I scowled at my reflection in the mirror. I had been pacing in my shift for some time now, trying to decide what to wear, and I was thoroughly sick of the business already.
I didn’t want to go to the dance, I thought sulkily. All of my dresses were too short and my hair wouldn’t behave, slipping free from any confines I tried to impose upon it, light and whispy. I understood for the first time why Gwendolen would be in and out of clothes a dozen times before she was finally dressed to her satisfaction.
My bed was a mess of bedclothes and old skirts, my small closet woefully empty, before I found the package Mother had given me some years ago when Gwendolen had a new dress.
I opened it now with nervous fingers, discovering a creamy mass of off white material beneath the crackling folds of brown paper. When I shook it out there was less to it than I had supposed at first, which made me slightly uneasy. It was a light summer dress with an odd, low waist that would sit at my hips. I tried it on, hardly daring to believe that it would fit; but fit it did, the girdle snug about my hips and the smooth bodice comfortably loose and light. None of Gwendolen’s tight-corseted dresses, this!
I wondered if Mother had seen the dryads dance, for surely this was a dryad dress. Tiny flowers chased each other over the long, sheer sleeves and about the kirtle, and the skirt, almost scandalous with its gauzy petticoat, was light and cool against my bare legs. I felt a sudden stab of excitement that tickled in my stomach very like nervousness, and left the room without daring to look in the mirror.
Akiva’s hood was still a convenient shade of summer green that went well with my new dress, and it seemed to me that it was more leafy than usual in the twilight, with the flowers of my dress nestling amongst the leaves. I skipped lightly through the shadowy forest with a fizzing excitement quickly building in me. I had a brief wish that Bastian could see me in my new dress but I quashed it, determined not to think of Bastian and his moods. I would enjoy myself.
I arrived at home with sparkling eyes, and time to spare. Gwendolen opened the door to me, dressed all in green muslin, and stood with her mouth in a scandalized ‘o’ of surprise.
“Rose!”
“What?” I demanded, on the offensive. I was feeling new and slightly unsteady in my dryad dress. “I’m not late.”
“Oh, never mind,” Gwendolen said, making a face. “You’re as ugly as usual. Happy?”
I grinned reluctantly. “Thanks, Gwen. Is Thomas here?”
Immediately Gwen stiffened. “Yes, the cheek of him! I told him I wouldn’t go to the dance with him, and what do you think he said?”
“I have no idea.”
“He said he wasn’t going with me, if you please! He said he was going with Mother and David!”
“Why don’t you make up with him, Gwen?”
“I didn’t begin the quarrel!” she began mulishly. “I don’t fuss when other girls flirt with him. I don’t insist that he should never speak to anyone else.”
“Thomas doesn’t flirt with anyone else,” I pointed out. Gwendolen would certainly take a dim view of it if any such thing happened, despite her protests. “If you’re going to marry him, you can’t keep flirting with everyone else.”
“I can’t help it if they all like me!” Gwendolen said, her face flushed. “And I am not going to marry Thomas! I’m not.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing that I haven’t asked you yet, then,” said Thomas’ voice, calmly amused. “Good evening, Rose. You’re beautiful.”
I blushed hotly, but Gwendolen scowled at him, and put her little nose in the air.
“I shall see if Mother and David are ready to go yet,” she said haughtily, and floated coldly away, ignoring Thomas’ quiet interjection that they were on their way downstairs. He smiled at her retreating back, but when he looked at me again his face was serious.
“I’ve learned a little more of your wolf and his situation,” he said softly. “Enough to make it strangely hard to speak of it, I might add.”
I nodded in understanding. “It does that to me, too. The only person I can speak to freely is Bastian.”
“You’ll be careful won’t you, Rose?” There was a crease between his brows that spoke of consideration for me as well as for Gwen, so I stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“You’re very nice, and I thoroughly approve. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
To my surprise, a dull red flush crept up in his cheeks. “Thank you. Now all I need is Gwendolen’s approval.”’
“I’d give you advice, but you seem to be doing very well on your own,” I said. “I’ve never seen her mope over her beaux before. Or mutter. It’s quite good for her, I think.”
A reluctant smile stole into his eyes. “I flatter myself that I know her quite well. She’s young yet, and I can afford to wait.”
I looked up at him thoughtfully as he stood before me, rock-like and steady, and knew that he would do just that. Wait and wait until Gwendolen was ready, and be there to catch her when she was. It occurred to me that Gwendolen, all unknowing, had been very fortunate.
Gilbert was waiting by the front gate when we emerged, whistling at the early moon with his hands in his pockets. He grinned in greeting and offered one arm to me, remarking with a nod at the flowers of my dress and the leafiness of Akiva’s hood: “You’ve brought the forest with you tonight.”
He offered the other arm to Gwendolen, who was still refusing to acknowledge Thomas’ presence and accepted the arm grandly. Mother and David strolled ahead of us, Thomas with them and seeming not to notice Gwendolen’s ire. He was behaving as if he really had come to accompany them and not Gwen.
Despite Gwendolen’s annoyance, there was an air of happiness and hilarity to our little group as we approached the dancing green and saw the lights twinkling. The only reminder that all was not quite right was Akiva’s hood, nestling warmly about my shoulders.
Gwendolen flitted away almost immediately, and Liz Gantry, her arm linked with Harry’s, immediately took her place. She darted toward Gilbert and I, dragging us irresistibly into the dance that was forming.
“It’s a four-square,” she explained. “We’ll make up our own set. Then we can step on each other’s toes and dance the wrong steps all night if we want to.”
So we danced and we laughed, amusing ourselves with everyone and everything, and in particular our own bad dancing. It was pleasant not to be serious for a little while.
Later, when passing in the reel, Gilbert enquired: “Your watchdog couldn’t make it?”
“He doesn’t leave the forest often,” I said watchfully, turning lightly on my toes at my corner to face him. “I don’t think he likes people very much.”
“That explains why he’s always glaring at me, I suppose?” Gilbert was grinning as we performed the obligatory last doci-do. Opposite us, Harry swerved wildly to avoid jostling Liz’s shoulder with his own, and collided with another couple. We were laughing then, and I wasn’t obliged to answer Gilbert’s question, much to my relief. To tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure why Bastian disliked Gilbert. Toward most humans he showed only indifference, Thomas and Mother being the only notable exceptions to whom Bastian seemed to have taken a liking, apart from myself. Gilbert he seemed to actively dislike, and I could see no reason for it.
Thinking about it, I found to my surprise that I was missing Bastian. I was by now so used to having him around that when he wasn’t there I felt his absence like a hole in the background. It occurred to me in a moment of clarity that every time I turned to laugh and share a joke with Gilbert, I was startled that the face I turned to wasn’t Bastian’s.
My thoughts left me unsettled, and when the others suggested a walk along the mill road after the dance, I excused myself to seek out Mother and David. I found David first: he was watching Mother dance with Thomas, a smile on his thin face. It was a warm, personal smile, so I sat beside him without speaking, my eyes also on the dancers; and after a moment David put his arm around me in an absentminded, fatherly hug.
“Well, Rose? And what is it you want from me?”
“Want?” I demanded, pretending injury. “Perhaps I like your company.”
That got me a sideways look and a real smile. “Strange,” he said, turning his gaze back on the dancers. “I could have sworn you only come to see me when you want to pick my brains.”
I laughed, and we watched the dancers in silence for a moment longer. Then David, with a frown deepening on his face, said suddenly: “You feel it too, don’t you, Rose? I keep thinking I’m imagining it; but it feels like someone has left a door open near the birches. I think something is coming through.”
I looked at him curiously but felt a few of the lines nearby, and found that he was right.
“How did you notice that?” I demanded, a little put out that he had sensed something I had not.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know that no one else could sense it until I asked Margot what it was. She didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Now that it had been pointed out, I could see what he saw. It wasn’t quite a door, as David had thought, it was more of a tiny, deep hole in the small copse of birches that the younger children liked to dance rings around. The copse was clear of the forest but still quite close, and the lines glimmering between it and the forest told me that it was still part of the forest: and more importantly, of deep forest. There was no telling what could come through with the forest in the state it was in. The children were lively tonight: not unusually so, but there was an energy in their leaping and a dexterity in their dancing feet that sent a danger signal prickling across my scalp. It was disturbingly reminiscent of deeper forest and the wildly dancing dryads.
I stood unhurriedly, but my heart was beating more quickly with a touch of fear.
“Maybe I’ll dance with the children,” I said. “No one’s chaperoning.”
“And I will join you,” David said, pulling my hand through his arm. We strolled around the outskirts of the grownup dancers, David’s thin, strong hand clasping mine tightly enough to keep me at an unhurried, unnoticeable pace that matched his.
“Don’t frighten them,” he said in a low voice. “If they’re panicked it will be impossible to keep them all in sight.”
I nodded, but my hand felt very cold where I grasped the light cloth of his shirt, my fingers hidden beneath his. He patted my hand once and then released it, as if he were satisfied that I wouldn’t do anything foolish. I kept it tucked in the crook of his arm nevertheless, feeling safer with him there. We joined the children briefly, spinning into the circle and through it in one swift, graceful swirl, and they let us pass without acknowledging us. Their eyes were wide and starry.
Before long we were at the centre of their straggling loop, the point at which the birch trees were thinnest. The whole patch of trees was no wider than twenty feet, and we should have been able to see party lights and silhouetted figures dancing between the pale trunks. Instead, we saw only inky blackness, as if we were gazing into the deepest, thickest of forest. I gazed pensively at the darkness and knew that though the trees were merging into deeper forest, what we were looking for was no longer between the trees.
“There’s nothing here,” I said, my voice small in the face of the massiveness of deeper forest. “Whatever it is has already come through.”
We turned back slowly to face the circle of dancing children, and found that, beyond them, the party had grown strangely unfocused.
“We should go back,” I said, a deep thrill of fear leaving me breathless and strangely euphoric; because David wasn’t looking at me any longer. He was gazing intently at a graceful, pale figure as it glimmered among the children, passing from hand to hand through the dance.
“I don’t think we can,” he said huskily. Just beyond the dancing line I could see Mother standing, her face white and her eyes intent on us, while the dancing figure came ever closer with graceful, strathspey deliberation. It turned in the dance, lights shining full on its face, and I saw, with a jolt of cold recognition, that it was Kendra. Beside me, I heard David’s breath hiss between his teeth, and I shot a look up at him in the conviction that he had got his memory back at last. The look on his face was not one of remembrance, however; it was one of deep confusion. And as Kendra threaded her way closer, I was ashamed to discover in myself a deep desire that he would not remember, that he would not recognise her. I didn’t know how Kendra could be here, but I did know how Mother felt about David, and how he felt about her. For once the thought of David’s memory returning was an undeniably unwelcome one.
I heard the sound of Mother’s voice calling but it sounded faded and far off. She wasn’t calling my name: she was calling David’s. The sound of it must have penetrated David’s ears, because he tore his eyes away from Kendra with a shuddering breath and fixed his gaze on Mother instead, with the desperate look a drowning sailor has for the wooden plank that will save him. I risked another glance at Kendra, and thought I saw her mouth form my name, but David didn’t look back again. Step by laborious step, he surged through the murkiness, dragging me with him until we were through the dancers. I looked back to catch another sight of Kendra, but she was gone and the dance was breaking up. The clump of birches was just a plot of trees again.
David gave something like a sob, then Mother had her arms around him, stroking his hair and murmuring in his ear as if he were a little boy, his face pressed tight into her neck and his eyes squeezed shut.
She spared me a swift look to ask: “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said shortly. “Someone came out of deeper forest and I’m not supposed to know about deeper forest.”
“You both went blurry,” said Thomas. He had been there beside Mother all the time, though I hadn’t seen him. He put his arm around my waist in a friendly fashion, and added: “I’ll get you some hot chocolate.”
Mother nodded approvingly at us. “I’ll take David home with me,” she said, gently pushing the hair away from his forehead.
David raised his head to look wonderingly down at her as if he had not quite seen her before. And then, just like that, Mother was being kissed long and hard before the whole party, David’s thin hands cupped around her face. Someone raised a cheer and several more whistled, but neither of them seemed to care, or even to hear. Thomas chuckled and pulled me away.
“Close your mouth, Rose. You’re not blind, you must have seen it coming.”
“Well, yes; but I didn’t think David had that in him,” I said, impressed. “Let go of me, clot! I have to tell Mother to keep away from the forest as they go home.” I was instinctively and perhaps unreasonably convinced that it was me and not David that Kendra had tried to talk to, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
“Margot knows,” Thomas said calmly, ignoring the insult. “Just as soon as I get you some hot chocolate, I will escort them home myself.”
He was as good as his word. As soon as I was sitting down on a stray chair with a mug of rich chocolate, Thomas was off after Mother and David. I saw them moments later through the throng, Thomas beside and slightly behind them; and it was with gratitude that I noticed he had chosen to walk nearest the forest.
They had barely gone when Gwendolen swept up to me, simmering with indignation and mortification. “Why didn’t you stop them!” she hissed, sweeping her skirts aside with an angry flourish to sit beside me.
“What on earth could I have done?” I inquired caustically. “Besides, I think it’s sweet.”
“Sweet!” Gwendolen squeaked, in a strangled whisper. “Sweet? She was kissing him in front of the entire village! Our mother!”
“I think he was kissing her,” I pointed out, but without much hope that it would abate her anger. It didn’t. I cut in on her tirade to say, experimentally: “You’re only cross because Thomas went with them. None of your young men have ever left a dance while you’re still at it, have they?”
“Thomas is not my young man!” almost shrieked Gwendolen. Heads turned, and she lowered her voice with flushed cheeks. “I don’t care if he is here or a thousand miles away! I don’t care if I never see him again!”
A last, angry swirl of muslin, and she was gone. I sat by myself thoughtfully until Gilbert returned with Liz and Harry, demanding a dance. Deep in my thoughts, I hadn’t heard them approach, and Gilbert’s voiced startled me enough to make me spill my hot chocolate. They laughed at me, teasing that I was daydreaming about a certain someone, and I pulled a face at them without denying it. If I had denied it I would have had to tell them what I had been thinking of, and I had no intention of telling them that I had been on the point of slipping away into the forest in an attempt to find Bastian. Kendra’s reappearance had made me uneasy, and I wasn’t entirely sure that Bastian would come if I called. He was still cross at me, and even if I didn’t know why he was so cross, I did know that I didn’t like being at odds with him. I hadn’t sensed him in the forest since he had left me by the creek, and the lack of his familiar presence even in the distance was beginning to make me truly, ridiculously miserable. I found myself, surrounded by party-goers as I was, suddenly forlorn and alone, wanting nothing more than to sense his presence at the edges of my mind.
Fortunately, Harry was in too boisterous a mood to allow anyone time to notice my quietness, and I was borne away to dance with him before Gilbert could laughingly protest that he had asked me first. Elizabeth pulled him along with the cheerful aside that at least she would not be knocked to the ground this dance, to which Harry replied by making a rude noise over his shoulder.
The dance was an energetic polka, which we romped through with hilarity, Harry’s high spirits inevitably cheering me up. Around us the party grew louder and more jolly: midnight was fast approaching, but the dance showed no signs of breaking up and the refreshments flowed as freely as before. Before the end of the dance I had begun to think wistfully of Akiva’s cottage and my comfortable little bed.
Almost before the last hop of my polka with Harry, Gilbert was by my side again.
“My turn,” he said gaily; and swept me away into the ring that was forming.
I found myself in an unfamiliar setting and tried to back away, but Gilbert wasn’t minded to let me pull away, and he swung me into a waltz hold with a teasing grin.
“It’s easy; and you can tread on my toes as much as you please. Just stick with me when everyone else changes partners and I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”
I assured him sourly that I would make sure to take advantage of his kind permission to tread on his toes, but when the dance began, the tiny, foot-flicking movements were oddly familiar. It took me a few revolutions to discover that I was dancing a variation of the dryad’s wedding dance: less sweeping and spectacular, but unmistakably the same dance.
I huffed a breath of relief that lasted only until I caught sight of a tall figure threading swiftly through the dance behind us. My first, startled thought, was that Kendra had broken though again; but as my eyes followed it through the dance, it became quickly evident that it was a male figure.
My breath quickened and I kept him in my sight, caught up with the sudden hope that the golden-haired stranger was Bastian. I couldn’t sense him with my forest sight and I knew my hope was ridiculous, but I still couldn’t help craning my head to keep him in sight. He passed from partner to partner as Gilbert and I dallied together, but I only ever caught glimpses of the back of his head; and once, a patch of corn-golden stubble on his turned cheek.
I lost sight of him a moment later, and an almost crushing disappointment settled on me as I furled out in what was meant to be the last movement before switching partners, my hand in Gilbert’s. With each change we had taken a waltz hold instead, ducking out and then back into the dance to remain together, but this time when I unfurled from the waltz hold I didn’t get a chance to spin back into Gilbert. Instead, my free hand was seized and I was nipped breathlessly away from Gilbert, circled closely about my waist by a strong arm and held tight to a certain someone whose scent was as familiar as the forest.
Absurdly happy, I said: “You’re wearing a shirt.”
It was a simple, exquisitely made shirt; though he wore it unlaced and untucked, as if he weren’t quite comfortable in one anymore.
Bastian looked down at it with the disinterested, cursory look of one who is used to the finest linens, and said: “Your bumpkin seems to want you back.”
I peeked around him to find that Gilbert and his new partner were just behind us, ready for the next change when he might reasonably hope to partner me again.
Bastian, his eyes glittering with sardonic amusement, said softly: “Hold tight, love,” and whisked us from the outer to the inner dancing circle, just before the change. I sputtered my laughter into his shirt, not willing to look up at him because I knew that if I did, I would laugh aloud. Gilbert was looking a touch aggrieved, and I didn’t want him to think that I was mocking him.
We passed safely through two more partner changes before it occurred to me to say, in some surprise: “Bastian! You can dance!”
Bastian swept me exhilaratingly high into the air and back down again, and the smile he held steadily on me was warm enough to make me look away in confusion.
“There are a great many things you have yet to learn about me, little witch.”
“Why are you here?” I asked quietly, keeping my eyes on level with the yoke of that beautiful shirt and no higher. Without knowing quite why, I was afraid to meet his eyes. “And how did you get here without me sensing you?”
Bastian manoeuvred us through another change with careless expertise. “The cocoon Akiva spun from the forest was stronger than she thought: it’s still around me. You wouldn’t have noticed it beside the forest.”
“If you change outside the forest, you’ll still be safe,” I nodded, understanding. Bastian took advantage of my upturned gaze to bestow another of his disturbingly warm smiles down on me, and I dropped my eyes.
“As to why I came,” he said softly in my ear, “I decided that I was not going to give you up to your bumpkin without a fight.”
I was tired of protesting that Gilbert was not a bumpkin, so I merely said: “He’s quite nice really, when you get to know him.”
“But I don’t want to know him,” Bastian murmured, still close to my ear. “Gilbert doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Once more, little witch.”
He spun me once, twice, as the tempo quickened; and then we were in the centre of the two circling rings. I caught my breath in dismay, but my feet remembered what my memory didn’t, and I couldn’t help chuckling once in the sheer joy of the dance. For a brief moment it felt as though it really could have been deeper forest, the dancers dryads, and Bastian and I the bride and groom. The pulse of the music picked up once again in the last tempo change for the dance that allowed me to be swung joyfully in the air one last time and brought down lightly on my toes. Around us the flying draperies of the other ladies swished one last time, then came the last unfurl and the swift curl back in. I found myself wrapped tight in Bastian’s arms, my head tilted back to laugh up at him and his eyes laughing back down at me.
The dance ended with a shout and a stamp, but Bastian didn’t release me.
“It’s time I gave you that birthday present,” he said, smiling down at me. He bent his head and for a moment I thought– I thought– I didn’t know quite what I thought.
Before I had time to feel more than startled, Gilbert’s voice said beside us: “Who’s your friend, Rose?”
Bastian snarled something softly through his teeth and let me go, but kept one arm lightly around my waist.
“He’s from the forest,” I said truthfully, because the curse wouldn’t let me say his name. I added, more helpfully and still strictly truthfully: “An acquaintance of Akiva’s.”
Gilbert acknowledged the information with a stiff nod at Bastian; and Bastian, as curtly, nodded back.
“My dance, I think,” Gilbert said, and I thought there was a touch of challenge in his voice. His hand was held out to me but Bastian didn’t drop his arm from around my waist.
“Rose was just about to walk me home,” he said, the smallest edge of a cold smile lifting his lips. There was a shimmer to his forest skin that seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t long be in human form. Even if the skin did hold, it wouldn’t do to have the whole party see him change from human to wolf.
I was cross with both of them for behaving so boorishly to each other for no reason, so I knocked Bastian’s arm from my waist and ignored Gilbert’s outstretched hand.
“I’ll walk you as far as the forest,” I said to Bastian, and added to Gilbert: “I’ll be back shortly.” It made me feel as though I was having two conversations at once, and that made me crosser.
Gilbert said: “No need; I’ll walk along with you,” and though Bastian looked annoyed, at least he made no demur. I put one hand through Bastian’s arm, the other through Gilbert’s, and they were forced to continue to be civil.
We got Bastian back to the forest just in time. As Gilbert and I turned away, I felt the shock of his transformation, a wave of energy so bright and exuberant that I knew his protective barrier had shattered and let out all the extra energy it had been catching during his illness.
“So he’s a friend of Akiva’s,” Gilbert remarked thoughtfully, ignorant of the deluge.
I said non-committally: “Mmmm.”
“He seemed to know you very well.”
I let the remark hang in the air unanswered, and said suddenly: “I don’t feel like dancing anymore.”
“Even better,” Gilbert said equably, allowing the subject to drop. “Let’s go for a walk instead.”
I’d been thinking of going home, but Gilbert sounded so pleased at the idea of a walk that I didn’t like to disappoint him. So we walked further away from the party instead of back to it, the glowing lights fading behind us in the darkness as we strolled by the edges of the forest. I half expected Bastian to be prowling along beside us under cover of the trees, but he was unusually far away, giving Gilbert and I our privacy.
We wandered in a pleasantly aimless way, leisurely making our way around the curvature of the forest through the hills until we reached the highest point to be had, where we sat on a rock, dangling our feet and gazing down at the lights of the village. To the side of the village, the forest stretched out, dark velvet green and silent, and I was content to hear its quiet whisper beside me, threaded through with the faint strains of music that floated up to us from the dance.
“Rose, you’re unlike any other girl I’ve met,” Gilbert said at last, breaking the silence. He was sitting back with his hands propping him up while I stretched out full length beside him, gazing up at the stars, having tired of the village lights. “You don’t chatter. I suppose you’re still alive?” He poked me in the ribs and I laughed softly but didn’t stir, too content to lay quietly in the peacefulness of the overhanging forest.
Gilbert stretched himself out beside me, leaning his weight onto one elbow to gaze at my profile, and asked idly: “If you could do anything, what would you do?”
“I’d like to fly,” I said hungrily, my eyes on the wide expanse of starry sky. The remembrance of my dragon-fever dreams came back sometimes at night, when I remembered the freedom of flight I’d felt with useless longing.
“I don’t think I would be surprised if you told me you could fly,” Gilbert observed.
I hitched myself up on my elbows and regarded the view before us. “What would you do?”
“Do you really want to know?”
There was a question in his voice that I didn’t quite understand, but I shrugged, and said: “Yes, if you like.”
He didn’t answer at once, and I turned my head to look enquiringly at him just as he leaned in and kissed me. It wasn’t like the time I had kissed Bastian; that quick, formal kiss to try and break the spell: this one was warm and sweet and pleasant, and wholly unexpected. I didn’t react as quickly as I might have done: first, because I found that being kissed was a startlingly nice feeling, and then because the realization of what I needed to do to break the second part of Bastian’s curse descended on me with blinding effect. For a moment I remained frozen, then I put my palm on Gilbert’s chest and pushed him back firmly.
“No.”
Gilbert looked part annoyed, part amused. He didn’t look surprised.
“Rose–”
“No,” I said again, shaking my head. “It was very nice, but–”
“But no,” nodded Gilbert, and took in a quick, regretful breath. He ran one rueful hand through his hair. “I knew it was too soon to kiss you. I should have waited until later, but the dance scared me and I thought–”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” I said. I felt clumsy and wrong-footed, but I didn’t want things to be odd between us. “I don’t like you in that way, Gil. I didn’t mean to make you think I did.”
Gilbert smiled a little wryly. “I think I knew that when I saw you with him. I thought that if I could just get to you in time I might have a chance to win you over.”
I tried to protest that it wasn’t like that with Bastian and I, but Gilbert only said: “He’s the wolf, isn’t he? The wolf from the stories, the one you’re always going on about?”
The curse wouldn’t let me agree to it or deny it, but Gilbert’s face told me that he knew anyway. I slid my arm through his and there was a moment of quiet as we both gazed out into the darkened forest.
“I wish I’d met you when I was younger,” I said, a little sadly. Gilbert would have been an ideal companion for my many escapades, and maybe with time I would have come to feel for him the same way that he did for me.
“I wish you had, too.” There was a little rough edge to his voice, but not enough to make me think that he wouldn’t recover from my refusal. “Then I might have had some chance.”
“We can still be friends, can’t we?”
I was surprised to hear the wistful tone to my voice– more surprised to discover that I was unwilling to lose Gilbert’s friendship, and perhaps with it the friendship of Elizabeth and Harry.
I found that I really was sorry as I said: “I’m sorry I couldn’t be your sweetheart.”
“So am I,” Gilbert said; but he laughed a little, and kissed me on the cheek. “Goodnight, Rose.”
He sauntered back downhill with his hands in his pockets, but I don’t think he went back to the party. I stayed where I was for a long time until a sniff surprised me by suggesting I was near tears. I took myself fiercely to task, sniffing away the impulse, and slipped into the forest where I wandered aimlessly in search of distraction. It wasn’t until some minutes later that I found I’d made my way instinctively towards the patch of forest that was distinctly Bastian-tinted. A few steps later I came upon Bastian himself, dozing with his snout cushioned on his paws. Feeling absurdly comforted, I dropped down on the grass beside him and curled up with my head on his side like we used to sit. Bastian turned his head to sleepily snuff at my face.
“What’s wrong, little love?”
I buried my face in his fur and heaved a big, huffy breath. “Don’t want to talk about it.”
The forest lines twanged and pulsed around me, and then I was curled up against human Bastian, one of his arms around me comfortably. He was still wearing his shirt from the party, and it was cool and soft against my cheek. He sat up, pulling me a little closer, and laughed at my surprise.
“Midnight, little witch. It’s a whole new day. What have you done?”
I tucked my head into his shoulder as if he were still the furry, wolfish Bastian and said moodily: “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want a hug.”
“It’s my pleasure, little witch,” Bastian said in his laughing voice. He took my far hand and pulled it across his stomach until I had one arm around him too, and moved slightly so that his chin could rest comfortably on the top of my head. “There. Is that better?”
“Yes.”
Bastian’s warm, quiet presence made the churning feeling in my stomach go away, and I began to feel more comfortable. I said: “I’m glad you came to the dance.”
“So am I, little witch; so am I,” Bastian murmured into my hair. He sounded as if he were talking more to himself. “It’s odd; I’ve never worked so hard for so little. And yet it has never been sweeter.”
It was a Bastian-remark, no making sense of it. I said cautiously: “I don’t know what you mean.”
His stomach contracted with laughter under my arm, and I felt the stir in my hair from his chuckle. “That’s what makes it so amusing, my love. How is it that your dance has finished so soon?”
“It hasn’t,” I admitted. “I just didn’t feel like dancing anymore.”
“Evidently you didn’t have the right partner,” Bastian said, a little arrogantly. “Come, little witch; I can still hear the music.”
He pulled me easily to my feet, but instead of settling into a traditional dance hold we remained as we had been before, my head on his shoulder and my arm around him. His hands clasped loosely about my waist and guided me in a series of small, slow steps that mirrored his own.
“You see, little witch? I can hug you and dance at the same time.”
“This is a nice way to dance,” I said approvingly. For the first time since leaving the dance I felt properly cheerful. Bastian laughed.
“My thought exactly,” he agreed. “Now, little witch, tell me: did you come all this way for a hug or was there something else?”
“Why does everyone think I must want something when I talk to them?” I demanded, pulling my head away from his shoulder indignantly.
Bastian firmly pushed it back down again into the snowy folds of his shirt and said soothingly: “Hush now. I acknowledge the purity of your motives, little witch.”
“Besides, it was more of an idea,” I added. “I wanted to try and break the second part of the curse again. I think I know how to do it now.”
Bastian’s steps stilled and he allowed me to take my head away this time without interfering. I thought he looked suddenly unsure, or perhaps a little uneasy; and it occurred to me to think that perhaps Bastian might want me to kiss him as little as I had wanted Gilbert to kiss me.
Uncertainly, I added: “Only if you don’t mind, Bastian.”
“I can’t think of any better way to begin the day,” Bastian said, and there was a queer little smile hovering about his mouth. “Take your best shot, little witch.”
“Hold still, then,” I said, but I needn’t have bothered to tell him. Bastian was standing wolf-still, his eyes intent on me and somehow nervous. It amused me a little at the back of my mind that he should be nervous when he had once courted three women together. I reached up to draw Bastian’s head down to me, and found that his hair was long enough to thread my fingers through. It was a nice feeling, and it made me forget suddenly the nervousness that had made me keep so far away from Bastian the first time I tried to break the curse. This time when I turned up my face to kiss him, I was near enough to feel the warmth of his body. I felt the uneven brush of his breath on my face and pressed the kiss firmly into his lips, drawing from my memory of Gilbert’s kiss and trying to recapture my sudden knowledge of what needed to be done. The curse didn’t want the businesslike kind of kiss I had tried before: it wanted the curious, soft kind that asked a question, just like Gilbert’s had done.
Somehow or other Bastian’s arms had gone right around my waist again. Finding this an advantage, I pressed the kiss more firmly into his lips, asking the question. I felt Bastian’s lips part slightly at the same time that mine did, and his arms tightened suddenly around me as he returned the kiss without my urging. At that moment, as I had been certain it would, the second part of the curse broke. A shock of magic burst through us in glowing shades of brilliant gold and rich amber, fizzing where our lips met and all the way to my toes.
I broke the kiss off with a crow of delight; and Bastian’s arms, which had locked suddenly and tightly around me, pinning me distractingly close to him at the moment the second part of the curse broke, loosened enough for me to disengage my fingers from his hair.
“It worked, it worked!” I was tingling with euphoria that must have been residue from the shock of magic, and pounced with delight rather than wisdom at the slight flush in Bastian’s cheeks. “Bastian! Why are you blushing?”
His arms loosened around my waist and then tightened. “You’ve been practicing, little witch!”
I flushed bright red and tried to twitch myself away, but Bastian was too strong and I was forced to stay where I was. “Who have you been kissing, Rose?”
“It was Gilbert, and he kissed me!” I defended myself, but couldn’t subdue the ruddy tinge in my cheeks. “Anyway, that’s how I learned how to do it so it’d break the spell, so be grateful. I didn’t want to kiss him.”
“Perhaps I should be having a word with your bumpkin, then,” Bastian said in his thoughtful growling-yet-silky voice.
“I can look after myself!” I snapped, with an air of authority that was ruined by the fact that I still couldn’t wriggle myself free.
“Stop wriggling, you wretch!” Bastian’s arms constricted again, and I knew that they would continue to do so, boy-like, for every wriggle; so I stopped struggling. “It’s not polite to break off a kiss after you get what you want, little witch. It’s polite to finish what you start.”
“I didn’t want you to have to put up with it any longer than you had to,” I explained, resignedly resting my arms on his shoulders since it didn’t seem likely that he would let me go until he had finished teasing me. “I thought you’d rather have it over with more quickly.”
Close as we were, I felt a familiar tightening of the muscles in his stomach that meant he was holding back a laugh. “Oh, did you? Well, let me tell you, little witch, I’ve no intention of being short-changed, and that means you still owe me half a kiss. But as I’m obliged to you for breaking the second part of the curse, I will allow you to defer payment.”
I said: “Hah!” darkly, but my rudeness didn’t affect Bastian at all except to make him smile faintly and offer to walk me home.
I allowed it since he didn’t seem inclined to let me go whether or not I acquiesced, and we wandered leisurely through deep forest hand in hand until Akiva’s cottage segued out of the darkness and halted our progress.
I must have been more weary than I thought, because when I flopped down on the bed to rest my weary feet for a moment, I fell asleep straight away, fully dressed and with Akiva’s hood spread neatly in a half circle on the pillows about me.