The groom came back out of the stables with bucket in hand, heading for the well. I seized what was perhaps my last chance.
“Excuse me.”
He started, then bobbed his head. “Mistress Jena! Shall I tell the mistress you’re here?”
I dredged my memory for his name. “No, Geza, I don’t want her knowing—not yet. I need your help. You may think it’s a little odd, but I have a job for you.”
“Of course, Mistress Jena. But I must water the horses first.”
The pancake was still warm when he got back. There was 373
a certain curiosity in his eyes, perhaps sparked by the story of the girl and the frog that everyone in the valley had been discussing over the last few weeks.
“Take this to Master Costin,” I said. “Make sure he gets it.
I know he has guests, but you must disturb him, even if he’s busy. Don’t tell him who this is from. If he gives you a message, bring it straight back. If he doesn’t, come back anyway.”
“Yes, Mistress Jena.” He held the platter with the ut-most care.
“Thank you, Geza. I know it seems a little strange.”
I waited, pacing up and down, too keyed up to be still for long. It was getting late. I imagined Sorrow, a cup of water balanced in one hand, a little bundle on his back, running, running, eyes burning with determination in his chalk-white face. I saw Tati as she had stood in Dancing Glade, frail as a birch in winter, her words an iron-strong declaration of faith. I thought of Costi eyeing my gift with a sad smile and turning his back. Trust, I told myself. This is Gogu, remember: your best beloved.
It seemed forever, but at last Geza appeared again, hands shoved under his arms to keep warm. The light was fading already; sparks from my fire spiraled upward, like tiny wild dancers.
“Did you give it to him?” I grabbed his shoulders, then made myself let go. “What did he say? Why did you take so long?”
“He has two merchants from Bra¸sov with him, Mistress Jena. I couldn’t go straight in—”
“I said to disturb him!” I snapped, then relented at the look 374
on his face. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I have to be home tonight, and it’s getting late.” I knew I should be setting off right now, if I was to be certain of reaching Piscul Dracului before dark. “Any message?”
“No, Mistress Jena.”
“Nothing at all?” My heart plummeted.
“Well, he did eat it all up, even the green part. I think he liked it.” Geza sounded astonished.
I breathed again. Hope was not lost, after all. “Thank you,”
I said. “Will you take this to him now?” I gave him the item I had found earlier. It was the discarded carapace of a beetle, iridescent green and shaped like a heart. “Please be as quick as you can. Here, take this quill and parchment, too.” Maybe those were a heavy hint, but I had to speed things up somehow.
I waited again. My heart seemed to sound out Sorrow’s footsteps as he made his desperate way back toward Dancing Glade. I thought of my sister, so weak she could barely lift her head from the pillow. Stay with us, Tati, I willed her. Keep faith with him. And I wondered whether I should forget my own dreams and run home now so I could be by her side, but my feet did not want to carry me away from the quiet orchard and the plume of smoke from my little fire.
“Come on, Costi,” I muttered, wiping out the frying pan and starting to put things away in my pack, “meet me halfway, can’t you?”
This time Geza was much quicker, and he brought me a note, scrawled on the tiny square of parchment I had sent. It read: Don’t good things generally come in threes?
I felt a big smile spread across my face. Costi was prepared 375
to play. Geza had brought back Paula’s quill. Dipping it in the ink pot, I wrote: If you want the third one, you’ll have to come and find me.
“Right away,” I urged Geza. “Please take this to him right away. How did he look?”
“Terrified, Mistress Jena.”
“Terrified is good,” I said. “That’s just how I feel. Hurry, please.”
I sat on the old seat, shivering with anticipation. With every rustle and creak from the forest, with every drone of passing insect or peep of home-winging bird, I glanced across the orchard toward the house. I tried to guess what Costi would say first and how I might answer.
He didn’t take long. I suppose my using his groom as my messenger made guessing where I was easy. He was carrying a lantern, something I had assumed I would not need, for I had not expected to wait here for so long, nor to be walking home after dusk. We didn’t have much time. But I couldn’t think of that. Here was Costi, coming across the orchard toward me, the firelight dancing over his face. His expression was terribly serious. He had cut his hair again—it curled around his ears and exposed the back of his neck, a spot my fingers might find rather nice to stroke. He wore plain, good clothes: a white shirt, trousers in a muted green, serviceable boots, a warm cloak. He looked as nervous as a miscreant about to face judgment. I had absolutely no idea what he would say.
Some three paces away from me, he halted and extended his hand toward me. “Would you c-care to d-dance, Jena?” he asked, summoning a ghost of a smile.
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“I’d be glad to,” I said in a woefully unsteady voice, and put my hand in his. His touch warmed my whole body. I was longing to throw my arms around him and hold him close, but the magic of this moment was like a single, lovely strand of cobweb, fragile and delicate. One wrong move and it would snap beyond mending.
“Can you hear the music?” Costi murmured as he put his hand on my waist. I put mine on his shoulder, and we began a slow, circling measure that took us to this side and that between the trees.
“Mmm,” I said, moving in a little closer, and I could hear it: out in the forest birds were singing, and a stream was flowing, and the wind was whispering secrets. His heart and mine added a rhythm all their own. We turned and turned, and with every turning we breathed a little more quickly and held on a little more tightly, and when we came back to the place where we’d started, we stopped dancing and stood with our arms around each other, holding on as if we would never let go, not if the sky fell and the whole world came to an end.
And even though there were still things to say, and decisions to make, and apologies to get through, I could feel a delicious happiness spreading through me, starting in my heart and moving outward.
“Costi?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry I hurt you. More sorry than I can say. I can’t believe I didn’t know you instantly.”
“I’m sorry I was so cruel that day. After what happened with Cezar, I hardly knew what I was saying. I was trying so 377
hard to sound assured and capable, and underneath I was a quivering mess. I should have tried to talk to you—to understand why you’d been so afraid of me. When you turned your back on me, when you accused me of lying, I felt . . . I felt shattered. As if part of me had been torn away. That day, I suppose I let that all spill out.”
“It’s all right, Costi. As long as we forgive each other now, we can put all that behind us.”
“Are you sure you forgive me, Jena?” His tone was quite wobbly. I was not the only one for whom this game had been difficult.
“Completely,” I said.
“Then can I have my third gift now?”
I took a step back. “Shut your eyes,” I told him.
He obeyed. But when I put my palms against his cheeks and stood on tiptoe, his eyes snapped open again. “Wait! Jena—”
“You don’t want a kiss?”
“It’s just that . . . What if—?”
The same idea had occurred to me. “I don’t think you’ll turn back into a frog,” I said. “That wasn’t the first time I’d ever kissed you, after all. I think we had to wait until Dr˘agu¸ta decided we’d learned our lessons. It sounded to me as if she wanted you to be a man from now on.”
Costi shut his eyes again. “I’m willing to risk it if you are,”
he said with a lopsided smile.
So I kissed him, and he kissed me back. There was no explosion. There was no blinding light. Costi’s arms came around me again, strong and warm, and I pressed against him, stroking the 378
back of his neck. The touch of his lips made me feel safe and loved, and at the same time it made every part of me tremble with excitement. The memory of Cezar’s uncouth effort was instantly wiped away. This was my first proper kiss, and it was everything I had always dreamed it would be. When, after a long time, we paused to draw breath, Costi showed no signs of becoming a frog.
“Costi,” I said breathlessly, “I hate to say this, but—”
“But it’s Full Moon and you have to get home?”
“Tati’s terribly ill. We’re scared she may not even survive until Sorrow gets here—if he does. I should start for home now.
You took ages to get here.”
“I’ll walk you to Piscul Dracului, Jena. We’ll go in a minute.
I have something to do first. . . .” I felt his hand lift my hair away from my neck, and then his lips brushed the place where he had so often sat in frog form, below my left ear. “I’ve been wanting to do that for years,” he whispered. “It’s just as nice as I expected. You can’t imagine what thoughts your little frog had, Jena. Far more than he ever dared share with you.”
“I’ll look forward to hearing them,” I said. “We have to go, Costi. The light’s fading.”
Costi went over to the stables, where Geza was hovering with a grin on his face. He gave the groom some kind of instruction, then we set off down the hill through the forest.
“Is it true there was a spell of silence on you all the time you were a frog?” I asked Costi. Questions were bursting out of me, now that we were together again. “A ban on telling me who you really were?”
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“Dr˘agu¸ta never actually told me so; I never even saw her.
The closest I came was that time you left me at Dancing Glade.
A fox carried me across the ice on its back. I guessed it was hers. Somehow I always knew about the silence spell. I knew I had to wait.”
“It was a long time. A terribly long time.”
“I’m just sad Father never knew I was still here.”
“He knows, Costi. He’s here somewhere, watching. He was a lovely man, so kind and good. Like you.”
“You think that, Jena? Really? I haven’t b-been much of a friend to you, this last month. It was a big change—it took a lot of getting used to. And there was Cezar . . . I’ve gone over and over what happened, wondering how I could have handled it better. And . . . I wasn’t sure you’d feel the same about me, now that I wasn’t Gogu anymore. I was afraid to ask you. I couldn’t b-bear it if you said no.”
“Costi, I don’t remember you stammering like this when you were a boy.”
“I don’t think I did. It’s just when I’m scared. Back then, I wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“You’re scared now? Why?”
“Because this is new and good and so p-precious I’m afraid it’s just a dream. I had a lot of d-dreams when I was a frog, and I hated waking up.”
I stopped walking, took both his hands in mine, and looked him in the eye. It was dark in the forest, but not so dark I could not see that here was my childhood playmate, my beloved companion of nine years, and the man of my dreams—
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miraculously rolled into one. Suddenly this wasn’t difficult at all. “I love you, Costi,” I said. “That’s the truest truth I ever said. Forever and always. There’s no need to be afraid anymore.”
“I love you, Jena. I always did. When you couldn’t trust me, you broke my heart.”
Tears spilled from my eyes. He leaned forward and kissed them away.
“Me too,” I said. “But it looks as if broken hearts can mend.
It’s quite remarkable. A phenomenon, Paula would say.”
“I suppose,” said Costi, “it is no more remarkable than boys turning into frogs, and frogs into men. Oh, Jena . . . When we’re married—that’s if you’ll have me—I want to keep on coming out here, and sitting by a campfire, and doing all the things we love doing.”
“Was that a proposal?” I asked, smiling through my tears.
“I can do better with practice,” Costi said, a little abashed.
“Shall I try again tomorrow?”
“If you want. I plan to say yes. It’s best if I tell you that now, so you won’t get anxious and go off to hide in the leaves.
I hope Aunt Bogdana will approve.”
“Mother will be delighted. She’s been nagging me ever since we got home to go down and mend things with you; she could see how miserable I was. But I couldn’t make myself do it.
You were braver than I was.”
“I was petrified,” I said, slipping my arm around his waist.
“But it was worth the effort. You played my game very well.”
“You know,” said Costi, “I did think I smelled pancakes the 381
moment I got off my horse. But I dismissed it as wishful thinking.” He was suddenly serious. “Jena, what’s going to happen tonight? Sorrow and Tati, I mean?”
“I don’t know.” As we walked on I explained how weak and dispirited Tati was, and what she had dreamed about Sorrow’s journey. Then we fell silent, thinking about what might happen if Sorrow didn’t come back. If Tati was prevented from being with her sweetheart, she might actually allow herself to die of a broken heart. It hardly seemed worth considering such practical questions as how we could get her across. Now that I had taken back my little crown and given up my free entry to the Other Kingdom, I did not think the old way would work anymore. Dr˘agu¸ta had granted Costi, Cezar, and me our wishes for a purpose, and that purpose was achieved now. Still, there must be some way for Sorrow to win his reward if he completed the quest. Let him reach us first, and perhaps the issue of a portal would take care of itself.
“You’re shivering,” Costi said, wrapping his arm around me. “Not far to go now.”
Then we froze. Someone was coming up the path through the forest. A small light bobbed into view, accompanied by scrabbling, hurried footsteps and the gasping breaths of someone who has run a long way in the cold. Costi moved me behind him. A moment later we could see a cloaked figure, face white and pinched, with lantern in hand.
“Paula!” I exclaimed. “What is it? What’s happened? Is Tati—?” I could not say it.
My sister was bent double, trying to catch her breath. She had set the lantern down.
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“Take it slowly, Paula,” said Costi. “We’re here, and we’ll help, whatever it is. Deep breaths if you can.”
“Sorrow—” she gasped. “Someone saw Sorrow in the woods. Now the men from the village are out after him—
scythes and pitchforks—come now, quickly!”
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Chapter Sixteen
