by S. Jae-Jones
“I gave up trying a long time ago. Each of my brides had come to me willing to die; their lives in the world above had ended already. They all wanted one last chance to feel again, and I gave them that. I gave them tears, I gave them pleasure, but most of all, I gave them catharsis. They used me as much as I used them, and once they were gone, I hated them all for leaving me behind. Leaving me to endure alone, until the next one came along. But Elisabeth…”
I held my breath.
“She was never a hothouse flower. She is a sturdy oak tree. If her leaves have fallen, then she will bloom again come spring. She was not ready to die when she gave her life to me. But she did anyway, because she loved, and loved deeply.”
Tears scalded my lower lashes.
“I know what Thou wouldst tell me. I should have done the greater thing—the godly thing—and returned her to the world above.” A hitch in his throat. “But I was selfish.”
Suddenly, the trespass of what I was doing overcame me. I had come to deprive the Goblin King of his voice, only to realize perhaps it was I who should have been listening instead.
“I know what it means to love, my Lord. It was Thee who taught me how. Thou hath shown me through Thy words and Thy death, but I did not understand the meaning of sacrifice until now. To love is to be selfless. Let me be selfless. Lend me strength, my Lord, for I shall need it in the trials to come.”
The soft sound of crying, the echoes of which I tried my hardest to suppress.
“In Thy name I pray, amen.”
BE, THOU, WITH ME
Back in the retiring room, I studied the violin before me. It was rather plain, devoid of ornamentation, but made of a beautiful, rich wood, stained a dark amber. The instrument was clearly quite old, the belly dinged and scratched with age and wear, although it appeared as though the neck, pegbox, and scroll had been replaced more recently. I thought of the scroll painted with the portrait of the austere young man in the gallery, the woman whose face was contorted in pain or pleasure. It had looked familiar. I wondered what happened to it.
I lifted the violin from the stand. It was an instrument, like countless others I had picked up and played over the years, yet there was a living, breathing quality to it. The wood was warm beneath my hand, and as with the flute the Goblin King gave me oh so long ago, it was a touch that felt back. Like holding someone’s hand. Like holding the Goblin King’s hand.
I should not have taken it.
To love is to be selfless.
I should not have heard those words. It had been neither the time nor the place. The Goblin King and I deserved to face each other when we gave up our most intimate revelations, and I had stolen that from us. Regret roiled through me.
Mea culpa, mein Herr. Mea maxima culpa.
I tucked the violin beneath my chin, inhaling the faint scent of rosin. Faint traces of an earthier, muskier perfume were ingrained into the wood. The scent of ice curling over pond edges, the woody heart of a bonfire. The scent of the Goblin King.
I tuned the strings first, but the violin had been played recently enough that it needed little adjustment. I practiced a few scales and exercises, running my fingers up and down the neck, acquainting myself with the feel of it. Each violin was different from its brother in the subtlest, smallest of ways, even if the bones were the same. This violin was older than any of the ones we had at the inn—any of the ones we had remaining. The angle of its neck to the body was different, as well as the length of the fingerboard. The sound was fuller and deeper as I ran the bow over its strings.
My hands had not touched a violin since the Goblin Ball, when I joined the musicians playing the minuet, when I had first allowed that seed of music within me to crack and emerge forth. My instrument, by necessity rather than choice, had been the klavier. First because I was needed to accompany Josef, and second because the keyboard was the easiest place I could visualize my music. But the violin was the first instrument I had learned, and therefore the first instrument I had loved. Although it did not sing in my hands the way it did in my brother’s, or even the Goblin King’s, I knew how to ply its strings.
Vibrations ran along the belly of the violin and along my jaw where it rested against the instrument. I closed my eyes, feeling the resonance sing inside my head. Once I was warmed up, I let my fingers do what they willed—the beginnings of a few chaconnes, phrases from sonatas I had always enjoyed playing, runs of sixteenth notes and trills.
But it had been years since I last played with any serious intent, years since I had practiced. My fingers tangled themselves up, the discipline lazied out of them. I could no longer keep my tempos consistent, nor could I remember an entire piece from beginning to end. But there was no need to prove virtuosity to myself, not anymore. So I picked a simple aria, one Mother used to sing as she worked around the inn.
Be, thou, with me.
I heard him breathing.
Then go I with joy, to Death and to my rest.
It had been so long since his presence walked in my mind that I knew the instant the Goblin King was near.
Oh how glad would be my end, if it be your dear hands I see, closing my faithful eyes at last.
The hitch of a broken breath. I opened my eyes, but there was no one there. But I felt his eyes upon me anyway, feather-light and invisible, gentle fingers tracing the line of my neck and arm as it held the violin. I felt its touch on my bow arm, gently holding my elbow as I moved it back and forth across the strings in a smooth, continuous arc.
“Be, thou, with me,” I said, still playing. An invitation.
“I am here, Elisabeth.”
The bow faltered, and I dropped my arms. And from the shadows appeared an austere young man.
The Goblin King had appeared before me in many guises before—a tall, elegant stranger, a poor shepherd boy, a peacock-king—but I had never seen the youth in the portrait until now. The black of his tunic set off the pallor of his skin, turning his complexion silver and his hair golden white. There was no ornamentation on his sleeves or collar, save for a small wooden cross at his throat, and there was something of the priest about him: simple, plain, and beautiful.
“You call, and I answer,” he said.
I set down the violin and the bow and held out my arms. “You come and I bid you welcome, mein Herr.”
There was nothing else that needed to be said.
We walked into each other’s embrace. We stood like that for a long while, allowing ourselves to adjust to the rhythm of each other’s breaths, to relearn each other’s shapes and curves. I had not known until that moment how empty my arms had been. He had lived in my mind for so long; now I wanted to hold more than just the idea of him. I wanted to hold him.
“Oh, Elisabeth,” he said into my hair. “I am afraid.”
He was quivering, shaking and trembling like a leaf in a storm.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
He laughed, an uncertain waver. “You,” he said. “Damnation. My heart.”
His heart. It beat beneath my cheek, fast and unsure.
“I know,” I murmured into his chest. “I’m afraid too.”
A confession, the first admission of weakness I had ever given him. I felt the realization all throughout his body. I had given him my hand, my music, my body, but the one thing I had not given him was my trust. I had trespassed against him in the chapel. Let him trespass against me now.
He kissed me.
It was not like any of the others we had shared. No passion, no frenzy, and I understood then that each time we had kissed before was not a gift; it was theft. We had stolen from each other, demanding something of the other without any thought to giving.
“Elisabeth,” he said against my lips. “I have done you great wrong.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I broke my promise. I gave you my music, but I withheld my trust.”
And it was true. I had given him everything but the one thing he truly needed: not my hand in marriage, not my body in his bed, n
ot even my music. I should have trusted the Goblin King back when I was a little girl playing her music for him in the wood. I should have trusted him with the consequences of my choice to become his bride. I should have trusted him when he tried to give me back to myself.
“Oh, Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said softly. His eyes were bright, vivid, and intense. “Your trust is a beautiful thing. Let me give you mine in return.”
He fell to his knees.
Confused, I tried to bring him back to his feet, but he wrapped his arms about my waist in response.
“Mein Herr, what—”
“Be, thou, with me,” he murmured. “How glad would be my end”—he lifted his eyes to mine—“if it be your dear hands into which I commend my soul.”
Those mismatched eyes were clear as a well, and I could see down to the boy he had been. The boy he might have been, before he had been transformed and consumed by a wolf in the woods. Before he became Der Erlkönig. My hands and limbs were trembling, and I sat down upon the bench.
“Elisabeth,” he said. “You gave yourself to me, whole and entire. Let me do the same. Let me give myself back to you.”
He lowered his head to place a soft kiss against my knee. And then I began to understand.
“You would … you would have me lead you into the dark? Into wildness?”
“Yes,” he whispered. I felt every vibration of his voice, every movement of his lips against my leg. “Yes.”
I hesitated. “I’m … I don’t know the way.”
I felt the Goblin King smile. “I trust you.”
Trust. Did I have the courage to take it? Could I bear its weight? I was the Goblin Queen, but I was also just a girl. Just Elisabeth.
But was I not also a brave maiden?
I swallowed. “All right,” I said, stroking his hair and pushing it away from his face. “As you wish.”
“As you wish.”
* * *
The Goblin King bows his head with gratitude, with reverence, with submission. I tangle my fingers in the luxuriant thickness of his thistledown hair, trying to lift his head and meet my eyes.“Look at me,” I whisper.
We hold each other’s gaze for a long moment. The nakedness in his expression turns me tender and nervous at once, the trust in his face mingling with a waiting apprehension. He has surrendered all power, and it is only now I understand that he had surrendered it to me long ago. When I offered him my life for my sister’s. When I offered him my music. When I offered him myself, entire. He has been in my thrall for longer than I can remember, and the realization of it makes me gasp. I could hurt him; I do not know if I could bear to hurt him.
His heart is in my grasp. It always has been.
His heart and trust are in my hands. I know what I want, but what I want brings a flush to my skin. My heart hammers in my breast, my blood sings in my ears, and my breath comes fast and hard. I strive for control, for an implacable countenance.
“You will … you will do everything I ask?” My control over my voice is incomplete. It shakes and trembles and shivers. “Without protest, without question, and … without laughing?”
He nods, his smile gentle. “Yes, my queen.” His eyes are steady on my face. “Your wish is my command.”
A nervous laugh crawls up my throat, but I swallow it, suppress it. The Goblin Queen does not ask for pleasure; she demands it. But I am not just the Goblin Queen. I am also Liesl, Elisabeth, a girl—no, woman—who yearns for nothing more than for the man at her feet to touch her, to take responsibility out of her hands. She does not know what to do with his trust.
Slowly, shyly, I undo the ties of my dressing gown. The Goblin King watches every movement of my hands with intense focus. I cannot control the blush that spreads from my chest through my body, but my hands are steady and sure. His eyes are fixated upon me, and I resist the urge to cover myself.
He waits upon my every word, and a trickle of surety, little by little, begins to fill me like a well.
“Stand,” I say.
He complies.
“Undress.”
The Goblin King lifts his eyebrows in surprise.
“Please.”
Slowly, he raises his hand to undo the buttons of his shirt. He is informally dressed—no waistcoat, no silken breeches, just a simple shirt and trousers. Yet it takes ages for the Goblin King to become revealed to me. I hold my breath; I had not realized how much I’d longed to be able to see him—all of him—unobstructed and uncovered. No furtive glimpses during accidental meetings in his bedchamber, no bits and pieces of flesh between unlaced breeches and unbuttoned blouses, just skin—whole skin—a great, naked expanse of it.
He shrugs off his shirt. Lean muscle covers his torso, and I notice a scar bisecting his left breast. It is small, thin, silver, and glows in the soft firelight of the retiring room. He is slim, much slimmer than the solid working companions of my youth. Unbidden, the memory of Hans returns to me: thick, stocky, and brawny. As a girl I had thought his physique the pinnacle of masculinity. The pinnacle of strength. But the Goblin King belies all of that, nearly feminine in his elegance and grace. But there is nothing delicate about him, no softness about his belly and arms. The shadows play about him, carving the shapes and contours of his body into a work of art.
His eyes meet mine. The austere young man looks at me with a question in his gaze.
“Yes,” I say, but I scarcely know for what I am giving him permission. “Yes, you may.”
He breathes out in a long sigh. Those eyes, two-toned and otherworldly, are for once free of the burdens they’ve carried for so long. The burden of immortality. The burden of unending indifference. He has relinquished them to me. He smiles.
I understand then that the trust he gave me is power. It is not only the Goblin Queen who has the ability to bend the will of those around her; it is me. Elisabeth, entire. “Come here,” I say at last, holding out my hand. “Come and follow me into the light.”
He takes my hand and I guide him toward my bedchamber. Then I gather him into my arms and we fall together.
We lie like this for a moment. I am no longer his Goblin Queen; I am Elisabeth, mortal, human, warm. He is no longer my Goblin King; he is my husband, the man behind the mask of myth. All pretense fades away and we stare at each other, naked in mind and flesh and soul.
I kiss him. He kisses me back. It is an exploratory dance of lips and tongue, a language we are learning together. There is a hunger within me that still yearns to be fulfilled, to be filled with him, but for now, I revel in the sweetness that is this: this moment, this communion.
And we are met.
This time, I do not leave him. I am fully in my body as my sense of self falls apart. My mind is wiped clean. Tabula rasa. He has rewritten who I am down to the core. It is one long revelation where I build myself back together again.
Dimly I become aware of the Goblin King whispering my name over and over, a mantra, rosary, a prayer on his lips.
“Elisabeth,” he says. “Elisabeth, Elisabeth, Elisabeth.”
“Yes,” I answer. I am here. I am here at last.
I am the rhythm, he is the melody. I provide the basso continuo, he the improvisation.
“Yes,” I whisper in his ear. “Yes.”
When he returns to me, we lie there, our chests rising and falling with our breaths, slower and slower as our heartbeats calm, and the tides of our blood retreat. Lassitude overtakes me, a deep restfulness radiating from every part of me. He shifts and I am nestled in the crook of his shoulder, my nose rubbing against the hair of his chest, surprisingly soft.
We don’t say anything and I feel myself drifting to sleep, an inevitable, inexorable descent into dreams. But just before I fade from consciousness, I hear four words that are my undoing.
“I love you, Elisabeth.”
I hold him tighter to me, even as my heart unravels.
“By God, I love you so.”
THE BRAVE MAIDEN’S TALE
“Tell me a story,
” I said.
The Goblin King and I lay in each other’s arms, nestled against each other’s hearts. His fingers lightly stroked the flesh of my upper arm, running them over the hill of my shoulder and down the valley between my breasts.
“Hmm?”
“Tell me a story,” I repeated.
“What sort of story?”
“A bedtime story. And let it have a happy ending.”
I felt the chuckle roll through him. “Is there one in particular you wish to hear?”
I paused. “Do you know,” I said in a small voice, “the true tale of the brave maiden?”
It was a long time before he answered. “Yes,” he said. “I know the true tale of the brave maiden. But I only know of it as a fairy tale, the story pieced together from bits of memory, both learned and inherited.”
“The story is not yours?”
A beat. “No.”
“Does the story not belong to Der Erlkönig?”
“The story belongs to Der Erlkönig,” the Goblin King replied, “but not to me.”
But not to me. It was the first time he had drawn such a clear delineation between himself and Der Erlkönig. Between the man he had been and the myth he had become.
I held him tighter, nuzzling against his heartbeat. I pretended it was mortal, that it pulsed in time with mine. His seconds were my hours, his minutes my years.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a great king who lived Underground.”
I closed my eyes.
“This king was the ruler of the dead and the living,” he continued. “He brought the world above to life every spring, and brought it back to death every autumn.
“As the seasons turned, one after another, the king grew old. Weary. Spring came later and later and autumn earlier and earlier, until one day, there was no spring at all.” His voice fell. “The world above had gone quiet, dead, and still, and the people suffered.”
I remembered the vivid image of frost tracing the edges of the summer green in the Goblin Grove, and shivered.
