Wintersong(80)

No more halfhearted noodling. No more careless scribbling. I would take my music, rough and unpolished, and turn it into something worthwhile.

I set to composing.

Picking up a quill and dipping it in ink, I marked down the basic melody as swiftly as I could onto a fresh sheet of paper. I also added the notes I had made about ideas for supporting accompaniment, time signatures, et al. Once I was certain I had collected all my thoughts from my wedding gown, I let it fall to the floor. The dress had served its purpose.

I did not know about Haydn or Mozart or Gluck or Handel or any of the other composers whose names I had studied, whose pieces I had played as a child, but music did not flow from my mind like dictation from God. It was said Mozart never made fair copies of his work, that no foul papers existed, for it was all perfect from his mind to the page.

Not so for Maria Elisabeth Ingeborg Vogler. Each note, each phrase, each chord was an agony of labor, to be revised again and again. I relied on the klavier to tell me which note I wanted, to figure out which inversion I needed. I was not Josef, to have this store of knowledge readily accessible; I had to test and sound out everything I heard in my head.

I loved it. This work was mine, and mine alone.

Ink spattered my fingers and the keys of the klavier, but I was oblivious to everything, even the scratch of the quill against paper. I heard only the music in my mind. For once there was nothing of Josef, nothing of Papa, nothing of the sour voice within that sounded like judgment, like fear. There was nothing but this, nothing but music and me, me, me.

There was another presence in the room.

I had been working for nearly an hour or so, but it was only in the past few minutes that I had noticed another person in the retiring room with me. His presence slowly seeped into my consciousness, emerging from the depths of my thoughts like a dream. I had been unable to untangle my sense of self from my sense of the Goblin King. I lifted my head.

The Goblin King stood on the threshold between his bedchamber and the retiring room. The path between his room and mine was now connected. He was simply dressed, looking less like a sovereign than a shepherd boy. If he had had a hat, he would have wrung it in his fingers sheepishly. He hovered in the in-between spaces, awaiting my permission to enter. I could not make out the expression on his face.

He cleared his throat. “Are you—are you all right, my queen?”

So distant. So formal. He always called me my dear, said in that sarcastic tone of his, or else it was Elisabeth, always Elisabeth. He was the only one who called me that, and I wanted to be Elisabeth for him again.

“I am fine, thank you, mein Herr.” I matched his distance with my own. The chasm between us grew to twice its size. I ached to bridge it, but did not know how. We had been connected in ways so much more intimate than this. How much more could you bare of yourself when you’d already given everything?

He looked away as soon as my eyes met his. A queer feeling overcame me when I realized I had caught my husband in a moment of unguarded admiration. Admiration. Of me. I felt as though he had walked in on me undressed. Yet he had seen me undressed. My mind, tidied into its proper spaces, fell back into disarray.

“How long have you been there?” I asked.

The words came out like an accusation. The Goblin King stiffened.

“Long enough,” was all he said. “Do you mind?”

Liesl would have minded.

“No,” I said. “I don’t mind. Please, sit.”

He gave me a grave nod and the slightest sliver of a smile. As ever, the tips of his pointed teeth poked through that smile, but it wasn’t as threatening as before. He walked to the chaise longue and sat down, leaning back and closing his eyes as I continued to muddle through the piece.

This was intimacy of an entirely different sort. He was inside me, part of me, in the spirit as well as the flesh. At first I thought I was merely giving him a glimpse into my mind, but before long I realized the Goblin King was already in my head. He offered a suggestion here, a revision there, all so deftly and subtly that his voice became mine. With Josef, composing had been something I gave him, something he took and shaped into the finished product. But with the Goblin King, music was something we molded together, just as we had done when I was a child.

I remembered now. All my memories of him came flooding back, ripped from the tide gates by my release. Sweeping away the cobwebs of shame and disappointment, our friendship shone shiny and new. We had danced together in the Goblin Grove, had sung together, had made music together. After I finished a piece, I would rush into the forest to meet the Goblin King. To share my music with him. As I had until my father told me to grow up.

I’m so sorry, I thought. I’m so sorry I betrayed you.

My hands shook on the klavier. The Goblin King opened his eyes.

“Is everything all right?”

I smiled at him, really, truly smiled at him. Warmth filled me, a soft, tickling sensation. It was a long moment before I recognized the emotion for what it was: happiness. I was happy. I could not remember the last time I had been happy.

“What?” He was suddenly bashful.

“Nothing,” I said, but my smile grew broader.

“It’s never nothing with you.” But he smiled too, and its sweetness hurt. He looked years younger with that smile. He was entirely that soft-eyed young man now, no trace of Der Erlk?nig in his face.

“Sometimes,” I said, shaking my head, “I wish you didn’t know me so well.”