Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

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  About the Author

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  For 할머니,

  for being the best fairy-tale grandmother of all time

  사랑해.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When my editor first asked me if I wanted to include acknowledgments in my book, I immediately said, “Sure! Absolutely!” without necessarily thinking just what an impossible task that would be. In many ways, writing acknowledgments was a lot harder than writing the whole of Wintersong. Who do I include? What if I forget to include someone? WHAT IF I INADVERTENTLY OFFEND SOMEONE POWERFUL WITH THE ABILITY TO MAKE OR BREAK MY BOOK? So, in order to cover my bases, I am hereby issuing a blanket statement of gratitude to anyone and everyone who has read, worked on, touched, or even looked at my book: Thank you so, so very much. Your help and support mean so much more than you could ever know.

  I’ve never been particularly good with thanks, either giving or receiving, but I would be remiss if I didn’t single out those who have been my most staunch and stalwart champions, starting with the person who asked if I wanted to write these acknowledgments in the first place.

  To my editor, Jennifer Letwack, who was my first and best champion in-house, the person who saw potential in this strange in-between manuscript and stuck with it through category changes and other unexpected turns in this crazy roller-coaster ride we call publishing. Thanks for not (letting me know just how much you were) panicking when I turned in a draft with an entirely different ending or a completely different prologue than expected, or any other time I’ve come back to you with “But how about…?” Many thanks as well to Karen Masnica and Brittani Hilles for being early enthusiasts of Wintersong (and fellow fans of Labyrinth), to Danielle Fiorella for the amazing cover (and letting me have input!), to Anna Gorovoy for the beautiful design (and letting me contribute my own artwork!), and to Melanie Sanders for guiding the book through production.

  To Katelyn Detweiler, my agent and partner-in-arms, my tireless advocate and adviser, a super-talented writer in her own right. You were the absolute first person to take a chance on me, and you never flinched or let your belief in Wintersong flag, even when the industry didn’t know what to do with us. Here’s to many more books in our future! Also to Jill Grinberg, Cheryl Pientka, Denise St. Pierre, and everyone at Jill Grinberg Literary Management, thank you so much for all your support.

  To my writer friends Marie Lu, Renee Ahdieh, and Roshani Chokshi, thank you so much for the advice, the cocktails, and the commiseration, for letting me kvetch and pull my hair out over email and in person, and for being my emotional bedrock throughout this entire journey. Thanks also to Kate Elliott and Charlie N. Holmberg for your kind words about Wintersong; yours were the first words of praise outside my friends, family, and paid sycophants (I kid, I kid), and I am extremely grateful for them.

  Every writer needs a support network to keep them sane, so shout-out to Sarah Lemon, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan, all my co-contributors at Pub(lishing) Crawl, and my fellow Swankys—but especial kudos to Kelly Van Sant and Vicki Lame for being there for me every day on Google Hangouts and talking me off whatever ledge I’ve wandered close to. My friends in New York, LA, and North Carolina, all the places I’ve called home, thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Last but not least, my eternal love and gratitude to my family. To Sue Mi, Michael, and Taylor Jones for supporting and believing in the black sheep of the SoCal Jones clan; to my Halmeoni for her unconditional love and prayers; and of course, to Bear. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be able to make good on your promise to your colleagues to quit and become a poker-playing kept man should Wintersong become successful. Let’s keep dreaming.

  Overture

  Once there was a little girl who played her music for a little boy in the wood. She was small and dark, he was tall and fair, and the two of them made a fancy pair as they danced together, dancing to the music the little girl heard in her head.

  Her grandmother had told her to beware the wolves that prowled in the wood, but the little girl knew the little boy was not dangerous, even if he was the king of the goblins.

  Will you marry me, Elisabeth? the little boy asked, and the little girl did not wonder at how he knew her name.

  Oh, she replied, but I am too young to marry.

  Then I will wait, the little boy said. I will wait as long as you remember.

  And the little girl laughed as she danced with the Goblin King, the little boy who was always just a little older, a little out of reach.

  As the seasons turned and the years passed, the little girl grew older but the Goblin King remained the same. She washed the dishes, cleaned the floors, brushed her sister’s hair, yet still ran to the forest to meet her old friend in the grove. Their games were different now, truth and forfeit and challenges and dares.

  Will you marry me, Elisabeth? the little boy asked, and the little girl did not yet understand his question was not part of a game.

  Oh, she replied, but you have not yet won my hand.

  Then I will win, the little boy said. I will win until you surrender.

  And the little girl laughed as she played against the Goblin King, losing every hand and every round.

  Winter turned to spring, spring to summer, summer into autumn, autumn back into winter, but each turning of the year grew harder and harder as the little girl grew up while the Goblin King remained the same. She washed the dishes, cleaned the floors, brushed her sister’s hair, soothed her brother’s fears, hid her father’s purse, counted the coins, and no longer went into the woods to see her old friend.

  Will you marry me, Elisabeth? the Goblin King asked.

  But the little girl did not reply.

  Part I

  THE GOBLIN MARKET

  We must not look at goblin men,

  We must not buy their fruits:

  Who knows upon what soil they fed

  Their hungry, thirsty roots?

  —CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, Goblin Market

  BEWARE THE GOBLIN MEN

  “Beware the goblin men,” Constanze said. “And the wares they sell.”

  I jumped when my grandmother’s shadow swept across my notes, scattering my thoughts and foolscap along with it. I scrambled to cover my music, shame shaking my hands, but Constanze hadn’t been addressing me. She stood perched on the threshold, scowling at my sister, Käthe, who primped and preened before the mirror in our bedroom—the only mirror in our entire inn.

  “Listen well, Katharina.” Constanze pointed a gnarled finger at my sister’s reflection. “Vanity invites temptation, and is the sign of a weak will.”

  Käthe ignored her, pinching her cheeks and fluffing her curls. “Liesl,” she said, reaching for a hat on the dressing table. “Could you come help me with this?”

  I put my notes back into their little lockbox. “It’s a market, Käthe, not a ball. We’re just going to pick up Josef’s bows from Herr Kassl’s.”

  “Liesl,” Käthe whined. “Please.”

  Constanze harrumphed and thumped the floor with her cane, but my sister and I paid her no heed. We were used to our grandmother’s dour and direful pronouncements.

  I sighed. “All right.” I hid the lockbox beneath our bed and rose to help pin the hat to Käthe’s hair.

  The hat was a towering confection of silk and feathers, a ridiculous affectation, especially in our little provincial village. But my sister was also rid
iculous, so she and the hat were well matched.

  “Ouch!” Käthe said as I accidentally jabbed her with a hatpin. “Watch where you stick that thing.”

  “Learn to dress yourself, then.” I smoothed down my sister’s curls and settled her shawl so that it covered her bare shoulders. The waist of her gown was gathered high beneath her bosom, the simple lines of her dress showing every curve of her figure. It was, Käthe claimed, the latest fashion in Paris, but my sister seemed scandalously unclothed to my eyes.

  “Tut.” Käthe preened before her reflection. “You’re just jealous.”

  I winced. Käthe was the beauty of our family, with sunshine hair, summer-blue eyes, apple-blossom cheeks, and a buxom figure. At seventeen, she already looked like a woman full-grown, with a small waist and generous hips that her new dress showed off to great advantage. I was nearly two years older but still looked like a child: small, thin, and sallow. The little hobgoblin, Papa called me. Fey, was Constanze’s pronouncement. Only Josef ever called me beautiful. Not pretty, my brother would say. Beautiful.

  “Yes, I’m jealous,” I said. “Now, are we going to the market or not?”

  “In a bit.” Käthe rummaged through her box of trinkets. “What do you think, Liesl?” she asked, holding up a few lengths of ribbon. “Red or blue?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She sighed. “I suppose not. None of the village boys will care anymore, now that I’m to be married.” She glumly plucked at the trim on her gown. “Hans isn’t the sort for fun or finery.”

  My lips tightened. “Hans is a good man.”

  “A good man, and boring,” Käthe said. “Did you see him at the dance the other night? He never, not once, asked me to take a turn with him. He just stood in the corner and glared disapprovingly.”

  It was because Käthe had been flirting shamelessly with a handful of Austrian soldiers en route to Munich to oust the French. Pretty girl, they coaxed her in their funny Austrian accents, Come give us a kiss!

  “A wanton woman is ripened fruit,” Constanze intoned, “begging to be plucked by the Goblin King.”

  A frisson of unease ran up my spine. Our grandmother liked to scare us with tales of goblins and other creatures that lived in the woods beyond our village, but Käthe, Josef, and I hadn’t taken her stories seriously since we were children. At eighteen, I was too old for my grandmother’s fairy tales, yet I cherished the guilty thrill that ran through me whenever the Goblin King was mentioned. Despite everything, I still believed in the Goblin King. I still wanted to believe in the Goblin King.

  “Oh, go squawk at someone else, you old crow.” Käthe pouted. “Why must you always be pecking at me?”

  “Mark my words.” Constanze glared at my sister from beneath layers of yellowed lace and faded ruffles, her dark brown eyes the only sharp things in her wizened face. “You watch yourself, Katharina, lest the goblins come take you for your licentious ways.”

  “Enough, Constanze,” I said. “Leave Käthe alone and let us go on our way. We must be back before Master Antonius arrives.”

  “Yes, Heaven forbid we miss our precious little Josef’s audition for the famous violin maestro,” my sister muttered.

  “Käthe!”

  “I know, I know.” She sighed. “Stop worrying, Liesl. He’ll be fine. You’re worse than a hen with a fox at the door.”

  “He won’t be fine if he doesn’t have any bows to play with.” I turned to leave. “Come, or I’ll be going without you.”

  “Wait.” Käthe grabbed my hand. “Would you let me do a little something with your hair? You have such gorgeous locks; it’s a shame you plait them out of the way. I could—”

  “A wren is still a wren, even in a peacock’s feathers.” I shook her off. “Don’t waste your time. It’s not like Hans—anyone—would notice anyway.”

  My sister flinched at the mention of her betrothed’s name. “Fine,” she said shortly, then strode past me without another word.

  “Ka—” I began, but Constanze stopped me before I could follow.

  “You take care of your sister, girlie,” she warned. “You watch over her.”

  “Don’t I always?” I snapped. It had always been up to me—me and Mother—to hold the family together. Mother looked after the inn that was our house and livelihood; I looked after the members who made it home.

  “Do you?” My grandmother fixed her dark eyes on my face. “Josef isn’t the only one who needs looking after, you know.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You forget what day it is.”

  Sometimes it was easier to humor Constanze than to ignore her. I sighed. “What day is it?”

  “The day the old year dies.”

  Another shiver up my spine. My grandmother still kept to the old laws and the old calendar, and this last night of autumn was when the old year died and the barrier between worlds was thin. When the denizens of the Underground walked the world above during the days of winter, before the year began again in the spring.

  “The last night of the year,” Constanze said. “Now the days of winter begin and the Goblin King rides abroad, searching for his bride.”

  I turned my face away. Once I would have remembered without any prompting. Once I would have joined my grandmother in pouring salt along every windowsill, every threshold, every entrance as a precaution against these wildling nights. Once, once, once. But I could no longer afford the luxury of my indulgent imaginings. It was time, as the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, to put aside childish things.

  “I don’t have time for this.” I pushed Constanze aside. “Let me pass.”

  Sorrow pushed the lines of my grandmother’s face into even deeper grooves, sorrow and loneliness, her hunched shoulders bowing with the weight of her beliefs. She bore those beliefs alone now. None of us kept faith with Der Erlkönig anymore; none save Josef.

  “Liesl!” Käthe shouted from downstairs. “Can I borrow your red cloak?”

  “Mind how you choose, girl,” Constanze told me. “Josef is not part of the game. When Der Erlkönig plays, he plays for keeps.”

  Her words stopped me short. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What game?”

  “You tell me.” Constanze’s expression was grave. “The wishes we make in the dark have consequences, and the Lord of Mischief will call their reckoning.”

  Her words prickled against my mind. I minded how Mother warned us of Constanze’s aged and feeble wits, but my grandmother had never seemed more lucid or more earnest, and despite myself, a thread of fear began to wind about my throat.

  “Is that a yes?” Käthe called. “Because I’m taking it if so!”

  I groaned. “No, you may not!” I said, leaning over the stair rail. “I’ll be right there, I promise!”

  “Promises, eh?” Constanze cackled. “You make so many, but how many of them can you keep?”

  “What—” I began, but when I turned to face her, my grandmother was gone.

  * * *

  Downstairs, Käthe had taken my red cloak off its peg, but I plucked it from her hands and settled it about my own shoulders. The last time Hans had brought us gifts from his father’s fabric goods store—before his proposal to Käthe, before everything between us changed—he had given us a beautiful bolt of heavy wool. For the family, he’d said, but everyone had known the gift was for me. The bolt of wool was a deep blood-red, perfectly suited to my darker coloring and warming to my sallow complexion. Mother and Constanze had made me a winter cloak from the cloth, and Käthe made no secret of how much she coveted it.

  We passed our father playing dreamy old airs on his violin in the main hall. I looked around for our guests, but the room was empty, the hearth cold and the coals dead. Papa still wore his clothes from the night before, and the whiff of stale beer lingered about him like mist.

  “Where’s Mother?” Käthe asked.

  Mother was nowhere to be seen, which was probably why Papa felt bold enough to play out here in th
e main hall, where anyone might hear him. The violin was a sore point between our parents; money was tight, and Mother would rather Papa play his instrument for hire than pleasure. But perhaps Master Antonius’s imminent arrival had loosened Mother’s purse strings as well as her heartstrings. The renowned virtuoso was to stop at our inn on his way from Vienna to Munich in order to audition my little brother.

  “Likely taking a nap,” I ventured. “We were up before dawn, scrubbing out the rooms for Master Antonius.”

  Our father was a violinist nonpareil, who had once played with the finest court musicians in Salzburg. It was in Salzburg, Papa would boast, where he had had the privilege of playing with Mozart, one of the late, great composer’s concertos. Genius like that, Papa said, comes only once in a lifetime. Once in two lifetimes. But sometimes, he would continue, giving Josef a sly glance, lightning does strike twice.

  Josef was not among the gathered guests. My little brother was shy of strangers, so he was likely hiding at the Goblin Grove, practicing until his fingers bled. My heart ached to join him, even as my fingertips twinged with sympathetic pain.

  “Good, I won’t be missed,” Käthe said cheerfully. My sister often found any excuse to skip out on her chores. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, the air was brisk. The day was uncommonly cold, even for late autumn. The light was sparse, weak and wavering, as though seen through curtains or a veil. A faint mist wrapped the trees along the path into town, wraithing their spindly branches into spectral limbs. The last night of the year. On a day like this, I could believe the barriers between worlds were thin indeed.

  The path that led into town was pitted and rutted with carriage tracks and spotted with horse dung. Käthe and I took care to keep to the edges, where the short, dead grass helped prevent the damp from seeping into our boots.

  “Ugh.” Käthe stepped around another dung puddle. “I wish we could afford a carriage.”

  “If only our wishes had power,” I said.