Wintersong(22)

Hans’s hand stayed me in my seat. “Liesl.” His voice was kind. “We know how hard you worked to keep this family together. We know what you did for Josef, how you worked your entire life to further his career. We know you neglected your own hopes and dreams for his future. We know your own parents often passed you over in favor of him.”

A prickling sensation overcame me. Hans was echoing all my selfish and unkind thoughts, validating my every frustration. Yet I felt no relief, no triumph, only a vague sense of dread.

“That still doesn’t explain why you all thought I would run away,” I said crossly.

Hans and Josef exchanged looks. I distrusted this new sympathy between them.

“You haven’t been well lately, Liesl,” Hans said. “You’ve taken to spending long periods of time alone and in the woods.”

“That’s not so unusual,” I said.

“Of course not,” Josef said. “Only … you keep telling us you’re searching for someone, someone who needs your help desperately.”

I stiffened. “K?the.”

The boys exchanged another look. “Yes, Liesl,” Hans said carefully.

The thought of my sister sharpened all my senses and mental faculties. “K?the!” I said again, and this time I managed to disentangle myself from my nest of cloaks and blankets. “I must find her.”

“Hush,” Hans soothed. “There is no danger. Everything is all right.”

I shook my head. “If I’ve been gone for three days, then K?the must be in even greater trouble. Have you sent any search parties after her? Have you had any luck in finding her?”

Josef worried his lower lip. His blue eyes shone with tears as he took my hand. “Oh, Liesl.”

The cold hand of fear gripped my heart. I misliked what I saw in my brother’s face. “What is it?” I asked. “What have you to tell me?”

Over my brother’s shoulder, Constanze hovered over us like a bird of prey. Her face was dark, her expression both smug and grave.

“Oh, Liesl,” Josef said again. “I’m so very glad you’re safe. But I must ask you: who have you been searching for? None of us understand what you’ve been talking about. Who, my dear, is K?the?”





Intermezzo





THE IDEAL IMAGINARY

No promises, the Goblin King had said. Your eyes will remain open, but you cannot deny me the power to cloud the minds of others as it suits my purposes.

As Josef prepared for his departure with Master Antonius and Fran?ois, Mother insisted I keep to my rooms and “recuperate.”

“You deserve a rest, my dear,” she said. “You’ve worked so long to take care of us; let us now look after you.”

I’m not ill! I tried to say, but it was no use. The harder I searched for everyone’s missing memories of my sister, the more convinced they were that reason had abandoned me.

It was not my mind that had broken.

Or was it?

K?the was gone, but she was more than gone; she had never existed. All traces of her were wiped completely from our lives and nothing remained, not even a strand of her golden hair. No dried wildflowers from the meadow. No ribbons. No lace. Nothing. She had simply never been.

Your eyes will remain open.

My eyes were open, but they could no longer trust what they saw, for it was not what they remembered.

One morning I awoke to find the klavier from Josef’s rooms had been moved to mine.

“Who put that there?” I asked Hans. “How did you move it without my hearing?”

Hans frowned. “The klavier has always stood in your room, Liesl.”

“No,” I said. “No, it has not. How could it? Josef and I practiced in his rooms upon it.”

“You and Josef always practiced on the fortepiano downstairs,” Hans said. His tone was patient, but his eyes were worried. “This is your own personal klavier, Liesl. See?” He pointed to a stack of music laid across the lid, with notes scrawled in my hand.

“But I never—” I picked up the notes. It looked to be the start of a composition, one I could not recall ever having written. I lightly tapped out the melody on the keyboard. Major seventh, my notes said.

The memory of a stolen moment before my brother’s audition returned to me. A little something to hold your promise, he’d said. Major seventh, of course that’s what you start with.

But was it a true memory, or a false one? Had I already begun writing this before our conversation? Or was this yet another dream I had wished into existence?

Hans placed his hands on my shoulders and guided me to the bench. His touch was intimate, but my mind recoiled. He was not mine. He had never been mine.

“Here, Liesl,” he said gently. “Play. Compose. I know how much your music brings you solace.”

Liesl. Had I always been thus? I thought I could remember the words Fr?ulein and Elisabeth upon his lips, a distance so vast it could only be bridged by awkwardness.

“Hans—Hansl.” The endearment tasted strange upon my tongue.

“Yes?” His gaze was tender, and wrong. Hans had never looked at me this way, never regarded me as anything but a sister.

“Nothing,” I said at last. “Nothing.”

*

I had awoken into a new world, a new life. Reality had snapped in half: truth on one side, lies on the other. But which was which? I struggled to match its jagged edges, but the pieces did not fit.