Wintersong

  To his surprise, I accepted. The tailor took the robe and fashioned it into a simple dinner gown. His long, spindly fingers clacked as he worked, ripping the seams until he had enough material to stitch into something wearable. The speed and dexterity of his fingers astonished me; within a few moments he had put together a dress with a full skirt and modest bodice. The gown was dull and ashy brown in color, the color of dirt, the color of mud. It was also, I thought, the color of sparrow feathers.

  “Good evening, Elisabeth.”

  The whisper of a cool breath against my neck. I shivered, icy fingers traveling down my spine. I faced the Goblin King and dropped a curtsy.

  “Good evening, mein Herr.”

  He brought my hand to his lips, all courtesy and charm. He was as resplendent as a peacock in a beautiful moss-green frock coat made of silk brocade, gold and copper thread woven into a pattern of autumn leaves. His satin breeches were cream, his stockings snow white, the toes of his pointed black shoes turned up like goblin feet in illustrations I had seen as a child. He was stunning, both as a king of goblins and as a man. My breath caught in my throat.

  “How are you, my dear?” The Goblin King held both my hands in his own. His were gloved; mine were bare. “Was the klavier to your liking?”

  I stiffened. I thought of the gleaming instrument in the room next to mine, waiting for me to sit down and compose. The beauty of its shape and sound had pushed at me, pressing down on my defenses.

  “Are you mocking me?” I asked.

  The Goblin King was surprised. “Why would I mock you? Did you not enjoy my gift?”

  I pulled my hands out of his grasp and turned away. I could not accept this gift from him; its very existence reminded me of the hollowed-out space inside me that longed to be filled.

  “Don’t, please,” I said. “It wasn’t a gift; it was an assault.”

  Those mismatched eyes immediately shuttered, turning his face cold and pitiless. I did not realize until he disappeared that I had been speaking with the soft-eyed young man. Der Erlkönig appeared in his place.

  “Shall we, my queen?” His distance was colder and bitterer than a winter wind. He offered his arm and I took it as he guided me to the great table in the middle of the hall. Once I had been seated on one end, the Goblin King disappeared and reappeared at the other end within a blink.

  The large table was situated next to an enormous hearth, larger than I was tall, in which a monster of a boar was spitted and roasting over a roaring fire. Out of the shadows came a multitude of servers, each bearing a dish or a platter I had never seen or heard of before. Two servers lifted the boar from the fireplace and set it, still steaming and smoking, on a lake-sized plate surrounded by an assortment of goblin fruits.

  “Let us say grace,” the Goblin King said, once the servers had retreated.

  My fingers were already wrapped around the fork and knife in front of me, and I shamefacedly returned them to my lap. My husband was more devout than I. I was curious about his faith, but kept silent as I bowed my head. The Goblin King asked for the Lord’s blessing upon our meal—in Latin.

  Where had he learned Latin? My own Latin was rudimentary at best, half-remembered from Sunday school lessons I had given up in favor of hobnobbing with Josef and the goblins in the wood. Heathens, our mother had called us, with no care or concept for God. But Josef and I hadn’t minded; we were Der Erlkönig’s own, and he did not believe in God. And yet this Goblin King sat before me, learned in Latin and schooled in music. Just who was he?

  “Amen,” he said once he had finished the benediction.

  “Amen,” I intoned. We commenced eating. I was amused by the shape of my utensils: the fork, fashioned into a thin, slender goblin hand with its many-jointed fingers and pointed claws serving as the prongs; the knife, suggesting a long fang slipping from a smiling mouth. The servers returned, carving up the boar and transferring the meat—steaming, red, undercooked, still dripping a little with blood—onto a large platter.

  We ate without speaking, as I picked at the roast and other winter root vegetables. I spied assorted dishes, custards and flans and other delicacies, but they all turned my stomach. Cooked with a goblin flair, they looked strange, unnatural, rotten: the chocolates muddy, the pastries frosted with slime.

  “What, does the food not please you either, my queen?”

  I looked up from my repast. The Goblin King wore a sour expression, his lips pulled tight. He picked at his own plate, a meager portion barely touched.

  “No, mein Herr.” I rephrased my words. “Your offerings do not tempt me.”

  “No?” He drove his fork into his roast with increasing force. “And what would it take to please you, my dear?”

  He was in a sullen mood, his lower lip pushed into a pout that rivaled Käthe’s. He was like a child denied his favorite toy, a spoiled child accustomed to getting his way.

  So I said nothing, giving the Goblin King a nonchalant shrug as I took a large sip of wine.

  “So particular, my queen,” he remarked. “You will be here for the rest of your life; you might as well enjoy yourself.”

  I had no response to that, so I took another sip of wine.

  The meal progressed in silence, a silence that stuck in both our throats. Neither of us ate much, but the goblin servers continued to bring out course after course after course. I tried my best to honor each dish, but the Goblin King had given up all pretense of eating. He drank cup after cup after cup of wine, growing more and more irritable when his servers did not refill his goblet quickly enough. It was the most I had ever seen him drink, but he seemed completely sober. Papa would have been laughing—or crying—by now.

  I watched the Goblin King fidget from beneath my lashes. I knew he longed to break the stillness that was not still between us. His mood grew fouler with each passing moment. He slid the platters and bowls on the table back and forth, watching the food slop on the surface and onto the floor, forcing the goblins to clean up after him. I could see the words forming on his tongue, but he clamped his lips shut and swallowed them down, determined not to be the one who broke first.

  But he did anyway.

  “Well, my dear,” he said at last.

  He wanted to fill the empty spaces with sound, with meaningless conversation. He was a little like Josef in that way; Josef, who always played because he could not bear the silence. I was content to shape the quiet into the structures I wanted.

  So I waited.

  “What scintillating topics shall we discuss over supper?” the Goblin King continued. “We have the rest of your life to reacquaint ourselves, after all.” He took another sip of his wine. “How about the wine? A very good vintage, if I do say so myself.”

  Again I said nothing. I methodically took bite after small bite of my food, chewing slowly and carefully.

  “What about the weather?” he continued. “Ever-unchanging here in the Underground, but winter in the world above, or so I’ve been told. Spring, they say, is slow to come this year.”

  I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth. I thought of what the tailor had said, of the earth belonging to the goblins during the days of winter. The food turned to ash on my tongue, crumbling all the way down my throat. I took another sip of wine.

  The Goblin King had had enough. “Will you not speak?” he demanded.

  I cut myself another piece of roast. “You were doing a fine job by yourself,” I said mildly.

  “I had not thought you would be such a dull conversationalist, Elisabeth.” He sulked. “You were always willing to speak to me before. Back in the Goblin Grove. Back when we were young.”

  Had Der Erlkönig ever been young? He was ageless and ancient, yet I seemed to remember his face, round and fleshed out with youth. I remembered a little girl in the wood, and a little boy.

  “A little girl’s idle chatter is not the same as scintillating conversation, mein Herr.” I set down my utensils. “But what did I tell you?”

  The Goblin King smiled,
but I could not tell whether it teased or soothed. “Many things. You wanted to be a famous composer. You wanted to have your music heard in all the great concert halls of the world.”

  Pain flared out from my breast, lightning quick, but the burn of it lingered after its initial strike. It was true I had dreamed those things once. Before Josef stole our father’s attention with his gifts. Before Papa had made it abundantly clear to me that the world had no interest in hearing my music. Because it was strange. Because it was queer. Because I was a woman.

  “Then you know the very heart of me,” I said. “And there is no more to be said.”

  The Goblin King’s face darkened. “What is wrong with you, Elisabeth?”

  I lifted my eyes to his. “There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “There is.” He shifted in his seat, and although there was an endless array of food and feast between us, he was too close. A storm was brewing behind those mismatched eyes, and the air between us crackled with electricity. “You’re not the Elisabeth I remember. I thought that if you—that if you became my—” He cut himself off abruptly. “This,” he said, gesturing to the space between us, “is not what I was hoping for.”

  “People grow up, mein Herr,” I said shortly. “They change.”

  He gave me a hard look. “Evidently.” He stared at me for a beat longer before leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, resting his feet on the table. “Ah, well, my mistake. Time passes differently Underground than in the world above. Mere moments for me, several years and a lifetime ago for you, apparently.” The storm in his eyes grew darker.

  A hapless goblin attendant tried to move one of the Goblin King’s feet to clean beneath it. “What are you doing?” he snapped.

  The goblin gave him a beetling look and tried to scurry out of the way, but not before the Goblin King grabbed the poor thing by the scruff of its neck and gave it a malicious kick, sending it ear over toe across the room.

  I was horrified. “How could you?”

  His eyes glittered dangerously. “It would do the same to me if it could,” he said mulishly.

  “You’re Der Erlkönig,” I said. “You are their king, and hold untold power over them. You are the reason they cannot leave the Underground. Have a little pity, why don’t you?”

  He snorted. “They are as much my jailers as I am theirs,” he retorted. “If I could lay down my burden as warden of the Underground, I would. If I could wander the world above as a free man, I would. Instead, I am a prisoner to my crown.”

  That brought me up short. He had always seemed to come and go at my beck and call in the Goblin Grove, but in his own way, he was trapped. Like me.

  “What would you do, if you were a free man?” I asked.

  The question struck him in the chest, spreading through his throat and face like the blush of dawn. With life and color to his features, he looked once more like the austere young man in the portrait gallery: young, idealistic, and vulnerable.

  “I would take my violin and play.” The words were spoken almost before his lips could catch up to what he was saying. “I would walk the world and play, until someone called me by name and called me home.”

  His name and his home. What had my Goblin King left behind in the mortal world? Was it a greater torment to watch everything you had known and loved transform and disappear before your eyes while you remained alive and unchanging? Or was it worse to die before you could witness that change for yourself?

  The Goblin King’s eyes met my own, and for the briefest moment, I saw him—truly him—behind the mask of Der Erlkönig, down to the boy he had been. But he blinked, and the mantle was upon him once more.

  “And what of you, Elisabeth?” he drawled. “What would you do, if you were free?”

  I turned my head, eyes stinging. He had returned my question with a particularly vicious volley, and we both knew it.

  “We can play this game all you like,” he said. “Question for question, answer for answer.”

  “You can keep your answers to yourself,” I replied. “I have no further questions.”

  “Oh, Elisabeth.” His voice was sad. “What happened between us? What happened to you? You were once so passionate and open with me, and now I can barely see the friend I once knew. Why won’t you come out and play, Elisabeth? Why?”

  He had all the questions, but I had no further answers. We finished our meal without another word between us.

  * * *

  After the goblins had cleared the last of our dishes away, the Goblin King invited me to join him in his retiring room. A slight tingle of excitement began at the base of my spine at the prospect of being in his private chambers again, and I agreed. I wished I could sort out my feelings for him, my lord and jailer, friend and foe. Part of me yearned to draw him close, while another wanted to keep him at arm’s length. The Goblin King offered me his arm and we left the dining hall on a breeze.

  When I caught my breath, we were in a beautifully appointed space with two fireplaces, the near wall lined with bookshelves, the far wall lined with enormous silver mirrors that showed snow falling on a winter wood. A klavier stood at the center. A white gown smudged with dirt hung from a rack beside the instrument. I frowned.

  “This,” I began, but my voice squeaked. I cleared my throat. “This is your retiring room?”

  The Goblin King nodded. “Of course, my dear. What do you think of it?”

  “But it’s—it’s the one connected—” I could not finish the sentence.

  “The one connected to your bedchamber?” he asked dryly. “But of course; we are married, after all.”

  A flush heated my cheeks. “And then your bedchamber—”

  “Is on the other side of this wall.” He gestured to the wall on the opposite side from my bedroom. I noted no threshold connecting his quarters to the retiring room. The Goblin King saw me searching and lowered his voice.

  “There is no direct path from your bed to mine,” he said softly. “And I could remove them even farther from each other, if that is your wish.”

  My cheeks flared even hotter, but I shook my head. “No, no,” I said. “It’s fine.” I straightened my shoulders and lifted my eyebrow, matching his dry tone as best I could. “After all, we are married.”

  A twitch at the corners of his lips. He conjured two chairs and a reclining couch before one of the fireplaces. “Relax, my dear.”

  I sat on the reclining couch. Two comely youths crawled from the shadows, one bearing a decanter of brandy, the other a tray with two cut-crystal glasses. I was startled by their appearance, not just because I hadn’t seen them in the dark, but because of their humanlike appearance. Most of the goblins I had seen were of Twig and Thistle’s ilk: more creature than kin.

  One of the attendants presented me with a glass of brandy. I gasped; for the space of a breath, I thought it was Josef beside me.

  Then I blinked. The face waiting so very patiently by my side did not belong to my younger brother; the skin was too pale, the cheekbones too angular, the features altogether too pretty. Yet there was something of Josef in this youth’s face, in the sensitive tilt of his mouth, the cant of his brows. But the eyes were pure goblin: a flat black that left no room for the whites about the pupils.

  The Goblin King gave me a sharp glance. “What is it, my dear?” He saw me staring at his attendants. “Oh, Elisabeth,” he said, “surely you’ve not forgotten my changelings?”

  He rested his hand on the youth nearest him, affectionately caressing the boy’s face. The attendant’s expression betrayed nothing, but when the Goblin King tilted back his head for a kiss, the youth complied with a razor-toothed smile. It was a lascivious, knowing sort of smile. Then I realized he was one of the goblin swains I had met at the goblin ball, one with whom I had played games of bluff.

  I took a sip of the brandy to disguise my discomfort. It tasted of summer peaches, of sunshine, of life, and it burned all the way down. I coughed.

  The Goblin King studied my face
, burning bright and red, and nodded at the changelings. They vanished without a word.

  “So,” I said, trying to smooth the awkwardness between us, “what shall we do to pass the time?” I couldn’t tell if it was the room or the brandy, but I was suddenly warm—too warm.

  The Goblin King shrugged. His eyes flitted to the klavier, where it gleamed in the glow of the fire and fairy lights. “It is up to you,” he said. “I am at my lady’s command.”

  It felt all so surreal and strange to be sitting with him, in this beautifully appointed room with a glass of brandy in her hand. When Käthe and I pretended to be rich noblewomen, we had played at their airs and graces, their refined and elegant tastes. But when confronted with the reality of it, I was at a loss. At the inn, there was never any time for leisure. After dinner had been served, there were dishes to wash, tables to clean, and floors to sweep and mop. It had always been Mother and me, working our hands to leather while Papa went out with his friends, while Constanze rested in her room upstairs, while Käthe primped and preened, while Josef played.

  “What would you do?” I asked.

  The Goblin King poured himself a glass of brandy, his silver-white-gold hair falling to cover his expression. “I would play some music.”

  I held my glass in both hands, as though it could protect me from what I knew he would ask next. He would ask me to play. He would ask to listen to my music.

  “All right,” I said. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, a knife-slash of a gaze that cut deep. But it was the hope and delight in his face that cut deeper. “Why don’t you play a little something on the klavier for me, mein Herr?”

  The light in his eyes dimmed. “As you wish, my queen.”

  The Goblin King set down his brandy and walked to the klavier, flipping out the tails of his coat as he sat down on the bench. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys and began to play.

  At first I didn’t recognize his choice of music. Gradually it revealed itself as a simple children’s skipping song, one Käthe and I had sung as we played in the wood. The Goblin King elaborated on the theme in a few variations, and I listened politely, my toe tapping the floor beneath me.