Shadowsong

by S. Jae-Jones

  Yet there remained that ineffable ethereality in those clear depths that had stirred my protective heart ever since he was a babe in the cradle. Since he had been changed for the child that was the brother of my blood, if not the brother of my heart.

  “Oh, Sepp,” I whispered. “What are we doing?”

  It was a while before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “I don’t know.”

  And just like that, the wall he had constructed around him came crumbling down. The mask fell, and the brother I loved, the gardener of my heart, appeared.

  I held my arms open for a hug as though he were still a boy and not a man near full-grown. But Josef walked into my embrace without a second thought, wrapping his arms around me. The tears that had been simmering beneath my lashes ever since I walked away from the Goblin Grove slipped down my cheeks. I had missed my brother, yes, but it wasn’t until this moment that I understood just how much.

  “Oh, Sepp,” I said again.

  “Liesl.” His was a man’s voice now, deeper and fuller. It carried all the rich resonance of his experiences, and would only grow richer with time, acquired with knowledge like a violin resined with age. My heart beat a painful tattoo, Don’t grow up, Sepp, never grow up.

  “How did we get there?” I asked in a muffled voice. “What are we to do?”

  I felt Josef’s shoulders lift in a shrug. “What we’ve always done, I suppose. Survive.”

  A sober stillness fell over us. We both knew how to survive. We had done it our entire lives, in different ways. It wasn’t just the long cold nights and empty bellies we endured to make ends meet; my brother had long suffered under our father’s crushing expectations. My expectations. I thought I had been helping him shoulder his burdens, yet I had done nothing but add to the weight with my resentment. My arms tightened around him. I did not know how to tell him I was sorry. Not with words.

  “Are you frightened?” I asked, unable to look at him. “Of . . . the Wild Hunt? The Procházkas? Of . . . everything? I am.”

  There was no reply but the steady beating of his heart. “I’m frightened,” he said at last. “But I think I’ve been frightened ever since I left home. Fear has been my constant companion for so long I think I’ve forgotten how to feel anything else.”

  Guilt squeezed my ribs in a painful grip, and fresh tears started in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Sepperl.”

  He extricated himself from my embrace. “It’s over and done now, Liesl,” he said in a dull voice. “This is where I live. This never-ending haze of fear and longing and dissatisfaction. Vienna or no, it is all the same to me.”

  Worry pierced through my remorse. “What of Käthe? And François? Don’t you want to go home?”

  Josef gave a bitter laugh. “Do you?”

  I was about to respond that of course I did when I realized I wasn’t sure what my brother meant by home. Vienna? Or the Goblin Grove? Or, I thought with a stab of alarm, the Underground?

  We all come back in the end.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I know now that Vienna was perhaps a mistake. But to go back . . .” I trailed off.

  “Would be an admission of failure?” Josef asked softly. His voice was gentle.

  “Yes,” I said. “And . . . and no.” I thought of the words of the old rector. The queer, the wild, the strange, the elf-touched—they are said to belong to the Goblin King. I had tried so long and so hard to move on that I was afraid of returning to the places where his ghost still lingered. To return to the Goblin Grove would be returning to a self I had outgrown, trying to tuck who I had become back into the seams of another girl. Then I thought of the vision I had had, of Der Erlkönig transformed, tortured, treacherous.

  His ring weighed heavily on my finger.

  Josef studied me. “What happened?” he asked carefully. He gestured vaguely toward the world outside, toward the forest beyond, the roads back over the Alps to the Goblin Grove. “Did you—did you meet . . . him?”

  Him. Der Erlkönig. The Goblin King. My nameless, austere young man.

  “Yes,” I said, the word forced from me in a choking laugh. “Yes, Sepperl, I have.”

  He sucked in a breath. I could see his pulse fluttering at the base of his throat, his eyes dilating to a depthless black. Interest honed his features to sharp edges. Interest, and envy.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. Where to begin? What did he want to know? What could I tell him? That the stories Constanze told us were real? That there was a fantastic world just below and beyond our mortal ken? The glowing lake, the Lorelei, the glittering cavernous ballrooms, the skittering beetle-eyed goblins, the needle-whiskered tailors? What of the chapel, the receiving room, the mirrors that were windows into another world? How could I reveal that the magic was real . . . without revealing the truth of who—or what—he was?

  We all come back in the end.

  “I—I don’t know if I can, Sepp,” I said. “Not yet.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I see.”

  Something about his tone niggled at me. I frowned. “See what?”

  “No, no, I understand,” he continued, the corner of his upper lip lifting in a curl. “Special Liesl. Chosen Liesl. You’ve always wanted to be extraordinary, and now you are.”

  My mouth fell open and I blinked. It was as though my brother had punched me in the gut; I could barely breathe for the pain. We had been circling each other for a long time, Josef and I, taking swift swipes at each other with razor-keen comments, enough to sting but not enough to wound. A dance of provocation, not injury. We might have been cold and cruel to each other, but this was the first time my brother had been actively malicious.

  “Is that what you think of me?” I whispered.

  He turned his head away, refusing to answer. Refusing to dignify his underhanded move with an explanation, taking the coward’s way out. Well, two could play at that game. If my brother wanted to fight dirty, then I would gladly oblige him.

  “Fine,” I said, my voice hard. “I’m selfish and self-absorbed. But I don’t take my life—my very existence—for granted.” Josef started, and my eyes slipped to his wrists, where he was hastily pulling down his sleeves. Guilt seized me. “Oh, Sepp, I didn’t mean—”

  “Enough,” he said softly. And like that, the mask of indifference he had worn before this moment slipped back into place, perfectly still and perfectly blank. “Enough, Liesl. I cry uncle. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Sepp, I—”

  “I’ll take the other room.” My brother bent to pick up his violin and walked through the open door connecting our quarters. “You should get some rest. It’s been a long journey. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I did not know what to say. I knew that the wound I had dealt him was far greater than the one he had given me and I did not know the extent or depth of the damage. I did not know how to fix it. I did not know how to fix us. So I said the only thing I could.

  “Good night,” I said, my throat tight. “Sleep well, mein Brüderchen.”

  Josef nodded. “Good night,” he said, slowly shutting the door between us. “Sweet dreams . . . Goblin Queen.”

  the villagers called it a demon, der Teufel in wolf form as it prowled the woods at night. An enormous, monstrous beast, it harried the edges of the town and its surrounding environs for months, slaughtering the sheep and carrying off the cattle.

  Two eyes like mismatched gems, the villagers said. One as green as sin, the other blue as temptation. The Devil, the Devil! they cried. Come to plague us all!

  So they brought in the Wolfssegner, the wolf-charmers, they brought in the hunters, they brought in the priests. They brought in anyone and everyone they thought could rid them of their fear.

  Four hundred Gulden for the pelt of der Teufel! the villagers shouted as they papered the town square with rewards. Four hundred Gulden for bringing us his head!

  The giant wolf had been te
rrorizing their sheep and goats for months, but as the winter set in, as the livestock died of hunger and of cold, they felt its ravenous teeth upon the napes of their necks. They were next, the villagers knew. They were next.

  A little girl was the first to disappear. She was the youngest daughter of a shepherd, disappeared from the hills one afternoon when the clouds hung low with frost. The crags and crevices rang with her name as the villagers went searching, but it was only after they found bloodied ribbons in the snow that they gave her up for lost.

  Next was a youth of fifteen, sweet on the dairy maid.

  Then was an old man, of years long uncounted.

  Slowly but surely, the Devil circled in on them, picking them off one by one. The priests sprinkled holy water, the Wolfssegner hung charms, and the hunters went searching, but as the winter deepened, so, too, did the Devil’s bite.

  A sacrifice, the wolf-charmers said. Let a sacrifice be made to the Devil to appease his black heart.

  The priest protested, but the villagers persisted. They scoured their homes for the appropriate victim, a willing lamb to be led unwitting to the slaughter.

  First, the idiot with his tongue thick in his mouth. No, said the priest. That would be callousness beyond measure.

  Then, the harlot with all her wares on display. No, said the hunters. That would be cruelty beyond bearing.

  At last they found a little infant boy, scarce a year out of his mother’s womb. Yes, said the wolf-charmers. This is a sacrifice worth giving.

  The little infant boy was an orphan, his mother and father lost, gone, or forgotten. No name, no baptism, no record. This was a child to whom Heaven and earth had turned a blind eye, a child meant for damnation. A ward of the church, the boy had been a foundling placed in a basket before the altar. Unclaimed and unloved, it would be no great crime to give this child up to the Devil, for he was surely shunned by God.

  The proof was in the eyes.

  The little boy’s eyes were of two different hues; one as green as spring grass and the other as blue as a summer’s lake. Witch eyes. Cats’ eyes. Like Der Teufel’s, the villagers said. Like the Devil’s. Cast the little demon back into the fires of hell from whence it came!

  The village priest refused to give up the child. He was a pious, God-fearing man, but it was his goodness that would be his damnation.

  They came with pitchforks, they came with knives. They came with torches and flame and purpose. They brought their rage and fear to the doorsteps of the church and built a pyre to the unknown. As the walls of God’s house crumbled into smoke and ruin, the bones of the village priest melted into char and ash. They found his remains three days later, when the haze had cleared and the embers had grown cold at last.

  But of the little boy, they found nothing. No swaddling cloths, no hair, no precious baby fingers. No earthly remains, almost as though he had vanished into thin air, blown away like mist with the bitter wind.

  As the spring rains melted away the winter ice, the wolf attacks on the village ceased.

  Praise be! the villagers cried. Der Teufel has accepted our sacrifice.

  Over the course of the next few weeks, the villagers saw no trace of the blue-and-green-eyed demon, or indeed, any traces of wolf at all. Only footprints remained in the frozen mud, great padded paws and the haunting imprint of one tiny, perfect human foot.

  THE KINSHIP BETWEEN US

  i awoke the next morning with my hand wrapped about the Goblin King’s ring. Despite the rough journey and the restless, turmoil-laden sleep, my head was clearer than it had been in a long time. The wisp of a dream returned to me, and I clung to it, trying to remember what I had seen, felt, experienced. But it was gone, leaving nothing but the sensation of fullness, as though my mind were a well that had refilled in the middle of the night.

  The door between my brother’s room and mine was still shut. I wondered if it would ever be open again, or if I had locked us up and thrown away the key. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to demand an apology. I hated what we had become. I hated how Master Antonius and the Goblin King had come between us, and I hated even more that my brother could make me resent what had been the deepest and most transformative time of my life. I wanted to yell at Josef. I wanted to break down that door between us. I wanted to throttle him. I wanted to coddle him.

  I shoved off my linens and threw myself forcefully from my bed.

  Nina had left me a tray of food and some clothes outside my door. The food was cold, but the clothes were clean, and I gratefully changed out of my travel-stained clothes into something more comfortable. I washed my face and did my best to tidy my hair without the use of a mirror. By now I was ravenous, having barely eaten since we left Vienna. I supposed I could have eaten the bread and cheese left for me last night, but it was cold and stale, and I was more of a mind to wander and explore . . . and potentially find someone who might help me get word to my sister and François.

  The twisting, labyrinthine corridors and passageways of Snovin Hall were no less confusing by day than they had been by night. I knew we were in the east wing of the house, having marked it when we arrived. I headed back toward what I assumed was the entrance, figuring it would be easier to orient myself from there.

  The neglect and decay were far more noticeable in the light. Although the wing where Josef and I were staying was relatively sound, a large part of the house had completely and utterly fallen apart: the roof collapsed in one room, brambles and vines climbing through empty window frames in another. I passed by portraits of Procházkas past, their stern faces looking down upon me from tattered hangings, an interloper in their midst.

  “I know,” I muttered to one particularly grim-looking fellow. “I don’t know what I’m doing here either.”

  The Count and Countess told me that I was in danger from the Wild Hunt, that they had abducted me and my brother in order to protect us. But Snovin Hall hardly seemed a refuge with its dilapidated walls and desolate halls. There seemed to be no staff, no personnel, no armed guard at the Procházka ancestral seat. It didn’t seem as though Josef and I were any better protected here than we had been in Vienna. It led me to believe that we had been brought here for other reasons.

  The warning from my old landlady Frau Messner swirled about my mind, the story of that young woman who had disappeared, the young man who had died. An incident. At their country home. Käthe’s voice, too, rose up in my memory. The Procházkas sacrifice goats to a dark god in occult rituals. They call upon sinister forces.

  But it was the Countess’s words from the night we were abducted that echoed the loudest. Your music creates a bridge between worlds.

  I looked down at the Goblin King’s ring on my finger. Incontrovertible proof that the veil between us and the Underground was thin. The Procházkas claimed that I could save us all from the end of the world, but I did not understand how. Not without going back. Not without giving up everything I had left for in the first place. My music. My life. Myself.

  And then I thought of mismatched eyes and a mouth tender with love. I thought of the Goblin King as I had seen him that last night as husband and wife, not entwined in our marriage bed, but playing a sonata in the chapel. Perhaps going back wasn’t giving up. Perhaps it was giving in.

  Then I remembered blue-white eyes and inky-black skin stretched over hollow bones, a voice hissing, He that you love is gone.

  Before long, I realized that I had come to an unfamiliar part of the house. I thought of my time as the Goblin Queen, when the pathways of the Underground rearranged themselves to suit my whim. I hadn’t paid much attention the night before, but I did not recall coming across a gallery this size. What seemed like portraits or paintings were hung high on the walls above me, covered with sheets. Curious, I reached up to look under the sheet when there was a gasp and a crash.

  I jumped and whirled around to see Nina on her hands and knees. She must have dropped another tray at the sight of me, and was hastily trying to gather the broken crockery. I got down
to help her clean, apologizing profusely for the fright.

  She tried to wave me off, but I insisted, pretending not to understand her Bohemian, even though her emphatic gestures were perfectly clear. It appeared as though the housekeeper had been coming to bring my brother and me our breakfast, but now that I had ruined the service, she seemed amenable to bringing me to the kitchens.

  Only it wasn’t the kitchens she brought me to. Instead, Nina led me to a small, brightly lit room with large windows, where the Count was sitting before a large, roaring fire.

  “Ah, Fräulein!” he said when he saw me. “You are up, I see. Please, come join me for breakfast.”

  By the looks of things, he had already been up for hours, his dark eyes bright and beady, his cheeks pink with health and good humor. He rose and offered me his seat, walking to a sideboard I had not seen laden with pastries, fruit, an assorted selection of cured meats and cheeses, as well as a large silver carafe.

  “Do you take coffee?” he asked.

  “I, uh, yes, thank you,” I said, a bit flustered. Coffee was a popular beverage back in Vienna, brought to the city by the Turks, but I had never developed much taste for the bitter brew.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Both, please.”

  The Count made me a cup before pouring himself one as well. He drank his without anything to cut the acrid bitterness, smacking his lips with relish. His chipper countenance this morning suddenly made much more sense.

  “I trust you and your brother slept well,” he said. “Alas, you must excuse my wife. She is not an early riser, nor is she much for breakfast. It looks as though it will be just you and me this morning.”

  The Countess and I had this much in common at least. In Vienna, I had grown accustomed to rising late; without the pressure of chores and other duties to perform around the inn, the luxury of lying abed when I could had been too sweet to resist.