Shadowsong

by S. Jae-Jones

  And that meant embracing my past as well as an uncertain future. I was so determined to not wallow in my misery that I made myself lonely; I pushed away memories and feelings and connections not only to the Goblin King, but myself. I had mourned, but I had not let myself grieve. I had not let myself feel.

  Don’t think. Feel.

  Determination and drive had returned, and with that came desire. For expression, for fulfillment, for self-destruction. I walked to the virginal in the musicians’ gallery and sat down at its bench. The keys were coated in years—decades, perhaps—of dust, but the strings were still in tune. I pressed my fingers into the notes, wringing chords and phrases from the strings and plucking mechanism. The Wedding Night Sonata had lain unfinished for a long time because I had not known how the story ended. But I realized I had not known how it ended because I had not resolved my own emotions—about my music, about my Goblin King, but about myself most of all.

  The Wedding Night Sonata had been about me. My feelings. Rage, anger, frustration, fear had been the first movement. Longing, tenderness, affection, and hope had been the second.

  Hatred was the third.

  Hatred, and self-loathing.

  I knew where to go. I was going to play. I was going to compose. I was going to open my veins and let my music run onto the keys.

  I was going to open the veil between worlds.

  I should have been afraid. I should have been careful. But I was a Pandora’s box of desperation and recklessness; once opened, I could no longer be closed. I cared about everything and nothing, and I wanted nothing more than oblivion. If drink had been Papa’s vice, then the Goblin King and the Underground was mine.

  I waited for the ghostly wail of his violin.

  I did not wait long.

  Through the mirror, through the glass, through the veil between worlds came the high, thin voice of singing strings. I called, and he answered. A sob hitched in my throat, of both relief and fear. I had wanted to hear him, to see him, to touch him, to hold him in my arms forever, and the notion that I somehow could again was overwhelming. I felt the weight of that release down to my fingertips, pushing my hands into the keys of the virginal.

  Yet with the hope came uncertainty. Uncertainty, or regret, for with the Goblin King’s arrival came the heady scent of pine and ice and deep loam, a lifting in pressure in the ballroom.

  The barrier was thin, thinning, gone.

  I looked up from the keyboard to face a thousand Liesls at a thousand instruments staring back at me from broken-mirrored panels in the musicians’ gallery.

  In all, save one.

  “Be, thou, with me,” I said.

  Der Erlkönig smiled.

  * * *

  The austere young man stands before me, violin in his hands. A soft look lights his dear, familiar, beloved mismatched eyes, and I am overcome with such longing I think I will die. My hands shake as I press the keys of the virginal, no longer aware of what notes I am playing or what melodies the Goblin King is making.

  “Be, thou, with me,” I say again.

  He lowers his violin and his bow. The music continues on, a repeating ostinato of yes, please, yes, please, yes, please.

  “Be, thou, with me,” I repeat, and I rise from the virginal.

  The Goblin King lifts his hand to press against the shattered glass. I walk to the reflection to meet him palm to palm, shards of silver slicing into my skin. I welcome the pain, the sharp sting of regret and want wounding me to the quick. Yes, this is oblivion. This is heaven, and this is hell.

  Our fingers twine together as we reach through veil and void. His touch is cool, dry, but I feel the thrill of it down to my deepest core. I pull him to me, and he does not resist, passing from reflection into reality. My arms open and he walks into my embrace, bringing with him the scent of sleeping green, earth, roots, rock, and the faint, impossible scent of peaches. The perfume of the Underground surrounds me, and I fall into a fever dream. The ballroom wavers and flickers, the world seen through water and flame, and I am lost.

  “Take me,” I whisper. “Take me back.”

  The green and gray of the Goblin King’s eyes flash white and blue, white and blue, the pupils shrinking to a pinprick of black. The corners of his lips curl, close—so close—to mine.

  As you wish, my dear.

  As you wish.

  A breath, a sigh, a kiss, and we are met.

  Ice runs through me, knife slashes of cold up and down my body. His fingertips leave searing trails of frost against my skin, and I no longer know whether or not I’m dying by fire or by freeze. Inky darkness trails up my arms and legs in whorls of black, and I can taste the sickly-sweet bitterness of opium—or blood—on my tongue. It has never hurt like this before, both inside and out. I shouldn’t want it. I shouldn’t crave it.

  But I do.

  Meine Königin.

  He calls me his queen, and I drink in the words, letting them fill me inside and out. The Goblin King’s hands find the seams of my gown, and I feel the laces of my stays snap one by one, the light tinkling of shattered glass as the frozen ribbons fall to the floor.

  “Mein Herr,” I breathe. I am excited and frightened, elated and afraid, and tears slide down my cheeks. I’m sobbing and shaking, but the Goblin King holds me even tighter, as though only he can hold me together.

  “No,” I whisper. “Break me. Let me fall apart.”

  Punish me. Destroy me. Let me suffer the consequences of being my abject, ignoble self. I was no longer Elisabeth, entire, but Elisabeth, obliterated. There is no tenderness in the Goblin King’s rough touch, and it leaves me in tatters. I hated myself enough to be wiped from existence and memory, and I press myself harder against the keen edges of him. I do not deserve to be remembered. I do not deserve to be loved.

  Hands wrap themselves about my throat, a cage of bones like a collar, and he claims me as his. The Goblin King’s lips stretch in a feral grin, the tips of his teeth gleaming in the light like a wolf’s bared to the sun. I should not have run away from the Underground. I should not have hurt my brother. I should not have doomed the world. Yes, please, yes. I am a sinner, a villain, a wretch. I am worthless, the most despicable of women.

  Elisabeth.

  The Goblin King’s voice is changed, a desperate urgency in his tone that only stirs my blood. I feel my pulse pounding everywhere—my ears, my throat, my wrists, my chest, my thighs—a persistent rhythm echoing in my body. It sets the tempo of our encounter, but I sense him pausing, chafing, resisting.

  Elisabeth, please.

  The cracking, creaking sound of twigs breaking or bones snapping, and the fingers of his hands twist and gnarl. Too many joints in his fingers, too little color in the Goblin King’s eyes. I stare into them, blue and white, then gray and green, as I watch the face of a man emerge from the monster in my arms.

  Elisabeth.

  It is the vulnerability in his voice that stops me, not the danger dressed in black with eyes of ice and death. I am holding them both, my austere young man and the Lord of Mischief, and they are one and not.

  Der Erlkönig smiles.

  The Goblin King cries.

  With a scream, I shove him away, but I am tangled in his embrace—my skirts in shreds about my ankles, my bodice falling off my shoulders. Der Erlkönig laughs, a soundless cackle that makes my ears pop with pressure.

  I have you now, Goblin Queen. You are mine.

  Elisabeth!

  With tremendous effort, my austere young man takes hold of himself, releasing me from his grip.

  Go! Run!

  He retreats back through the window between worlds, back into reflection, back to the Underground.

  “Mein Herr!” I shout, striking at the broken mirror with bare fists. My hands leave bloody streaks against the glass, but for all my begging and pleading, the Goblin King does not return. My screams are as shattered as the panels in the ballroom, fractured and refracted in the topsy-turvy shambles of my mind.

  Run, and n
othing but his whispered echo remains.

  HE IS FOR DER ERLKÖNIG NOW

  “fräulein? Fräulein!”

  I felt a pair of hands upon my shoulders, and I hissed and lashed out like a panicked cat. I struck something soft, and a muffled grunt filled my ear as strong hands wrapped themselves about my wrists.

  “Fräulein?” the voice repeated, holding my flailing limbs close. “My dear, it’s all right, you’re fine. You’re safe.” The words repeated themselves in a shushing murmur, a soothing, repetitive sound that pulled all my disparate parts back to myself.

  Through my haze of fear and madness, a face came into focus. Round, rosy cheeks, black button-bright eyes, a startled shock of frizzy, iron-gray whispers framing a concerned mouth.

  The Count.

  “Nina! Bring the young lady something to drink. Tea, perhaps, or something stronger.”

  I noticed the housekeeper standing behind my host with a worried expression on her broad face. Her dark eyes widened at the sight of blood running down the broken mirrored panels, and her hands went up to cover her mouth with her apron.

  “Nina!” The Count repeated his request in Bohemian, and the housekeeper snapped to attention. She bobbed a quick curtsy and bustled out of the room as fast as her legs could carry her.

  “Are you all right?” The Count peered into my face, taking in my red-blotched cheeks, my swollen eyes, and unkempt hair. He then took in the ripped bodice, the tattered skirts, my general state of deshabille and the angry red welts upon my arms. “What happened?”

  I had no defenses left, no strength to muster, no dignity to lose. But even so, I would have kept my mouth shut and my madness quiet were it not for the gentle sympathy and understanding in my host’s expression. Nothing crumbled my armor faster than compassion and kindness, and soon every last detail of my days came spilling out. The chink in my defenses became a breach, I was open and vulnerable, and I did not care. The Count listened without saying a word to me ramble incoherently about my fight with Josef; my guilt and reckless disregard for anything other than my worthless, selfish self; my grudging longing for the Goblin King; my fears of becoming a burden, for who could bear the weight of my disgusting soul with all its attendant madness and mania? I told him everything and nothing, unable to corral my thoughts into a semblance of order.

  Presently, Nina returned with a tray laden with things for tea and a small philter of a dark, brownish liquid. The Count led me back to the bench beside the virginal and dismissed the housekeeper, pouring me a cup of tea himself.

  “What is that?” I asked, stopping him before he could tilt the vial of unknown solution into the brew.

  “Laudanum,” the Count said. At my terrified expression, he set down the vial and handed me my tea untouched. “I mean no harm, Fräulein, I swear to you upon my brother Ludvik’s life.”

  I paused in sipping my drink. “Your brother?”

  He nodded. “Aye. My twin brother. I was the elder by seven minutes.”

  I set down my cup. There was a sadness in the Count’s eyes and a resignation in his tone, although his shoulders seemed tight with unexpressed tension. He was an older sibling. I felt our shared sense of responsibility and resentment as eldest children.

  Then I frowned. “Was?”

  It was a moment before the Count understood my question. “Oh.” He went to pour himself some tea, but Nina had brought only one set. He swirled the laudanum between his fingers. “Yes. He died when we were twenty years old.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

  The Count nodded unhappily. “You understand, Fräulein. How you both chafe at and embrace the obligation thrust upon you. You take it upon yourself to safeguard the lives and hearts of your younger siblings, however ungrateful they might be. Although Ludvik was my twin, I was firstborn, still expected to become the next Count Procházka und zu Snovin upon our father’s death. Therefore, it was my duty to watch over him.”

  I picked my cup back up and carefully took a small sip of tea. It was chamomile, and only chamomile. I continued sipping.

  “I failed.” The Count contemplated the tincture of opium in his hand. “I failed in my duty, and it was Ludvik who paid the price.”

  Like Josef. I reached out to touch the Count’s sleeve. He did not notice me.

  “He was . . . special, my brother,” he continued slowly. “Elf-touched, as they would have said in the old days. Sharp-eyed and present one moment, raving and oblivious the next. He could see goblins and fairies and elves, and I always envied him that gift. Although my family had ever been the watchdogs standing guard at the threshold between the Underground and the world above, very few of the Procházkas had—if ever—been a part of the magic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Count opened the philter of laudanum. I eyed it suspiciously, but my host placed the vial to his lips and drank. I started, wondering if I should stop him, if he was poisoning himself. I was no physician, but I did not think one could drink so much without poisoning oneself. Wiping his lips, the Count put the empty vial in his pocket and turned to me, his dark eyes large and dilated, lambent and shining as though wet with belladonna.

  “We are the ordinary and the mundane,” he said. “Perhaps by design, or perhaps by fate. Perhaps it takes a certain sort of mind to withstand the maddening uncanniness of Snovin, but my family have ever and always been seneschals and stewards to the line of the first Goblin Queen.”

  “The brave maiden,” I said.

  His lips twisted into a smile of self-loathing. “Is that what you call her? A strange notion of bravery you must have, Fräulein. If by bravery, you mean butchery, then I might be inclined to agree with you.”

  Somehow I didn’t think he was speaking of his wife’s illustrious forebear.

  “Do you know what it takes to escape the old laws for good?” the Count asked. He forced the words through sticky lips, as though fighting his own body’s impulse to silence him.

  “The Countess said there is an ancient protection in her bloodline,” I said slowly. Drops of nervousness were trickling down my spine, and I eyed the ballroom exits, wondering if I should call for Nina now. “Because of what the first Goblin Queen did when she walked away.” I frowned. “But she never did say what that was.”

  And now I did not trust that she ever would.

  The Count laughed, but the sound was bitter, raw. “Oh, child,” he said, and there was genuine pity in his voice. “Nothing comes for free. A life for a life. Death for spring. You know this.”

  I did. The trickle of nervousness became a stream of fear. I remembered my conversation with the Countess on our excursion to the old monastery, of how the old laws had punished the first Goblin King for letting her go. Of how the brave maiden had returned Underground to save him by finding his name and setting him free. I thought of my own austere young man, of those eyes I knew so well becoming lost to cold and night and frost. Even if I did find his name and unlock his soul, there was the man I loved and the monster I craved. I did not know how to free one without losing the other.

  “Ludvik was the good twin,” the Count said suddenly. I was surprised by this sudden turn in conversation. “The good twin, and pure. There were those who called him elf-touched, and those meaner still who called him simple. Thickheaded. Mad.”

  I did not like where the story was headed, but my host continued without a second glance in my direction, eyes fixed straight ahead, staring at something not before him, but within him.

  “There were rather more of us in the old days,” he said. “Der Erlkönig’s own, that is. But science and reason have thinned our ranks, and now only the mad, the fearful, and the faithful remain. Even my own family, despite their sacred charge to safeguard the barriers between worlds, had let Snovin fall to ruin and decay. There was no one else, you see. No one else to pay the price.”

  “What price?”

  He gave me a hard look despite the laudanum coursing through his veins. Despite the opium dreams and the
poppy milk, the Count was still present, still clearheaded, still aware. Too aware. I was beginning to understand why it was he partook of the drug. The weight of belief was too much to bear alone.

  “Innocent blood.”

  I recoiled. “What?”

  A slow, syrupy smile began to spread across the Count’s face like blood through water. “Elena told you of ancient protections in her bloodline. Blood is part of it, yes. But not hers. The Wild Hunt and the old laws still find her an aberration, a mistake. The first Goblin Queen cheated them not only of a proper sacrifice, but Der Erlkönig as well. As punishment, they would hound her and her kin to the ends of time, lest she pay in blood.”

  Realization was dawning within me, an inevitable, inexorable revelation I did not want to face. Not yet. Not yet.

  “Whose blood?” I whispered.

  The Count pulled the philter of laudanum from his pocket, although it was empty. He gazed longingly at it, searching for the oblivion that had not yet come. “It was easier then,” he murmured. “Easier when there were still those who left out gifts of bread and milk for the goblins and fairy kind. Easier when superstition ruled and science did not. The Faithful were easy prey.”

  With growing horror, I thought of Käthe’s warning words in the mirror. Blood of the Faithful, unwillingly given, to seal the barrier between worlds.

  I thought of the poppy field growing outside on the grounds of Snovin Hall. The souls of those stolen by the Hunt, my sister had said. The souls of the Faithful.

  The souls of the sacrificed.

  “But as time went on, the Faithful became wise to our ways,” the Count went on. “And they went underground. Not,” he said with a chuckle, “to the realm of the Goblin King, but to ground. Into foxholes, through the shadow paths, and into darkness. And so,” he said, his voice thin, “we turned to our own.”

  My blood ran cold. “Ludvik?”