But there was no doubt at all what Father had loved. Next door to Vârful cu Negur˘a was Piscul Dracului, Devil’s Peak. Father had first seen the empty, crumbling castle, set on a high spur of rock, when he was only a boy. Our father was an unusual kind of person, and as soon as he clapped eyes on Piscul Dracului he wanted to live there. There’d been nobody to inherit the ruin and the tract of wildwood that went with it; perhaps the many strange tales attached to the place had frightened people away. The owner had died long ago. Florica and Petru had been custodians of the place for years, looking after the empty chambers and eking out a living from the small farm, for they were hardworking, thrifty folk.
Father had waited a long time to achieve his dream. He had worked hard, married, and fathered daughters, bought and sold, scrimped and saved. When he’d set enough silver aside from his 4
merchant ventures, trading in silk carpets and bear skins, spices and fine porcelain, he’d quietly paid a large sum to an influen-tial voivode, gone into partnership with Uncle Nicolae, and moved our family into Piscul Dracului.
I think Mother would have preferred to stay in Bra¸sov, for she feared the tales folk told about the old castle. It looked as if it had grown up out of the forest, with an assortment of bits and pieces sprouting from every corner: tiny turrets, long covered walkways, squat round towers, arches, and flagpoles. The eccentric nobleman who had built it had probably been someone just like Father. People seldom ventured into the forest around Piscul Dracului. There was a lake deep within the wildwood, a place unofficially known as the Deadwash, though its real name was prettier: T˘aul Ielelor, Lake of the Nymphs.
Every family had a dark story about the Deadwash. We got ours soon after we moved into the castle. When I was five years old, my cousin Costi—Uncle Nicolae’s eldest son—drowned in T˘aul Ielelor. I was there when it happened. The things folk said about the lake were true.
Before Father became so ill, Tati and I had scarcely given a thought to such weighty matters as what might happen to Piscul Dracului, with no son to inherit our father’s property. My elder sister was a dreamer, and I had a different kind of future in mind for myself: one in which I would work alongside my father, traveling and trading and seeing the world. Marriage and children were secondary in my scheme of things. Now—with Father’s cough ringing in our ears, and his white face regarding us across the supper table—they had become a frightening reality. I remembered Aunt Bogdana saying that sixteen was the 5
ideal age for a young woman to wed. Tati was already in her seventeenth year; I was only one year younger.
Father went off to bed as soon as the meal was over; he’d hardly touched his food. The others disappeared to our bedchamber, but I waited for Florica to bank up the fire in the big stove and for Petru to bolt the front door, and for the two of them to retire to their sleeping quarters. Then it was safe, and I ran up the stairs to our chamber, my worries set aside for now, my heart beating fast with an anticipation that was part joy, part fear. At last it was time.
The long room we sisters shared had four round windows of colored glass: soft violet, blood-red, midnight-blue, beech-green. Beyond them the full moon was sailing up into the night sky. I put Gogu on a shelf to watch as I took off my working dress and put on my dancing gown, a green one that my frog was particularly fond of. Paula was calmly lighting our small lanterns, to be ready for the journey.
With five girls, even the biggest bedchamber can get crowded. As Tati fastened the hooks on my gown, I watched Iulia twirling in front of the mirror. She was thirteen now, and developing the kind of curvaceous figure our mother had had.
Her gown was of cobalt silk and she had swept her dark curls up into a circlet of ribbon butterflies. We had become clever, over the years, in our use of the leftovers from Father’s ship-ments. He was good at what he did, but buying Piscul Dracului had eaten up a lot of his funds and, even in partnership with his wealthy cousin, he was still making up for lost ground. I saw the books every day—he had been unable to conceal from 6
me that finances remained very tight. We sisters had to impro-vise. We made one new dancing gown anytime a cargo contained a little more of a certain fabric than the buyer had requested. I wore Tati’s hand-me-downs; Paula wore mine.
Iulia, with her fuller figure, did rather better, because she could not fit into either Tati’s clothes or mine. All the same, she complained; she would have liked a whole wardrobe of finery.
Tati was clever with her needle, and adjusted old things of Mother’s to fit her. Mother was gone. We had lost her when our youngest sister was born. Stela was only five—easy to dress.
Paula had finished lighting the lamps. Now she crouched to bank up the fire in our little stove and ensure its door was safely shut. One year Iulia’s junior, Paula was our scholar. While I was good at figures, she shone in all branches of learning. Our village priest, Father Sandu, came up to Piscul Dracului once a month to provide Paula with private tutoring—I shared in the mathematical part of these lessons—and went home with a bottle of Petru’s finest ¸ tuica˘ in his coat pocket. Most folk believed education of that kind was wasted on girls. But Father had never cared what people thought. Follow your heart was one of his favorite sayings.
“What is it, Jena?” Paula had noticed me staring at her. The heat from the stove had flushed her cheeks pink. Her dark eyes were fixed on me with an assessing look. Tonight she was wearing dove-gray, with her spectacles on a chain around her neck, and her brown curls disciplined into a neat plait.
“You look pretty tonight,” I said. “So do you, Stela.” Stela, our baby, was rosy-cheeked and small, like a little bird, maybe 7
a robin. Her hair, the same ebony as Tati’s, was wispy and soft, and tonight it was tied back with rose-pink ribbons to match the gown Tati had made for her. She was standing by the oak chest, jiggling up and down in excitement.
“What about your hair, Jena?” asked Tati, doing up my last hook. “It’s all over the place.”
“Never mind,” I told her, knowing nobody would be looking at me while she was anywhere near. My elder sister’s gown was a simple one of violet-blue that matched her eyes. Her hair rippled down her back like black silk. Tati didn’t need jewelry or ribbons or any sort of finery. She was as lovely as a perfect wildflower. It always seemed to me a generous fairy must have presided over her christening, for Tati was blessed with the kind of beauty that draws folk’s eyes and opens their minds to dreams.
I didn’t make a big effort with my appearance. When people commented on our family of sisters, Tati was always the beautiful one. If they noticed me at all, they called me sensible or practical. I had bushy hair, brown like Paula’s, which refused to do what I wanted it to, and eyes of a color somewhere between mud and leaf. My figure was a lot more straight-up-and-down than Iulia’s, even though I was two years her elder. The one special thing about my green gown was the pocket I had sewn into it for Gogu, since he needed a safe retreat if he got tired or upset. Tonight the only ornament I carried was the frog himself, sitting on my shoulder. You look lovely, Jena. Like a forest pool on a summer’s day.
Tati darted across to make sure our door was bolted. Then, 8
by the shifting light of the lanterns, we moved to the most shadowy corner of the chamber: the place where we had once sat playing games by candlelight and made the most astonishing discovery of our lives.
We dragged out the heavy oak chest from against the wall and set our lanterns on it so their light was cast into the little alcove where the chest had been, an indentation that wasn’t even big enough to store a folded blanket in.