Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier Page A

in the black coat. His features bore their usual forlorn look, like that of a loyal dog unfairly reprimanded. The dark eyes belied that expression: I saw a message there that scared me. Gogu shiftedon my shoulder.
He’s trouble
. I swallowed and found my voice. “Are you going to introduce me to your new friend?” I croaked.
    “Oh. You mean Sorrow? I don’t think he’s quite ready for that, Jena.”
    “Who?” I couldn’t have heard her correctly.
    “Sorrow.” She glanced at Black Coat, her lovely features softening in a way that set a chill premonition in my heart.
    “I bet that’s not his real name,” I snapped, anxiety making me cruel. “His parents probably called him something plain and serviceable, like Ivan. Ah, well, pretentious coat, pretentious name.”
    Tati stared at me. She looked as if she might burst into tears or slap me. We never argued.
    Now you’ve done it
.
    “Shut up, Gogu,” I muttered, furious with myself. “Tell him you can’t talk to him,” I hissed to my sister under my breath. “He’s one of
them
. Don’t you understand how dangerous that is?” Then I turned on my heel and plunged back into the crowd.
    I didn’t dance much after that. I watched the two of them as they went back into the shadows under the trees—she in her night-blue cloak, he in his long black coat—not touching, not even so much as fingertips, but standing close, so close each might have felt the whisper of the other’s breath on half-closed lids or parted lips. They were talking. At least, Tati was talking, and Sorrow was doing a lot of listening and putting in a word or two, here and there, though he was certainly not given to opening his mouth very far.
    I watched them as the night drew toward dawn and thejigs and reels and high-stepping dances of the earlier hours gave way to slower tunes, music for lovers. Iulia sat on the bank, watching, her eyes full of dreams. Stela was stretched out with her head on Ildephonsus’s stomach, half-asleep. A couple of hedge sprites were making nests in her hair. At Paula’s table, the arguments raged on; did scholars never grow weary?
    Tati took off her cloak. Sorrow folded it and laid it among the roots of an oak, his eyes never leaving her. A shaft of moonlight illuminated my sister in her delicate gown—her hair tumbling down her back as dark and shiny as a crow’s wing, the curves of her body revealed through the sheer, floating silk. She reached out a hand; Sorrow took it in his as if it were something precious. There was no longer a shred of doubt in my mind that Tati had worn the butterfly gown for him. It was a gift—a gift for his eyes only.
    They danced. All by themselves, beyond the farthest fringe of the crowd, they circled and swayed, met and parted, turned and passed. Even when the steps of their dance drew them apart, their heads turned to look, and look, and look, as if they would drown in each other’s eyes.
    “What is she thinking of, Gogu?” I whispered. “She must have gone mad!”
    I’m cold
. Gogu gave an exaggerated shiver.
Can we go home now?
    Why didn’t it surprise me that Tati was the last sister to come down to the boats? I saw where Sorrow had beached their craft at some distance along the shore, half concealed by reeds. I stood with Sten as my other sisters stepped into their boats and headed off across the lake with their escorts. The mist wreathed the water thickly in this predawn hour: in theswirling white I could see strange shapes—wyvern, dragon, manticore. Gogu’s trembling felt about to dislodge him from my shoulder. I tucked him into the glove and into the pocket. “It’s all right, Gogu.”
    Dawn
, I thought. Since last Full Moon, I had asked Paula a lot of questions about Night People. She’d told me they lost their powers with the rising sun. If I could get Tati out of here safely, she’d come back to herself. Once home, I would be able to make her see sense. Just as long as she could drag herself away in