by S. Jae-Jones
“Marvelous, isn’t it?” Below me, I could hear the pride in her voice.
“Yes,” I said. From this vantage point, I could see clear across to the mountains across the way and the sparkling ribbon of silver that cut through the valley floor. “What river is that?”
“Snovin River,” the Countess said. “The Procházkas weren’t terribly imaginative, I’m afraid.”
I strained to see farther, toward Snovin Hall and the mountains beyond. I caught a glimpse of an intense blue-green, that enchanted mirror lake I had stumbled upon when I first learned of the Countess’s lineage. “What is—what is that lake?” I asked.
“You can see it from here?” she asked, sounding surprised.
I nodded.
“Lake Snovin,” she said. “I told you Otto’s ancestors weren’t imaginative.” She laughed, seeing my expression. “But we always called it Lorelei Lake, Adelaide and I,” she continued in a softer voice. Her daughter.
“Lorelei Lake?” I remembered the sense of magic that lingered about the water, the window to another world I had glimpsed in its reflection.
“Yes,” she said. “Family legend boasts of their descent from a Lorelei found bathing in that very lake. It’s the melusine on their shield.”
“Is the water always that color?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” the Countess said. “And the water is always warm. Volcanic activity, I’m told, but we wanted to believe it was magic, Adelaide and I. She believed it was a gateway to the Underground.” Something within her seemed to suddenly snap closed, like a trap on a mouse’s neck. “Come, child,” she said shortly. “Your weight is wearing me down.”
I hopped down from my perch at the window and offered my arm to the Countess as we made our way back down the stairs.
“I do hope your brother will be able to join us for dinner tonight,” she said in a different tone of voice as we emerged through a different door and into a wide, cavernous space. “Perhaps we can get to know him better once you are both settled.”
The abrupt change in conversation startled me, and I did not know how to respond. “Where are we?” I asked, gesturing to the rocky room around us.
“The crypt,” the Countess said. “Most of the brothers are buried in the cemetery at the base of the mountain itself, but their names are carved here, so that they may be remembered long after their remains rotted away.”
I ran my fingers over the letters etched into stone. I thought of the day we buried Papa, of his limestone grave marker standing next to the little wooden crosses of his brothers and sisters—my aunts and uncles, most of whom had died before they had even drawn breath. In time, those crosses would wither and rot away, leaving nothing but their names in the village register behind. And even then, ink faded and paper dissolved to dust. All that remained of a person once they were gone was a legacy, which would linger only as long as you were loved or hated. Immortality was memory.
Evzen, Filip, Andrej, Victor, Johannes, Hans, Mahieu.
I paused over this last name, puzzling over its resonance with me. These were the names of monks dead and gone, their names as anonymous as the faces of strangers in this valley. Yet the name Mahieu rang a bell inside me, as though I had heard that name whispered to me in my sleep.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
I went still. The Goblin King’s voice returned to me, our confessions to each other that last night in the chapel. I had asked him who had taught him to play the violin.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
Then the familiarity of it all unfolded before me. Why I had felt as though I had seen this place before. Because I had seen the monastery before. In a mirror. Underground.
Above the Goblin King’s bed.
the villagers called the boy vlček, or “little wolf.” He had a long, lupine face, a cloud of white hair like a mane about his head, and the guttural growls and snarls of a cornered animal. It was hard to say how old the wolf-child was; he was small, no more than the size of the baker’s youngest, Karolína, who was three. The priest thought the boy might be older, for he was as agile as a cat, and more cunning besides.
It was a long time before anyone could come close enough to the child to bathe and tend to his wounds. A long gash ran across his chest and over his heart, inflamed and infected. The priest was afraid the cut would turn septic, but no one could approach the boy without risking a few fingers and toes. The priest himself wore a bandage and poultice about his forearm where the vlček had torn out a large chunk with his teeth.
Only Mahieu, another orphan of the Great Winter several seasons past and himself a ward of the church, was able to tame the wolf-child.
Faithful Mahieu, the villagers called him. The youth was good and kind, a lover of growing things and the wild things in the woods. Touched by God, the priest proclaimed. Mahieu could coax even the flowers to bloom in the snow. Little by little, like a shepherd with a recalcitrant flock, the youth called the boy out of the wolf. He taught the child the rudiments of being human, cleanliness, of posture, of manners, of clothing. The process was long and slow, the vlček eventually learned to use his fingers instead of claws, wear cotton instead of fur, and eat cooked meat instead of raw. When it came time for the boy to be christened, he did not struggle or resist the dunking of his head in the baptismal font. He was given the name Kašpar by the priest, recorded in the church register along with the note Given to us by the Lord and delivered from the wild and the woods.
The taming was complete, but for one small matter.
The vlček did not speak, nor did he respond to his name.
It was not that the boy lacked intelligence, even beyond the animal cunning of his wolf kin. He was quick and clever, solving the puzzles and riddles set for him by the priest, following orders, obediently cleaning the small cell in the church he had been given. He was of the age to be taught the alchemy of language and written speech in the local grammar school, and learned his letters competently alongside the other children of the village.
The boy was not dumb. When given leave to explore the village and the edges of the forest beyond, the townsfolk overheard whispered conversations between the vlček and the trees, between the boy and the beasts. It was a tongue half remembered by babies and babblers, a curious murmur and chatter understood only by the innocent, the mad, and Mahieu. What was he whispering? they wondered. It sounded like eldritch spells.
Father, Father, they entreated the priest. There is something wrong with the child.
The good Father tried his best to appease his flock but fear, the priest would come to know, was greater than faith.
The boy’s silence was no longer regarded a symptom of a shy, retiring nature; it was the stubbornness of animal cunning. More and more, the villagers became convinced that the vlček could speak but wouldn’t; it was in the way those mismatched eyes watched everything and everyone around them. The vlček thinks, they would say to one another in the market place. He schemes. He spies.
What secrets do the voiceless keep? Only their own. But the townsfolk were afraid of what the vlček knew. The butcher and his mistress, two years younger than his own daughter. The blacksmith’s wife and her stash of stolen sweets, eaten on Lenten Sundays when the pious fasted. The goatherd and the baker, their hearts and lips still warm with the scent of each other’s breaths.
On the day the old year died, the butcher’s mistress was found dead in her bed.
There had been no mark upon her: no gash, no wound, no bruise. She was found blue and glassy, as though winter had turned her to ice from within.
Elf-struck! the villagers cried. The goblins have preyed upon Ludmila in her sleep!
The cold deepened, and with it came other deaths, other betrayals. Jakub the goatherd’s flock went astray, the blacksmith’s tongs turned brittle and broke, and the villagers came to understand that there was something deeply broken with the balance of the world.
It was because they had brought a monster into their midst. Who was the vl
ček? Where had he come from? Stories and rumors began to spread from house to house, tales of a kobold with mismatched eyes that stole trinkets and totems to do its owners mischief and harm.
Could it be, could it be? the townsfolk whispered.
But the vlček remained blameless, separate, distant. He went about his day, silent and sure-footed, a ghost among the living.
Then Karolína, the baker’s youngest, became possessed of a demon.
It began with biting pains on her hands and feet. The poor child cried that a wolf was devouring her limbs in her sleep, and she awoke with red, weeping sores and deep, suppurating wounds. Goblin bites, the villagers said, and they sent for the priest for an exorcism.
He came with incense, he came with holy water, and he came with two companions: the vlček and Mahieu. But when the wolf-child approached the sickbed, Karolína screamed as though she were being burned at the stake.
It was a sign.
It’s him, it’s him! the villagers cried. He’s the one!
The priest and the villagers began to crowd around the boy, who snarled and dropped to all fours, for he had not yet learned to suffer another’s touch. They came with kettles, they came with pans, and the men outside went in search of pitchforks and shovels, as the cornered vlček lashed and kicked out in fear.
It was Mahieu who betrayed them all.
Run, Kašpar! he yelled, leaping forward to shield the villagers from the wolf-child’s snapping white teeth and rolling, panicked eyes. The boy startled at the youth, his one and only friend, then ran, tearing through the crowd before disappearing into the dark beyond.
Torches sprang to life, voices were raised in eager shouts, as the fever of the hunt spread through the town like a plague, like a wildfire. While little Karolína wailed on in pain and fear, her mother and father, the priest and the mayor, the butcher and blacksmith gathered their tools as weapons and went in search of the wolf-boy.
Kill him, kill him! they chanted. De-mon! De-mon!
Mahieu knew where the vlček would go, and did not follow the others into the night. Instead he ran toward the church, toward the cemetery, toward the crypts, where a lost little boy might hide in the dark with the dead, the only humans who never asked him to speak.
Inside, Mahieu found the wolf-child hunched amidst a pile of rags, a collection of odds and ends and secrets stolen from the villagers. A little blue glass vial, the shards of a shattered sword, a goatherd’s bell, last seen draped about the neck of Jakub’s prize billy.
“Oh, Kašpar,” Mahieu said.
The vlček looked at him, stubbornness writ in his gaze. He knew Mahieu was calling him, but refused to respond.
“Kašpar,” Mahieu repeated, fighting against the panic rising with him. “Please. We must flee.”
The wolf-child growled.
Faithful Mahieu, blessed by God to commune with bird and beast, could not find the words to reach this boy, half wild, half tame.
“I know it is not your name,” he whispered to the vlček. “But until you give it to me, I cannot call you home.”
Whether or it was the kindness or plea that undid the wolf-child, Mahieu did not know, but the vlček dropped his treasures and began to weep. The boy had endured much since he emerged from the beast’s lair, kicking and spitting, had learned how to eat and dress and walk, but what he had never done was cry. The shine of tears had turned his mismatched eyes brilliant, and their glittering beauty stole Mahieu’s breath away.
“Come,” he whispered. “Come, we must flee.”
He held out his hand to the vlček, who stared at the outstretched palm with neither suspicion nor fear on his face. The wolf-boy held Mahieu’s gaze, and for a moment, eternity and a question stretched between them.
“Yes,” the vlček said. “Yes.”
His voice was rough and hoarse, his tongue thick and unused. But it was words, real words, more words than anyone had ever heard him say. The vlček grasped Faithful Mahieu’s hand, and the two of them ran into the forest, into the beyond, and the unknown.
THE MONSTER I CLAIM
my brother did not join us for dinner.
I hadn’t expected him to show his face, yet the sting of disappointment was just as sharp this time as it had been the first. Our meal was a polite enough affair, but my hosts couldn’t contain their curiosity about Josef forever. They asked several questions about his skill with the violin, about his talent, about his musical gifts. I understood that prodigies and virtuosos were marvelous and unusual, but their interest in my brother’s abilities over mine picked at wounds that should have long since scabbed over.
Special Liesl. Chosen Liesl. You have always wanted to be extraordinary and now you are.
Cold, oily guilt slicked my stomach with resentment and regret, and I found I had no appetite. The remainder of the meal was stilted and awkward, and I tasted none of the food that Nina had prepared for us. The fare was simple and hearty: sausages and stews, dumplings and cream sauce, braised cabbage and hearty breads. Familiar. Comforting. But it all turned leaden in my gut.
After dinner, I returned to my quarters to find the door between Josef’s room and mine still shut. I did not know whether or not he had retired for the evening or if he hadn’t returned from his daytime wanderings. I undressed and climbed into my bed, though the hour was early. I was tired from our excursion to the monastery that afternoon, and I could use the rest.
Yet try as I might, I could not sleep. Silence pounded at my ears with the absence of sound. Back home, the forest chorus would have lulled me to sleep with its symphony of cacophony. In Vienna, the constant hum and drumming rhythm of human lives formed the bass line to my staccato days. But here, in Snovin, all was quiet. It was an empty sort of quiet. Once I would have sensed, would have known down to my marrow, whether or not Josef slept on the other side of a door, a window, a wall. The tether between us, woven of our love of music and magic, had frayed so badly that only the barest thread of blood tied us together.
And we weren’t even bound by that.
I turned over in bed, squeezing my eyes shut as though I could shut out my own guilt.
The other times that particular disloyal thought about Josef crossed my traitorous mind, my body was racked with self-loathing and disgust. But tonight I let myself examine it. Let myself think about what it meant—what I felt—that my brother was not my brother, but a changeling.
A changeling. Before I had gone Underground, I might have been delighted. Or proud. Or even envious for many of the same reasons Josef was jealous of me now. I understood better than anyone the pain of being unremarkable. Had I not privately railed to myself about how my brother’s talent set him apart from the rest of us? Music was a language we shared, and it hurt to know that not only was he better than me, he was anointed by Papa. To have discovered that my brother not only had a connection to the world of myth and magic to which we often escaped but an actual belonging to it might have devastated me.
Special. Chosen. Extraordinary. Josef had chosen his words well, for the accusations cut me to the quick. I curled up tighter into a ball, pulling my pillow over my face to blot out the last dregs of the setting sun.
But since I had walked away from the Underground, my thoughts about changelings had changed. I remembered the comely youths with whom my sister and I had danced at the goblin ball with their elegant faces and inscrutable eyes. The creature by the lake who had tricked me into crossing the barrier between worlds by playing on my homesickness and my longing for the simple pleasures of mortal life. Deceitful, tricksy, cruel. Inhuman.
Josef was inhuman. Josef was not mortal. Josef was a creature, a sprite, a thing. My entire being cringed at the notion of my brother as a thing. If my brother was not human, he was at the very least a person. He laughed, he cried, he sulked, he raged. He reasoned and felt the same as any other boy—youth—and it did not matter that his bone and blood was of otherkin, not mine.
And yet, it did. I thought of the baby who should have grown
up to be my brother, the child of my parents’ mortal get. The one whose name and place and life my brother stole. That Josef had been a cheerful, easygoing child, ruddy-cheeked and sparkly-eyed. My Josef was a colicky, cranky baby, a difficult and disagreeable child that I nevertheless loved. Perhaps loved even more than the boy who shared my blood.
I should have been disgusted with myself. I loved a usurper, a thief, a monster. I turned the Goblin King’s ring over and over on my finger, feeling the silver slide smoothly across my skin.
You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.
Perhaps I loved the monstrous because I was a monster. Josef, the Goblin King, and me. We were grotesques in the world above, too different, too odd, too talented, too much. We were all too much.
Images flashed across the backs of my eyelids. Cloud shadows passing over sun-dappled red tiles. A monastery looking down its nose at the valley below. The names of monks carved into mountainsides, the echoes of memory ringing bells in my mind. Scarlet poppies springing from white snow with a whisper and a sigh. Faster and faster and faster, a long spiral down into the labyrinth of my subconscious yet I could not sleep, could not rest. I tossed and turned, unable to stop the whirlwind carousel thoughts flying out from the center: that I should tell Josef the truth.
I kicked at the bed linens tangled about my legs, clenching my fists and teeth to hold in the urge to scream. Notes and musical phrases and melodies crashed in my head, and I clapped my hands over my ears to drown out the noise. Rage and frustration were coiled in my limbs, a tantrum building in my body ready to burst forth with a roar and whimper. The truth about my brother’s changeling was a trap that could be tripped at any moment, and I would rather spring it myself than have it snap down upon our necks and break our relationship.
I should tell him.
I should tell Käthe.
My eyes flew open. Clawing my way out from under the covers, I threw myself out of bed, unable to lie still any longer despite my fatigue. I paced back and forth before the windows of my room. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to play. I wanted to sit before my klavier and work out my feelings through my fingers, through the black and white keys, through major and minor.