Wintersong(70)

“What would you do?” I asked.

The Goblin King poured himself a glass of brandy, his silver-white-gold hair falling to cover his expression. “I would play some music.”

I held my glass in both hands, as though it could protect me from what I knew he would ask next. He would ask me to play. He would ask to listen to my music.

“All right,” I said. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, a knife-slash of a gaze that cut deep. But it was the hope and delight in his face that cut deeper. “Why don’t you play a little something on the klavier for me, mein Herr?”

The light in his eyes dimmed. “As you wish, my queen.”

The Goblin King set down his brandy and walked to the klavier, flipping out the tails of his coat as he sat down on the bench. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys and began to play.

At first I didn’t recognize his choice of music. Gradually it revealed itself as a simple children’s skipping song, one K?the and I had sung as we played in the wood. The Goblin King elaborated on the theme in a few variations, and I listened politely, my toe tapping the floor beneath me.

The variations were not particularly inspired, nor his execution on the klavier especially clean. For a man of myth and legend, the Goblin King’s playing was astoundingly ordinary. But his touch on the keys was light and nimble, and he had a wonderful sense of rhythm, moving in and out with the rise and fall of the melody.

My fingers twitched, and a hitching sensation clawed its way out of my breast. I wanted to go to him, to suggest a different variation, to sit next to him on the bench and share in the act of creation. I wanted my hands on his, I wanted to guide those long, slim fingers, and I wanted to change the tenor of the music, to push here and draw out there. The Goblin King sensed me watching him, and the faintest blush of pink tinted his cheeks. His fingers slipped on the keyboard.

“Well,” he said once he had finished. “I hope that was to your satisfaction, my dear. I have not your gift for improvisation, and my hands are much more accustomed to the feel of strings and a bow beneath them.”

“Who taught you to play?” I was trembling, but I was not cold; I was hot. I could feel the heat rising from my cheeks, my throat, my chest.

His only answer was an enigmatic smile. “And now it is your turn, Elisabeth.”

From too hot to too cold. A wash of fear drenched me from head to toe in a nervous sweat. “Oh no.” I shook my head. “No.”

Annoyance began to harden his face. “Come, Elisabeth. Please. I am asking nicely.”

“No,” I said again, a little more firmly.

The Goblin King sighed, and rose from his seat. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why are you so afraid? You were always so fearless, so brazen in your own way when it came to this. You never held anything back when we played together in the Goblin Grove.”

The small tremors in my body had grown into bone-shattering shakes. The Goblin King studied me, watching my complexion change from pale to flushed to pale again, and walked over to me. His hands took mine and I let him lead me from the couch to the klavier.

“Come.” He sat me down on the bench and set my hands on the keyboard. I snatched them away as though I’d been burned, hiding them in my lap.

“Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said. “It’s just us.”

That was the problem. It wasn’t just me. It was me and the Goblin King. I could not play for him. He was not Josef, who was the other half of my soul. He was another person, whole and entire.

I shook my head.

He made a frustrated sound and moved away. “Here,” he said, pushing a bundle of white silk at me. “Why don’t you play what you were working on before? This—”

The words died in his throat as he spread the fabric before his inquisitive eyes. Too late, I saw it for what it was: my wedding gown with my smudged-ash composition. I leaped to my feet, but he was too quick, or I was too slow, for he read every last bit of me on that dress.

“Hmmm,” he said, scanning the marks on the gown, the music I had notated there. “You were angry when you wrote this, weren’t you? I can see the rage, the impotence, in your notes.” Then he looked up. “Oh, Elisabeth,” he breathed. “You wrote this on your—on our wedding night, didn’t you?”

I slapped him, hard, across the face. My aim was sure, and he staggered back, hand on cheek.

“How dare you,” I said. “How dare you?”

“Elisabeth, I—”

“You make me give up my music, force me to sacrifice my last bit of self and sovereignty to you, and you throw it back in my face?” I asked. “You have no right! No right to look at my music like that.” I reached to snatch the wedding gown out of his hands, to rip the fabric to shreds, and to throw the pieces into one of the hearths, but he held me back.

“I didn’t mean—I mean, I just thought—”

“You thought what?” I returned. “That I would be grateful? That you can bring an instrument like this—so beautiful and so perfect—out of nowhere and expect me to be all right with it? I can’t—I cannot—” But I did not know what it was I could not do.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Color slashed his cheekbones. “Isn’t this what you wished of me? Your music? Time to compose? Freedom from your responsibilities?” He dropped the gown and stepped closer to me. The Goblin King was slim, but tall, and he towered over me. “I’ve given you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’m tired of living up to your expectations.”