I who had grown up with Papa, I who had nurtured Josef’s developing virtuoso talent, had never, ever heard such playing as this. The violinist played a piece I did not know. I did not recognize the composer, though I thought I could hear Bach’s contrapuntal intricacy, Vivaldi’s elegant expressiveness, and Handel’s grandiose charm within the piece. There was devotion in every strain—devotion, reverence, ecstasy—and I nearly wept from the beauty of it. I stopped humming.
The scent of summer peaches filled the corridor.
Even Käthe seemed moved, though she couldn’t tell the difference between a concerto and a chaconne. My sister swayed on her feet, closing her eyes as though trying to listen with greater attention.
The music came from somewhere just beyond reach. Hand in hand, Käthe and I followed the sound to where it seemed loudest, the most clear, the most affecting. But there was no musician standing before us, no one to congratulate on the exquisiteness of his or her playing. In fact, the music seemed to come from behind the earthen wall of the passageway, in another room, another hall, another world. I pressed my ears to the dirt, struggling to get closer to the source of that sound.
I clawed at the earth, digging, digging, searching, reaching. The music grew louder as I pressed myself into the dirt, burying myself deeper and deeper into the Underground. The moving earth shifted and stirred about me, the dirt falling back on my shoulders as I dug and tunneled closer to the music.
I did not know to where I was digging, or to whom. I did not know if it was to freedom, to the world above, to the unknown musician, to Josef, or to the angel of music himself. I only knew that I could not die without having beheld the face behind the magic.
“Sepperl!” I cried. Or perhaps it was the name of God. Dirt filled my mouth and my nostrils, but I did not care.
“Liesl!”
Through earth-packed ears, I thought I heard a cry. My name, perhaps. A voice I once knew.
“Liesl, please.”
Hands on my shoulders, pulling and tugging and dragging me away.
“No!” My throat was clogged with dirt, and I choked on it. The music was fading and I wept at its loss.
“You can’t do this. You can’t leave me here to do this alone.”
Something wet fell on my face. Rain? How it could possibly rain underground?
A few more drops. Then another. They were warm, so warm. Almost living. Like no rain I had ever felt. A drop slid to the corner of my mouth and I tasted it. Salt.
Tears. They were tears.
Käthe was crying.
“Liesl, Liesl,” she keened, clutching me to her chest, rocking us back and forth.
“Käthe,” I croaked, then coughed, spitting out bits of dirt, mud, and even leaves. My lungs were raw, each breath drawn over gravel and charcoal. As my wits returned, I saw I was buried up to my neck in the loose dirt and rocks of the corridor floor, digging my grave with my bare hands.
“Oh, thank God!” My sister worked furiously at my bodice and stays, trying to loosen the strings to help me breathe. I coughed and retched and coughed and retched until the bile ran clear.
In the distance I could still hear the ghostly strains of that angelic violin, but my sister held me tightly in her grip, my face in her palms.
“Stay with me.” Her blue eyes searched mine. “Right here. Don’t listen. It’s not real. It’s not Josef. It’s not Papa. It is the Goblin King. It is a trick.”
It’s not Josef. It’s not Papa. It is the Goblin King. It is a trick. I repeated those words like a refrain, drowning out the sweet music that enveloped me and threatened to steal my senses. The scent of summer peaches was stronger than ever, only now it held the whiff of putrefaction.
Goblin glamour, I realized.
Käthe brushed the mud and blood from my face and helped me to my feet, leading me down the long, labyrinthine corridor.
Dear, sweet, unmusical Käthe. Each time the spell of the violin tightened its stranglehold about my wits, my sister gripped my hand all the harder. It hurt, but I relished the pain; it reminded me of who I was and what I was doing. I was Liesl. I was Käthe’s older sister. I was rescuing her from the Goblin King. I was saving her life. Only now it was my little sister saving mine.
Presently, the peach perfume faded from the air, my senses cleared, and I heard the music with a mind entire. The magic was gone. There was no angel of music, no divine presence, only the fallible sounds of mortal performance. Beautiful, but human.
Curiosity had returned along with my wits. Something—someone was playing the violin, and the music was closer than ever.
Light shone through a large crack in the wall of the maze ahead of us. A slim, slender silhouette cast a shadow against the passage floors. Der Erlkönig. I did not marvel then that I knew the shape of his body as well as my own reflection.
I watched the Goblin King’s shadow play his violin, his right arm moving in a smooth, practiced bowing motion. Käthe tried to pull me away, but I did not go with her. I moved closer to the light, and pressed my face to the crack. I had to look, had to see. I had to watch him play.
The Goblin King’s back was turned to me. He wore no fancy coat, no embroidered dressing gown. He was simply dressed in trousers and a fine cambric shirt, so fine I could see the play of muscles in his back.
He played with precision and with considerable skill. The Goblin King was not Josef; he did not have my brother’s clarity of emotion or my brother’s transcendence. But the Goblin King had his own voice, full of passion, longing, and reverence, and it was unexpectedly … vibrant. Alive.
I could hear the slight fumblings, the stutters and starts in tempo, the accidental jarring note that marked his playing as human, oh so human. This was a man—a young man?—playing a song he liked on the violin. Playing it until it sounded perfect to his imperfect ears. I had stumbled upon something private, something intimate. My cheeks reddened.
“Liesl.”
My sister’s voice sliced through the sound of the Goblin King’s playing like a guillotine, stopping the music mid-phrase. He glanced over his shoulder, and our eyes met.
His mismatched gaze was unguarded, and I felt both ashamed and emboldened. I had seen him unclothed in his bedchamber, but he was even more naked now. Propriety told me I should look away, but I could not, arrested by the sight of his soul bared to me.
We stared at each other through the crack in the wall, unable to move. The air between us changed, like a world before a storm: hushed, quiet, waiting, expectant.
A moan broke the tension. Käthe. The hooded expression fell over the Goblin King’s eyes, and he was distant and untouchable, Der Erlkönig once more.
“Liesl,” Käthe whispered. “Let’s go. Please.”
I had forgotten my sister’s existence. I had forgotten why I was there. I had forgotten everything but the sight of the Goblin King’s eyes, gray and green and blue and brown together. Käthe pulled at my sleeve, and I followed, running down the corridor hand in hand with my sister. Running before Der Erlkönig could catch us, running before he could trap us again with sweet words and sweet enchantments, and running before I could quite understand the strange, syncopated beat of my sympathetic heart.
PYRRHIC VICTORY
The sky was dark when we emerged from the Underground at last, spangled with endless stars. The moon had not yet risen and I did not know how much time had passed. Were we too late?
I glanced about me. The surrounding forest was unfamiliar, lit with the otherworldly glow of starlight. The trees grew into twisted shapes, sculpted by centuries of wind—or a goblin-led hand. They grew as though striving to dance and roam free, only to be rooted fast and trapped by the earth beneath them. I thought of the stories Constanze had told us of maidens turning into trees and shivered, although the night was curiously mild.
No, we were not too late. I stared at the great open expanse above me. The sky above me was proof, proof I had won. My eyes burned against the light; after what seemed like days buried b
eneath dirt and roots and rock, the sight of stars was enough to move me to tears.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh, come and see!”
I had crawled out from the roots of an enormous oak tree, through a rabbit hole scarcely large enough for the rabbit. Käthe and I had wandered the endless corridors for what had seemed like days on end. The tunnels had grown narrower and narrower, the finishes rougher and rougher, the niceties of civilization gradually disappearing until we crawled on our hands and knees. I was proud of my sister; she never once complained of the dirt on her dress, the rocks beneath her palms, or the roots tearing at her hair. I had taken heart from her courage, and never faltered, even when despair clung to my ankles as the passageways began shrinking around us.
“Käthe,” I called. “Come and see!”
I turned to help my sister out, but all I could see were her beautiful blue eyes in the shadows of the oak.
“Käthe,” I repeated. “Come.”
She did not move. Her eyes darted to a point behind me.
“What is the matter with you?” I knelt before the tree and reached for my sister. “We’re done. We’re finished. We’ve escaped the Goblin King.”
“Have you?”
I turned around. The Goblin King stood before me in a clearing, dressed in leather trousers and a roughspun jacket. Were it not for the pallor of his skin, or the sharp tips of his teeth poking through his smirk, I might have taken him for one of the local shepherd lads. But he was not a shepherd lad. He was both too beautiful and too terrible.
“Have I not?” I gestured to the night sky. “I have beaten you and your godforsaken labyrinth.”
“Ah, but are we not, in some ways, all trapped in a labyrinth of our own making?” the Goblin King asked lightly.
“A philosopher as well as a king,” I muttered. “How charming.”
“Do you find me charming, Elisabeth?” His voice was a velvet purr.
I searched his face for the soft-eyed young man, a hint, an anchor I could cling to. But I could find none. “No.”
The Goblin King pouted. “You wound me.” He moved close, bringing with him the scent of ice and sweet loam. He took my chin in his long, elegant fingers and raised my gaze to his. “And you lie.”
“Release me.” I trembled, but my voice was steady.
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He pulled away, and the absence of his touch was a sudden chill. “I don’t see your sister with you.”
I sighed. Käthe, so brave until now, had suddenly turned mulish in his presence. She remained hidden in the roots of the great oak, unwilling to come out into the open.
“Then help me free her from the tree,” I said.
He raised his brow. “With nary a please? Tsk, tsk, where are your manners, Elisabeth?”
“I wish you would free Käthe from the tree.”
The Goblin King bowed. “Your wish is my command.”
The oak tree split open from root to tip, revealing a terrified Käthe at its heart. She was tightly curled into a ball, hiding her face between her knees, her shoulders shaking with fright.
“Käthe, Käthe.” I took her into my arms. “It’s all right. It’s all over. We can go home now.”
“Not so fast.” The Goblin King stepped forward. “We are not yet finished.”
My sister cringed and buried her face into my shoulder.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “We had a wager.”
“Did we? Remind me.”
Sometimes it was all too easy to forget that Der Erlkönig was ageless, ancient, older than these hills. “That I would find my way out of the Underground and bring my sister,” I said through gritted teeth. “And lo, here we stand, in the world above.”
“Is that what you think?”
Dread began to grow inside me, rising waters of panic, drip by drip. “What do you mean?”
“A valiant effort, Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said. “But you have lost.”
At his words, the forest about me changed. What I had taken for trees smoothly changed into columns of stone, leaves into bits of ragged cloth, and the night sky froze and cracked, like a pond icing over in winter. Käthe gave a quiet sob against my shoulder, and what I had taken for the chattering of her teeth was in fact a repeated refrain: too late, too late, too late.
“No,” I whispered. “Oh no.”
We were still Underground.
“Yes,” he said, the word a soft, sibilant caress. “I win.”
I gripped my sister tighter to me.
“Well,” the Goblin King amended. “I will win, once the full moon rises on the new year.”
I stiffened. “It hasn’t risen?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “You are close. Too close for comfort, in fact.” He waved his hand. The icy sky rippled, and the stars returned, weak and watery, as though seen through a reflection upon the surface of a lake.
“We stand upon the threshold, you see,” he said. “The world above lies beyond that veil.”
Käthe sucked in a sharp breath as she turned to face the stars. They bathed her face and hair in silver and she closed her eyes, as though to shut out the sight of freedom, so close yet so far.
“How long before the moonrise?” I asked.
“Not long,” the Goblin King said. A grin spread across his face. “Not long enough for you to escape, at any rate.”
“You have to give me a chance.”
He crossed his arms. “No.”
“A gentleman would honor the rules.”
“Ah, but I am not a gentleman, Elisabeth.” The Goblin King was all affectation and languid sarcasm. “I am a king.”
Realization swept over me in a wave. “You were never going to let me win.”
“No.” He bared his teeth. “After all, am I not the Lord of Mischief?”
The Lord of Mischief. Of course.
“Then why play this game?” I asked. “Why bother with all this when you could have simply taken what you wanted?”
An unfathomable expression flashed across his eyes. Suddenly he seemed terribly old—old and weary. I was reminded that Der Erlkönig had existed in these mountains and woods longer than I, longer than time itself.
“I do not want this.” The words were soft, so soft I might have imagined them. “I never wanted this.”
Surprise slashed through me, leaving me cold and breathless. “Mein Herr,” I said. “Then what…”
The Goblin King laughed. His face, previously old and haggard, took on a puckish expression. His features sharpened: his gaze hard and glittering, his cheekbones a slash of shadow.
“What did you think the answer would be, Elisabeth? I toy with you because I can. Because it gives me great pleasure. Because I was bored.”
An inarticulate scream of rage strangled me. I wanted to destroy something, to spend my anger against the unfairness of everything. I wanted nothing more than to grapple with the Goblin King, to tear him from limb to limb, a Maenad against Orpheus. I tightened my hands into fists.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Go ahead. Hit me. Strike me.” The invitation was not just in his words, but his voice. He advanced. “Use your rage against me.”
We stared at each other, scarcely half a breath between us. This close, I could see that his gray eye was flecked with silver and blue, his green one ringed with amber and gold. Those eyes mocked me, inviting and inciting me into a passion. If I were a smoldering ember, he was the poker, stirring me into flames.
I retreated. I was afraid. Afraid to touch him for fear of starting a fire within me.
“What,” I asked tightly, “do you want from me, mein Herr?”
“I already told you what I want,” he said. “You, entire.”
We did not relinquish each other’s gaze. Let go, his eyes seemed to say. But I couldn’t; if I surrendered to my fury, I wasn’t certain what else I would give up.
“Why?” My voice was hoarse.
“Why what, Elisabeth?”
“Why me?” My words were barely audible, b
ut the Goblin King heard them. He had always heard me.
“Why you?” Those sharp, pointed teeth glistened. “Who else but you?” Even his words were sharp, each slicing through me like a knife. “You, who have always been my playmate?”
Childish laughter rang in my ears, but it was more memory than sound, the memory of a little girl and a little boy, dancing together in the wood. He, the king of the goblins, and she, an innkeeper’s daughter. No, a musician’s daughter. No, a musician herself.
A wife, said the little boy. I need a wife. Will you marry me someday?
The little musician laughed.
Just give me a chance, Elisabeth.
“A chance,” I whispered. “Give me a chance to win. The moon has not yet risen.”
The Goblin King said nothing for a long moment. “The game is unwinnable,” he said at last. “For either you or me.”
I shook my head. “I must try.”
“Oh, Elisabeth.” The way he said my name reached out and stroked some inner part of me. “One could almost admire your tenacity, if it weren’t so foolish.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to plead my case, but he placed his long fingers against my lips and silenced me.
“Very well,” he said. “One last chance. One last game. Find your sister, and I shall let the both of you go.”
“Is that all?”
His only response was a smile, more scary than soothing.
“Fine,” I said, my voice shaking. “Come, Käthe, let us be gone from here.”
But she did not come.
“Käthe?”
I whirled around, but I was alone, my sister vanished. Again.
Find your sister.
I did scream then. The cavern shook with my screams, of rage, of self-loathing, of hatred, of despair. The world around me shifted again, and I was once more in that strange and eerie forest, out in the cold with the stars above. The sky was clear, and the stars watched from a dispassionate distance.
I was in the world above.
“Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no, no.”
In the woods, only the echoes of Der Erlkönig’s mocking laugh lingered.
“You bastard!” I raged. “Come out and fight fair!”