Wintersong

  The silence between us began to fill.

  “Who are you, Elisabeth? Answer this, and you shall understand.”

  I frowned. “I am,” I began, then stopped. The Goblin King did not press me, but simply waited. His patience was infinite; his patience was immortal.

  “I am … I am an innkeeper’s daughter.” It was the answer I would have given when I was Liesl, but it no longer felt true.

  The Goblin King shook his head. “That is what you were.”

  “I am … a musician. A composer.”

  A small smile tilted his lips, but he shook his head again. “That is what you are. But who are you, Elisabeth?”

  “I am…”

  Who was I? Daughter, sister, wife, queen, composer; these were titles I had been given and claimed, but they were not the whole of me. They were not me, entire. I closed my eyes.

  “I am,” I said slowly, “a girl with music in her soul. I am a sister, a daughter, a friend, who fiercely protects those dear to her. I am a girl who loves strawberries, chocolate torte, songs in a minor key, moments stolen from chores, and childish games. I am short-tempered yet disciplined. I am self-indulgent, selfish, yet selfless. I am compassion and hatred and contradiction. I am … me.”

  I opened my eyes. The Goblin King gazed upon with me with naked longing. My pulse skipped, tripping over the emotions in my blood. His eyes were as clear as water, and I could see down to the heart of where he had been, my austere young man.

  “You are Elisabeth,” he said. “A name, yes. But a soul as well.”

  I understood then. He could not give me his name because he was no one; he was Der Erlkönig. He was hollowed out, his name and his essence stolen by the old laws. The space within where the austere young man had been was wanting, longing to be filled.

  “I am Elisabeth,” I said. “But Elisabeth is only a name. An empty word I fill with myself. But you had a word once; I see the echoes of it within you.”

  I couldn’t say why I wanted his name. It didn’t matter; he was Der Erlkönig, the Goblin King, mein Herr. But these were titles bestowed upon him, not ones he had claimed for himself. I wanted the part of him that did not belong to the Underground, but to the world above. To the mortal man he had been. The mortal man he could have been … with me.

  “It is gone,” he said. “Lost. Forgotten.”

  We did not speak for a long time. I held his silence close to me. His name might have been forgotten, but it was not lost.

  “Well,” he said at last. “Do you accept my forfeit?” The Goblin King extended his hands, palms up.

  No. I did not accept. It was not what I had asked for, but it was what I would have to take.

  “Yes,” I said. “Your turn is ended.” I placed my hands in his.

  “Good.” His smile hardened. “Then I shall ask you five questions, Elisabeth, and you must reply truthfully or pay the forfeit.”

  I nodded.

  “Why have you not continued work on the sonata?”

  I winced. The Wedding Night—our Wedding Night Sonata. The first movement was finished, but I had not taken up the quill to begin work on the second. Our evenings had been filled with music, but not mine.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “That is not an answer.”

  “It is the truth.”

  The Goblin King raised his brows. He did not accept.

  “I don’t know,” I repeated. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t tried. I wanted to finish it, I wanted to write something wholly and utterly in my own voice, something the world would hear and know as mine. But every time I sat before the klavier, every time I pressed my fingers to the keys, nothing came. “I … I can’t continue. I don’t know how. It’s as if … it’s dead inside.”

  The Goblin King narrowed his eyes, but I could not give him another answer. He studied me closely, but did not ask me to justify myself, and simply asked the next question.

  “What do you miss about the world above?”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. The Goblin King’s face was carefully neutral, and I could read nothing of his intent. Did he mean to be cruel? Consoling? Or was he merely curious?

  “Many things,” I said in a faltering voice. “Why do you ask?”

  “Your turn for questions is ended, Elisabeth. Answer truthfully or pay a forfeit.”

  I turned my head. Although I could not say why, I could not look at him while I gave my answer.

  “Sunshine. Snow. The sound of branches lashing against a windowpane during a storm. Standing before the hearth in the middle of summer, the feel of sweat trickling down my neck. And then the unexpected sweetness of a cool breeze from an open window.” I glanced at the salver of strawberries on the klavier. “I miss the sharp, green taste of lemony grass, the yeastiness of beer.”

  Tears burned along my lashes, but I did not cry. Could not cry. There were no tears in me, and I felt the stinging of phantom sobs run up and down my throat.

  “I even miss the parts I didn’t know to miss. The pungent, musky pong of an inn overcrowded with travelers. Leather-clad feet, baby breath, sodden wool. Men, women, children.” I laughed. “People. I miss people.”

  The Goblin King was silent. I still could not bear to look at him, and our only communion was through the meeting of our hands.

  “If you could,” he said softly, “if it were at all possible, would you leave the Underground?”

  This time, it was I who snatched my hands away, to hide their trembling. “No.”

  “Liar.” I could hear the snarl in his voice.

  I straightened my shoulders and steeled myself to meet his gaze. The Goblin King’s lips were twisted in a sneer, but his eyes were sad.

  “Down here,” I said, “I have found myself. Down here, I have space to be. It is a gift I never looked for, and I cherish it.”

  “It wasn’t a gift.” The Goblin King picked up the salver of strawberries and presented it to me. I picked the biggest, reddest one. “It is merely a consolation prize.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The game is finished. I’m tired.”

  “Do you accept my answer, then?”

  He looked at the big, red strawberry in my hand. “No.”

  “Then what is your forfeit?”

  The set of his mouth tightened. “Finish your strawberries, Elisabeth. That is what I claim of you.”

  A strange request, but I did as he asked. I took a bite. And gagged.

  I tasted nothing.

  I stared at the strawberry in my hand, its flesh still succulent and soft, the juice still running down my fingers. I could still smell its sweet perfume, a promising treat. But without its taste, the berry was nothing but mushy flesh and grainy skin. My stomach turned.

  The Goblin King said nothing, only watched as I ate berry after tasteless berry, as I paid my penalty.

  THE THRESHOLD

  “I have a present for you.”

  It was the changeling again, the one with whom I had spoken on the shores of the Underground lake. I was there again, hiding from my goblin attendants. During my uncounted hours, I often found myself listless; unable to compose, unable to play, and unable to eat. The flesh about my ribs had thinned to reveal a cage of bones, my cheeks sunken to expose a death’s-head grin. Food had lost all its savor, a fact Thistle never failed to notice or relish whenever she brought me my dinner tray. I ate to spite her, but it was hard, so much harder when all pleasure was gone from the eating.

  The changeling had his hands cupped around an object, offering it to me as though it were a precious thing, a baby bird.

  “Another?”

  He nodded. His palms opened like a flower, and at their heart, there lay a bloody mass. I gasped.

  The changeling tilted his head, his flat, black eyes watching me with no expression. Then I realized that it wasn’t a dying creature in his hands; it was a bunch of strawberries, bruised, battered, and bleeding.

  “Oh,” I sai
d, a bit breathless. “Thank you.”

  “They’re not from me,” he said. “They’re from the sunshine girl.”

  Käthe. The sunshine girl. The first smile in an age touched my lips, and my spirits, dead and dull, stirred within me.

  “An offering in the grove?”

  The changeling nodded again. “I saw her from the shadows. She spoke your name and wished you happy birthday.”

  Birthday? I had forgotten. I had long ceased to mark the passing of days, weeks, hours. The Underground never changed, never transformed with the seasons, and the years stretched out ahead of me, bland and blank. “Is it midsummer?”

  “Yes. Everything is warm and lush and green.” The changeling’s voice was as flat as his expressionless eyes, yet I thought I could hear a note of longing in it. His longing echoed in me.

  It would be my twentieth summer, in the world above.

  “I wish I could see it.” A useless wish. I had the power to bend the will of the goblins to my desire, but this was not one they could fulfill.

  The changeling said nothing, but pushed his hands forward, berries still red in his palms.

  When we went strawberry picking, Käthe and I used to argue over which were the best berries to gather. She always went for the biggest, whereas I always picked the reddest. She used to say that it was best to have the biggest, because you got the most strawberry for the littlest effort. I would retort that bigger wasn’t always better; the reddest berries, the ones most vibrant and even in color, were always the sweetest.

  The berries in the changeling’s hands were small, but each was perfect in its red intensity. They shone like jewels in the dark, and I wished I could want them. That I could crave them the way I once had. But the taste of strawberries, of chocolate, of tart mustard on yeasty bread—they were all gone.

  I plucked a berry from the changeling’s hands anyway.

  “Thank you,” I said, and took a bite.

  Sweetness burst across the tongue. More than sweet; I tasted sunshine in the meadow, lemony greenness, heat. Memories flooded in along with the taste, running down my throat like tears.

  I tasted Käthe’s love.

  “Oh,” I breathed. “Oh!”

  I devoured the rest, shoving them all into my mouth like a child, as many as I could hold. I should have waited, I should have savored, but I didn’t care. Color returned to my world, and I felt my veins run with red.

  The changeling was silent as I ate. It wasn’t until I had finished that I caught the look of envy on his face. It was the first truly human expression I had ever seen in a changeling and it startled me.

  “I’m sorry.” I wiped the juice from my lips. “I didn’t think to offer you any.”

  He shrugged. “It would turn to ashes in my mouth anyway.”

  Sympathy flared through me. We weren’t so different, the changeling and I. Neither dead nor truly alive. Along with my sense of taste, all my emotions returned to me with full force. My throat closed with the pity and sorrow I felt for this strange creature. I covered his hands with mine.

  Hunger swept over his features, and too late I remembered Thistle’s warning. Careful, they bite.

  But the changeling did not move. Instead, he closed his eyes, and pain thumped my chest. He reminded me so much of Josef, his gentle fragility, his ethereal otherworldliness. This changeling lived a half-life, and suddenly I was glad my brother was far from me, far from the fate from which my love had saved him.

  Stay away, Sepperl, I thought fiercely. Stay away, and never come back.

  “They say love can free you,” the changeling whispered. “That if one, just one person loved you enough, it could bring you back to the world above.” He opened his eyes, those flat, inhuman goblin eyes, and implored me. “Would you love me?”

  His words, those little gifts. It was all made clear to me now why this changeling had sought me out. An invisible hand crumpled my heart in my chest. I wanted to gather him in my arms, to soothe him the way I would have soothed my little brother, kissing away the pain from his fingertips after Papa had made him practice his scales so much it tore the calluses. But he was not my brother.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could.

  The changeling did not react to my denial. I searched his face for hurt, for anger, but saw nothing but the inhuman, unfamiliar affect of the other goblins.

  “I’ll bring more strawberries next time,” was all he said. “Is there anything you want me to give the sunshine girl?”

  It was as though a thunderclap rang in the grotto. Silence and shock rang across the lake like a gong, resonating in my bones.

  “You … you can do that?”

  He shrugged. “She doesn’t see or hear me standing there. But if I can bring you her gifts, then maybe you can leave something for her.”

  Hope. Hope so searing it burned me with determination.

  “Could you … could you bring me with you?”

  The changeling studied me. I could read nothing in his goblin gaze.

  “All right,” he said. “Tomorrow. Meet me here tomorrow.”

  * * *

  I returned immediately to the retiring room and gathered the leaves of the Wedding Night Sonata, the beginnings of a fair copy, the foul papers, and all. I folded them together in haste, a jumble of music and half-coherent thoughts, wrapping them with the length of ribbon my sister had tied around the clover blossoms.

  “What are you doing?” asked Thistle.

  The goblin girls were by my side, though the room had been empty when I arrived. Sometimes I wondered if they were charged with spying on me in addition to attending to me. Then I felt guilty for the thought. There was no reason the Goblin King had to spy on me, no reason for me to hide my actions.

  Until now.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “It is none of your business.”

  “Is there anything with which we can assist you, Your Highness?” Twig asked. Of my two goblin girls, she was the kinder one, the one more inclined to offer deference instead of contempt.

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m fine. Now shoo, the both of you, and leave me alone.”

  Thistle crawled atop the klavier and leaned toward me. She breathed in deep.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “You smell of hope.” Her lips split in a jagged grin. “Interesting.”

  I batted her away. “Get off, you little homunculus.”

  “Hope, and sunshine,” Twig added. I jumped when her branch-laden hair scraped against my side. “Like the world above. Like … like her.”

  I paused in the gathering of my music. “Like whom?”

  Twig yelped as Thistle leaped from the klavier and tackled her to the floor.

  “Like whom?” I repeated.

  “You raging idiot,” Thistle snarled, pulling handfuls of tufty cobwebs from Twig’s head. “You stupid, sentimental fool.”

  “Enough!” My goblin girls flew apart, the force of my will sending them crashing into opposite corners of the retiring room. “You”—I pointed at Thistle—“are dismissed. And you”—I pointed at Twig—“are to stay here and explain yourself.”

  Thistle resisted my command as long as she could, her ugly face twisting and contorting with the effort as her fingers, then her legs, and then her body began to vanish. Her head was the last to disappear, her furious grimace lingering long after the rest of her was gone.

  Twig groveled at my feet. Bits of cobweb floated in the air like dust motes as she trembled.

  “Twig,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I know, Your Highness.” She lifted her head. “But I am not supposed to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About the nameless maiden.”

  Time ceased. The flames froze in the fireplace, the cobwebs and dust motes hung like stars.

  “Do you mean,” I said softly, “the first Goblin Queen?”

  The one who lived.

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  The nameless, br
ave maiden. I had forgotten about her, forgotten that she was the first and only one of us to make her sacrifice, and survive.

  “How?” I whispered. “How did she escape?”

  “She didn’t.” Twig twisted her spindly fingers into gnarled fists. “He let her go.”

  Something snapped behind my eyes: pain, explosion, an epiphany. “What?”

  She nodded. “Der Erlkönig loved her, and he let her go.”

  For a moment, the sharp stab of jealousy gutted me. Der Erlkönig had loved the brave maiden. He had loved her beyond the breaking of the old laws and the end of the world.

  “How,” I said in a low voice, “is that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Twig whispered. “But their sacrifices were made in love, a love so vast it spanned both the world above and below. Their love was a bridge, and so they crossed it.”

  I frowned. “They?”

  She trembled even harder at my question. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, and the effort of answering—or not answering—was causing her anguish.

  “Twig,” I said. “Are you saying that … that the brave maiden and Der Erlkönig walked out of the Underground—together?”

  The gallery of Goblin Kings. The changing face of Der Erlkönig through the ages. A succession? Sons? Heirs? But Thistle had said no union of mortal or the Underground had ever been fruitful. There has always been Der Erlkönig. There will always be Der Erlkönig.

  Twig wailed, and with horror, I saw a band of granite grow around her chest, a spreading stain of gray. She moved her fingers and they moaned and cracked, like branches caught in a gale. Bark covered her claws, her knuckles, her palms. My kindhearted goblin girl was turning into roots and rock.

  “Stop!” I cried. “Enough!”

  But I could not stop her transformation, and she stiffened and twisted, turning into a hideous statue of herself.

  “I release her!” I shouted. “I release her from my will!”

  Time resumed. Once more, the flames danced merrily in the grate. My goblin girl stared at me, all traces of bark and stone gone from her body.

  “Is there anything else I can assist you with, Your Highness?” Twig tilted her head, but I could read nothing in her black, expressionless eyes.