Wintersong(79)

Freedom.

I start to cry in earnest, a rush, a torrent of emotion, of beauty, of shame. My mind goes blank and I am nothing but my body. Liesl is gone, and I am reduced to my elemental parts: music, magic, imagination, and inspiration. The sensation is frightening in its intensity, and I call out a name, wanting the Goblin King to anchor me back to myself.

His head snaps up and our eyes meet. His eyes, glassy and dark and opaque, grow clear as the wolf retreats and the austere young man returns. But when he does, his gaze falls on the tears staining my cheeks, and he jerks away.

No, don’t go, I want to say, but I can’t speak. I’m here, I’m here. I’m here at last.

“Oh no,” he says. “Oh no no no.” He retreats, hiding his face in his hands.

The Goblin King curls up at the corner of the bed, his back turned to me. As my wits return one by one, I realize we are in the Goblin King’s bedchamber. I crawl toward him, heedless of the shredded remains of my dress, and wrap my arms around him.

“I am,” he whispers, “the monster I warned you against.”

“You are,” I say hoarsely, “the monster I claim.”

“I don’t deserve your mercy, Elisabeth.”

We lie there in silence, the rise and fall of our breaths our only movement.

“No,” I say at last. “Not my mercy, but my gratitude.”

The Goblin King laughs, a choked, almost hopeful sound. He turns to hold me close. “Oh, Elisabeth,” he says. “You are a saint.”

But I am not a saint. I open my mouth to protest, but the salt of his tears stains my lips, startling me into silence. I listen to the beat of the Goblin King’s heart slow and fade into sleep and whisper to myself the truth he does not hear.

I am not a saint; I am a sinner. I want to sin again and again and again.





ROMANCE IN C MAJOR

A light shone down upon me. I opened my eyes, and for a moment I was lost, unsure of where I was. I shaded my hand; a mirror—a silver-backed mirror—hung above the Goblin King’s bed, showing me a scene of an unfamiliar town.

The town was small, sitting beneath a tall peak I did not recognize. Perched atop the summit was an abbey, the cloisters overlooking the town, a priest looking down his nose at the penitent masses. My mirror showed me the Goblin Grove, my sacred space. I wondered if this was the Goblin King’s.

The sun was high overhead in the world above. My husband slept soundly beside me, his breathing soft and even. We had fallen asleep resting against each other, but during the night we had drifted apart, founding our separate kingdoms on opposite sides of his bed. Our borders were delineated by a pile of bedclothes. We had touched each other in the most intimate ways possible, but neither of us could bear the other’s closeness. Not yet.

There was nothing visible of the Goblin King but a mess of tangled hair and a bare shoulder peeking out from beneath the blankets. I was naked, I was sore, and between my thighs was a mess of blood. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to be away from here, back in my own chambers, clean and alone. The memory of what we had done the night before returned to me, and a pleasant burn spread through my loins. But with the pleasure came a wash of pain. I needed to be alone, recollect my thoughts, and center myself.

Slowly, carefully, I slid out of bed and began to clean myself up. The Goblin King did not stir, lost to the waking world. He slept blissfully, like a babe after a long night of crying, and I remembered the feel of his tears against my skin. I couldn’t face him, not after he had shed those tears and stained my soul. I had touched him, known him, seen every last bit of him, and it was his tears that brought me shame.

“I wish I were back in the retiring room,” I said softly to the waiting air.

And there I was, back beside the klavier in the retiring room. My legs wobbled, bringing me crashing to my knees. Distantly, I registered the pain, but everything was muted, muffled.

My wedding night. My true wedding night.

The world was changed somehow. I was changed. The Goblin King had walked into the tidy room of my life and upended its contents. I was left picking up the pieces, struggling to fit them back together into some semblance of what I had known before. My life was divided into two neat and perfect halves: Before and After.

Liesl. Elisabeth. I had been Liesl until the moment we gathered each other in our arms, when I granted the Goblin King mercy as he absolved me of my shame. I had emerged from the other side of our tryst a different woman: no longer Liesl, but Elisabeth. I tested the edges of this new identity, slipping it on, seeing how it fit.

The retiring room looked different by the light of day. The large mirrors hung on one side lent the illusion of enormous windows, sunshine from the world above streaming through them. I saw a fortress on a hill high above a river, a bright red-and-white flag fluttering in the breeze. Salzburg. Snow still piled in drifts, but along the Salzach River, the palest hint of green shimmered among the trees. The first hint of spring. I smiled.

I sat at the klavier, hands poised over the keyboard. Then I paused. A great weight had been lifted from me, my soul cleared of a corrupting shame. But the freedom frightened me, and I did not know how to proceed. So I played a few chords, inversions of major C, before expanding them out into arpeggios. Safe. Sure.

From inversions and arpeggios to scales. I ran through every key, falling into the mindless movement like a meditation. Like a prayer. My mind began to reorder itself, to fold its memories and thoughts back into their proper drawers, neat and tidy and clean. Once my fingers were sufficiently limbered up, I took my wedding gown from its rack beside the instrument and laid it across the hood of the klavier. I was ready to move forward at last.