“Come on,” Iulia urged. “My feet are itching for a dance.”
The first time we had done this, in our earliest days at Piscul Dracului—when I was only six, and Stela was not yet born—Tati and I had been amusing the younger ones by making shadow creatures on the walclass="underline" rabbits, dogs, bats. At the moment when all our hands had been raised at once to throw a particular image on the stones, we had found our forest’s hidden world. Whether it had been chance or a gift, we had never been sure.
It made no difference that we had done this over and over.
The sense of thrilling strangeness had never gone away. Every Full Moon, our bodies tingled with the magic of it. The lamp shone on the blank wall. One by one, we stretched out our hands, and the lantern light threw the silhouettes onto the stones. One by one, we spoke our names in a breathless whisper:
“Tatiana.”
“Jenica.”
“Iulia.”
“Paula.”
“Stela.”
9
Between the shadows of our outstretched fingers, a five-pointed star appeared. The portal opened. Instead of a shallow alcove, there was a little archway and a flight of stone steps snaking down, down into the depths of the castle. It was dark, shadow-dark. . . . The first time it ever happened, back when there were only four of us, we had clutched one another’s hands tightly and crept down, trembling with excitement and terror.
For the others the fear had dissipated over the years; I could see no trace of misgiving in any of them now, only shining eyes and eager faces.
I was different. The magic drew me despite myself; I passed through the portal because it seemed to me I must. There were eldritch forces all around, and the only thing sure was that the powers of the wildwood were unpredictable. It was curious: from the first I had felt that without me, my sisters would not be safe in the Other Kingdom.
Lanterns in hand, we made our way down the winding stairway, holding up our long skirts as our shadows danced beside us on the ancient stone walls. It was so deep, it was like going to the bottom of a well. Gogu rode on my shoulder down the twists and turns of the stair, until we came to the long, arched passage at the bottom.
“Hurry up!” urged Iulia, who was at the front of the line.
Our slippers whispered on the stone floor as we glided along under the carved extravagance of the roof. Here, there were enough gargoyles and dragons and strange beasts to decorate the grandest building in all Transylvania. They clung to the corners and crept around the pillars and dripped from the arches, watching us with bright, unwavering eyes. Subterranean mosses 10
crawled over their heads and shoulders, softening their angular forms with little capes of green and gray and brown. The first time we saw this Gallery of Beasts, Tati had whispered, “They’re not real, are they?” and I had whispered back, “Just nod your head to them, and keep on walking.” I had sensed, even then, that respect and courtesy could go a long way to keeping a person safe in a place such as this.
As we passed now, I felt something jump onto my shoulder—
the one not occupied by Gogu—and cling there, its needle claws pricking my skin through the soft fabric of the green gown. It was doing its best to look like a frog, rolling up its long tail and bulging its eyes, while casting surreptitious glances at Gogu.
The frog tensed. Interloper.
The little creature poked out a forked tongue, hissing.
“Lights out!” ordered Iulia, and we each covered our lanterns in turn. As our eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, a pale expanse came into view ahead of us: the mist-wreathed waters of a broad lake, illuminated by the moon. Through the vaporous cloud we could see the bobbing torches of those who were waiting to escort us on the last part of our journey.
“Ooo-oo!” Iulia called in a falling cadence. “Ooo-oo!”
The little boats came, one by one, out of the tendrils of mist—high-prowed and graceful, each shaped in the form of a creature: swan, wyvern, phoenix, wood duck, and salamander.
In each stood a figure, propelling the craft by means of a slender pole: push and lift, push and lift. The response to Iulia’s call came in five voices, each different, each as uncanny as the others. Our guides were what they were; the only human creatures in this midnight realm were ourselves.
11
The boats pulled in to the shore. The boatmen stepped out to help us board. The next part, my frog didn’t like. He began to quiver in fright, a rapid trembling that went right through his body. I was used to this; he did it every time. I held him against my breast and, as I climbed into the boat, I murmured,
“It’s all right, Gogu, I’ve got you. We’ll be there soon.”
T˘aul Ielelor: the Deadwash. This was the place where Costi had drowned. Our mother had warned us about it, over and over: we should never go there, for to do so was to risk harm at the hands of the vengeful fairy folk who had robbed us of our cousin. And yet, since the very first time the portal had opened for us, the realm that lay beyond had shown us warmth and kindness, open arms, and welcoming smiles. I was still cautious; I did not have it in me to trust unconditionally. All the same, it was impossible to believe that the person who had drowned our cousin was one of those greeting us on our nocturnal journeys.
The folk of the Other Kingdom had their own name for this expanse of shining water—at Full Moon, they called it the Bright Between. The lake waters spanned the distance between their world and ours. Once we set foot in their boats, we were caught in the magic of their realm.
Time and distance were not what they seemed in the Other Kingdom. It was a long walk from Piscul Dracului to the Deadwash in our world—an expedition. Gogu and I had made that forbidden trip often, for the lake drew us despite ourselves. At Full Moon, the walk to T˘aul Ielelor was far shorter. At Full Moon, everything was different, everything was upside down 12
and back to front. Doors opened that were closed on other days, and those whom the human world feared became friends.
The Bright Between was a gateway: not a threat, but a promise.
It was all too easy to lose track of time in the Other Kingdom—to forget where you were and where you had come from. This might be the familiar forest, the same one in which Petru farmed our smallholding, and Uncle Nicolae harvested pines to sell for timber, and Cousin Cezar went out hunting in autumn. It was the same and not the same. When we crossed the Bright Between, we entered a realm that existed at the same time and place as ours, with the same trees and hillsides and rocks. But it was not open to humankind, except for those lucky few who found a portal and its key. And the folk who lived there lived by their own laws, laws not at all like those of the human world. Any aged man or woman with stories to tell knew that.
There were tales about men who’d gone through a portal and spent a night among the forest folk, and when they’d come back again, a hundred years had passed, and their wives and children were dead and buried. There were stories about people who had visited the fairy revels and been driven right out of their minds.
When they returned to the human world, all they did was wander around the forest in a daze, until they perished from cold or hunger or thirst. There were still more accounts of folk who had gone into the forest and simply disappeared.
So, although we believed such misfortunes would never be-fall us—for we were constantly assured by the folk of the Other Kingdom that they loved and welcomed us—we had made a set of rules to keep us safe. If anything went wrong, the others 13