Wintersong(28)

My latest composition still lay open on the music stand. Across the top, in my best handwriting: Für meine Lieben, ein Lied im stil die Bagatelle, auch Der Erlk?nig.

For my loved ones, a song in the style of a bagatelle, or The Goblin King.

Below that, in a hasty scrawl:

For Sepperl, may he never forget.

For K?the, all my love and my forgiveness.

I shuffled the leaves together, stacking them neatly, before tying them with a length of twine from my sewing kit.

The pages looked plain and forlorn, sitting unadorned on my keyboard. If I were K?the, I would have dressed them with a bit of ribbon or lace, or some dried wildflowers from the summer meadow. I had nothing but a few catkins dropped from the alder trees in the Goblin Grove.

But perhaps that was the most fitting decoration after all.

With my shears, I snipped a lock of hair and tied it with the catkins to the sheet music. My latest composition, and my last. My gift to my loved ones, my farewell. If I could not give them one last embrace, one last kiss, then I could give them this: my truest expression of self, to safeguard in their keeping. I left the composition on the bed.

Then, gathering both the flute and the lockbox, I turned from the klavier, from the room, from home, toward the Goblin Grove and beyond.

*

Constanze stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you ready, Elisabeth?”

It was the first time my grandmother had ever called me by name. Shivers ran through me, not of dread, but of anticipation.

“Liesl,” I said. “Call me Liesl.”

Constanze shook her head. “Elisabeth. I like the name Elisabeth. It’s a name for a grown woman, not a girl.”

In her words I heard the echo of the Goblin King. But I chose to draw strength from them. For all our differences, Constanze believed in me. She handed me a cloak and a lantern. To my surprise, she also handed me a slice of Gugelhopf, which she had not made for me since I was a child.

“An offering for Der Erlk?nig.” She wrapped the cake in a piece of linen. “From me. He will not have forgotten the taste of my Gugelhopf so soon, I should think.”

I smiled. “Nor will I, Constanze.”

We faced each other one last time. No tears, no farewells. My grandmother did not countenance sentimentality. She merely patted me on the shoulder.

“Viel Glück, Elisabeth.” She did not say we would meet again.

I followed Constanze through the back door of the inn. She did not direct me on my way, but it did not matter. I knew exactly where I was going.

“Servus, Constanze,” I said softly. “Go with God. And thank you.”

Constanze nodded. She had no words of encouragement, no blessing for my journey. But the cake in its linen wrapping was as good as a benediction from my grandmother. I took it, and left.

*

The night was clear, and the air had the breath of winter upon it, death and ice and slumber. I held the lantern aloft, illuminating the path ahead.

The Goblin Grove lay in the distance, the only bit of the forest wreathed in mist. The mist formed spectral shapes before my eyes, suggesting the hump of a goblin’s back or the curve of a nymph’s cheek, but nothing—no one—materialized. I would have no audience tonight.

Very well, then, I thought, walking into the Goblin Grove itself. It was a circle of twelve alder trees, almost perfectly round, as though planted by some tender gardener ages ago. It had the whiff of some place holy or sacred, fed by the stories we told each other. Of Frau Perchta. Of the Wild Hunt. Of the White Ladies. Of Der Erlk?nig.

I set down my lantern and began combing the grove for deadfall. I found plenty of wood within reach, but the wood had gone to damp and the coming winter. It would not light without tinder. I managed the best I could, arranging the sticks into a small pyramid over a small pile of kindling. But try as I might, I could not get a fire lit, and as match after match sputtered out in my trembling fingers, so too did my hopes.

I could not play for him like this. I could not give him my music with hands half frozen and lips blue with cold. I had promised the Goblin King a sacrifice, but he was not going to make it easy for me. Turn back, whispered the spectral breezes. Give up. I reached into my satchel for the flute.

The instrument felt alive in my grip. It was carved from some sort of wood, possibly alder wood, which was sacred to the Goblin King. The flute unsettled me; it was like holding someone’s hand, a touch that felt back. The instrument was old, built on a simpler design, without the keys and metal joins of the newer flutes I had seen the musicians play in church. Yet it had the right holes that allowed chromatic fingering, not like the fifes and old transverse flutes in our inn that had belonged to our grandfather. Papa had taught me the rudiments of the flute; I knew how to play all the notes, but whether or not I could get them to sound as I wished remained to be heard.

I wet my lips, brought the instrument to my mouth. Nothing but a hollow whistling noise emerged, the sound of the wind in the trees. I gently blew into the instrument itself, attempting to warm the air within, the wood of which it was made. It helped but little; my hands trembled too much to hold the flute straight, my numb fingertips scarcely feeling the holes beneath them.

In the silence of the forest beyond, I thought I heard the mocking echo of a laugh.

You have not defeated me yet.

Fire. I needed fire. I could not keep going like this. The mist grew thicker, droplets of moisture forming on my hair. They would be droplets of ice before long.