Wintersong(72)

I dip my quill into the inkwell once again, and join up my teardrops into a song.





CHANGELING

Liesl!

Someone called my name, and I struggled against the weight of darkness pressing me into sleep.

Liesl!

The voice was familiar—dear—to me, but I could not remember where I had heard it before. When I had heard it. With one great effort, I wrenched my eyes open.

I was in the Goblin Grove. A bright red shape walked toward me and I knew her before I even saw her face. Who else would steal my red cloak?

K?the! I called, but I was voiceless.

My sister scanned the forest, as though she had heard some echo of her name. But her eyes did not settle on me, did not find me standing in front of her.

K?the! I tried again, but I was invisible.

“Liesl.” K?the paced the Goblin Grove. “Liesl, Liesl, Liesl.”

My sister chanted my name over and over, a summons or an incantation. With shaking hands, she reached into her satchel and withdrew a sheaf of papers. My heart leaped in my chest. It was the piece of me I had left behind, the composition I called Der Erlk?nig.

Then K?the reached into her satchel again, drew out a piece of foolscap and a lead pen. To my surprise, the paper was covered with little figures—hands, eyes, lips, dresses. I had not known my little sister could draw, and draw well.

Resting the foolscap against her knee, K?the began scribbling furiously. I leaned closer to see what she was sketching—a tree?—but K?the wasn’t drawing; she was writing.

Dear Josef.

A letter. She was writing a frantic, hurried, panic-filled letter.

Liesl is gone. Liesl is gone. Liesl is gone.

K?the ignored both her spelling and her penmanship in a rush to get down her words. Liesl is gon and no one rememburs her name. I am not going mad. I am not. I hav held the pruf of our sister in my hands, and I am riting nao to entrust it into yurs. Pubblish it, Josef. Play it. Play her music. Then rite me bac, rite Mother bac. Tell everyone that Liesl exists. That Liesl lives.

She did not even bother to sign her name. Then, holding the letter before her like a precious artifact, K?the took one trembling, hesitant step beyond the Goblin Grove.

A strangled, inarticulate cry ripped through the forest. I jumped back as K?the tore the foolscap in her hands, violently, angrily. She threw the pieces away and they scattered about her like falling petals. Bits of paper floated toward me, and I reached out to touch one, afraid I would pass through it like mist.

The paper was solid in my hand. I gathered them all, and tried to piece them together; a bit of a hand, the tip of a finger, the corner of a smile, the shine of an eye. I searched for me, for evidence of my existence, but there was nothing. Only blank, empty space where my name used to be.

The world grew dark around me. I covered my face, and wept.

*

The sound of a violin. My heart thrilled, recognizing its sweet strains, its exquisite emotional clarity.

Josef.

I removed my hands from my face. My brother and Fran?ois stood before me, playing for an audience. As they finished together—in sync, in unison—the audience leaped to their feet. I could feel the applause but not hear it; I could see the cries of Encore! Encore! etched on their lips, but the room was as silent as a tomb.

After a cursory bow, Josef removed himself from the salon with an abruptness that bordered on rudeness. Fran?ois said something placating to the confused listeners and then hurried after Josef. I followed them into an adjoining chamber, small, private, and intimate. Fran?ois furiously gestured to the audience outside. The boys argued, Fran?ois agitated and incensed, my brother curiously laconic and morose. Josef shook his head and said something that stopped the black boy short.

Liesl.

I did not hear my name, but I felt it, resonating in the chambers of my heart. Josef repeated my name, and Fran?ois softened. He went to Josef and gathered my brother up in his arms. He let my brother cry, smoothing away his tears as I might once have done. Then Fran?ois began to kiss him, but not as I would have done; with passion, with tenderness, with artfulness. I averted my eyes to give them privacy and drifted back outside, where my brother had left his violin, his bow, and his music score open on the stand.

Für meine Lieben, ein Lied im stil die Bagatelle, auch Der Erlk?nig.

My heart gave a queer jolt, as though someone had reached into my breast and shaken it in their fist. My music. My brother was playing my music, not just for himself, but for the world to hear.

I smiled. I sat down at the klavier and ran my fingers over its shining ivory keys. I began to play a Mozart sonata, one Josef and I had practiced for ages when we were both little. Little by little, with each note I played, sound began to return.

Behind me, I could sense someone pick up the violin and join me in the music. I turned to face him and smiled, my pixie smile.

Sepperl.

He was as beautiful as ever, my baby brother, his golden curls shining in the light of some distant sun, his blue eyes large and bright. His face had lost much of its baby fat already, the angles of his cheekbones and jaw chiseled and sharp. We played together, just as we always had, but there was something different about his playing.

Sepperl’s music had always been crystal-clear, a bell-drop of a sound, exact and transcendent. His playing was of another world, a clarity that was almost ruthless in its precision. So, so beautiful. So ethereal. So otherworldly. But as he drew closer, the tenor of his playing changed. It grew warmer, more languid, more mysterious, more … human. My fingers faltered on the keyboard.