Wintersong(39)

Thistle crossed her arms. “I don’t understand. The other mortals loved all the pretty dresses we could find for them.”

“I am not my sister.” I paused. “The other mortals?”

“The other brides, of course.”

I knew that the Goblin King had taken other brides. Constanze was a veritable fount of cautionary tales about women who were too bold, too intelligent, too beautiful, too different. Yet jealousy pricked me with its needle-sharp sting; I was none of those things, and the Goblin King had made me believe he had wanted me—me entire, me alone.

“What, jealous?” Thistle grinned.

“No.” But my flush betrayed the lie.

“Look how pink she is now!” Twig said with delight.

“What happened to the other women?” I was determined not to let my attendants get the better of me. “What happened to the other brides?”

“They failed,” Thistle said simply. She went about the business of dressing me.

“Failed?” I was too surprised to swat her away. “What do you mean, failed?”

“Stand still,” Thistle growled, trying to lace me into the stays and panniers. The matter was clearly of no great import to her, but the game had changed somehow. I felt I had turned a familiar corner to find a completely different path than the one I expected. Constanze’s stories had never mentioned this.

“What do you mean, failed?” I repeated the question to Twig.

The taller goblin girl lifted her bushy brows. “They failed to escape,” she said. “What else would we mean?”

“Escape the Underground, you mean.”

Twig shrugged. “Der Erlk?nig, the Underground, Death. They are one and the same.”

“Stop wriggling!” Thistle pinched me with her sharp little claws, and I yelped. “If you let me dress you, then you can go see to your sister. I can tell you she’s already dressed in whatever her retinue have put out for her, and eaten of whatever they have brought.”

Was she trying to guilt me? I bit back a laugh. If I started laughing, I would cry.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get dressed. But not in this. Find me another dress.” My stomach rumbled. “And bring me a loaf of bread and some water. Some sausage if you can find it. None of these fairy-made sweets. I will not have my senses clouded by your magic.”

Twig and Thistle opened their mouths to protest. I glared at them. “I wish…”

They disappeared without a word, leaving behind nothing but the echoes of a disgruntled sigh.

*

Once I was properly dressed and suitably fed, I felt much better equipped to face whatever was to come. After questioning both Twig and Thistle, I discovered that the world underground had corridors and thresholds, but no windows or doors. Goblins had no concept of privacy, and there had never been a need to shut an entrance. My barrow room had been sealed for my comfort. Orders of the Goblin King.

“Can you also conjure things from the earth?” I asked my goblin girls.

They nodded.

“Then conjure me a door. With a lock on it.”

It was a while before they understood exactly what I needed. Thistle and Twig took my descriptions and fitted me with a circular door, odd but satisfactory. The lock was a strange device of their own invention, but serviceable. We three were the only ones with a key.

My barrow opened into a corridor. Like my room, it was a mixture of natural and unnatural elements: dirt-packed floors and wrought-iron decorations. Goblin art was both frightening and beautiful; it emulated human art with an extraordinary degree of skillful imitation, but the subjects were not lofty. They were entirely terrestrial. The sconces along the wall were carved not into the shapes of flowers and angels; they were grown from tree roots into the shape of an arm clutching its torch. The paintings on the wall did not depict the traditional scenes of grandeur and glory; they were mostly landscapes. Woods and mountains, streams and brooks, rendered with such precision they seemed like windows to the world above. It alleviated the sense of being trapped underground.

Thistle and Twig led me along the corridor to a grand hall. Like the ballroom, this space was a cavern of stone with tall, arched ceilings and dripping icicles of glittering rock. Above, the fairy lights danced like stars in the night sky. But I saw not a single goblin, not of Twig and Thistle’s ilk, closer to the earth than humankind.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Working,” Twig said, as though it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“Working?” I had not thought that goblins worked; at least, not in the way humans did in the world above. It made me wonder: where did goblin food come from? Where did their clothes? Their furniture? Did they have goblin farmers? Goblin craftsmen? Constanze’s stories never told me much about the Underground itself, only what happened when its denizens trespassed into the world above. Always fighting, always tricking, always stealing, the goblins always sought to take away what did not belong to them.

“What,” Thistle said sourly. “Did you think all this was created by magic?” She waved her long, many-jointed fingers about the great hall.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “Couldn’t you just … wish this all into existence?”

The goblin girls laughed, their cackling giggles echoing up the walls like skittering roach feet.