Wintersong(104)

“The foolish young man thought it wasn’t much of a sacrifice—after all, a changeling had no soul, and he had never had a name that was truly his own.” The Goblin King’s laugh was as bitter as anodyne. “But as the years wore on, as the weight of immortality grew heavier and heavier, he realized what a fool he truly had been, to have taken the king underground at his word. For no power in the world above or below was worth the torment he felt.”

“Oh, mein Herr.” I lifted my hand to push the hair away from his face, but the Goblin King was not finished with his tale.

“Then, one day, he came across a maiden in the wood.”

“A brave maiden?” I ventured.

“Brave,” he agreed. “And beautiful.”

I scoffed. “This is a fairy tale indeed.”

“Shush.” He touched a finger to my lips. “The maiden was both brave and beautiful, beautiful in ways that she did not see. Could not see, for all her beauty was locked away inside, magic and music, waiting to be set free.”

I was brave and beautiful. It was both a pretty lie and an ugly truth.

“They became friends, the beautiful maiden and the foolish young man. They became friends, and the foolish young man began to remember all that was good and wonderful about the world. About humans. Music, faith, folly, passion. But,” the Goblin King said, “as they grew older, the beautiful maiden forgot the foolish young man. She forgot him, and the foolish young man forgot why he had wanted to be human.”

I cringed.

“So he set out a trap, caught the beautiful maiden, and kept her in a cage. She had a song and he wanted it, so the foolish young man made her sing it again and again until he let her out. But the beautiful maiden dutifully returned to her cage night after night, and for the first time in eternity, the foolish young man thought he could be happy.”

“And was he?” I asked in a hoarse voice.

“Yes,” he said, barely audible. “Oh, yes. He had never been happier.”

My throat closed up.

“But, happy as the foolish young man might have been, the beautiful maiden was not. The cage was killing her, killing her spirit. And gradually, little by little, all that the foolish young man cherished about the beautiful maiden began to disappear. There was nothing he could do but watch her fade into a ghost before his very eyes, nothing unless he ripped out his own heart. Keep her, make himself happy, and watch her die? Or set her free, break his heart, and watch her live?”

He fell silent.

“So how does the story end?”

He met my gaze, and for the briefest moment, I thought those remarkable eyes brightened and deepened in color, just like the portrait of the austere young man, just like the eyes he must have had when he was human.

Then I blinked and they were as they ever had been: pale, faded, and icy.

“You are the one who wanted a happy ending, my dear. So you tell me, how does the story end?”

Tears slipped from my face, and he wiped them away with his thumbs.

“The foolish young man lets the beautiful maiden go.”

“Yes.” His voice was clotted thick with unshed emotion. “He lets her go.”

I burst into sobs then, and the Goblin King gathered me close, rocking me in his arms as I cried. I cried for the breaking of the foolish young man’s heart. I cried for the happiness we might have had. I cried for the selfishness I could not overcome. I cried for him, for us, but most of all, for myself. I was going home.

“You must leave, Elisabeth,” he said softly.

I nodded my head, unable to speak.

“Choose to live, Elisabeth. There’s a fire within you; keep it alight. Feed that flame with music and seasons and chocolate torte and strawberries and your grandmother’s Gugelhopf. Let it grow with your love for your family. Let it be a beacon to set your heart by, so that you may remain true to yourself.” He stroked my cheek. “Do this, so that I may remember you like this: fierce and full of life.”

I nodded again.

“Are you ready?”

No. “Tomorrow,” I said.

He smiled, then kissed me. His lips were gentle, and in them I tasted a farewell.

I kissed him back. Time did not stop for anyone, least of all me, but in that moment of our kiss, I found a little pocket of eternity.





THE MYSTERY SONATAS

If I did not sleep, tomorrow would never come.

I left the Goblin King slumbering in my bed and ran away. Not to the retiring room, where our music waited upon the stand, but to the chapel. It was his sanctuary, his place of refuge, but on this last night before my freedom, I wanted a word with God.

Neither Thistle nor Twig were on hand to guide me, but by now, I had learned that the labyrinth of the Underground unraveled for the Goblin Queen, and the path from my bedroom to God’s house was straight and narrow.

I wondered who had built the chapel. High above me, illuminated stained glass windows depicted various scenes, not from the life of Christ or the acts of the Apostles, but of Der Erlk?nig and his brides. On the right, a series of panels showed a golden-haired woman clothed in white and a dark horned figure. The seasons progressed along with the panels as the maiden in white grew pale and thin. The very last window showed the maiden dying in the horned figure’s arms as another woman in blue stood behind them.

The windows lining the left-hand side showed a young man in red, riding a white horse through a forest as little hobgoblins and grotesques cavorted at its feet. As the windows went on, the young man encountered a mysterious horned figure in the woods, a nimbus of darkness surrounding him instead of a halo of light. As the young man knelt at the figure’s feet, the dark gloriole enveloped them both, and in the following panel, a shadowy gray man rode away on a white horse, leaving the young man in red with a crown of antlers upon his head.