Wintersong(66)

“And this one,” Thistle chimed in, pointing to another dress form, “belonged to Maria Emmanuel. Prissy, she was. Refused to do her duty by her lord. She was consecrated to someone else—a carpenter? Something like that. Don’t know what the king saw in her, but they were both possessed of a strange devotion to a figure nailed to a wooden cross. She lasted the longest, this prudish nun, not having given herself to king and land, and during her rule, our kingdom suffered. Yet she lasted the longest for that, although she too died in the end, pining for the world above she could see but not touch.”

This dress form was slim, the gown that hung on it made of an austere gray wool. I could imagine the woman who wore this dress—a pious creature, veiled like a bride of Christ. No beauty, but her eyes would be a clear, luminous gray, shining with the fervor of her passion and faith. Not like Magdalena, whose loveliness would have been carnal and earthly; Maria Emmanuel would have glowed with an inner light, the beauty of a saint or a martyr. The Goblin King was a man of varied tastes, it seemed.

On and on, Thistle and the tailor went through the litany of brides, but their names and histories blurred quickly from my mind, their lives faded from memory. This was not a clothier’s shop; this was a mausoleum, the dress forms all that remained of each previous bride. Reduced to the fabric she wore. I wondered what gown my dress form would wear, once the Goblin King had used me up.

“What of the first Goblin Queen?” I asked. “Where is her dress form?”

Three pairs of black eyes blinked at me. Then Thistle and the tailor exchanged looks.

“She doesn’t have one,” Twig said.

“She doesn’t?” I glanced around the shop, mannequins of all shapes and sizes standing in an array. “Why not?”

Thistle gave Twig a vicious pinch, but the taller goblin girl waved her off.

“Because,” Twig said, “she lived.”

The room spun around me, the mannequins and goblins tilting and twirling in a swirl of color and shadow.

“She lived,” I echoed. “How do you mean?”

The goblins were unwontedly quiet. The brave maiden must have found a way to escape the Underground with her life, without having condemned the world above to an eternal winter. How was that possible?

“What was her name?” I whispered.

“Her name is lost to us,” Twig said.

“Forgotten, not lost,” Thistle interrupted. “Stricken from our memory. We do not honor her.”

“Understand this, mortal,” the tailor said. “What the old laws giveth, they taketh away. Do not think she walked away from us unscathed, unbroken, or whole. You are dead, maiden. Your life is ours.”

“I thought my life belonged to the Goblin King.”

The goblins burst into their strange laughter. “And to whom,” Thistle said, “do you think his life belongs?”

Their smiles were row upon row of jagged teeth. I shuddered.

“Now, why don’t we find you a nice gown for your dinner with Der Erlk?nig?” the tailor asked. “We have some lovely new fabrics taken from the world above. Still warm from their owners’ now-cooling bodies, if I don’t miss my guess.”

I recoiled. “What did—how did—” I could not finish for the horror that strangled my throat.

“Ah, the days of winter,” the tailor said, licking his steel-tipped whiskers. Did I imagine things, or were there bloodstains upon his clothes? “The earth belongs to us as the old year dies, mortal. Walk away from the Underground, and the earth belongs to us forever.”

Magdalena, Maria Emmanuel, Bettina, Franziska, Ilke, Hildegard, Walburga; my predecessors and rivals and sisters. Every single one of them had married Der Erlk?nig. Every single one of them had given up her life. Had they known the true cost of their sacrifice? Had I? They had long since faded away to dust, but something of their spirits lingered, the seams of their threadbare gowns holding in the last remnants of their souls. Their ghosts surrounded me now, and I could hear the whispers of their voices across time, beckoning, pleading, calling. Join us. Join us. But one voice was absent. The nameless, brave maiden.

She lived, I thought. She walked out of the Underground, and lived.





COME OUT TO PLAY

The dining hall was another cavern, much like the ballroom. Its tall ceilings rose high above me like the arches of a cathedral, while icicles of stone dripped down low, strung with fairy lights. It was like standing in a monster’s giant maw, its teeth threatening to close down on me at any moment, as I waited for my lord and husband to escort me to my seat.

I strove to calm myself. It was difficult with the stays about my ribs, holding my lungs in their iron grip. The breaths I took were restricted, doing nothing to slow my fluttering heart. Did it flutter with nervousness or excitement? I wasn’t sure.

Thistle, Twig, and the tailor had brought back an array of gowns for me to choose from. Most were terribly ill-suited to me—the colors too bright, too pale, the shapes all wrong, the fit made for someone taller, someone more slender, someone simply more. The thought of wearing another woman’s—another dead woman’s—castoffs made my skin crawl, and I refused them all, driving my attendants mad. The tailor finally tossed me a drab old robe and threatened to dress me in it.

To his surprise, I accepted. The tailor took the robe and fashioned it into a simple dinner gown. His long, spindly fingers clacked as he worked, ripping the seams until he had enough material to stitch into something wearable. The speed and dexterity of his fingers astonished me; within a few moments he had put together a dress with a full skirt and modest bodice. The gown was dull and ashy brown in color, the color of dirt, the color of mud. It was also, I thought, the color of sparrow feathers.