The music was making my feet move even before I trod on the sward. I took the dwarf ’s hand and we threw ourselves into a jig. The drumbeat made my heart race; the goat-pipes seemed to speak to something deep inside me, saying, Faster, faster! You’re alive! Anatolie gripped my hand tightly as we ran and jumped, as we turned, and swayed, and pointed our toes. Gogu had retreated to the pocket, where he was safe from falling and being trampled by the multitude of stamping, hopping, kicking feet.
When the dance was over, I fished him out and set him on my shoulder once more.
19
“All right?” I whispered.
If you could call being shaken about like a feather duster “all right,”
I suppose so.
I was looking around the glade as my heartbeat slowly returned to normal. “Where are the Night People?” I asked Anatolie.
“They will come. Wait until the moon moves higher; wait until you see her between the branches of the tallest oaks. Then you’ll catch a glimpse of them, around the edges.”
“Don’t they dance?”
Anatolie grinned. “I’ll bet you a silver piece to a lump of coal that you can’t get one of them to step up and partner you,”
he said. “They stick to their own kind, those black-cloaked streaks of melancholy. They don’t come to enjoy themselves, but to observe—to take stock.”
Out of long habit, because I was the sensible sister, I checked on the others, one by one, to make sure they were safe.
Over at the far side of the sward I saw Stela, now playing a chasing game with her bevy of small companions. Those that could fly had a distinct advantage. Iulia was with a circle of young forest men and women. When I had first seen such folk, I had thought of them as fairies—though they were far taller and more elegant than the tiny figures of my childhood imagination—