Wintersong

by S. Jae-Jones

  I wondered if I had imagined it all. “No,” I said, my voice shaking. “You may go.”

  I half-expected her to vanish the moment I dismissed her, but Twig remained, studying the folded-up Wedding Night Sonata in my hand.

  “Whatever you’re planning,” she said, “don’t trust the changelings.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it.

  “They are not human, despite how they look. Remember what we told you.”

  I hid the pages of music behind me. “What have you told me?”

  “They bite.”

  * * *

  Despite Twig’s warning, I was back at the Underground lake the following day. The changeling dutifully waited for me by the shore, twisting his fingers and shuffling his feet back and forth with nervousness. He reminded me so much of Josef. It was not just in the tilt of his eyes or the angle of his cheekbones; it was in the set of his shoulders, the biting of his lower lip.

  “Are you ready?” the changeling asked.

  I nodded.

  “Do you have your gift for the sunshine girl?”

  I nodded again and brought out the copy of the Wedding Night Sonata.

  “Good,” the changeling said. “Let us go.”

  He led me around to a hidden mooring, where a small skiff awaited us. It was not the barge that had borne me to the chapel; we were at another part of the lake altogether. We climbed into the boat, and that beautiful, unearthly singing that had carried me across on the night of my wedding rose up all around us.

  The Lorelei.

  They guard the gateway to the world above, the changeling had said.

  The skiff moved swiftly over the black waters. My companion and I said nothing as the Lorelei carried us, and presently, I thought I could hear a faint roaring sound beneath their song.

  “What’s that sound?” I asked, but I had my answer in a moment.

  The lake had narrowed into a rushing current, a river. Faster and faster, the roaring growing louder, the rushing going faster, the rapids getting bigger. I clung to the changeling’s hand, afraid the little skiff we rode would capsize, but it held sturdy.

  I don’t know how long we rode the currents to the world above, but at long last the torrent slowed to a trickle, and we found ourselves approaching a hollowed-out grotto. The light was different here. It was a moment before I realized it was because of the light from the world above.

  The changeling got out of the skiff and hauled it to shore before helping me out of it. Here and there, shafts of dusty brightness cut through the darkness of the grotto, showing an earthen room with a ceiling buttressed by roots.

  “We are beneath the grove,” the changeling said. He pointed above our heads, where a gap between the roots and rocks was just large enough for a small person to crawl through.

  He helped me make the ascent, although there were plenty of foot- and handholds to ease the way. At last, I emerged.

  The light was blinding. I threw up my hands to shade my eyes, but I could see nothing but endless white. Tears streamed and I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, but nothing could cool their burning.

  But little by little, bit by bit, my sight began to return. When at last I could bear the light, I removed my hands.

  The Goblin Grove. New growth and new life covered branches that I had last seen bare, a lush, verdant green blanketing the forest floor. I breathed deep, and the heady scent of the Goblin Grove in high summer filled my nostrils, indulgence and languid possibility.

  “Thank you,” I said to the changeling. “Thank you.”

  He did not reply, only watched as I circled the ring of alder trees, so beloved and so familiar to me. I touched every branch and leaf and trunk, reacquainting myself with old friends. When I reached beyond the ring of trees, I felt my fingers brush against something.

  I frowned. There was no fence, no curtain, no physical veil, yet there was nevertheless a sense of trespass.

  “The barrier between worlds,” the changeling said. “Cross, and you stand in the world above.”

  I gave the changeling a sharp look. The words sounded almost like a taunt. A challenge. But the changeling’s face was as unreadable as ever, and he stood patiently in the grove with me, letting me explore the threshold.

  Here and there I found traces of Käthe. Bits of ribbon, a scrap of paper with scribbled sketches, and even the beginnings of what looked like a piece of embroidery. I bent down to touch them, and they were real and solid in my hands.

  “How is it I can touch and see and smell these things?” I asked, marveling.

  “We stand in one of the in-between places,” the changeling said. “These objects are both of the world above and the Underground at once. Until you touch them, they belong wholly to the world above. Until the sunshine girl carries your gift back to her home, it remains Underground.”

  I put my hand in my pocket, where the Wedding Night Sonata rested against my hip. “What if Käthe doesn’t see my gift?”

  The changeling shrugged. “Then it never leaves the Underground.”

  I looked beyond the ring of alder trees. Home was so close, yet so far. If only I could just step outside for a moment, run back home and press my music into my sister’s hands.

  A perverse thought came to me. What would happen if I should cross? The sun was high in the sky, and the heat of it was fierce upon my skin. It was the middle of summer, and winter had never seemed so far away. I would not be breaking my vows to the Goblin King if I stepped out and then returned … right? I had given myself to him, to the Underground, of my own free will. I would return. I would come back. I pressed my fingers against the barrier.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the changeling, who continued watching me with neither censure nor encouragement in his eyes.

  First my fingers, then my hand, then my wrist, then my arm.

  At last I was fully on the other side. I could not pinpoint the exact moment I had crossed from the Underground to the world above, but I knew the instant I had. My vision brightened, my hearing sharpened, and my breathing eased. I was alive.

  I was alive.

  I was alive in ways I had not realized I could be: I felt the thrum of blood pulsing through me, the zinging singing in my veins and beneath my skin. Every particle of dust and dirt, the silky feel of hot Föhn winds from the Alps, the faint hint of yeast and rising dough.

  The smell of baking bread. The inn. Mother. Käthe. I fell to my knees. I was here. I was alive. I wanted to tear all the clothes from my body and run naked through the woods. I wanted nothing—nothing—between life and my body. All my senses sang, an overwhelming symphony of sensation, and I burst into tears.

  Ugly, wrenching sobs tore through the forest. I did not care whether God, the Devil, or the changeling judged me. I cried and I cried and I cried, and even as the sorrow gushed forth in a torrent of grief and homesickness and joy, a part of me relished the pain. I had not known, until I had stepped out into the world above, just how stifled, how buried I had been.

  I threw out my arms and closed my eyes, as though I could embrace the whole of creation, feeling the intensity of summer sunshine upon my face.

  The light changed.

  I opened my eyes to see a cloud pass over the face of the sun. But it wasn’t just the veiling of the sun that changed the light around me. It seemed suddenly thinner, weaker, grayer. The hot Föhn winds that ordinarily seared the valleys beneath the Alps kissed my cheeks with a cool breath.

  I glanced at the changeling in confusion, and recoiled. His lips were pulled back in a feral snarl, and those black goblin eyes glittered with malice.

  Chill hollowed out the air around me, and frost began to rim the edges of the branches and leaves, a delicate lace made of ice.

  Winter.

  I leaped to my feet and ran back into the Goblin Grove. “Why didn’t you stop me?” I cried.

  The changeling laughed, a sharp and brittle sound that pierced my ears. “Because I didn’t want to.”

 
And then, bursting from beneath the roots of the alders, a myriad of arms and hands. I shrieked and jumped away as they clawed at the earth, a whole host of changelings emerging.

  “The Goblin Queen may never again set foot in the world above,” the changeling said. “But you have broken the old laws, mortal, and now we are free to roam the earth.”

  “You tricked me!” I rushed forward to grab him, to wrestle him to the ground and strangle the life he so desperately wanted from his body. But he sidestepped my attack with ease, grabbing my wrists in a superhuman grip.

  “Of course,” he scoffed. “Of all his wives, you were the easiest to fool. Your soft and tender heart could be shaped and twisted like clay. All it took was a little pity.”

  His features shifted. The lower lip softened, his shoulders drooped, his lashes lowered decorously. I gasped as the shadow of my little brother emerged.

  “I didn’t even have to change all the way with you. I can, you know. We all can.”

  I blinked. I was staring into Josef’s face, perfect in every detail, from the tilt of his nose to the freckles that lightly dusted his cheeks. Perfect save for one small thing: his eyes remained the flat, inescapable dark of goblin eyes.

  “You monster,” I hissed.

  The changeling only smiled.

  “Take me back,” I said. “Take me back!”

  “No.”

  “I wish you would take me back!”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Your power is broken, Goblin Queen,” he sneered. “You can no longer compel me.”

  I shook my head. “Then I shall go back without you.”

  “Too late,” he crooned. The others, his brothers and sisters, took up the chorus. Too late, too late, too late. “Once you’ve crossed the threshold, mortal, there is no returning.”

  Clouds swirled overhead, dark and ominous. I felt the icy bite of a snowflake land on my cheek before it melted away. A blizzard was coming. I had doomed the world above to eternal winter, all for my selfish desire to live.

  I collapsed to the forest floor. The weight of my guilt and horror bore down upon me, pressing me into the earth.

  Oh, God, I prayed. Oh, God, forgive me. I’m so sorry. Please save us. Please.

  But God did not listen. The snow was flurrying in earnest now, dusting my shoulders, my back, my hands. My glance fell on the wolf’s-head ring around my finger, its blue and green eyes twinkling in the light.

  With this ring, I make you my Queen. Sovereignty over my kingdom, over the goblins, and over me.

  “Please,” I whispered to the wolf. “Please. Of my own free will, I gave unto you myself, entire. Take me back, mein Herr. Take me back.”

  I would have called his name if I had known it. But he had no name, only a title, and I did not know if he would or could hear me now.

  Although ice rimmed the branches of every tree, I was suddenly warm and oh so sleepy. The temptation to lay down my head overpowered me. I could close my eyes and sleep forever, never waking up to the world I had destroyed.

  “Elisabeth!”

  I knew that voice. I struggled to lift my gaze to meet his, but my lashes had frozen shut. I was blind.

  “Elisabeth!”

  Arms encircled me, lifting me from the forest floor.

  “Hold on, my darling, hold on,” the voice murmured in my ear.

  “Of my own free will,” I croaked. “I gave unto you myself, entire.”

  “I know, my dear. I know.” He held me tight, and warmth—real warmth—flooded through me. Not the false heat of freezing to death.

  I opened my eyes to see the Goblin King gazing down upon me.

  “Do you accept my pledge?” My throat was hoarse, but my voice was steady.

  “I do, Elisabeth, I do.” Those mismatched eyes were alight, shimmering with … tears? I reached up to brush them away, but my hand fell to my side.

  And behind him, the skies cleared, turning blue and cloudless, as the leaves crowning him returned to green. My last thought before unconsciousness claimed me was that I had not known Der Erlkönig could cry, and wondered what it betokened.

  ZUGZWANG

  I awoke to shouting. I was a child again, back under the covers with Käthe, listening to our parents argue downstairs. Over money, over Josef, over Constanze. When Mother and Papa weren’t kissing or cooing at one another, they were screaming.

  “How could you let this happen?” The sounds of destruction shattered the room. “I told you not to let her out of your sight!”

  More smashing, more breaking. I opened my eyes to see the Goblin King raging at Twig and Thistle, who cringed and cowered at his feet. Their ears were pushed back and they shuffled forward on hands and knees, making obeisance to their king.

  “Get out,” he snarled. A vase flew from the mantel straight at Twig’s head. “Get out!”

  “Stop!” The vase halted in midair. The Goblin King whirled around as my goblin girls stared at me, wide-eyed.

  “Leave them alone,” I said. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The vase crashed to the floor. “You!” His eyes flashed, his nostrils flared, and his hair was wild. Two bright spots of red stained his cheeks, a high, hectic, color. “You—you—”

  “Go,” I said to my attendants. They did not need to be told twice.

  The Goblin King made an inarticulate sound of fury and kicked at a small side table. It went tumbling into the fireplace, sending ash and embers everywhere. The Goblin King hauled the now-smoldering side table out of the hearth and threw it to the ground, stomping it into pieces. He was like a child in a tantrum, fists clenched with anger, face clenched with irritation.

  I knew I should be sorry. I knew I should be contrite. But I couldn’t help it; I laughed.

  The first giggle that escaped me nearly choked me with surprise. I had not laughed in an age, and the muscles of happiness and humor were unused to it. But the more I laughed, the better it felt, and I bathed in my mirth, an endless bubbling fountain.

  “And what, my dear,” the Goblin King said in acid tones, “is so funny?”

  “You,” I gasped out between breaths. “You!”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Do I amuse you, Elisabeth?”

  I collapsed onto my bed, back and stomach spasming with a fit of giggles. Then the storm subsided and my body was no longer wracked with the uncontrollably joyous hiccoughs of laughter. But their aftermath fizzed along my veins, and I felt loose, limber, and languid. My head hung over the edge of my mattress, and I looked up at the Goblin King upside down.

  “Yes,” I said. “You do.”

  “I’m glad one of us finds the other amusing,” he fumed. “Because I am wroth with you.”

  “I know, and I am sorry,” I said. “But I don’t regret it.”

  The truth dropped between us like a stone, surprising the both of us. The Goblin King went livid, an ashen-gray color. But I … I was flush with life and fervor again. I did not need to look at a mirror to know that the pink had returned to my cheeks, or that a sparkle had returned to my eyes. I could feel it in the singing of my blood. I had set foot in the world above … and returned.

  And the Goblin King was angry. His shoulders were heaving, his eyes alight, his lips tight. I felt his fury roll off him in waves, heating the air between us. He had once said he could no longer feel the intensity of emotion, but I knew that anger boiled his blood, and he held himself tight to contain it. My breath came quicker.

  “What, mein Herr,” I said, “did you think I would say otherwise?”

  I watched the pupils of those mismatched eyes contract and dilate. His fingers curled into claws. The wolf inside him was thrashing and shaking to get loose.

  Come, I thought. Come and get me.

  “Perhaps I was foolish enough to think that the consequences of your actions would have at least caused you some concern.”

  I remembered the sky returning to cloudless blue, the leaves greening. I remembered tears in those pale eyes as the world around us
returned to summer.

  “Have I condemned the world to eternal winter?”

  I could see the truth in the Goblin King’s mouth. His jaw tightened and his lips thinned with the effort of holding it back.

  “No.”

  “Have I set the denizens of the Underground loose upon the world?”

  A furious pause. “No.”

  “Then there’s been no harm done.”

  Insouciant, impertinent, impudent. A coquette’s arsenal of flirtation, and I was reckless with it. He was so close to breaking, so close to grabbing me by the shoulders and punishing me. I wanted it. I wanted the pain and the pleasure, and the reminder that I was still alive.

  “No harm done!” He grabbed a statue from the mantel and hurled it against the far wall. “What if I hadn’t heard you? What if I couldn’t bring you back? What if—” He stopped himself, but I heard the rest of that sentence, hanging in the air between us.

  What if you didn’t want to come back?

  I got up from the bed. With each step forward, the Goblin King retreated, but when I had his back pressed against the wall, he could run no farther from me. I placed my hands on his chest, a light touch, and rose up onto my toes to whisper in his ear.

  “I came back,” I murmured. “Of my own free will.”

  His hands shot out and gripped me about my shoulders, but whether to push me away or pull me close, I wasn’t sure. His fingers dug into the flesh about my upper arms.

  “Don’t you ever, ever do that again.” Each word was a dart to my heart, deliberate and sure. “Ever.”

  I felt both his anger and his fear in his grip. Every bit of him was strung with tension, balanced between wanting to put me in my place and wanting to let me go. His trembles traveled all the way down my body, like his passion was the finger that plucked the string connecting us, reverberations and resonance pooling deep within me.

  So I kissed him.

  The Goblin King was startled, but I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. I clung to him like a drowning man clings to a lifeline; he was my lifeline. He returned my kiss with desperation, over and over and over again, each one sloppier and rougher than the last. His arms tightened about me, his hands grasping at the back of my dress, while my own hands found the hem of his shirt and slid them against his bare skin.