Shadowsong

  My brother did not answer immediately. In the silence that followed my tale, he rose to his feet and began pacing the length of the ballroom. Although his expression was calm, there was an agitation and anger to his footsteps.

  “Sepp—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he interrupted.

  “I didn’t know how—” I began, but he cut me off with an angry retort.

  “Horseshit.” I flinched. I had never heard my brother swear before, and the word sounded even filthier coming from his lips. “You told Käthe.”

  Not all of it, I wanted to say. Not all of it at all. But I had told her enough, and it was more than what I had told Josef.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why her, of all people?”

  “Because she had been there,” I said tartly, unexpectedly stung on Käthe’s behalf. “Because she had seen.”

  “I’m not talking about the Underground,” he said. “I’m talking about him.”

  Him. The Goblin King. I was taken aback, surprised by the vehemence in his tone. The Goblin King was the beginning and the end of my time Underground, yet he was also the least and most magical part of it at once. Compared to the glowing lake, the singing of the Lorelei, the twisting of time and space, the fairy lights, the glittering caverns and halls, our love seemed almost mundane. There had been no grand romantic gestures, no sweeping declarations of feeling, no fighting to be with each other against all odds. We had simply, though not always quietly, broken each other apart and put ourselves back together again. It was not a story in which I thought my brother would be interested.

  “What do you mean, Sepp?”

  “I mean him,” Josef said again, punctuating the word with an emphatic jab of his bow. “And you.” He pointed the tip of his bow at me, hovering right above my breast like a blade. “You always called me the gardener of your heart,” he said softly. “But you have gone and grown your flowers without me.”

  It was then I understood that he had not been hurt by the fact I hadn’t told him about my time Underground; it was that I had not shared with him anything about my feelings as Goblin Queen. We had always bared our souls to each other, our deepest thoughts and darkest emotions, often without speech. My sister had been my confidante through words and actions, but my brother had ever been the keeper of my secrets.

  “Oh,” I said. I did not know what else to say. “I’m sorry, Sepperl.”

  He shook his head. “Why didn’t you trust me?” he asked, and in his voice, I heard the little boy I had thought I had lost.

  I give you back your heart. Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. “I don’t know.”

  But I did know. He was no longer first in my heart. Josef and the Goblin King shared the space where my soul lay within my breast, along with Käthe and François and Constanze and Mother. My capacity for love had not diminished; indeed, it had only grown with each person I let in, but the formless, undifferentiated love I had felt in childhood only grew more defined with age and time. There were parts of myself I was willing to share with my sister, parts that were given to my brother, and still other parts that had been claimed by an austere young man.

  Josef’s stare was hard. Accusatory. “I think you do.”

  He always did know me best.

  “What is it you want to hear from me, Sepperl?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “I’m sorry? I’ve already apologized to you.”

  “But what is it you’re apologizing for?” he shot back. He lowered his arm, his bow hanging limp by his side. “You didn’t tell me for a reason. That’s why you feel so guilty. You’re hiding something from me, Liesl, and I don’t like that. You and I were always open with one another.”

  “Were we?” My eyes strayed to his wrists. His arm twitched, as though he were resisting the urge to cover himself. “Tell me, Sepp, have you always been honest with me?”

  He stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  I stood up. “Then you had no right to pry either!”

  “Fine!” he exploded. “Fine! What do you want to know? That Master Antonius beat me? That he subjected me to every humiliation under the sun and then some? That he twisted my longing for home, for the Goblin Grove, into a shameful, infantile indulgence? I couldn’t talk to anyone, Liesl. Anyone. I had François to protect me, but he didn’t understand. Couldn’t. How the farther away from home I went, the less I felt whole. The less I felt real. I was a sham of a boy, the husk of a man, an imposter of a human being. It was only when I played your music that I felt any sort of connection to . . . to life.”

  Take us far from the Underground and we wither and fade.

  I felt my face drain of blood. And Josef noticed.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it, Liesl?”

  Would it grant him peace of mind, if he knew the truth of what he was? Or would it merely serve to alienate us even further? Would he hate me for not telling him sooner? If Josef resented me for keeping the Goblin King to myself, how much more would he despite me for not giving him a piece of his own history?

  “What is it?” he demanded. “What do you know?”

  “It’s because,” I whispered, my voice catching on the edges of my emotions. “It’s because you’re a changeling.”

  His lips went white. I waited for my brother to say something, to do something—anything—other than stand there. But he was as still and silent as a statue, almost as though he had been replaced again by another entity. I hated myself for the thought.

  “Sepp?” I asked in a small voice. “Talk to me, Sepp.”

  “How dare you.” My brother did not sound like himself, and for the first time in my life, I felt as though I did not know him.

  “Sepp, I—”

  “Don’t.” He threw up his hands, his violin and bow still clenched in his fists. “Don’t.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wished the words weren’t so insufficient.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Sepp—”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  Josef threw aside his instrument, the cherry wood body of his violin clattering across the broken marble floor, the neck snapping off from the rest. I cried out, but the bow followed soon after. “Josef, please—”

  “I’m not him!” he cried. “Josef isn’t real! He was never real!” He looked at me with a feral expression, the pupils of his eyes dilating to drown the blue in a depthless black. Like goblin eyes. “Who am I?” A savage cry tore from his throat. “Who am I?”

  “Josef, I—”

  But before I could tell him, reassure him, reaffirm him, my brother had turned and gone, vanished into the wild.

  achangeling had no name, and no one to call him home.

  He fled from the ballroom and into the wild, leaving his sister, his past, and his name behind him. Josef. The name belonged to another boy, another son, another human, and he could not bear to wear it any longer. The wounds upon his wrists itched, and he longed to dig his fingers into the scars and tear off his skin, to cast off the face, the hair, the eyes of a boy who did not exist.

  He did not exist.

  The changeling found himself standing in a patch of poppies, the bright red blooms curled around his feet like a cat about its master’s legs. Come with us, nameless one, they cooed. Join us.

  As he looked up, he saw pops of scarlet, crimson, and vermillion appear like paint drops amid the gray and brown and green of a late winter wild, a river of blood cutting through the woods and up the hill.

  Come, the whispers urged. Come.

  He did not ask where, or why. The Countess had told him that these impossible flowers were the souls of the stolen, the last mortal remnants of those who had been taken by the Wild Hunt. They were guiding him home, back to the Underground.

  The changeling set his feet upon the path of poppies and followed.

  Behind him, he could hear his sister calling his name—no, the name of her brother—but he paid her no heed. Josef was gone now; he had never been. The
void at the center of his soul made sense now. For years he had thought there was something broken within him, that his inability to feel deeply for anyone was a defect, or a flaw in his making. He cared for his family, or the people he had thought were his blood and kin. He felt affection for his grandmother and her stories, respect for his mother and her hard work, fear for his father and his moods, and fondness for his sisters. Perhaps the changeling even felt love, especially for Liesl, insofar as he could understand it.

  Love. He thought of François and waited for guilt to pool in his stomach. The changeling thought of his companion’s face—the dark eyes, the tightly curled lashes, the warm skin, the full lips. It was a face that rang a bell deep inside him, that made him want to look and look and look. François was beautiful, the changeling knew, but it was not the beauty of his companion’s beloved features that drew him; it was the safety he had found there. He had ever preferred the shadows to the light, and François’s love was the nightfall in which he could hide.

  But ever since he had come to Snovin, the memory of his beloved’s face returned less and less to him. Even now the exact shade of François’s skin, the scent of his cologne, and the timbre of his voice was fading, as though his companion were disappearing into mist or fog. Beloved. It was the only word the changeling could think of when he thought of François, for he had no other word for the tenderness within him, the desire to protect, to hold, to kiss. But the changeling knew that his love was not the same as François’s love, for the urge to touch was absent and the heat of passion was cold.

  I love you, he had told the black boy.

  And it was true, or truth as the changeling understood it.

  His breath came faster as he climbed the hills behind Snovin Hall, the path narrow and steep. The poppies never ceased their whispering, cajoling, pleading, beckoning him to hurry, hurry. He did not know the reason for their urgency, only that he felt it too as a sort of freedom, an excuse, a reason to run away. The changeling did not care where he was running to, only that he was running at all.

  He was surprised when the trail opened up into a wide vista. The poppies led him to a rocky ledge poised over a sparkling lake, a long drop. Looking down into the aquamarine waters gave him a sense of vertigo, as though he were looking up at the sky instead of into dark depths. The changeling saw his reflection below, a pale, sharp-cheeked face staring back at him with a razor-toothed grin.

  The changeling touched his face, wondering if knowing the truth of who he was had rearranged his features. All his life—Josef’s life—he had known his hair to be gold and his eyes to be blue. But the youth who peered back at him from the lake had hair the color of unbrushed cotton and eyes as black as obsidian. Yet the face was recognizably his: the same nose, ears, cheeks, chin.

  “Who are you?” the changeling whispered.

  The reflection smiled. I am you, it replied.

  “What am I?” the changeling asked.

  Lost, the reflection said.

  Lost. The word resounded in the void within the changeling. “How do I become found?” he asked his reflection.

  The boy in the lake did not answer. Instead he reached for the surface, and Josef found himself reaching for the mirrored world.

  Join me, the reflection said. Join us.

  And so Josef fell, down and down and down, into the Underground.

  INTO THAT WORLD INVERTED

  OBLIVION

  i waited one breath too long to chase after my brother.

  “Josef!” I screamed. “Sepp!”

  The grounds of Snovin Hall rang with my cries as I fled the ballroom after my brother, but nothing but the echoes of startled birdsong returned. Josef had disappeared, vanished, gone to earth, and I did not know how he had run so quickly and so far. No tracks trampled the tangled vines and overgrown weeds, no evidence of trespass or flight. Nothing but crushed poppy petals, scattered underfoot like drops of blood.

  “Sepp!” I called again. “Sepp!”

  “Fräulein?” I whirled around to see Nina standing behind me, a worried look on her face. “Is okay?”

  The last thing I wanted to endure was another’s presence, to keep up the mask of civility or a calm countenance. I was neither civil nor calm, and I raged and seethed that I felt compelled to maintain a straight face before her. Who would notice? Who would care? The worst Nina could do was return to the Count and Countess with tales of my rudeness, my unsociability, my erratic moods. Yet despite this, I did not want to frighten her with my monstrosity, the maelstrom that threatened to swallow not just me, but the entire world.

  “Yes,” I said, trying my best for a smile. The corners of my mouth shook and quivered, and I felt my lips curling in a snarl. “Everything is fine, thank you, Nina.”

  The housekeeper did not look reassured. Instead, she seemed even more concerned. “Is okay?” she repeated, then said something in a torrent of Bohemian I could not understand, accompanied by gestures I could not decipher.

  “Yes!” I barked. “Okay. I’m okay.”

  I could feel the press of fury and frustration building behind my eyes, a growing headache. I was tired of keeping a tight rein on the feral beast I was inside, and I was tempted to let go, to unleash the wolves and hounds of mania and recklessness upon her. I don’t know what it was Nina saw in my expression, but a strange sort of pity crossed her face. Pity was the last emotion I wanted from her, and I felt my gorge rise.

  “Come,” she beckoned. “I show you.”

  “Unless you can show me my brother, I don’t care,” I snapped. If she did not understand my words, she could at least understand my tone.

  “Come,” Nina said again. Her tone was firm, a mother’s voice, and I did not resist.

  She led me back into the ballroom, gently picking up the pieces of Josef’s violin that he had thrown to the floor. A part of me—the part not submerged in the depths of my own feelings of self-loathing and despair—mourned the loss of such an instrument. It wasn’t just that it had been a beautiful Del Gésu; it was that it had survived not only years of wear and tear and abuse, but Papa’s constant pawning off to Herr Kassl’s for drinking money. The housekeeper held the neck and the body out to me in separate hands. I shook my head; I did not know if it could be salvaged.

  Nina gave me stern look, as though I were being a fool. I resented being treated like a petulant child by a woman I did not know, to whom I was not beholden in any way. I shook my head again, but she harrumphed before taking the neck of the broken violin and gently removing the scroll.

  Ornamental scrolls were not common, and the finial of this particular instrument had been carved into the shape of a woman. Nina pressed the finial into my hand, and I wrapped my fingers around the figure. The woman’s face had been carved with her mouth open in perpetual song, but in certain angles she looked as though screaming with joy . . . or terror. I was discovering more and more with each passing day that the line that divided those emotions was honed finer than the keenest razor.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I said it more to send Nina away than from any sense of actual gratitude.

  “Is okay?” she repeated.

  No, it was not okay. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be okay.

  The housekeeper eyed me warily, as though I were a fragile china shepherdess poised on the edge of a shelf. I forced another smile for Nina, and this time, I did not bother to swallow the growl that escaped my throat. She took the hint, and left.

  I looked through the broken windows of the ballroom to the world outside. I should have gone after my brother. I should have tried to find him. I should have gone looking until my eyes went dim and my throat went hoarse, for I was afraid. For him, and of him. Of what he would do. To me, but to himself most of all. I should have, I should have, I should have.

  But I did not.

  Instead I was trapped in the quicksand of my own mind, reliving each and every mistake I had made with Josef. Every misstep revealed another, and another, and another, a long line a
ll the way back to when we were children. I should have protected him from Papa. I should have seen how miserable our expectations made him. I should have brought him home to the Goblin Grove the instant I understood how it was killing him.

  I should have told him he was a changeling.

  Sooner. Better. At all. The truth of Josef’s nature was not my secret to withhold, and yet I had. I hadn’t wanted to tell him because . . . because deep in my heart, I knew I would lose him. He would hate me for not telling him, and the longer I held on to the truth, the more he would hate me for my selfishness. It no longer became for Josef’s own good that he did not know; it was for my own peace of mind.

  Was I worried he would run away to the Underground? Did he even know how? Did I know how? I was overcome with a sudden, fierce, unspecified anger. Toward the Underground. The Goblin King. The strange and queer and uncanny that had dogged me my entire life. If I had just been normal, if I had just been ordinary, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be trapped in a house of madmen and dreamers with an unholy host at my back because I wouldn’t be Liesl. I wouldn’t be me.

  I wanted to kick and scream. A toddler’s temper tantrum crawled up my throat, and the desire to break and smash and cry made my fingers twitch with pent-up frustration. At times like these, I used to run to the klavier and pound my emotions into the keys, reveling in the cacophony of discord. I used to make noise with intent and purpose, to sound my barbaric and untamed self into the void. More than anything, I wanted that now.

  Your music creates a bridge between worlds.

  I hadn’t tried since coming to Snovin Hall. To play. To make music. For a while I thought my reticence had been a fear of reprisal, of what my power could do to the fabric of the world. But perhaps my reticence had simply been a matter of reluctance; I had wanted so badly to leave that part of myself behind. The part that had walked the Underground. The part that had married—and loved—the Goblin King. I was so focused on being Elisabeth, alone, I had not thought about what it meant to be Elisabeth, entire.