Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  Josef asked something, and François shook his head. Josef’s shoulders slumped, his fingers crumpling the parchment in his hand. A composition? No, no notes. Words. A letter—

  Fog covered the glass once more. “Sepperl!” I cried, but when the mist disappeared again, my anguished call died in my throat.

  A young woman knelt beside a bed. For a moment, I thought I beheld my own reflection, until I noticed the gleam of gold peeking out from beneath her headscarf.

  Käthe.

  Wearily, she put aside her stained apron and made ready for bed. She was about to pull back the covers and crawl beneath them when she paused. Reaching beneath the pillow, Käthe pulled out a sheaf of paper.

  With a jolt I realized it was the little Lieder, the composition I had left behind. Für meine Lieben, I had written. For my loved ones.

  My sister fingered the lock of hair tied with twine to the piece. Her blue eyes swam with tears and she hugged the piece to her chest. I was not dead to the world above. The mist closed in again.

  The sacrifice I had made, my marriage to the Goblin King, seemed foolish now. My life, my future, my loved ones—I had thrown it all away for selfishness. Because for once, just once, I had wanted to be wanted. Desired. The Goblin King had said he wanted me, and I had taken that desire and staked my entire life on it.

  Was my sacrifice worth it? I felt hollow and bereft, yet the grief in my heart had palpable weight, bearing me down to the ground. I could not breathe. I carried the burden of my love for my family, and it threatened to suffocate me.

  THOSE WHO HAVE COME BEFORE

  “Is she all right?”

  “Don’t know. It’s hard to tell with mortals. They wither and fade so quickly.”

  “She’s filthy.”

  “Must have been a fine night then.” A snicker. “Well, that bodes well for us.”

  “Should we wake her?”

  I stirred at the sound of voices in my room. Twig. Thistle.

  “Sure. Lazy layabout.” Thistle. I recognized the contempt in her voice through my haze of exhaustion and grief. Her dislike was comfortingly reliable, like Constanze’s.

  Constanze. The stab of homesickness roused me, and I groaned and sat up. Thistle leaped back with surprise, her hand poised for a slap.

  “What is it?” I rasped. The painting above my fireplace once again showed the Goblin Grove. Several hours must have passed; the snow was much thicker now.

  “Can’t spend the entire day lying in bed,” Thistle said. “Or on the ground, as the case may be. Funny.” She grinned, showing all her sharp teeth. “I thought you mortals preferred the comforts of a bed, but here you are, sleeping in the dirt like a proper goblin.”

  I rolled my eyes as Twig helped me to my feet. My half-tied dressing gown fell off my shoulders as my joints creaked and protested against the abuse. Human bones were most certainly not meant to sleep on dirt floors.

  “She has gone native,” Thistle said to Twig. “Not even a second thought for those quaint mortal notions of modesty!”

  I tied the dressing gown properly about myself. “If you’ve come to wake me, at least have the decency to bring me a proper breakfast,” I groused. Twig made a motion to go, but I shook my head. “Not you, Twig.” I pointed to Thistle. “You. You go.”

  Thistle made a face, but disappeared in a twinkling. Twig gave a deep bow, her cobweb-and-branch-laden hair scraping the floor.

  “Twig,” I began. “What is that painting above my fireplace?”

  An inscrutable expression crossed her face. Between my two attendants, Twig had seemed the more sympathetic one, but I was reminded that despite her kindnesses to me, she wasn’t my friend. But she was the closest thing I had to a confidante in the Underground, and I sorely missed the companionship. I sorely missed Käthe.

  “You touched it, didn’t you?” Twig asked.

  I nodded.

  She sighed. “It’s a mirror, Your Highness.”

  “A mirror?” I glanced at it again, but all I saw was the Goblin Grove, blanketed in white. “Then why…?”

  “That one,” Twig said, inclining her head toward the gilt-edged piece above the mantel, “was brought from the world above. Like most of the mirrors there, it’s silver-backed. Silver follows her own laws here in the Underground. She won’t show you your reflection; she’ll show you what she wants you to see.”

  Josef. Käthe. My heart twisted with pain.

  “That’s why we warned you not to touch it,” she said. “Your thoughts, your feelings, your questions—that’s what gets reflected back at you, not your face.”

  “Is what the mirror shows me not a true vision, then?” I desperately needed this magic mirror to be real. So I could watch Josef grow up to be the man he was meant to be. So I could see Käthe blossom into the woman I knew she could become. So I would not forget what it was to live, even as life itself forgot me.

  Twig’s lips twisted. “I wouldn’t necessarily trust what you see in it, Highness. Silver won’t lie, but it can conceal truths as much as it can reveal them.”

  The ghosts of my family sat around us in my chamber, crowding in on the edges of our conversation. I had to talk around them.

  “If silver won’t show me my reflection,” I said, “then what will?”

  “Still water is best, of course, but in the absence of that, polished jet, bronze, or copper will do.” Twig picked up a round copper basin from the floor. She turned its convex side toward me.

  I looked worse than I thought. Tearstains cut grooves through the ash and dirt encrusting my cheeks, but could not disguise the gray shadows beneath my eyes. My face looked sunken, haggard, old, and the copper basin distorted my image back at me—long, pointed nose; stubby, weak chin. Or perhaps I truly was this ugly.

  I swallowed. “I look a right mess.”

  “That you do,” Twig said cheerfully. “I’ve been told mortals like to bathe, so I’ve been instructed to bring you down to the hot springs. Come,” she said, gesturing to me. “You won’t even have to say I wish.”

  I laughed. It felt good to laugh, even for a feeble joke; it relieved a bit of the pressure of grief and homesickness on my heart. It felt good to laugh with someone again, even if she wasn’t my sister. Even if she wasn’t a friend.

  Humans were not meant for isolation. We were not meant for loneliness. I glanced back at the ghosts of my family sitting with me in my bedchamber, invisible to the eye, but visible to my heart. I was dead to the world above, but I could not help but reach for comfort and companionship, the way a flower yearns for sunshine in the dark.

  * * *

  After my bath, Twig and Thistle took me deep into the heart of the Underground, to the center of the goblin city for some proper gowns and dresses. I was curious about goblin ateliers—Thistle and Twig did not wear human clothes; they preferred to wear little skirts woven of leaves and branches and twigs. The fact that goblins had tailors and seamstresses at all intrigued me.

  The corridors changed as we wound through the various passageways. Where my room was situated had curved hallways, tunnels rather than broad passages, paintings and portraits and other objets d’art, and dirt floors lined with rugs. The paths by the underground lake were smaller, tighter, and damper—less earthen and more rocky.

  As we neared the center of the goblin city, the hallways broadened and expanded into passable avenues. The floor became paved with enormous gemstones, each the size of my head. They glittered beneath our feet as we passed, their surfaces polished by thousands—millions—of feet smoothing them over centuries. On each side of these broad avenues were elaborately carved thresholds, with “windows” cut into the second- and third-story walls to overlook the streets below.

  It was wrong. The city was strange, forced, and artificial. It did not teem with life; it was empty. This city had not been grown—it had been made. There was a symmetry to these buildings that seemed antithetical to the goblin aesthetic, a rigid sameness and grace that was as ordered as a Baroque sympho
ny.

  “Does anyone live here?” I asked.

  “Goblins don’t live in cities,” Thistle said. “We’re not like you humans, wanting to live on top of each other. Most of us are solitary, and we live in barrows connected by family and clan. This,” she said, gesturing to the storefronts around us, “is where we trade.”

  “Trade?” I was surprised. “Goblins conduct business with each other?”

  The sour look was back on Thistle’s face. “Yes. Obviously.”

  There were signs above each open threshold, goblin sigils. Family crests, perhaps. Perhaps this one indicated gold work, that one gem-cutting. I had seen some astonishing works of art in the Underground, works that were far more deftly made than those made by human hands. Goblin-made objects of legend had always been treasure beyond measure in Constanze’s stories; wars had been waged for their possession, empires had fallen to acquire them.

  “A lot of effort to build a city that will never be lived in,” I murmured. My eyes swept over the elaborately carved arches, the graceful façades and storefronts—all for nothing.

  “It wasn’t always this way,” Twig put in. “Goblins never gathered in cities; we always conducted our business in the open air, in groves and other sacred places in the world above.”

  “What changed?”

  Twig shrugged. “Der Erlkönig. When he took the throne, he brought many strange customs with him.”

  I frowned. “My Goblin King?” I corrected myself. “This Goblin King?”

  Thistle wore a dark look. “Der Erlkönig is Der Erlkönig. It is only you mortals who care where one ends and the other begins.”

  “Look here, we’ve arrived at the clothier,” Twig said jovially. She bustled me past a dark threshold into a large room. I was about to admonish Twig for her transparent attempt to distract me, when I became distracted indeed.

  The clothier was laid out like a large shop, with dresses in the “window displays,” and gowns hanging on dress forms. A large mirror made of polished copper stood in the corner, and fairy lights illuminated the space: glowing, floating dust motes that gave everything a soft, diffuse look. Käthe would have loved this.

  The thought of my sister was sharper than needles and pins, my heart a pincushion of sorrow. I thought of her running her hands over the sumptuous bolts of fabric at the clothier’s in our village, her summer-blue, beauty-loving eyes drinking in the rich velvets, the elaborate brocades, the vibrant colors, the shimmering silks and satins. How I both loathed and loved visiting the shops with my sister. Loathed because I would never be as lovely as she, loved because her delight was infectious. I brushed away the moisture from my lower lashes.

  “Ah, fresh meat.”

  I jumped when another goblin materialized at my feet. He wore a knotted measuring ribbon about his neck, with a few pins in his mouth. The tailor. Upon closer inspection, I realized the pins in his mouth were in fact whiskers. Steel-tipped whiskers.

  “Yes, this is Der Erlkönig’s latest.” Thistle pushed me forward.

  The tailor sniffed. “Not much to look at.” He peered into my face. “Looks familiar, though.”

  I shrank beneath his scrutiny.

  “Well!” the tailor said, sweeping his hand over the shop. “Welcome to my humble atelier. We’ve been dressing brides of Der Erlkönig since time immemorial, so you’ve come to the right place if you are in need of attire befitting a queen. What can I do you for?”

  My eyes wandered over the beautiful gowns on display. They were all several years out of date—some even older than that. I ran my hands over the gowns. Although the fabrics were sumptuous, rich, and beautiful, the gowns themselves had been skillfully repaired. Nothing, not even goblin hands, could stop the wear and tear of time on these gorgeous pieces. The more I looked, the more I realized that everything around me was crumbling, decaying, dying.

  It was only then that I understood these dresses had belonged to my predecessors. My rivals. I immediately quashed the thought.

  The tailor sidled forward, his long, multi-jointed fingers caressing the dress form closest to me.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The color of storms and oceans, or so we’ve been told. This dress,” he continued, “belonged to Magdalena. She was beautiful—the way you mortals reckon, anyhow—beautiful, but stupid. Oh ho, we had fun with this one, we did, but we used her up too soon. Her fire died, leaving us cold and dark.”

  The dress form beneath the gown was tall and well-formed, the bosom and hips generous, the waist tiny. The dress, a robe à la française, was made from a deep, jewel-toned blue silk, and I could imagine the dramatic coloring of the woman who had worn it: pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes to match her gown. A breathless beauty, a glittering jewel, and I imagined the Goblin King partaking of her loveliness over and over again, biting the sweet peaches of her cheeks until she was gone.

  “And this one,” Thistle chimed in, pointing to another dress form, “belonged to Maria Emmanuel. Prissy, she was. Refused to do her duty by her lord. She was consecrated to someone else—a carpenter? Something like that. Don’t know what the king saw in her, but they were both possessed of a strange devotion to a figure nailed to a wooden cross. She lasted the longest, this prudish nun, not having given herself to king and land, and during her rule, our kingdom suffered. Yet she lasted the longest for that, although she too died in the end, pining for the world above she could see but not touch.”

  This dress form was slim, the gown that hung on it made of an austere gray wool. I could imagine the woman who wore this dress—a pious creature, veiled like a bride of Christ. No beauty, but her eyes would be a clear, luminous gray, shining with the fervor of her passion and faith. Not like Magdalena, whose loveliness would have been carnal and earthly; Maria Emmanuel would have glowed with an inner light, the beauty of a saint or a martyr. The Goblin King was a man of varied tastes, it seemed.

  On and on, Thistle and the tailor went through the litany of brides, but their names and histories blurred quickly from my mind, their lives faded from memory. This was not a clothier’s shop; this was a mausoleum, the dress forms all that remained of each previous bride. Reduced to the fabric she wore. I wondered what gown my dress form would wear, once the Goblin King had used me up.

  “What of the first Goblin Queen?” I asked. “Where is her dress form?”

  Three pairs of black eyes blinked at me. Then Thistle and the tailor exchanged looks.

  “She doesn’t have one,” Twig said.

  “She doesn’t?” I glanced around the shop, mannequins of all shapes and sizes standing in an array. “Why not?”

  Thistle gave Twig a vicious pinch, but the taller goblin girl waved her off.

  “Because,” Twig said, “she lived.”

  The room spun around me, the mannequins and goblins tilting and twirling in a swirl of color and shadow.

  “She lived,” I echoed. “How do you mean?”

  The goblins were unwontedly quiet. The brave maiden must have found a way to escape the Underground with her life, without having condemned the world above to an eternal winter. How was that possible?

  “What was her name?” I whispered.

  “Her name is lost to us,” Twig said.

  “Forgotten, not lost,” Thistle interrupted. “Stricken from our memory. We do not honor her.”

  “Understand this, mortal,” the tailor said. “What the old laws giveth, they taketh away. Do not think she walked away from us unscathed, unbroken, or whole. You are dead, maiden. Your life is ours.”

  “I thought my life belonged to the Goblin King.”

  The goblins burst into their strange laughter. “And to whom,” Thistle said, “do you think his life belongs?”

  Their smiles were row upon row of jagged teeth. I shuddered.

  “Now, why don’t we find you a nice gown for your dinner with Der Erlkönig?” the tailor asked. “We have some lovely new fabrics taken from the world above. Still warm from their owners’ now-cooling b
odies, if I don’t miss my guess.”

  I recoiled. “What did—how did—” I could not finish for the horror that strangled my throat.

  “Ah, the days of winter,” the tailor said, licking his steel-tipped whiskers. Did I imagine things, or were there bloodstains upon his clothes? “The earth belongs to us as the old year dies, mortal. Walk away from the Underground, and the earth belongs to us forever.”

  Magdalena, Maria Emmanuel, Bettina, Franziska, Ilke, Hildegard, Walburga; my predecessors and rivals and sisters. Every single one of them had married Der Erlkönig. Every single one of them had given up her life. Had they known the true cost of their sacrifice? Had I? They had long since faded away to dust, but something of their spirits lingered, the seams of their threadbare gowns holding in the last remnants of their souls. Their ghosts surrounded me now, and I could hear the whispers of their voices across time, beckoning, pleading, calling. Join us. Join us. But one voice was absent. The nameless, brave maiden.

  She lived, I thought. She walked out of the Underground, and lived.

  COME OUT TO PLAY

  The dining hall was another cavern, much like the ballroom. Its tall ceilings rose high above me like the arches of a cathedral, while icicles of stone dripped down low, strung with fairy lights. It was like standing in a monster’s giant maw, its teeth threatening to close down on me at any moment, as I waited for my lord and husband to escort me to my seat.

  I strove to calm myself. It was difficult with the stays about my ribs, holding my lungs in their iron grip. The breaths I took were restricted, doing nothing to slow my fluttering heart. Did it flutter with nervousness or excitement? I wasn’t sure.

  Thistle, Twig, and the tailor had brought back an array of gowns for me to choose from. Most were terribly ill-suited to me—the colors too bright, too pale, the shapes all wrong, the fit made for someone taller, someone more slender, someone simply more. The thought of wearing another woman’s—another dead woman’s—castoffs made my skin crawl, and I refused them all, driving my attendants mad. The tailor finally tossed me a drab old robe and threatened to dress me in it.