Shadowsong

by S. Jae-Jones

  Your music creates a bridge between worlds.

  I thought of the evening we had performed Der Erlkönig for the Count and Countess. The scent of ice and pine and deep woods filling the small, stuffy room. The whisper of my name across the veil. The weight of the Goblin King’s ring in the palm of my hand when I awoke from the dream. The sudden itch to play scratched at me, despite the Wild Hunt, despite the barrier between worlds, despite how utterly perverse and nonsensical it was to return to my art at the moment it was the least safe.

  I shouldn’t.

  And yet.

  Why shouldn’t I?

  The tantrum tempest raging within me fed upon my manic irritation, growing larger and stronger to encompass Josef, my sister, the Countess, the world. I was no longer the Goblin Queen, no longer mistress of a domain that would twist and bend itself to my will. I could not tear the curtains to shreds. I could not smash the dresser beside me. I could not tear the linen cupboard doors from their hinges. I could not shatter the windowpanes with my bare hands. I was in the world above now and I could not, I could not, I could not.

  Dusk deepened outside, turning the sky indigo blue and the shadows a violet purple. I walked to the windows in my quarters and looked toward the hills behind the estate and Lorelei Lake. I saw the Countess walking toward the poppy field, her uneven gait distinctive even in the darkness. One by one, stars emerged in the sky, pinpricks of light that limned the world in silver. On a night like this, my brother and I would have imagined the goblins and fey out and about, wreaking havoc and mischief upon a sleeping world. Shapes moved about in the forest beyond the edges of the estate, my imagination running wild.

  Until a stark silhouette emerged from the trees, carrying a violin.

  Josef.

  He stood on the grounds facing the house. I could not make out anything of his face or features, but I imagined his eyes turned up to the second floor, seeing my white chemise stand out in the murky black of my window. We stared at each other—or not—for several long moments. Our first moment of connection since we had argued. Then my brother turned around and made his way back toward the poppy field and the woods.

  I felt as though I had been slapped.

  Fine, I thought. You are no longer first in my heart. I waited for guilt to flay the flesh from my bones and leave me bare, but it never did. Nothing touched me but exhaustion and resignation.

  I was tired of waiting, tired of longing and hoping and wishing my brother would turn around and appreciate me. That Josef loved me, I had no doubt, but he, like so many others, had taken me for granted. That I would come running to him in Vienna to save him. To bring him home. To be at his beck and call. François and I had tried and tried and tried to put him back together after he had fallen apart, but the more we tried, the more the pieces no longer fit.

  I thought of Käthe then. My sister had once called me a top spinning out of control, and that the slightest wobble would topple me. I hadn’t realized until then how selfish I had been to lay that emotional burden on her shoulders. I wished Josef could see that now.

  I am tired of holding your heart.

  “I give it back,” I whispered to my brother, lost to the shadows outside. “I give you back your heart.”

  Sadness washed over me. Instead of guilt or frustration or anger, in the aftermath of the tempest tantrum, I felt nothing but melancholy. Mania and melancholy, my twin demons. With sorrow came fatigue, a deep and abiding sense of exhaustion. I climbed back into bed.

  “I give you back your heart,” I said to the darkness. “And I wish you would give me mine.”

  snovin Hall was haunted.

  It wasn’t haunted in the usual manner—with ghosts and sprites and spirits. Josef knew how to exorcise ghosts from a house with bells and holy water. He knew how to appease kobolds and Hödekin with offerings of milk and bread, how to safeguard his home from the unseen forces of the world with salt and prayers. But what he didn’t know how to do was cast out the demons from his own head.

  The whispers beckoned from every corner of the estate, filling his ears at night so he could no longer sleep. He had taken to wandering the halls after everyone else had risen for the day, playing his violin out in the woods where no one would hear. The playing did nothing to drown out the voiceless murmurs in his mind, but he could at least lose himself in the rigorous, tedious repetition of notes. He would play through every piece he could remember, and some he did not—once, twice, thrice. The first for feeling: the bowing languid and smooth or sharp and emphatic. The second for precision: the fingering exact, the timing rigid. The third for despair: the last resort of an unraveling mind. And when Josef had played through his entire repertoire several times over, he would fall back on his exercises. Scales. Rhythm and tempo practice.

  None of it helped.

  When he closed his eyes, he could still see his sister’s face when he called her Goblin Queen. It had not been a term of endearment, but an accusation. He could still see the arrow land between her ribs, and the expression of shock and hurt and betrayal both shook him and soothed him. They had both gone away from home and emerged transformed: his sister a woman, he a quivering wreck. Liesl had had Der Erlkönig while Josef had had Master Antonius when it should have been the other way around. His sister was meant for fame and recognition and public adulation; he was meant for the Goblin Grove.

  After nightfall, Josef made his way back to the manor. He was tired, exhaustion carving out blue-black hollows beneath his eyes and cheeks. He wanted to sleep, to rest his head, to forget the image of Liesl’s brown eyes looking at him with such reproach. His very first memory was of his sister’s eyes peering over the edge of his cradle, large and lambent and full of love. He remembered little else from his earliest childhood; in the end, it had been Liesl, always Liesl, who made him feel safe. But he could not forgive her for not being there when he had needed her most, for sending him away when every fiber of his being had cried out to stay.

  When he finally returned to the grounds of Snovin Hall proper, Josef looked up at the second story window where he knew his sister slept. To his surprise, he saw her standing there, her pale chemise standing out against the darkness of the room like a ghost. He ached down to his bones, a knot of guilt and resentment and hatred and love tangled in his veins. There was no feeling but ceaseless, never-ending pain at the sight of her standing there, and he wanted to bleed himself to relieve the pressure. To leech himself of bad blood and bad thoughts.

  He turned away.

  In the distance, he spied the distinct figure of the Countess limping ahead. The dark was complete now, and nothing but stars lit her path, though she strode with purpose and determination. A place and destination in mind, perhaps. The faint stirrings of curiosity fluttered in Josef’s breast, so slight he might have ignored them, save for one thing:

  She was following the whispers.

  The voiceless murmurs were strongest from the direction of the poppy field, and Josef wondered if she could hear their pulsing sighs like the breeze through weeds. Nameless, they said. Usurper.

  He had ignored the whispers the way he had so often pushed away his emotions. The way he had turned away from François. If it was not Liesl’s reproachful eyes he saw when he went to sleep, then it was his beloved’s lips. François had long since perfected a mask of serene calm, his armor in a world hostile to those of his color, but Josef knew where to find the chinks. It would be at the corners of his mouth, tight with anger, twisted with sorrow. The weight of his sister’s and beloved’s feelings was heavy, and he was tired of carrying their burden. The whispers were just another load to put down.

  But tonight he would follow them. Follow the Countess. His footfalls fell softly on dried grasses and broken twigs, for he did not notice the scarlet petals of the poppies wither and die in her wake. The whispers fell silent as she passed.

  The stranger came, the flowers left.

  It wasn’t until the Countess turned to face him that Josef realized she had kn
own he was there all along.

  “Hallo, Josef,” she said softly.

  Her voice was lost amidst the shushing breeze, the poppies murmuring run away, run away, run away. But Josef did not run.

  “Hallo, madame,” he replied. His own voice was hoarse from disuse, but clear above the whispers.

  The Countess’s green eyes glowed in the dark. “Will you not play?”

  He knew she meant the violin. “Have you not heard?”

  She inclined her head. In the dim light of the stars above, Josef could see her mouth forming words, but they were drowned out in the cacophony of voiceless warnings. Beware, beware, beware!

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”

  She only smiled. The Countess reached down to pluck a flower, and Josef flinched at the soundless scream of pain.

  “Do you know why the symbol of House Procházka is the poppy?” she asked.

  He did not answer.

  “It is said,” the Countess said, “that Jaroslav Procházka founded his house at the site of a great battle, where so many soldiers had fallen and stained the fields red with their blood.” She brought the petals up to her nose, and though Josef knew the flower was odorless, he thought he could smell the slight tang of copper on the air. “The house was built to honor their sacrifice, and this field of poppies planted to commemorate their passing.”

  Josef glanced at the shriveled and desiccated petals at her feet, black and brittle.

  “Try as I might, I never did find any evidence of a battle here,” the Countess went on. “But that isn’t to say that blood hasn’t been shed.”

  Beware, nameless one, beware.

  “What do you mean?” Josef wasn’t sure whether he was asking the Countess or the poppies.

  “My family comes from a long line of butchers,” she said. “Not nobly born was I, despite my uncanny lineage. My father was a butcher, my mother a fancy French whore. How far the first Goblin Queen’s descendants have fallen. From Der Erlkönig’s bride to tinkers and tailors, butchers and bakers. But Snovin”—she breathed in deep the scentless flower—“was where we always returned.”

  “Why?” Josef asked.

  “Do you know that the heir of the first Goblin Queen is always a stranger?” She laughed. “Foreigners, commoners, the lowly born. Yet we are drawn here because this placed is soaked with innocent blood, and all the Goblin Queen had been was a butcher in the end.”

  Run away, nameless one, run away.

  “Impossible poppies,” the Countess said. “Blooming in late winter. A place teeming with magic if there ever was one, and the stories say that the flower is all that remains of the souls of the stolen.”

  “Stolen by whom?” Fear was beginning to seep in through Josef’s numbness along with the cold.

  “The Wild Hunt.” Her green eyes were sharp, even in the dark. “The elf-struck are dead, but the elf-touched are trapped.”

  He looked down to his feet, the poppies scattered across his boots like drops of blood. “Do they protect us? From the Hunt, I mean.”

  “The unholy host cannot be appeased by anything but a sacrifice,” the Countess said softly. “It is the ancient bargain we’ve struck. A life for a life. Our lives. Our livelihood.”

  Josef frowned. “Sacrifice?”

  But the Countess did not immediately reply, kneeling down to pluck another poppy from the field. It dulled immediately between her fingers, turning purple and black with decay. She stepped forward and tucked it behind his ear.

  “The gifts of Der Erlkönig are not to be taken lightly. But in the end, the fruits, like all bounties, must be harvested.”

  There was no reply but the moan of the wind through the trees.

  “Go to sleep, Josef,” the Countess said gently. “Not long now until spring.”

  He turned and obeyed, walking back to Snovin Hall as though in a trance. Darkness deepened, then lightened. The sky behind the hills lifted from densest purple to crushed, faded lavender, and the shadows retreated. Josef climbed into bed and watched as, one by one, the stars began to wink out, disappearing from the night like fireflies in summer. Silhouettes took on shape and texture, details grew clearer and brighter, and a world at peace began to stir and rise to greet the day. It wasn’t until the first ray of dawn struck the foot of his bed that Josef remembered that harvest was in the autumn while planting was in the spring. Everything was inside out in this strange and unexpected place, and as he drifted off to sleep, he wondered when the whispers had finally gone silent.

  the people said there were wolf-wraiths in the woods.

  Tales began to spread from town to town, stories of a sighting here, an encounter there. Freshly baked pies snatched from windowsills as they were laid out to cool, stores of grain disappearing, farm animals crying. No two accounts agreed on the appearance of the wraith: some said they were ghost boys, others insisted they were wolf cubs who walked about on their hind legs. Still others—the elders of many winters past—spoke of kobolds and sprites, mischief-makers and thieves. Spidery fingers and beetle-black eyes, the usual suspects.

  Goblins.

  Despite these differing accounts, there was one detail all the stories had in common: that wherever these wolf-wraiths had been, red poppies bloomed in its wake.

  Impossible, claimed the philosophers. It defies natural order.

  But it was impossible to discount the evidence.

  It began in the barns and stables of the farmers outside town. Doors left open, footprints in the mud and muck, frightened bleating and lowing, the impression of bodies in the hay. The first farmer to see the wraiths had woken before dawn to milk his cow to see two shadows slipping away from the stable. Fearing thieves, he ran after them, but they vanished with the last dregs of starlight, leaving no sign they had ever been there, save a handful of red poppies scattered among the rushes.

  From farm to farm, town to town, poppies began springing up in the oddest of places. In a hayloft, wedged between cobblestones, twined about the gables of houses. Each appearance of the flower came with a strange tale of ethereal figures and things that went bump in the night. Locked pantry cupboards with half a season’s worth of cured meats missing. Furniture completely rearranged without sound in utter darkness. A haunting shushing noise, the sound of winter branches rubbing together in the wind.

  As the poppies began making appearances farther south and west, more and more descriptions of the wraith began to become similar.

  Boys, the consensus ran. Two ghost boys.

  It was always two, or so the stories said. One taller, one smaller, one as black as night, the other white as snow. Some claimed they were the spirits of two children murdered by their parents as a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, others stated they were not human at all, but changelings escaped from the realm of the fey, looking for a home.

  As the days grew longer and the nights grew warmer, fewer and fewer poppies appeared. The stories that traveled with the flowers shifted and changed as the landscape turned from rural villages to prosperous cities.

  Not dead boys, they said. Alive.

  Two children, one older, one younger. Orphans. One with hair as dark as soot, the other with eyes as pale as water. They had the haunted look of the hunted, their faces gaunt, their eyes hollow. No one knew where they came from, for they spoke no tongue the townsfolk understood.

  Take them to the abbey, they said. The monks would know.

  The learned brothers of the abbey were scholars, philosophers, musicians, and artists from near and far. Indeed, the choirmaster spoke their tongue, and understood the boys had journeyed far in search of safety. But what the choirmaster did not understand was that it was not the language of man he shared with the boys, but the language of music.

  Welcome, children, the choirmaster said. Rest, and be welcome, for you are now in God’s hands. The hand of Providence has guided you to our doorstep.

  The vlček had followed the wolf-paths in the woods to the mona
stery, but what he had truly followed was the sound of singing at Sunday services. The boy had no words for melody, harmony, or counterpoint, but he wanted them. In their moments of rest on the run, in the slow breaths before they fell asleep, Mahieu had listened to vlček humming lullabies to himself in the wild. It was the only time he ever heard the wolf-boy use his voice, and Faithful Mahieu decided right then and there that he would learn to play music, so he could speak with his friend.

  When the choirmaster asked for the boys’ names, only one answered.

  “I am Mahieu,” said the older.

  The monk glanced at the younger child. And the boy?

  The vlček said nothing, only stared at the choirmaster with his piercing, unsettling, mismatched gaze.

  “He . . . he has not yet given it to me,” Mahieu said. The vlček’s eyes warmed, and the smallest hint of a smile softened his face.

  Does the child speak?

  The boys exchanged glances. “Yes,” said Mahieu. “The language of trees, of birds, of fang and fur.”

  But does he speak the language of Man?

  Mahieu did not answer.

  Then we shall call him Sebastian, the choirmaster said. For our patron saint, and the man who cured Zoe of Rome of being mute. Perhaps the same miracle can be performed for the child.

  The vlček bared his teeth.

  Later that night, when the monk brought the boys to their new quarters, Mahieu turned to whisper to the wolf-boy in the dark.

  “Speak, friend,” he said. “You understand my words and I have heard you use your voice. Why do you not reply in kind?”

  It was a long moment before the vlček responded, first pursing his lips and curling his tongue, as though silently rolling sounds and syllables and notes and names around in his mouth. “Sebastian is not my name. And until they call my name and call me home, I shall not reply.”