The pain that stabbed me was sudden and fierce. I turned my head away so the Goblin King would not see me cry. My little brother had once told me that exact thing, before I came to the Underground, before I understood the difference between genesis and exegesis. I was too full of me, too full of my memories. I was drowning in the mire of my childhood dreams, and the unbearable pleasure of the present.
I felt the comfort of his presence settle down beside me on the steps. The Goblin King rested a gentle kiss on my shoulder blade, but said nothing, waiting for me to pull back my emotions, waiting for me to compose myself.
“Who—who taught you to play the violin?” I managed, clearing my throat of the sadness lodged there.
I felt him smile against my shoulder as he mumbled an answer.
“What?”
He lifted his head. “His name,” he said softly, “was Brother Mahieu.”
A monk. A monk of no consequence even, one who had passed from the world above without leaving a mark. Yet the Goblin King remembered him. The Goblin King had clearly loved him, and it was in his love that the beloved old teacher lived on. This was the immortality humans were meant to have: to be remembered by those who loved us long after our bodies had crumbled into dust.
I thought of my brother and sister, those who still loved me, and remembered. They were waiting for me in the world above, and I felt the wings of tomorrow settle over me. Too soon. It was too soon.
“What was he like?” I asked, my back still turned to the Goblin King. “Did he raise you? Who were your parents? How came you to the abbey? What—”
“Elisabeth.”
I still did not face him. I was not ready.
“Tomorrow has come.”
I shook my head, but we were past the point of no return. I had made my choice. I had chosen myself. I had chosen selfishness.
The Goblin King sensed my hesitation. “Don’t regret your decision to live.”
“I don’t,” I whispered. “And I won’t.” It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it entirely the truth.
“Elisabeth.”
I tensed.
“Elisabeth, look at me.”
Slowly, reluctantly, I turned around. There was a light shining in his eyes, a light that would remember me, long after I had faded from both the Underground and the world above. And those eyes … those eyes were brilliant gems. They changed his face utterly. His beauty no longer seemed so unsettling or uncanny, so preternaturally flawless. There was a vividness to his face, and it made him seem young. Vulnerable.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The question fell like a raindrop between us, pinging the glass quiet that enveloped us both.
“I am Der Erlkönig, the Lord of Mischief and the King Underground.”
I shook my head. “No, that is what you are. Who are you?”
“I am the Goblin King, your immortal beloved, your eternal lover.”
He was Der Erlkönig, and he was my Goblin King, but I wanted to know who he was to himself. His name was the last bit of him I could not have.
“No,” I said. “I know who you are.”
Teeth slipped from his grin. “Who am I?”
“You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish.”
The Goblin King did not reply.
“Well?” I asked. “Do I have the right of it?”
“Yes,” he said thickly. “Yes, you have the very soul of me, Elisabeth.”
“Then your name, mein Herr.”
He laughed softly, but it was a gasp of pain, not of joy. “No.”
“Why?”
“So you will forget me,” he said simply. “You cannot love a man with no name.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“A name is something that belongs to a mortal man.” There was an expression I couldn’t quite decipher in his mismatched eyes. “And the man I was is back there—back in the world above.”
He pulled me close to him. I was nestled in his embrace, against the scar that crossed his heart.
“Find me,” he said, his voice low. “Find me there, Elisabeth. It’s only there, in the world above, that you will find the last bit of me.”
He let me go. But he was not just releasing me from his embrace; he was releasing me. He was releasing the girl who once played her music for him in the wood, the girl he had broken open to set her soul free, the girl to whom he had given himself, entire.
With a hitching breath, I reached into my pocket and withdrew his wolf’s-head ring, the ring he had set upon my finger the night we wed.
The Goblin King shook his head, closing my fingers around the ring. “Keep it.”
“But … is it not a symbol of your power?”
“It is.” He smiled sadly. “But it is only a symbol, Elisabeth. Of my power, yes, but also of my promise to you. Whatever else, I gave that ring to you in earnest, as a husband to a wife.”
I wrapped my hand around his ring and pressed it against my heart. “How … how is it to be done? How are we to be”—I swallowed—“parted?”
“We made our vows in this room,” the Goblin King said. “And so we can unmake them too.”
A chalice of wine appeared on the altar. He reached for the goblet, then hesitated.
“I cannot … I cannot help you. Once we break our troth, your power as the Goblin Queen, Der Erlkönig’s protection … it will all be gone. Have you the courage to make the way on your own?”
I did not. But I nodded just the same.
“The … the others will not make it easy. But I have faith, Elisabeth. Faith in you.”
I had no faith of my own, but the Goblin King had his, and it was his faith in me that would be my courage. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
He took my hands in his. “Rejoice, for you shall live,” he said softly, “and I shall rejoice with you.”
I kissed his hands. His eyes were worried, but his mien was calm. He was being strong for me.
“I do solemnly swear,” he said, “that I return the gift of your life, selflessly and selfishly given.”
It was hard to speak through my tears. “And I do solemnly swear,” I said, “that I accept my life, taken from your hands of my own free will.”
The Goblin King retrieved the chalice from the altar and offered the goblet to me.
“Let us drink,” he said. “And break our troth.”
THE RETURN
My reign as Goblin Queen was ended.
I knew the moment my power had broken, for the passages around me had rearranged themselves. The chapel and the Goblin King had vanished, and I was on my own. No more would my path through the Underground be straight and clear. I had no map, no compass to guide me, but I knew where I had to go. To the shores of the Underground lake, to find the skiff the changeling had moored in its secret dock, and row and ride my way to the world above.
The Underground was far less civilized without the grace and protection of my power as Queen. Goblins scuttled underfoot, their long, multi-jointed fingers click-clacking over stone, beetles skittering in the dark. Their beady eyes shone down on me, the watchful touch of a thousand inhuman eyes at my back. The eerie, watchful, waiting silence had a shape and texture to it. It brushed over me like dark, musty cobwebs, which clung to me no matter how much I tried to shake them off. The silence raised all the hairs along my arms, sending prickles of ice and needles up my spine, and with each step I took, fear and dread increased a hundredfold.
They will not make it easy. But I have faith, Elisabeth, faith in you.
I was careful of my step, but the malice of the Underground was deviously clever. A crevice suddenly opened up beneath my feet, and I tripped and wrenched my
ankle. Wincing with pain, I trod on the hem of my skirt, tumbling head over heels. I wiped at my stinging chin.
Blood.
The instant a drop of my blood hit the earth, a storm of hissing arose. This was the opportunity the goblins had been waiting for.
The clacking cacophony grew and swelled, like waves approaching some distant shore. Hands burst from beneath my feet—hands like gnarled and twisted branches, growing from the earth like brambles or vines. They grabbed at my ankles, my hair, my dress, my shoes, any part of me they could reach.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop!”
The corridors echoed with the sounds of their hands coming free, rattling off like gunshots. I covered my head and my ears as hands burst forth from the walls and the ceiling overhead, reaching, reaching, reaching. The hallways echoed with my screams.
“Stop! Please! I wish you would stop!”
But my wishes no longer had any power here. Crawling hands, myriad eyes, pointed teeth, all reaching to devour me, tear me apart limb from limb. Fingers twined about my feet brought me crashing down onto their waiting hands, a creature felled by a snare. I shrieked, struggling to break their grip, but their knobby fingers were strong. The hands bore me down into darkness, musty and rank with the sour scent of my panic.
Oh, God, oh, God, I thought. I will be buried alive.
Buried alive; what an ignominious end. Sacrificing my life for spring had been noble, but this? This was a terrible way to die. Not with a bang, but a whimper. I thought of the trees in the Goblin Grove, their uncomfortably human branches, and wondered if that was to be my fate, my limbs and shape immortalized by dead wood.
“What do you want from me?” I cried.
You, you, you, their hissing voices returned. We want you. You cannot leave the Underground, mortal, not without paying the price.
“What price?” Goblin hands crawled over my mouth and neck, as though to strangle the sounds coming from me. “Tell me and I shall pay it!”
The scuttling hands stopped. A few of them broke away to join together, their curled fingers and thumbs forming two eyes, a nose, a mouth. I was staring into a face.
There were only holes where the eyes should have been, only darkness inside its maw of a mouth. Yet I sensed a presence there, many goblins joined into a singular entity. I stared into the abyss, and found it staring back.
“What is it that you want?” I asked.
It was a while before those fingers could work together to form lips, a tongue, words.
You have something that belongs to us, mortal. Myriad voices joined together as one, a dissonant mass of pitches.
“What—”
It lives in the world above. More hands had come together to make a more complete face. High cheekbones. A pointed chin. Curls. The features were familiar. Free from our reach. Our influence.
Cold fear trickled into my veins, slowly turning me to ice. “No.”
Yes, they hissed. You know of whom we speak.
I shook my head. I did know of whom they spoke; they spoke of Josef. But I wasn’t going to give my brother up to the goblins.
The changeling, mortal, they said. The one you freed with the power of a wish. We want it back. It has no place among you humans; it belongs down here. With us. With its kin, here in the Underground.
“No.”
Yes, they repeated.
“No!”
The hands tightened about me.
We want it, they said again. It is rightfully ours. Bring it back, maiden. Bring it back.
It. As though my baby brother were an animal. As though he didn’t have a name, a life, a personhood. Josef might have been a changeling, but he was no less human than me, than Käthe, than all those who loved him.
“No,” I choked out. “He does not belong to you.”
Nor does he belong to you.
“No,” I gasped. “Josef belongs to himself.”
Those goblin hands squeezed tighter, and a sparkling blackness began to fill the corners of my vision. Your love is a cage, mortal. Set him free.
I laughed. It was lost amidst choking coughs as twining hands strangled the life from me, but I laughed nonetheless. I could no more stop loving Sepperl than I could stop the sun from rising each dawn.
Your love is killing him.
My laughs turned to sobs. Tears leaked from my eyes, scalding hot and salty. They tasted of my reluctance, my despair, but most of all, my love for the little changeling boy who stayed in the world above because he wanted to play music. Josef had died all those years ago, but my true brother, the brother of my heart, still lived. My tears dripped onto goblin hands, staining them with love.
A hiss of pain rose from them all, a collective susurrus like the sighing of branches in the wood. Multi-jointed fingers uncurled from my wrists, my arms, my waist, dropping me to the ground.
It burns! they cried. It burns!
Once released, I coughed and gulped down great gasps of air as all around me, echoes of It burns! It burns! blended with warnings of Your love is killing him into a symphony of discord.
I lay on my side, there on the floor of the dirty corridor, long after the goblin hands had disappeared. For although their voices had faded away, the damning words remained.
Your love is killing him.
* * *
I don’t know how long I lay there, crushed beneath the crippling weight of my doubt.
As long as you have a reason to love, Thistle had said. Love kept the wheel of life turning. Love created bridges between worlds. If there was nothing else I had learned, I had learned that love was greater than the old laws.
But uncertainty crept over me on silent wings, whispering in the changeling’s voice: None of us have lasted long in the world above.
I might have lain there in the dust and dirt, save for my promise to the Goblin King. There’s a fire within you; keep it alight. Move or die. If I could not walk, I would crawl. If I did not know the answers now, I would discover them later. While there was breath, there was time. I got to my feet.
And then, faintly, a violin began to play.
I closed my eyes. I had expected obstacles, physical trials to overcome, but the Underground knew to attack me where I was the most vulnerable: my heart.
It’s not Josef. It’s not the Goblin King. It is a trick, I chanted to myself. The mantra had saved me before, when Käthe and I trod these paths to fight our way back to the surface. But the words no longer possessed the power they once had and, almost against my will, my feet followed the sounds to a large cavern.
It was the ballroom. The ballroom that held the Goblin Ball, where the Goblin King and I had danced together for the first time. It was also the room where we had greeted our subjects as husband and wife. But it was empty now, no beautiful or otherworldly decorations, no banquet tables laid with bloody feasts. Yet in the center sat a quartet of musicians: a violinist, a keyboardist, a violoncellist, and a flautist.
The violoncellist and flautist held their instruments in their laps, their hands still. The other two were playing a slow, mournful piece, which I immediately recognized as the adagio from the Wedding Night Sonata. The violinist wore Josef’s face, but no glamour could fool me; the changeling could imitate my brother’s golden curls and delicate features, but he could never, ever recreate Josef’s skill.
In the changeling’s hands, my music was flat and uninspired. The notes thunked and thudded to the floor, carrying no emotion, no weight, no meaning. I had put so much of my frustration into this movement; the desire to go faster, go further, only to be met with denial at every turn. I had wanted the music to unsettle and agitate; instead it merely bored.
I ran forward to snatch my music off the stands, to take it back, when the violoncellist spoke.
“You waste your talent on this drivel.”
I startled. Papa.
“I hear no genius in the notes, no inspiration in their arrangement. This should all be burned in the rubbish heap.” He turned to me. “Ah, Lies
l. Do you not agree?”
I closed my eyes. Papa was by turns autocratic and convivial, depending on how many drinks were in him. I could never guess which version of my father I would be facing, so I took care never to face him at all.
“Well?”
I tried to cling to those moments with the Goblin King when we had been both lost and found in my music. When we had both been transported by sound and rapture, when nothing else had existed outside the time we played together. But I could not hold them, as Papa and my doubt wrenched them from my fingers.
“No,” I whispered. “No, I do not agree.”
I could hear the scrape of the chair push back as the violoncellist stood to his feet. A changeling, I told myself. It is a changeling. Not Papa. It can’t be Papa.
“No?” Papa’s voice was closer now, and the stink of stale beer overwhelmed me. “What have I told you, Liesl?”
If I opened my eyes, if I looked my father in the eyes, the illusion would be broken. I would see black goblin eyes in a human face, and know him for a changeling. But I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t face the possibility that it might not be true.
“You will never amount to anything.”
I flinched, expecting the blow of a violin bow like a rod upon my skin. He had broken several bows that way, bent against our backs as punishment.
“You overreach yourself. Grow up and stop indulging in these romantic flights of fancy.”
His voice seemed to come from the cracks, the nooks and crannies through which the wind from the world above whistled and wuthered. I tried to stand my ground, tried to push against the cruelty he wielded like a scythe, but I was shriveling, curling, drying up inside.
“Stand in the world above as you are, Elisabeth Vogler, and be judged as your father judged you: talentless, forgettable, worthless.”
Elisabeth.
Papa never called me Elisabeth. Within our family I was always Liesl, occasionally Lisette, and sometimes even Bettina. But my father never called me by my full name; it was a name reserved for friends, acquaintances, and the Goblin King. It was a name for the woman I had claimed myself to be, not the girl I had been.