Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  But he did not. His fingers curled in on themselves and he retreated.

  “Her life would sustain the king’s, the king’s life would sustain the denizens of the Underground, and their lives would sustain the earth and make things grow. The king accepted her bargain, and when the new year turned, spring came again.”

  In its own way, it was a beautiful story, more like the parables and fables of good Christian martyrs Mother told us than Constanze’s tales of hobgoblins and mischief. Virtuous people, persistent people, people who sacrificed themselves for the greater good of all, these were the heroes of Mother’s stories. Like the brave maiden of the Goblin King’s tale.

  But Käthe was not the brave heroine of Mother’s stories; she was the foolish, beautiful girl of Constanze’s. Who was the brave maiden of the Goblin King’s tale?

  “But the story doesn’t end there, does it?” I asked.

  “The story has no end,” he said roughly. “It goes on and on and on and on unto eternity.”

  The Goblin King’s eyes were sad, or regretful. His eyes were not like those of the other goblins—those dark, ink-black orbs that hid all intent. It was difficult to read the faces of the goblins around me; their eyes flat and inscrutable, their features twisted and alien to the natural eye. But there was sympathy between myself and the Goblin King, a language of our bodies that I understood.

  “So you want my sister to die,” I whispered, “so the world can live.”

  He said nothing.

  “If,” I began, and then cleared my throat. “If you lose the game, what happens? Will—will spring never come? Will the world above live under eternal winter?”

  His face was grave. “Are you willing to take that risk?”

  An impossible choice. The life of my sister … or the fate of the world. I had thought my stakes were high, but I saw now that the Goblin King’s was even higher.

  “What will happen to you if I win?” I whispered.

  A smile crossed his lips, but the corners were downturned, more sad than satisfied. “You know,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s ever asked.”

  Then he vanished in a swirl of wind and dead leaves.

  * * *

  I was running out of time.

  With no sunrise or sunset to mark the passing of days, I counted the hours by the fading of Käthe’s hair, the withering of her flesh, the growing pallor of her complexion. The curves about her breast and hips disappeared, and the skin beneath her eyes thinned to a bruise-black.

  My sister was dying.

  The Goblin King paid frequent tribute to her in his role as the Hungarian count. I watched my sister and the Goblin King fawn and simper at each other at these outings, at dinner, at the goblin revels he insisted on holding every night. Another night of goblin wine, another night lost to indulgence.

  Every moment lost was another victory gained for the Goblin King.

  His eyes seemed to tell me so, whenever our gazes met over my sister’s head. Which was often. I felt the touch of his eyes on my skin at all times, an insistent caress that compelled me to look at him. Although I did not admit it aloud, the sight of Käthe on his arm drove me mad with envy. She was a pawn in our game, and I knew it; she was the bait to my temper, and I knew it, yet I could not brush off the nettle-stings of jealousy. I missed my klavier, where I could let those staccato notes of frustration and futility burst forth in a torrent of song.

  In my moments alone, I wandered the labyrinthine passages of the Underground. Goblins scuttled back and forth underfoot, their black eyes shining at me from the corners like beetle carapaces. At my request, Twig and Thistle brought me stacks of paper and a lead pen. I tried to mark the various pathways in the Underground, but the tunnels shifted and twisted and changed every time I thought I traversed down a familiar way. More often than not, I scribbled little throwaway melodies and musical thoughts in the margins of my maps.

  Käthe too was determined to distract me. She had seen my maps, but her eyes lingered on the notes, not the paths. She insisted I sit at her desk and compose, and supplied me with pretty paper and fancy nibs, her fantasy of how a composer truly worked: in beauty, in isolation, and in silence. My sister, so kindhearted, so blind.

  “Come!” she said one day—night?—clapping her hands. “I have a gift for you!” She gestured to her goblin attendants, who brought in gown after gown after gown.

  “What’s all this?” I asked as Käthe shooed her attendants away again.

  “For your debut, you ninny,” she said.

  “What debut?”

  She gave me an exasperated eyeroll. “Honestly, Liesl, it’s a wonder you’re even able to function sometimes. The debut of your latest symphony, of course. Manók has arranged for a concert to be held in the receiving hall.”

  The strength of my sister’s fantasy world overwhelmed me sometimes, so much I could no longer tell where the edges of her dream ended and mine began.

  I let Käthe dress me in whatever gown she thought best suited me and let her fuss with my hair. For a moment, it was like we were children again, the touch of her gentle fingers on my scalp as familiar as the lullabies Josef and I used to play for each other.

  “There,” she said once she had finished. “Beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?” I laughed. “No need to flatter me with lies, Käthe.”

  “Stop it.” She slapped my shoulder. “Just because you grew up in a backwater town doesn’t mean you have to dress like a peasant all the time, you know.”

  “If it were only feathers that could transform a sparrow into a peacock.”

  “A sparrow is beautiful in its own way,” Käthe said severely. “Don’t force yourself to be a peacock, Liesl. Embrace your sparrow self. Look.” She gestured to the bronze mirror before me.

  It was not my reflection that caught my eye, but hers. The full scope of my sister’s transformation hadn’t been clear until I saw her face in the bronze mirror. How many times had I watched Käthe primp and prepare before the mirror in our bedroom, her apple-plump cheeks and sparkling eyes glowing with health? The bones of her cheeks and jaw jutted painfully now, angular and almost masculine. Her chin was as sharp as a dagger, her nose long, her lips thin. Her eyes were overlarge in that wasted face, and with a start, I realized I was looking at me. No, my sister. Faded away to a wisp of her former self, Käthe and I looked the same, save for our different coloring.

  “See?” She smiled, a rictus grin. “Ready to face the whole, wide world.”

  Käthe hadn’t done much in the way of face paint or powders; she’d merely touched my lips with rouge and brushed out my brows. In the flickering fairy lights of the Underground, my sallow complexion evened into a creamy pallor, the angles of my face imposing rather than thin. This was the face I had seen every day of my life growing up—plain, angular, horsey—yet in this new environment, I glowed with an otherworldly light. A sparrow in its nest.

  “I wish…” Käthe began, then frowned.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just…” She bit her lip. “I wish, just once, we might venture beyond these palace walls. To hear your music played before a wide audience. To see works of art by the great masters. To feel … real sunshine, taste strawberries sun-sweet from the meadow, to—oh!”

  Drops of blood fell to stain the rug beneath our feet. Another nosebleed. I jumped up, rushing to grab a cloth or a bandage, but there was nothing in the room save for yards and yards of expensive fabric. I grabbed a discarded stocking—clean, I hoped—and helped clean her up.

  “I need to lie down,” she murmured weakly.

  “All right.” I helped her to her bed. She felt even thinner and frailer in my arms than before.

  “Liesl.” Käthe’s voice was a thready whisper. “Liesl, I don’t … feel so well. I—”

  “Shush,” I said. “I’ll call for your attendants.”

  Käthe shook her head. “I want Mother,” she whimpered. “I want—”

/>   I did not know what to do. Mother was far away; life was far away, and slipping ever further from my sister’s grasp. Despair and rage choked me, but I swallowed them down. Käthe looked at me with large, frightened eyes, and I smiled for her. Mother’s smile. Calm in the face of adversity.

  Smoothing her hair as she rested against her pillows, I hummed a bit of a lullaby Mother used to sing for us. My voice held none of our mother’s sweetness, but Käthe seemed soothed nonetheless. To my surprise, she joined in, her unmusical, tone-deaf ear struggling to find the right pitch along with me. As a little girl, she had refused to sing or play other musical games with the family, painfully conscious of her inadequacies.

  “Liesl.”

  Behind the strained voice, I heard her. My real sister, behind the enchantment. I faltered.

  My sister seized my hand. “No, don’t,” she said. “Keep singing. Keep going.”

  I stopped playing with Käthe’s hair. I took up the lullaby once more, substituting the lyrics with a wordless ooh as I tried to figure out what to do next.

  Are you here, Käthe, my love, my dear?

  The question fit awkwardly into the lullaby’s rhythm and beat, but it seemed to be the best way to speak with her without breaking the music.

  “Yes, I’m here,” she said, struggling. “Your music … it helps keep the fog away.”

  We must flee, we must fly, your bridegroom awaits to take his prize.

  “My bridegroom?” Her blue eyes clouded and I silently cursed myself for slipping in my own spell that I tried to weave about her.

  No matter, no worries, come with me; let’s hurry!

  “Hurry,” she repeated. Her eyes roamed the barrow chamber, as though seeing it for what it was for the first time. “Yes, we must hurry.”

  Are you well, are you hale? You are so weak, you are so pale.

  “Yes.” She nodded stiffly. Then, almost as if by strength of will, color returned to her face, and her blue eyes were hard with determination. “I am.”

  Then follow me, my sweet, follow me.

  Käthe nodded again.

  “I’m coming, Liesl,” she said faintly. “I will follow.”

  STRANGE, SWEET

  I wasted no time. Once I got Käthe out of bed, I dressed us both in the most practical gowns I could find. I had nothing with me, not even my rudimentary and contradictory map of the Underground. But the time for planning was past. Whether or not we got lost mattered little now; time had run out. So, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I strove to lead my sister away.

  My voice was already growing hoarse. I could not sing forever; I needed some other way to keep my sister under my spell.

  When the idea came to me, I almost dropped my song within a laugh. My flute. The gift of the tall, elegant stranger. I had played it into his lair; I would play it out.

  I wish, I wish, for anyone near

  To bring me my flute, quick!

  Bring it to me here.

  Within the twinkling of an eye, Twig and Thistle appeared before me. Thistle seemed irritated by the summons, but Twig seemed amused. The tall, spindly goblin offered me the instrument with an almost reverent look on her face.

  Thank you, my friend

  My thanks to you.

  Please help me find my way

  Out of this tomb?

  I could not figure how to work I wish into my improvised song, which grew more tuneless and shapeless by the measure.

  “There is no way out, mortal,” Thistle said. “It is futile to try.”

  I shook my head, still humming a wordless tune. I turned to Käthe, whose drawn face was pale and sheened with cold sweat.

  “I’m here,” she said in that strained, distant voice of hers. “I’m still here.”

  Twig gazed at me with those flat, inhuman, unreadable eyes. I wanted to read kindness into them. “Know this, mortal,” she said. “All paths lead to the beginning and to the end in the Underground. It is for you to find which is which. Stay true; be swift. Remember, what the old laws giveth, they also taketh. It will not be easy for you to escape.”

  “She will fail,” Thistle sneered. “No mortal on earth has the power to upset the ancient balance.” She bared her teeth in a ghoulish grin. “Good luck. You will need it.”

  I ignored Thistle, and nodded my thanks to Twig. Both goblin girls faded away.

  Talk to me, darling, I sang to Käthe, Stay with me. Sing!

  Then I placed the flute to my lips.

  * * *

  The Underground was a labyrinth. I followed corridors that led upward, corridors that doubled back on themselves, corridors that disappeared into a wall. I could not hold Käthe’s hand as I played the flute, but she tied herself to my apron strings. Every time she faltered, I played something from our childhood. A canon. A skipping song. A silly little nonsense ditty.

  “You’ll never win, you know.”

  Ahead of me, wreathed by shadow and torchlight, stood the Goblin King. He wore the hood and cloak he had when I first met him in the marketplace, when he was just a tall, elegant, and mysterious stranger.

  I stopped in my tracks. Käthe tripped into me.

  “What is it?” she wobbled. “Are you all right?”

  I stared at the Goblin King, but Käthe’s eyes darted about, blind to his slender form blocking our path. He raised one side of his mouth in a smirk and brought a gloved finger to his lips. Shhh.

  A breeze picked up in the Underground, bitter and cold, bringing with it the tantalizing scent of the world above: leaves, loam, ice, and freedom. My sister pressed against me and I could feel her trembling against my back. The wind darted about us like a little sprite, tugging at our hair, our skirts, our blouses, playful and mischievous.

  “Liesl,” Käthe said. “Are we getting close?”

  I dared not lower my flute to comfort my sister. The Goblin King’s eyes glittered beneath his hood. I raised my chin and met his gaze squarely.

  There was nothing of my soft-eyed young man in him now; this Goblin King was all shadow and illusion, Der Erlkönig in his most elemental form. Trickster. Seducer. King. I searched his face for any hint of the austere youth from the portrait in the gallery, my Goblin King. But he was not there.

  I squared my shoulders and turned to Käthe, playing a jaunty little Ländler. It was one of the most cheerful melodies I knew, and I playe it with all the lightheartedness I could muster. The little wrinkle of concern never left my sister’s brow, but her face relaxed into a tentative smile. Käthe wasn’t one to dissect the moods and tones of a piece of music, but even my non-musical sister could respond to what I was saying without words.

  All is well. Do not worry.

  Käthe followed in my footsteps as we approached Der Erlkönig. The wind grew stronger, no longer a playful sprite, but a malicious spirit. It pushed, it pulled, it argued, it threatened. It bit at my fingertips and lips, turning them stiff, numb, insensitive. The sound of its wuthering rose higher than the thin voice of my flute, drowning out my melodies. Käthe huddled close as I struggled to play over the wind, but it was a battle we were losing. My sister slipped farther and farther away from me, my apron strings leaving her grasp. So close, we were so close …

  “Give up, Elisabeth,” Der Erlkönig crooned. “Let go, my dear. Lay down your flute and rest. Stay with me.”

  I closed my eyes. I could no longer feel the instrument between my numb fingers. I was tired, out of breath, and out of ideas.

  “Yes,” he hissed. “Gently, slowly—”

  My lips left the flute, my hands slowly lowered to my side. But to yield was not always to lose. I was not defeated yet.

  Mother had taught us all to sing, just as Papa had taught us all to play. While none of us had her gift of song, she taught us all how to control our breathing, how to project our voices, how to shape the air within us to produce an enormous sound. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs down to my stomach with air. I found a pitch I could comfortably sustain: high enough to be shrill, low enough
not to shred my vocal cords.

  I opened my mouth and screamed.

  I let the sound fill my head, resonate in the hollow spaces of my face, and pushed outward. Der Erlkönig faltered, stunned by the intensity of my scream. He stumbled back, throwing his hands up against the sound.

  I took one step forward; Der Erlkönig took one step back. I kept moving forward, but the distance between us never closed. I wanted to meet him, confront him, push him out of the way with my bare hands, make him admit defeat at my feet. I reached for him, but my fingers passed through the fabric of his cloak. He was as insubstantial as a will-o’-the-wisp. He vanished in an instant.

  Käthe and I were alone in the passageway. The air grew still and warm, the silence about us stifling. I began humming, a tuneless hum that was more resignation than reassurance. Käthe slid her hand into mine and squeezed it comfortingly, her palm surprisingly warm.

  I glanced down at the flute by my side. It was smoking slightly, but not from heat. Frost rimmed its joins, the frozen wood of its body almost too painful to hold. I brought it back up to my mouth, my lips sticking to the ice-rimmed metal embouchure. A sigh misted across the surface as I began to play once more, my breath forming clouds before me.

  * * *

  It was my first encounter with Der Erlkönig on that long, endless night, but it would not be the last. Over and over again, he appeared before me, taunting me, misleading me, tricking me. I stood stalwart and unwavering, walking past his apparitions and through his illusions. It was easier, somehow, when I thought of him as the terrifying and enigmatic figure of myth from Constanze’s stories, rather than the Goblin King with whom I had danced as both a child and a young woman. There was nothing of my Goblin King within Der Erlkönig.

  Each triumph against Der Erlkönig strengthened my resolve and determination, but I grew overconfident. I had bested his supernatural tricks; I had not reckoned on his psychological ones.

  I was playing the flute again—I alternated between singing and playing in an effort to preserve both my voice and my breath—when I heard the violin.