Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  She shrugged. “I grew up.”

  “All children do,” I said. “And yet, you still believe.”

  Constanze returned my gaze with a long, hard stare. Then she gestured to the footstool beside her with a nod. I came and knelt at her feet, just as I had when I was young.

  “I believe because I must,” she said. “Lest the consequences prove disastrous.”

  “What consequences?”

  It was a long while before Constanze spoke.

  “You don’t know,” she croaked. “You could never know what the world was like when Der Erlkönig and his subjects walked among us. It was a dark age, an age before reason, enlightenment, and God.”

  I resisted the urge to ask how she knew. Constanze was old, but not that old. Instead, I let myself be young again in her presence, to settle into the rhythms and cadences of her story, lulled by the rise and fall of her speech.

  “It was an age of blood, violence, and war,” she continued, “a time when man and goblin fought—over land, over water, over flesh. Beautiful flesh, sweet and tempting, the flesh of maidens, full of light and life. The goblins saw them as sustenance, men saw them as otherwise.”

  Pointed teeth over razor-thin lips. I shuddered, remembering how juice from the enchanted peach had flowed over Käthe’s mouth and throat like blood.

  “Blood spilled as easily as rain, soaking the land, salting the earth, turning it red beneath our feet with the remains of the dead, burying the harvest beneath rage, grief, and sorrow. Der Erlkönig heard the cries of the land, stifled by death and war, and stretched out his hands. In his right, he gathered Man; in his left, the goblins, dividing one from the other. And so, Der Erlkönig has ever stood between us and them, between the world of the living and the dead, the ordinary and the uncanny.”

  “How lonely,” I murmured. I thought of the tall, elegant stranger in the marketplace, the first guise in which the Goblin King had shown himself to me, more man than myth. Even then, he had stood alone and apart, and his loneliness called to my own. My cheeks flushed with the memory.

  Constanze gave me a sharp glance. “Lonely, yes. But does the king serve the crown, or the crown serve the king?”

  We sat in silence.

  “How then, Constanze,” I said at last, “do I gain entrance to the Underground?”

  For a long moment, I was afraid my grandmother would not give me a straight answer. Then she sighed.

  “Der Erlkönig is bound by an ancient sacrifice,” she said, “so we honor him with our own.”

  “A sacrifice?”

  Her eyes softened. “An offering,” she amended. “When I was a girl, we used to leave bread and milk as a tithe, a portion of our hard-earned work. But these are not the lean times they were when I was young. You must bring the Goblin King an offering that costs you something; after all, is that not the meaning of sacrifice?”

  “I don’t have anything,” I said. “Only people. And I’ve already sacrificed one I love to Der Erlkönig, Constanze; I’ll not risk any more.”

  “Do you truly have nothing?” There was something in the tone of my grandmother’s voice that chilled my blood.

  “Nothing,” I repeated, but my voice was less sure than before.

  “Oh, but I think you do.” Her words were soft, sinister. “Something you love more than your sister, more than Josef, more than life itself.”

  My mind did not comprehend her meaning, but my body knew. My body was cleverer than I. It went cold, and then numb with stillness.

  My music.

  I would have to sacrifice my music.

  SACRIFICE

  I should have known it would come to this.

  As dusk began to fall outside, I knelt before the bed—the bed my sister and I had shared our entire lives—and reached for the lockbox I knew would be hidden there. My fingers scraped and searched, but stopped when they brushed over something smooth and polished.

  The elegant stranger’s gift.

  I had all but forgotten about it since we returned from the market that fateful day Käthe had taken that bite of goblin fruit.

  I do not offer this gift to you out of the goodness of my heart, but out of a selfish need to see what you might do with it.

  And what had I done with the Goblin King’s gift? I had taken it and hidden it away, like it was something secret, something shameful. Perhaps my lack of faith had cost me everything after all.

  I drew out my box of compositions from beneath my bed and opened it. It looked like nothing: bits of foolscap, pages torn from my father’s unused accounting books, the backs of old hymnals—the sad, pathetic treasure hoard of an unlovely, untalented child.

  Closing the lockbox, I got to my feet and walked to the klavier. Its presence in the room was both bane and balm, a reminder of all I had dreamed of and all I would never gain. I ran my hands over its surface, feeling the hours that had chipped away at the ivory keys and twisted and warped the strings within.

  My latest composition still lay open on the music stand. Across the top, in my best handwriting: Für meine Lieben, ein Lied im stil die Bagatelle, auch Der Erlkönig.

  For my loved ones, a song in the style of a bagatelle, or The Goblin King.

  Below that, in a hasty scrawl:

  For Sepperl, may he never forget.

  For Käthe, all my love and my forgiveness.

  I shuffled the leaves together, stacking them neatly, before tying them with a length of twine from my sewing kit.

  The pages looked plain and forlorn, sitting unadorned on my keyboard. If I were Käthe, I would have dressed them with a bit of ribbon or lace, or some dried wildflowers from the summer meadow. I had nothing but a few catkins dropped from the alder trees in the Goblin Grove.

  But perhaps that was the most fitting decoration after all.

  With my shears, I snipped a lock of hair and tied it with the catkins to the sheet music. My latest composition, and my last. My gift to my loved ones, my farewell. If I could not give them one last embrace, one last kiss, then I could give them this: my truest expression of self, to safeguard in their keeping. I left the composition on the bed.

  Then, gathering both the flute and the lockbox, I turned from the klavier, from the room, from home, toward the Goblin Grove and beyond.

  * * *

  Constanze stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Are you ready, Elisabeth?”

  It was the first time my grandmother had ever called me by name. Shivers ran through me, not of dread, but of anticipation.

  “Liesl,” I said. “Call me Liesl.”

  Constanze shook her head. “Elisabeth. I like the name Elisabeth. It’s a name for a grown woman, not a girl.”

  In her words I heard the echo of the Goblin King. But I chose to draw strength from them. For all our differences, Constanze believed in me. She handed me a cloak and a lantern. To my surprise, she also handed me a slice of Gugelhopf, which she had not made for me since I was a child.

  “An offering for Der Erlkönig.” She wrapped the cake in a piece of linen. “From me. He will not have forgotten the taste of my Gugelhopf so soon, I should think.”

  I smiled. “Nor will I, Constanze.”

  We faced each other one last time. No tears, no farewells. My grandmother did not countenance sentimentality. She merely patted me on the shoulder.

  “Viel Glück, Elisabeth.” She did not say we would meet again.

  I followed Constanze through the back door of the inn. She did not direct me on my way, but it did not matter. I knew exactly where I was going.

  “Servus, Constanze,” I said softly. “Go with God. And thank you.”

  Constanze nodded. She had no words of encouragement, no blessing for my journey. But the cake in its linen wrapping was as good as a benediction from my grandmother. I took it, and left.

  * * *

  The night was clear, and the air had the breath of winter upon it, death and ice and slumber. I held
the lantern aloft, illuminating the path ahead.

  The Goblin Grove lay in the distance, the only bit of the forest wreathed in mist. The mist formed spectral shapes before my eyes, suggesting the hump of a goblin’s back or the curve of a nymph’s cheek, but nothing—no one—materialized. I would have no audience tonight.

  Very well, then, I thought, walking into the Goblin Grove itself. It was a circle of twelve alder trees, almost perfectly round, as though planted by some tender gardener ages ago. It had the whiff of some place holy or sacred, fed by the stories we told each other. Of Frau Perchta. Of the Wild Hunt. Of the White Ladies. Of Der Erlkönig.

  I set down my lantern and began combing the grove for deadfall. I found plenty of wood within reach, but the wood had gone to damp and the coming winter. It would not light without tinder. I managed the best I could, arranging the sticks into a small pyramid over a small pile of kindling. But try as I might, I could not get a fire lit, and as match after match sputtered out in my trembling fingers, so too did my hopes.

  I could not play for him like this. I could not give him my music with hands half frozen and lips blue with cold. I had promised the Goblin King a sacrifice, but he was not going to make it easy for me. Turn back, whispered the spectral breezes. Give up. I reached into my satchel for the flute.

  The instrument felt alive in my grip. It was carved from some sort of wood, possibly alder wood, which was sacred to the Goblin King. The flute unsettled me; it was like holding someone’s hand, a touch that felt back. The instrument was old, built on a simpler design, without the keys and metal joins of the newer flutes I had seen the musicians play in church. Yet it had the right holes that allowed chromatic fingering, not like the fifes and old transverse flutes in our inn that had belonged to our grandfather. Papa had taught me the rudiments of the flute; I knew how to play all the notes, but whether or not I could get them to sound as I wished remained to be heard.

  I wet my lips, brought the instrument to my mouth. Nothing but a hollow whistling noise emerged, the sound of the wind in the trees. I gently blew into the instrument itself, attempting to warm the air within, the wood of which it was made. It helped but little; my hands trembled too much to hold the flute straight, my numb fingertips scarcely feeling the holes beneath them.

  In the silence of the forest beyond, I thought I heard the mocking echo of a laugh.

  You have not defeated me yet.

  Fire. I needed fire. I could not keep going like this. The mist grew thicker, droplets of moisture forming on my hair. They would be droplets of ice before long.

  I looked at the lantern Constanze had given me. It had a small well of oil at its base, along with a wick of flame. Perhaps I could spill a little bit onto the woodpile I had made, just enough to prompt a fire. But I worried that the damp would defeat that too, and what little light I had would be gone with it.

  No, I needed something else to burn: something dry, something seasoned, something like … paper.

  I remembered my box of compositions.

  I wanted to laugh. I thought I had known the meaning of sacrifice. I thought I had known the meaning of suffering. But no, I had been a fool. What did it mean to sacrifice my music to the Goblin King? I had thought a few tunes would be enough. But I was wrong. So very wrong. He wanted more. He wanted my very soul.

  Hands shaking with more than cold, I reached into my satchel and pulled out my box of compositions. It was nothing but an old lockbox I had found in the garret—long emptied of its coins but filled with treasure nonetheless. The lock was rusted through, but the clasp still worked, and the box stayed shut until I opened it. I opened it now.

  My compositions were scattered in its depths, dead leaves on autumn loam. Music scribbled hastily on foolscap, on parchment stolen from my father’s account books, on fancy stationary our guests sometimes left behind. All paper. All flammable.

  “Is this what you want, mein Herr?” I asked. “Is this the sacrifice you asked for?”

  No response from the wood but a waiting silence, as if the air held its breath.

  With a cry I scattered my music over the woodpile. Then before I could lose my nerve, I splashed the burning oil from my lantern over it.

  The pages caught fire immediately. Flames flared into life, then died down. No, I would not burn my life’s work for nothing. I kicked their burning ashes further into the kindling, and the rest began to catch light. Twig after twig, branch after branch, a small, smoky, but steady fire began to grow.

  For you, mein Herr, I thought. Is this enough?

  Nothing again but that waiting silence. First the pages, then my soul. This last scrap of self, he demanded it all. This was the meaning of sacrifice.

  I pulled out the slice of cake Constanze had given me. Unwrapping it, I broke off a piece and cast it into the fire. The sweet smell of its ashes rose into the night air. I took one bite. Subtle sweetness melted across my tongue, subtle sweetness and strength.

  “Let us share a meal, you and I,” I said to the waiting stillness. “But first, some music.”

  I lifted the flute and began to play.

  * * *

  I played everything I knew, every étude and écossaise, every chaconne and concerto, every sonata and song. I embroidered, I embellished, I improvised, I improved. I played and played and played until the flames died down, until my fingers turned white with frost, until my throat grew hoarse with ice. I played until the darkness creeping in on the edges of my vision became the entirety of it, until I could no longer see the approaching dawn.

  * * *

  Someone takes me in his arms.

  “Hans?” I ask weakly.

  There is no reply.

  Only the sensation of long fingers running along the length of my neck, soft and gentle as spring rain. They rest against my collarbones. The caress is light, and somehow reminds me of the flute in my hand.

  Then I know no more.

  Part II

  THE GOBLIN BALL

  A linnet in a gilded cage, -

  A linnet on a bough, -

  In frosty winter one might doubt

  Which bird is luckier now.

  But let the trees burst out in leaf,

  And nests be on the bough,

  Which linnet is the luckier bird,

  Oh who could doubt it now?

  —CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, A Linnet in a Gilded Cage

  FAIRY LIGHTS

  The sound of giggles woke me.

  “Käthe?” I murmured. “It is early yet.” It was too dark to be dawn, too dark for my sleepy sister to be awake. I reached under the covers for her warmth, but there was nothing.

  My eyes opened with a snap. The room was dimly lit, but I wasn’t home, wasn’t in my bed. I was comfortable, for one thing. The mattress Käthe and I shared was old, full of lumps and sags, and no matter how many hot bricks wrapped in wool we cuddled, no matter how many blankets we piled over our heads, it was never warm enough.

  I sat up. The room brightened. Small twinkling lights hovered beside me, and I gasped with delight. I reached to touch one, but was met with an angry zzzzzzzt! and a sharp, sizzling pain that lasted half a moment. The light pulsed irritably before resuming its steady glow.

  “Fairy lights,” I breathed.

  Fairy lights.

  The fey. Goblins. Der Erlkönig.

  “Käthe!” I cried, throwing off my covers and scattering the fairy lights into a frenzy.

  But there was no reply.

  I was Underground.

  I had done it. I had won this round.

  Now fully awake, I saw I was in some sort of barrow, the ceilings, floors, and walls made of packed dirt. But there were no doors, no windows, no way to escape. The room was as sealed as a tomb. The bed was carved from the roots of a very great tree, the roots curved and bent into sinuous shapes, almost as if it had been grown.

  I got to my feet. A crackling fire gave off cheery pops and hisses in a beautiful travertine fireplace. I ran my hand over the mantel. The crea
my white stone was shot through with gold, the joins seamless, as though it had been laid from one continuous slab of stone. Such fine craftsmanship seemed incongruous in this tomb of roots and dirt.

  I wandered every inch of my barrow, searching for a window, a threshold, some means of escape. The barrow was well-appointed with little luxuries and creature comforts, outfitted like a graceful lady’s private quarters. An upholstered chair and table in the Louis Quinze style graced the hearth, and a beautiful rug woven with glittering threads covered the packed-earth floor. Above the mantel hung a large painting of a winter landscape, and scattered about here and there on side tables and dressers were delicate, decorative objets d’art.

  At first glance, it was all harmonious elegance and feminine delicacy. Yet upon closer inspection, little grotesqueries revealed themselves. Instead of smiling cherubs, little hobgoblins leered from the carved furniture finials. The carpet beneath my feet depicted stylized spiderwebs and flowers dying on the vine. The pretty little objects decorating my room were not charming little china shepherdesses; they were demon-faced nymphs with a flock of hunchbacked goblins. Their shepherds’ crooks had been replaced with reapers’ scythes, their dresses torn and ravaged, revealing breasts and hips and thighs. Instead of pretty pouts, their lips were twisted into satyrs’ smiles. I shuddered.

  The winter landscape above my mantel was the only bit of art in my barrow that did not reveal itself to be full of hidden ugliness. It showed a forest shrouded in fog, disconcertingly familiar. The mist seemed to move and writhe at the corners of my vision. I peered closer. With a jolt I realized it was a painting of the Goblin Grove. The painting was so skillfully rendered that its brushstrokes were practically invisible, more like a window than a work of art. My fingers reached to touch it.

  Giggles erupted behind me.

  I whirled around. Sitting on my bed were a pair of goblin girls. They stared at me, tittering behind their hands. With a twist of the stomach, I noticed they had too many joints in their long, twig-like fingers. Their skin had the greenish-brown tint of a spring wood just waking from its winter slumber, and their eyes had no whites about the pupils.