a spare cloak?”
“No—!” I began, not wanting him to put his hands anywhere near my sister, but he ignored me, picking Tati up as easily as if she were a doll. Paula and I followed him around the margin of Dancing Glade and down the path to the Deadwash.
None of us said a word. I was full of mixed-up feelings, upper-most being a sense of betrayal: how dare Dr?agu?ta meddle so cruelly? How dare this
By the time we reached the boats, a silent crowd was following us: red-eyed Stela, somber-faced Iulia, and all our usual escorts and hangers-on. There wasn’t a smile among them.
Grigori took Tati from Gogu and laid her in his boat. She was beginning to stir, putting a hand to her brow and murmuring something. Then Dr?agu?ta’s great-nephew extended his hand to me. “You, as well,” he said.
Sten took Iulia, and the dwarf was boatman to Stela. Ildephonsus, refusing to accept her departure until the last possible moment, clambered into the small craft to sit by her, sobbing.
A hooded soothsayer ferried Paula, who was now carrying a mysterious bundle. On the shore behind us, the young man with the green eyes stood quietly, watching. He did not ask for a lift, and nobody offered one.
“Goodbye!” my sisters called. “Goodbye! Thank you!” But I had no heart for farewells; all I could feel was a numb disbelief.
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The folk of the Other Kingdom waved and shouted and sang, and one or two flew over us, blowing kisses and causing the dwarf to curse as he nearly lost his pole. Then the mist came down to cover us. Behind us, the Other Kingdom shrank . . .
and faded . . . and vanished.
“All will be well, Jena,” Grigori said quietly. But it couldn’t be. A terrible sense of wrongness was coming over me: the feeling that I had just thrown away my dearest treasure and that I would never, ever get it back.
I reached out to take Tati’s hand. She seemed fragile as a moonflower—destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall. A whole month until next Full Moon: it was a long time for her to wait. And yet, for me, it was short.
Only a month, and my sister might be gone forever. How could I let that happen?
On the far shore, Ildephonsus refused to be detached from Stela. Both were in floods of tears. Paula disembarked, bundle in hand, and bade her boatman a grave farewell. She moved to Stela’s side.
“Stela,” she said with remarkable composure, “I’ve been given some books and maps and other things, see? Even if we can’t use our portal anymore, there must be other ways we can find. There are clues in here. We just
