by S. Jae-Jones
“Then let the world judge me as I am.”
I opened my eyes. The changeling who wore Papa’s face had done a good job of it; the ruddy cheeks, the sunken eyes, the patchy skin. But his face held a malice that my father never had, an intentional cruelty that could be wielded with precision. Papa was a blunt instrument, his blows made indiscriminate by drink.
“Stand aside,” I said, “and let me pass.”
The changeling smiled, and his features shifted. “As you wish, mortal,” he said, giving me a sweeping bow. Then he snatched the Wedding Night Sonata from the stand, the sheets of paper written all in my own hand, and began to rip them apart.
“No!” I cried, but the flautist came to hold me, while the others joined the first in shredding my music to pieces. The changelings savaged my work, bits of paper floating and falling in the air like snow, settling in my hair, my eyes, my mouth, tasting of bitterness and betrayal.
So much lost. So much effort, all to ash. Those early works Papa had burned in retribution for burning Josef’s face. The pieces I had written in secret, all sacrificed to gain entrance to the Underground and save my sister. And now this, my latest and possibly greatest, all gone, gone, gone.
I screamed and sobbed, but it was only after the last few notes had fallen to the floor that the changelings released me.
“No matter,” said one cheerfully. “I’m sure you can re-create it, if you’ve the talent you claim.”
Then they abandoned me in the empty cavernous ballroom, the echoes of their spiteful laughter ringing in my ears.
* * *
I arrived at the shores of the Underground lake.
I had been stripped of everything—my confidence, my esteem, my music—but still I forced myself onward. They could take everything else away from me, but I had myself, entire. Elisabeth was more than the woman who bore the name, more than the notes she produced, more than the people who defined her. I was filled with myself, for they could not take my soul.
I glanced about. I had come to an unfamiliar shore, and could see no barge or skiff to bear me across. I stared across the great black expanse. Its glassy surface seemed deceptively calm, but beneath those obsidian depths, danger lurked.
The Lorelei.
As though called by my thoughts, glistening shapes rippled beneath the water. I squared my shoulders. I had come this far. I had faced the goblins. I had faced the changelings. I would face the Lorelei. If I could not row across, then I would swim.
There was no way through but down.
I took a step into the lake and gasped when the water touched my skin. It was cold; colder than ice, colder than winter, colder than despair.
The Lorelei swam closer, drawn to my presence like pikes scenting blood. One by one, they emerged, breaking free of the glassy black in a shower of glowing droplets.
They were so, so beautiful. Beautiful in the way the Goblin King was beautiful, a relentless symmetry to their features that was both alluring and terrifying. They were as naked as newborn babes, but their voluptuous, feminine shapes seemed molded by a hand that did not understand their function. So perfect, so flawless, nary a dimple or nipple or hair to betray any hint of humanity. Their flat black eyes focused on me, and they moved toward me with sinuous, flowing grace.
I was up to my waist in the water now. The closest Lorelei reached out with her hands, and my arms lifted of their own volition to meet hers. She smiled, row upon row of prickly teeth, and moved in to press that jagged grin against my skin.
The others swam close, fanning out around me, encircling me, entrapping me. Their hands stroked my face, my hair, my limbs, my waist. I was numb but I felt their fluttering touches slide up between the valley of my thighs, the ridge of my spine where it met the curve of my backside, the underside of my breasts. My body, so like theirs and not. One tangled her fingers in my hair, undoing the plaits I habitually wore in a coronet about my head, letting the dark locks fall into the water. The weight of my hair dragged me down like an anchor.
I don’t know when it happened, but suddenly, it was no longer my feet taking me farther and farther into oblivion. I was being pulled, dragged, coerced, caught in an undertow I had not sensed. I stopped, but the current around me was irresistible, and I began to struggle.
The Lorelei hissed, and the serenity surrounding us was shattered. They grabbed at whatever part of me they could reach, my chemise, my belly, my toes, my hair. They grabbed, and dragged.
I was submerged in darkness, broken only by wavering ripples of light as we disturbed the surface of the lake. I fought and kicked and clawed, but the Lorelei only bore down harder. The gleaming, glowing surface of the lake was growing farther and farther from reach. My aching lungs hitched, screaming for air they did not have.
But no. If I were to drown, then I would take as many as I could with me. I would not go quietly into the long darkness. I had not come so far to give up. I would go with fire and fanfare and a fight.
I grabbed at the Lorelei whose arms were locked about my waist. Her head was the closest to mine, and I wrapped my fingers in her hair, jerking her face hard toward mine. I did not know what I intended—to bite, to tear—but my lips found hers and I opened my mouth to the end.
A breath passed from her to me, and my lungs seized upon the air. Hot, humid, and moist, but air nonetheless.
And then it wasn’t the Lorelei with her arms about me, it was me clinging to her. She thrashed in my embrace, but I held on, Menelaus against Proteus, and I was the King of Sparta. With every kiss I stole, I drew another bit of breath, until at last the Lorelei returned me to the surface.
I broke through the water with a choking gasp, and I broke through alone. The Lorelei had vanished, but I was now caught in the grip of something just as terrifying: the rushing current.
“Help!” I called, but my cry was lost in the watery, gurgling rattle of my chest. “Help!”
But no one came.
I was tired, so tired, I could scarce keep my head above the water. But I would not succumb to fatigue. I had escaped near drowning by the Lorelei. I would escape this. The water battered and bashed me against hidden rocks, but despite the growing darkness in my head, despite the utter exhaustion in my body, I kept swimming. I kept breathing.
At last, the river slowed to a gentle crawl, a burbling brook that gave way to a still pond. The water pushed me against a rocky shore, and with a herculean effort, I managed to clamber out of the river, heedless of the cuts and scrapes and bruises on my body. I collapsed, coughing and retching, water running from my nose and mouth, still shimmering, still glowing, but tinged red with blood.
When I had coughed up the last of the water, I sat up. The world reeled, turning both black and sparkling at the edges.
Stay awake, I ordered myself. Stay alive.
I took a shuffling step forward, but if the mind was willing, the flesh was still weak. Darkness crashed down on me, and I remembered no more.
IMMORTAL BELOVED
“Elisabeth.”
A gentle hand shook me awake. I stirred and groaned, retching up the last bits of lake water from my lungs. In the blurry darkness, I could make out a long, lanky figure, with a shock of silver-white hair around his head like a mane.
My lips shaped a name before I remembered I did not know it.
“Mein—mein Herr?”
“Yes,” the Goblin King said softly. “I am here.”
“H—how?” I croaked.
“You may not have had Der Erlkönig’s protection as you walked the Underground,” he said, a smile in his voice. “But you always had mine.”
He held out his hand and I took it. Slowly, painfully, I got to my feet. I was aching all over, bruised and battered in more than just my body.
Above us, the same gap in the earth and tree I had crawled through to break the old laws the last time I came here. I was tired, so tired, but I forced myself to climb the ladder of roots and rock to the surface. The Goblin King supported me, encouraged me, helpe
d me, until at last, I tumbled onto the forest floor of the threshold.
The world above was blue, the deep indigo of predawn. The starry veil of the night sky still held reign, but soon it would be gone, hidden by the rising sun. Already the darkness was lightening to purple, and the shadows were beginning to retreat.
I turned to face the Goblin King. He wore a soft expression and held a leather portfolio in his hands. Without another word, he took two steps forward and gave it to me.
“What is this?”
His only response was a smile. With shaking hands, I undid the ties that held it shut and opened it to find scores upon scores of music. I did not recognize the hand, but I recognized the composer. Me. It was my music, copied out in his hand. All of my music, the unfinished Wedding Night Sonata as well as the pieces I had sacrificed to gain entrance to the Underground.
“They’re all there,” he said softly. “All your compositions.”
“But,” I choked out. “They were destroyed.”
“Oh, Elisabeth,” he said. “Did you truly think they had been lost? I treasured your music as much as you. I kept it safe. I remembered each and every little thing you ever wrote; after all, had you not played them for me your entire life?” He chuckled. “Did I not say that I was a copyist once?”
Tears fell from my face to stain the paper in my hands. I closed the portfolio to save me from ruining his labor of love.
“You played them for me; now you should go play them for the rest of the world. Finish the Wedding Night Sonata, Elisabeth. Finish it for us.”
“I will write it for you,” I whispered. “For my immortal beloved.”
It was close, so close to what I wanted to tell him. I love you, I insisted, but my lips would not comply.
“Play it for me,” he said. “Play for me, my dear, and I will hear it. No matter where you go. No matter where I am. I swear it. I swear it, Elisabeth.”
A name came to my lips. I tried to lift my hand, to hold it against his cheek, to tell him I loved him.
“Will I see you again?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “I think—I think it is better that way.”
Even though I had expected it, his refusal still struck me like a blow. But perhaps he was being cruel to be kind. We would never again truly be together, would never again feel the touch of each other’s hands upon our bodies. Not even in the thresholds of the world, where the Underground bled into the world above. I had had all of him. I had tasted all of him. To see but to never touch … I would be a woman in the desert, forever thirsting for water she could see but never reach.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
No. But I would never be ready. This day and the day after next and the day after that would be full of unknowns, full of uncertainty. And I would face each one as I was, Elisabeth, entire.
“Yes.”
He gave me a nod, more a gesture of respect than agreement. “Then,” he said. “The whole wide world awaits you.”
I walked to the edge of the Goblin Grove. I placed my hands against the barrier, invisible yet tangible. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself to push through. I stepped past the barrier, and into the forest beyond.
For a moment, I stood there, beyond the edge of the Goblin Grove. The air, warm and mild, did not change, did not grow cold. I had crossed the threshold, and there was no going back. And yet, still I lingered, unwilling to go, unable to stay.
“If—if I could find a way to free you,” I whispered, “would you walk the world above with me?”
My back was to the Goblin King; I could not face him. It was a long time before he answered.
“Oh, Elisabeth,” he said. “I would go anywhere with you.”
I turned around. His eyes deepened in color and for a moment, just for the merest glimpse, I could see what he would have been like as a mortal man. If he had been allowed to live the course of his life, from the child he had been to the man he would have become. A musician—a violinist. I ran back into the circle of alder trees, wanting the circle of his arms around me. I reached out my hands, and his fingers brushed mine, but we passed through each other like water, like a mirage. We were each nothing but a shimmering illusion, a candle flame we could not hold.
And yet, the Goblin King was still here, in the Goblin Grove, with me. He stood in the Underground while I stood in the world above, but our hearts beat within the same space.
“Don’t look back,” he said.
I nodded. I love you, I wanted to say. But I knew those words would break me.
“Elisabeth.”
The Goblin King was smiling. Not the pointed smile of the Lord of Mischief or Der Erlkönig, but a crooked one. Twisted to one side, lopsided and goofy, it cracked my heart open and I bled inside.
He mouthed a word at me. A name. “You’ve always had it, Elisabeth,” he said softly. “For it is to you I gave my soul.”
His soul. I held my music—our music—to my heart. We were sundered forever, never to be with the other again. The grief shattered me, broke me into sharp, jagged pieces. I wanted the touch of his hand, for my austere young man to put me back together, scarred but whole.
But I was already whole. I was Elisabeth, entire, even if I was Elisabeth, alone. The knowledge of it gave me strength.
I straightened my shoulders. The Goblin King and I held each other’s gazes for the last time. I would not look back. I would not regret. He smiled at me and pressed his fingers to his lips in farewell.
Then I turned and walked away, into the world above, and into the dawn.
Ever Thine,
Ever Mine,
Ever Ours.
—LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, the Immortal Beloved Letters
To Franz Josef Johannes Gottlieb Vogler, care of Master Antonius
Paris
My dearest Sepperl,
My heart, my love, my right hand, I have not abandoned you. It is true your letters did not reach me, but it is not because you’ve offended or because I’ve left you. No, mein Brüderchen, your letters did not reach me because I was unreachable, because I was gone.
You have undertaken a journey, and so have I: a journey far beyond and just beneath the Goblin Grove. It is a tale full of magic and enchantment, such as Constanze might have told us when we were children, only it is true. Only it is real. Do my stories have a happy ending? You must tell me, for I cannot decide.
I thank you for the news of your gala performance of my little bagatelle and its reception. I pray you do not reveal its true authorship quite yet, despite how popular you claim it’s become. Strange to think of elegant, sophisticated Paris enamored with the works of a queer, unlovely little girl, and I can’t imagine what they would say when the composer of Der Erlkönig revealed herself as Maria Elisabeth Vogler, the daughter of innkeepers.
I would rather not imagine. I would rather see it for myself.
Käthe talks of nothing but publication now, especially after seeing the fee you sent her after selling the print rights to Der Erlkönig. She has taken it upon herself to meet with Herr Klopstock, the traveling impresario, to learn all she can about managing musicians, but I think it is Herr Klopstock’s brown eyes that intrigue our sister more than the details of the work. She misses you. We all miss you.
As for your other request … stay, Sepp. Stay in Paris with Master Antonius, with François. There is no need to come home, no need, for I shall send you a piece of it.
Enclosed are some pages from a sonata I have written, although the last movement is still unfinished. I send it to you with my love, and a leaf from the Goblin Grove. Tell me what you think, and then tell me what the world thinks, for I think it is my best yet, my most honest and my most true.
Yours always,
Composer of Der Erlkönig
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. JAE-JONES (called JJ) is an artist, an adrenaline junkie, and an erstwhile editrix. When not obsessing over books, she can be found jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, cohosting the Pub(l
ishing) Crawl podcast, or playing dress-up. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in North Carolina as well as many places on the Internet, including Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and her blog. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Overture
Part I: The Goblin Market
Beware the Goblin Men
Come Buy, Come Buy
She Is for the Goblin King Now
Virtuoso
The Audition
The Tall, Elegant Stranger
Intermezzo
The Ideal Imaginary
A Pretty Lie
The Ugly Truth
Sacrifice
Part II: The Goblin Ball
Fairy Lights
Eyes Open
The Games We’ve Played
The Bride
The Old Laws
Strange, Sweet
Pyrrhic Victory
Resurrection
Part III: The Goblin Queen
Consecration
The Wedding
Wedding Night
Prick and Bleed
Those Who Have Come Before
Come Out to Play
Changeling
Mercy
Romance in C Major
Part IV: The Goblin King
Death and the Maiden
Perchance to Dream
Unfinished Symphony
The Threshold
Zugzwang
Justice
Be, Thou, With Me
The Brave Maiden’s Tale
The Mystery Sonatas
The Return
Immortal Beloved
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
