Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  I quickly dressed myself and unlocked my door, emerging into the corridors outside. I was in the mood to wander tonight, and did not care where my feet took me.

  I passed the goblin city, glittering in the winking, twinkling fairy lights, passed the enormous ballroom where I had danced with the Goblin King for the first time as husband and wife. But I strode past them all, wanting to go deeper. The paved avenues gave way to narrow passages, rocky and sharp and jagged. Moisture glistened along the walls, the air around me growing damp and dank.

  Suddenly, the Underground lake appeared before me.

  This was the farthest I could go. My toes touched the edge of the water, sending glowing ripples of light across the surface. The water was cold, colder than an alpine spring, and I minded how these waters flowed into the rivers and pools of the world above.

  And then, all around me, the sound of singing. High and clear, the sound of a finger running along the edge of a crystal goblet. The entire grotto rang with its eerie beauty, resounding in my chest and in my bones. The Lorelei.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I jumped. A changeling appeared, as suddenly as though he had walked through the rocky walls surrounding the lake.

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. I had never actually exchanged words with a changeling before. They were the Goblin King’s silent servitors, the swoonworthy swains at the Goblin Ball, the lost and hungry children of the world above, the most mysterious and monstrous denizens of the Underground. I knew next to nothing about them, save that they had been “the product of a wish.” I thought of the night I had made a wish, when Josef was a baby, dying of scarlet fever.

  “They are dangerous, you know, the Lorelei.” The changeling sidled closer and I tried not to let my discomfort show. Despite everything, I pitied the creatures, pitied their half-life, their liminal existence. “Beautiful, but dangerous.”

  “Yes,” I said again. “I nearly succumbed to their spell the last time I crossed.”

  The changeling’s flat, black eyes—goblin eyes in that human face—studied me. “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “Der Erlkönig saved me.”

  He nodded, as though this explained everything. “Of course. He would not want you to discover their greatest secret.”

  “And what is that?”

  The changeling tilted his head. “That they guard the gateway into the world above.”

  A cold, ringing sensation numbed me from head to toe. “A gateway? There is … a gateway to the world above?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It lies on the far side of the lake.”

  I stared at the lake, at its dark, dark depths, black like obsidian. Like death. Yet on the other side was light. Light and life. If only I could …

  “It’s not safe.” The changeling watched me closely. “You cannot cross without a guardian.”

  Shame lit my face, and I averted my gaze. I had not known my thoughts to be so transparent.

  “Here,” he said suddenly. “I have a present for you.”

  Startled, I opened my hand, and he dropped a bundle of wildflowers into my palm. “Thank you,” I said in bewilderment. The flowers were nothing more than clover blossoms, prettily tied with a length of ribbon.

  The changeling shook his head. “It’s not from me. She left it for you in the Goblin Grove.”

  I went still. “Who?”

  “A girl,” he said. “A woman in a red cloak with sunshine hair.”

  Käthe.

  “How—how—” Goblins could only roam the earth during the uncounted days of winter.

  “The grove is one of the few sacred spaces left where the Underground and the world above overlap,” the changeling said indifferently. “The girl came by and said your name before dropping the flowers. I took them when she left.”

  Of course. Now I understood. I understood why it was always to the Goblin Grove Josef and I ran as children, why it was the only place I ever saw the Goblin King, why I had gone there to sacrifice my music and gain entrance to the Underground.

  It was a threshold.

  The glimmerings of an idea began to form, fragile and fraught. I turned away from it, afraid to look for the hope rising in me. The changeling turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “A moment, please.”

  The changeling folded his hands and cocked his head to one side. His face was human, but his expression was entirely goblin-like in its inscrutability.

  “What—what can you tell me of my brother?”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes,” I choked out. “Josef.”

  His black eyes glittered. “All you mortals are so alike,” he said. “Quick to be born, quick to die. Like mayflies in the night.”

  “But,” I said. “Josef is not dead.”

  A slow smile spread across his lips. “Are you so certain of that?”

  I turned my head away. “What—” I began, my throat hoarse. “What is Josef?”

  The changeling did not reply, but I already knew the answer. In some ways, I had always known the answer. My brother died that night I heard him crying, when the fever ravaged his mortal body, leaving nothing but a corpse. Before the scarlatina had taken him, my brother had been rosy-cheeked and hale, a chubby, good-natured baby. The morning after the fever broke, the thing left in his cradle had been sallow and thin, a queer, quiet creature. We all thought it was the fever. But I knew better.

  “How can a changeling live in the world above?” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “They can’t, except by the power of—”

  “—a wish,” I finished. I wanted to laugh. “I know.”

  “No.” The changeling’s voice was amused. “By the power of love.”

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and I was falling. Suddenly it seemed like the rules of the Underground were changing, and I couldn’t grasp their meaning.

  “Love?”

  The changeling shrugged again. “You love him, don’t you? Your brother?”

  Was he my brother? How could I possibly ask myself that? Josef’s nature did not change the fact that he was the other half of my soul, my amanuensis, the gardener of my heart. Of course he was my brother.

  “Yes,” I said. “I love him.”

  “Then he stayed for you. None of us have lasted long in the world above, you know. Take us far from the Underground and we wither and fade. You called him by name and loved him entire. That is power.”

  I feel severed from the land of my birth, and I can feel my talent fade and grow dull. I feel blinded, deafened, muted.

  “Oh, Josef.” I pressed my hand to my anguished heart.

  “Do not worry,” the changeling said. “He will return to us soon enough. We all come back, in the end.”

  UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

  Of all my mortal emotions, hope was the worst. All the others were easy to carry and easy to put aside: anger flashed then burned out, sorrow gradually lightened, and happiness bubbled then disappeared. But hope … hope was stubborn. Like a weed it returned, even after I had plucked it away again and again.

  Hope also hurt.

  It hurt when, night after night, the Goblin King put me to bed with a chaste kiss upon my brow. It hurt when the clover blossoms from my sister faded, then died. It hurt when I never again heard Josef’s violin from the world above, calling my name in A minor.

  It also hurt when I thought of the gateway beneath the Underground lake and the threshold beyond.

  So I tried my best to stifle hope. Because hope’s twin was despair, and despair was infinitely worse. If hope hurt, then despair was the absence of hurt. It was the absence of feeling. It was the absence of caring.

  I wanted very much to care.

  But it was getting harder to meet each day with purpose. It was hard to find excitement, joy, or anticipation, even in that which had brought me so much happiness before. The Goblin King and I worked the first movement of the Wedding Night Sonata until it was perfect, until there were no mistakes left. I had heard t
he Allegro more times than I could count, and while I could no longer find anything I wanted to fix, neither could I find anything I liked about it.

  Move on, the Goblin King had encouraged me. Write something else. The next movement, perhaps.

  I tried. Or rather, I tried to try. But I couldn’t. I stared at the black and white keys of the klavier, but inspiration did not come. I did not know where to begin or how to proceed. And then I realized I did not know how to proceed because I did not know how the story ended.

  What was the resolution of a piece begun in rage, impotence, and desire? How did it finish? I knew the rules, how a sonata should be structured. Three movements: fast, slow, fast. A declaration of theme, a deconstruction, a resolution. But there would be no conclusion, not for me; only a slow, sputtering decrescendo.

  Those would be the remaining years of my life.

  I had thought I knew impotence. I had thought I knew futility. I had been so wrong.

  As long as you have reason to love, Thistle had said.

  I had many reasons to love. I touched the faded clover blossoms on the sheet music beside me.

  As long as the world above remembers you.

  Could I … could I send some sort of message? Could I send proof of my love, the way Käthe had, the way Josef had?

  The grove is one of the sacred spaces left where the Underground and the world above overlap.

  And then hope flared again, more painful than before.

  * * *

  There were endless facets to my Goblin King—trickster, musician, philosopher, scholar, gentleman—and I had taken great pleasure in discovering them, one after another. Each new side revealed another dimension, another depth which added to my understanding of my husband.

  But there was one facet of him I had uncovered, and it was one I liked not at all: martyr.

  It was a while before I understood his curious reticence, his careful distancing. It was even longer before I noticed it, for although my husband was free with his affection—touches upon my face, my hands, my shoulder, my lips—he was a miser in everything else.

  The longer you burn the candle …

  There was a hesitation whenever he touched me now, a conscious gentleness that infuriated me. The door had been opened between us, and I wanted him to walk in and treat my body like home. But there was a line he would not cross, for although I felt his ardor in every kiss, every caress, he never entered. If I could still laugh, my laugh would have been heard even in the world above.

  It was not my shame that stopped us now; it was his guilt.

  “You are not attending,” I said one evening after dinner.

  “Hmmm?”

  We had just finished playing a series of suites in G minor by a composer unknown to me. The Goblin King had an entire repertoire of music, a library of librettos and portfolios stolen from the world above. Many of the composers’ names were lost to time, but I wondered if something of their ghosts didn’t stir each time their music was played. At first I had thought these compositions the work of the same man, for they were all written in the same hand, until the Goblin King admitted he had copied the notes down himself.

  “I was a copyist once,” he said. Then he shut his mouth and did not say another word, although I pressed and pestered until his patience snapped.

  He was immediately contrite afterward, which only needled me more. In the space between his anger and his apology, I had felt that spark of flame between us, and for the briefest moment, all my senses flared to life, as intense and potent as they had been in the world above.

  But his guilt dampened my fire and my hope.

  “You are not attending,” I repeated. “You were playing by rote; I could hear the emptiness.”

  The emptiness was not just in his playing. It was in the silences between us. Where the quiet had once been full, full of music and communion, now it was hollow.

  The Goblin King’s bow, still poised over the strings, trembled in his grip. The horsehair bounced lightly against the bridge, producing a nervous, fidgety sound.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ve been up long into the dark hours of the night these past few days.”

  It wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one. I could see the dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and had heard from both Twig and Thistle that the Goblin King did not sleep, but spent his time wandering the winding passages of the Underground.

  “Then let us rest,” I said. I clapped my hands, and Twig and Thistle appeared, one bearing a decanter of brandy and a glass, the other a salver of strawberries. I poured the Goblin King a drink and held it out to him.

  He did not miss the significance of the gesture. “I’m fine, Elisabeth.”

  I shrugged, then took a sip myself. The liquor was weak and watery.

  “Well,” I said. “How shall we pass the time, then, mein Herr?”

  “I am at my lady’s command,” he said. “Your wish is my desire.”

  “Is it?” I rose from the klavier and took a step forward. “Then I think you know just how I would like to pass the time.”

  The Goblin King raised his bow like a sword and his violin like a shield between us. “Not tonight, my dear.”

  Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Not any nights in the foreseeable future. I would have cried, if I had any sorrow left. I would have shouted, if anger still burned within me. But there was nothing, nothing but hope and despair, and despair was winning.

  “Very well.” I returned to my seat at the keyboard. I wanted to throw up my hands in defeat, or wrap them around his throat and throttle him. I wanted to pour my frustration out into song. But I did not know how to articulate the swirling maelstrom of confusion within me into words, phrases, sentences, so I twisted my fingers into the keyboard instead. A discordant jangle, a handful of notes that clashed and screeched. “Let us play a game.”

  Something in the Goblin King loosened, though his wolf’s eyes were still wary. “What game, my dear?”

  “Truth or Forfeit.”

  He lifted his brows. “Child’s play?”

  “The only games I know. Come, mein Herr, surely you remember our games in the Goblin Grove.”

  A smile showed the tips of his teeth. “I do, Elisabeth. With pleasure.”

  “Good.” Hope flickered in my stomach. “I shall start.”

  I picked up the tray of strawberries and moved from the bench to the floor. I set the berries before me and tucked my legs beneath my skirts, as I had when I was a little girl. The Goblin King made no remark, only set aside his instrument and joined me on the ground. I held forth my hands, palms up. No tricks. The Goblin King took my hands in his own. No traps.

  “We’ll begin with simple questions,” I said. “What is your name?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh no, Elisabeth. That is a question I cannot answer. Pick another.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  His eyes were hard. “Can’t. Won’t. Both. It doesn’t matter. Pick another. Or name your forfeit, and I shall pay it.”

  I hadn’t expected the game to start off so poorly, so I hadn’t yet gathered any ideas for penalties to dole out. So I asked another question. “Fine. What is your favorite color?”

  “Green. What’s yours?”

  My glance fell on the salver beside me. “Red. Favorite smell?”

  “Incense. Favorite animal?”

  My eyes lingered on his. “Wolf. Favorite composer?”

  “You.”

  The response was so simple, so sincere, it took my breath away. “All right,” I said, my voice unsteady. “The questions will get harder now. I shall ask you five questions, and you must reply truthfully or pay the forfeit. Then you may ask me five.”

  The Goblin King nodded his head.

  “Where do you go when you wander the Underground at night?”

  A flash of pain crossed his face, but he answered without hesitation. “The chapel.”

  His reply surprised me. “The chapel? Why?�
��

  “Is that your next question?”

  I paused. “Yes.”

  It was a while before he answered. “Solace.” I waited for him to continue. “It gives me comfort to offer my prayers to the Lord, even if he never hears them.”

  “For what do you pray?”

  He watched me from beneath those hooded lids, eyes slightly narrowed. “For atonement.”

  “For what must you atone?”

  His eyes glittered. “For selfishness.”

  I considered pressing him further, but I had one more question and I did not want to waste it. “How did you come to be Der Erlkönig?”

  The Goblin King’s head snapped up and he snatched back his hands. “Don’t you dare, Elisabeth.”

  My hands were still in front of me, palms empty. “You promised to answer truthfully.”

  His nostrils flared. “There has always been Der Erlkönig. There will always be Der Erlkönig.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  “It is the one you must accept. If you will not, then name your forfeit, and I shall pay it.”

  I studied him. I remembered the first story he had ever told me. The king underground knew the cost of sacrifice. He had sold his soul and his name to the goblins. His soul … and his name. But I thought of the gallery of Goblin Kings, an evolving line of different men. My Goblin King was Der Erlkönig, but Der Erlkönig was not every Goblin King. To whom had my husband given his name? To whom had he given his soul?

  “Your name,” I whispered. “I claim your name as forfeit.”

  He stiffened. “No, Elisabeth. I will give you anything but that.”

  “Is a name so high a price to pay?”

  The Goblin King looked at me, and there were a thousand emotions, a thousand years in his eyes. He had the form and figure of a young man, but he was ancient.

  “It is,” he said quietly, “the highest price I could pay.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed, and it was the wind in the trees. “Who are you, Elisabeth?”

  “Am I answering your questions now?” My hands were still empty, empty of his name. “You have not paid your forfeit.”

  “I am paying it in the only manner I can.”