Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  It was like coming home.

  “Don’t,” he whispered against my lips, fierce and urgent. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”

  Don’t touch me. Don’t tempt me. Don’t ever try to leave the Underground again. I did not understand what he was protesting, but it did not matter. We were two juggernauts on a collision course, and this joining had been a long time in the making.

  “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” I said, but I did not know what I was promising. I did not care. My flesh leaped at his touch, erasing all conscious thought.

  He tangled his fingers in my hair then, yanking me away from his lips. I struggled to kiss him again, but his grip was strong. He grabbed my chin with his other hand, forcing me to meet his gaze.

  Those eyes. So pale, so startling, so different. His breath was hot against my face, and we stared at each other. I was stunned to see I was looking into the face of the austere young man, not Der Erlkönig, not the wolf, and suddenly I understood what he had been pleading.

  Don’t leave me.

  A warmth spread from my center, turning my limbs liquid. But when that warmth reached my heart, it turned into pain.

  “Never,” I breathed.

  At my word, his eyes transformed. Hardening into jewels, the mask of Der Erlkönig returned. He lowered his mouth to the column of my neck, a light touch of teeth, his hand moving to rest lightly against my collarbone.

  “Good,” he growled.

  And then with one swift motion, he tore the fabric of my dress from the neck down.

  * * *

  We are rough and reverent. We fall onto my bed together, a twisted, tangled knot of torn clothing and exposed limbs, a pair of wrestling wolves.

  Our bodies reacquaint themselves, relearning the other’s touch. I hold the Goblin King and he is mine, familiar and new all at once.

  “Don’t,” he says.

  Don’t let go.

  “Never,” I breathe.

  We struggle to find a rhythm, a consensus, a progression, but neither of us give in to the other, both wanting to take and take and take. I deserve it, I deserve this for the ages he starved me of his touch. He deserves it, he deserves it because I nearly abandoned him, abandoned the Underground, abandoned the world. We are angry, but our anger is like play, like hounds practicing for the hunt.

  The Goblin King has ever been generous with me in our marriage bed, but it is only now I understand just how much. He presses my shoulders down, legs pinning my torso, and leans over me, his face close. His expression is wild and feral, brows furrowed, mouth curled into a snarl. The austere young man is gone; there will be no one to guide me through the forest now.

  He crushes his lips to mine, our tongues dancing, his hands running over my body to rest between my legs. I feel him against me, and tense.

  The Goblin King pauses. “Your wish is my command,” he murmurs. He waits upon my word.

  I hesitate, then nod. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes.”

  I’m not quite ready for the joining, but I am caught breathless as he pushes close. This is more than fullness, this is fulfillment. I lift my head up to the heavens. Heaven is far away, but the fairy lights twinkle above me, stars in a firmament that will never see the light of day.

  And then we play together, our tempos matching, a shared rhythm that grows wilder and wilder. I am not me. I am not Elisabeth. I am not a human girl. I am a wild thing, a creature of the forest and the storm and the night. I run through dreams and fancies, through all the stories of my childhood of the dark and uncanny and strange and weird. I am primordial, I am made of music and magic and Der Erlkönig.

  I am lost.

  Gradually, I return to myself, bit by bit, body part by body part, sense by sense. First my feet. Then my hands. Then my body, draped with the warmth of him. Color returns to the world, the taste of blood where I’ve inadvertently bitten my lip. Sight and touch and taste and smell. I wait for sound to join me, but as the moments tick on, I hear nothing but the thudding of my heart.

  Little by little, they will take your sight, your smell, your taste, your touch; a slow feast.

  Fear grips me.

  The Goblin King feels me panic, and reaches down to stroke my face. I reach up to touch my nose and my hand comes away with red. A nosebleed.

  I feel the horror that runs up and down the length of him a second before he wrenches himself away.

  Elisabeth? I see the Goblin King’s mouth form the syllables of my name, but I cannot hear him.

  Elisabeth!

  He shouts something more, but I can no longer understand him. Words blur into an unintelligible muffled drone, and with a chill, Thistle’s words come back to me:

  Think you your beating heart the greatest gift you could give? No, mortal, your heartbeat is but the least and last.

  The Goblin King shouts something again, and within an instant, my goblin girls appear.

  No, not this. No. I returned from the world above. My sister still remembered me. My brother still said my name. As Twig and Thistle fuss over me, I hold the Goblin King’s gaze, looking for answers, knowing he cannot give me the ones I want to hear, because I can hear nothing at all.

  JUSTICE

  Somewhere in the distance, a violin sang a song of sorrow, regret, and apology.

  “Josef?” I murmured, stirring from a dream.

  But it was not my little brother. I did not hear Josef’s characteristic clarity in the music; instead I heard a weighty sort of grief, the notes lacquered with years—centuries, perhaps—of loss.

  It was the Goblin King.

  I gasped and sat up in my bed. Memories of what had passed between us returned in a flash of heat, mingled with the chilling terror of the consequences. I shuddered and touched my ears, listening, hoping, fearing.

  “She’s awake.”

  That was Thistle’s voice. I turned to see my goblin girls beside me, watching me with flat, black eyes. I could hear again. Relief flooded me, threatening to submerge me under a wave of tears. I had not lost this. Not yet. I still had sight and smell and sense and sound. I threw off my covers and rose from my bed. I wanted to rush to the retiring room, wanted to press my fingers into the klavier, wanted to revel in the music I thought I had lost.

  “Wait, Your Highness, wait!” Twig grasped for me, but I hurried out of her reach. “You must rest.”

  My limbs were still shaky and I trembled as though I were recovering from a bout of illness, but I did not care. Music roiled and churned within me, pushing at my pores, my eyeballs, my fingers, and I needed to get it out, get it out, or explode.

  In the retiring room, I saw that Twig and Thistle had taken the Wedding Night Sonata from my apron pocket and set it back on the klavier, but I was in no mood to compose. Everything was an ungovernable, chaotic mess within me, less music than a cacophony of sound. I sat down on the bench, and pushed, pounded, and played the klavier, pouring into the instrument my relief, anger, surprise, and joy. I improvised, I butchered, I wailed. I gave into the tempest of emotions within me until the storm passed.

  In the calm that followed, a violin replied.

  I am sorry, Elisabeth.

  I understood the Goblin King’s apology as clearly as though he had spoken the words before me. Music had always been the language we shared, a language of love, of laughter, of lamentation. I let him play and play and play until at last I set my hands upon the keyboard and played my mercy.

  I thank you, I forgive you. I thank you, I forgive you.

  But the violin sang over my absolution, an ostinato of guilt and shame. I tried to join him in the music, to find an accompaniment, a basso continuo, but the Goblin King kept changing the tempo, the key, the time signature, variation upon variation of remorse.

  I am a monster. I am a monster. I am a monster.

  It went on and on, and I could not get a word in edgewise.

  “Fetch him,” I commanded Thistle, who was absentmindedly shredding a pile of discarded foul papers. “Fetch Der Erlkönig.”
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  She made a face but did as I asked. But when she returned, she returned alone.

  “Where is he?”

  For the first time ever, I thought I detected a hint of sheepishness about Thistle’s expression. She mumbled an excuse.

  “His Majesty will not come,” said Thistle.

  I knew the Goblin King was not bound to my will as my goblin girls were, but I sent Twig to fetch him, hoping the kinder of my two attendants could convince him. But she, too, returned alone.

  “What, is Der Erlkönig too ashamed to face me?” I asked. “I would rather he make his apologies to my person than through his violin.”

  “He is in the chapel, Your Highness,” Twig said.

  “We do not disturb him when he is in prayer,” Thistle added.

  I looked at them, astonished. “What? Surely you goblins don’t give two figs for his God?”

  Thistle crossed her arms. “We don’t.”

  “We do not trespass upon sacred spaces,” Twig said. “A courtesy you mortals never gave us. We abide by the old laws, but if nothing else, we respect His Majesty’s faith, for who are we to deny the uncanny and unknown?”

  This surprised me. In all of Constanze’s tales, goblins had no honor or morals, quick to lie and steal and cheat to get their way. But who was I to question the old laws?

  “Fine then,” I said. “I would deprive him of his voice. Fetch me his violin.”

  My goblin girls exchanged glances. It would be a useless command.

  I made a noise of disgust. “All right. Leave me be, and I shall call him another way.”

  Twig and Thistle gave each other another glance, then faded away.

  I waited.

  I waited for the Goblin King to finish, for the guilt to run dry. I waited for the violin to fall silent so I could make my reply.

  I organized my papers and began work on the second movement of the Wedding Night Sonata, the adagio.

  You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.

  Through the large mirrors lining the retiring room, I watched the river ripple through Salzburg, letting the mood serve as my inspiration. I heard the delicate pizzicato plinks of a violin, droplets of ice melting into spring and summer. Beneath that, the murmuring susurration of a flowing brook. Arpeggios on the fortepiano. I made notes on the paper in front of me. The key had not yet resolved in my mind, but I thought it might be C minor.

  I modulated the arpeggios up and down, not with any purpose, just to play with the sound until I heard something that struck me. Nothing, so I began to expand the arpeggios. Better. Some chromatic color. There was tension building there beneath the notes. I liked it. I recognized it. It was the unbearable weight of desire.

  I left no room for the Goblin King to reply.

  The first movement had been about anger and impotence. The theme thwarted, the melody reaching and never quite resolving its potential until the end. The second movement would be about loss, and about dreams just out of reach. The world above. My body. His body. The throb of desire beat beneath it all, marrying these two movements together.

  I made notes to revise the allegro with these new thoughts.

  Softer. Gentler. The slower tempo of the adagio lent itself to a more meditative, melancholy air, but I did not want complacence and resignation. No, I wanted the melody to unsettle and disturb him, even as it beguiled and tempted him. Rising notes, a pause, then resolution. Modulating higher. The same pattern, a pause, then resolution. I thought of the Goblin King’s hands, sliding over my skin. A laden pause, then a painful grip. Over and over again. Leaving his mark upon my person. I made my marks on the score.

  I leaned into the notes, my body pushing and pulling with the music. I closed my eyes and imagined the Goblin King standing behind me, his hands resting about my shoulders. Sixteenth notes in a chromatic scale. Those same hands, fingers splayed, running down my throat to my collarbone, down my shoulders, down my décolletage. Falling notes, glissando, slower eighths. I let out a sigh.

  There was an echo of that sigh in the room.

  Let the Goblin King listen to me now. Let him hear my frustration and forgiveness.

  As I played, as I composed, I waited. I waited for the soft touch of a hand against my hair, the whisper of a breath upon my neck. I waited for his shadow to fall across the keys, for teardrops to fall on my shoulder. I waited and waited and waited until the sun came up, until the darkness faded to show no trace that the Goblin King had ever been there.

  * * *

  It didn’t work. I had been so certain—so sure—that my music, the music he had so desperately wanted of me, would be enough to draw the Goblin King from his guilt. But as the minutes, the hours, the days passed, my husband kept his distance. He had not touched me, not spoken to me, not looked at me since our disastrous encounter after he brought me back from the world above.

  I missed him.

  I missed our conversations by the fire, when he had read aloud from the writings of Erasmus and Kepler and Copernicus, when I had set aside my self-consciousness and performed for him the works of occasional poetry I had learned. I missed our childish games of Truth or Forfeit, his hand tricks and jests. I missed working with him on our Wedding Night Sonata, but most of all I missed his smile, his mismatched eyes, and those long, elegant fingers of his that worked both music and magic.

  Well, if the Goblin King would not come to me, then I would drag him out from hiding myself.

  The second movement of the Wedding Night Sonata was nearly finished, and it had nothing of the Goblin King’s voice within it. I set down my quill.

  “Thistle,” I said to the waiting air.

  The goblin girl materialized before me.

  “What do you want now, Goblin Queen?” she sneered.

  “Where is Der Erlkönig?” I asked.

  “In the chapel. As is his wont these days.”

  “Lead me to him.”

  Thistle raised an eyebrow, or she would have, had she had eyebrows at all. “You are braver than I reckoned, mortal, to interrupt His Majesty during his devotions.”

  I shrugged. “I believe in God’s unending forgiveness.”

  “It’s not your God’s forgiveness you’d be needing.”

  Nevertheless, Thistle agreed—after I had wished it—to guide me to the chapel to retrieve the Goblin King’s violin. Thistle left me at the entrance and then disappeared as soon as I released her.

  The chapel was empty.

  I was furious with my goblin girl, berating myself for allowing myself to be swindled by her tricks. I should have asked Twig instead. I turned to leave, but not before a violin before the altar caught my eye.

  The Goblin King’s violin.

  I walked up the aisle to retrieve it, to take his voice and his guilt away. Above, the stained glass windows glowed with an otherworldly light. There were no pews or seats in the space; after all, there was no priest to conduct a service, no parishioners to attend. A plain wooden crucifix hung above the altar, and in the chancel rested the Goblin King’s violin in its stand on a small table.

  As soon as my hands touched its warm, aged wood, a sigh echoed around me.

  I nearly dropped the violin from surprise. I turned around, but there was no one there.

  “I don’t know if Thou art there, my Lord, but I am here, come once more, kneeling and asking forgiveness. Asking for guidance. I am so far from Thee and Thy grace in the Underground, yet still I yearn for Thy presence.”

  The voice came from one of the niches lining the aisle, devotional spaces where one might light a candle for prayer. I tiptoed my way toward the one on my left, from which the voice emanated.

  The Goblin King knelt at a small table, head bowed before a small gilt image of Christ. Several candles burned beside him, illuminating the face of Our Lord with a gentle, golden glow.

  “As the years pass, one would think the immortal would become accustomed to death. After all, everyone else withers and fades. For one such as me, it is merely a fact of existence.
Do mortals wonder at the passing of summer into autumn? Of autumn into winter? No, they trust that the world will turn again, and life and warmth will return. And yet…”

  The Goblin King lifted his head. I pressed back against the rock wall, hidden from view.

  “And yet I keenly feel the bitter chill of each winter. The frostbite of death never lessens its terrible sting. I have watched so many of my brides bloom and fade, but…”

  His voice faltered.

  I shouldn’t be here. I should leave the Goblin King to his private confessions. I turned to go.

  “But Elisabeth…”

  I stopped.

  “Elisabeth is not like the flowers who have come before. Their beauty is fleeting, transient. One learns to admire them while they last, for they will be ashes tomorrow. Once their petals faded to brown, I swept them away.”

  My ears were not meant to hear his soul poured out before God. Yet I could not move. Did not want to move.

  “They would call me cruel, I suppose. She would call me cruel. But to be cruel, cold, and distant was the only way I knew how to survive.” He laughed, but it was more a scoff than a chuckle. “Why does an immortal need to worry about survival? Oh, my Lord, every day is a struggle to survive.”

  His voice fell into softer cadences, more reminiscence than supplication.

  “My life, my very existence, is a torture unending. I made a bargain with the Devil, and I am in Hell. It’s something I never understood, not until I became king of this accursed place. I was so afraid of dying that I took the chance—any chance—to escape its deep darkness. What a fool I was. What a fool I am.”

  He bowed his head again.

  “Anger, heartache, joy, desire, I have not properly felt these emotions in a long time. Especially joy. Of them all, anger was the easiest to feel—bitterness and despair have been my constant companions for centuries. But despite everything, I still yearn for depth. For intensity. Despite the years, I have not forgotten the spark and the burn. I yearn to feel it again, even as time and eternity have inured me to the freshness.”

  I clutched his violin to my breast, wishing I could go to him, wishing I could take him into my arms and give him comfort.