Wintersong(83)

The retiring room was empty.

“He’s not here,” said a cackle from the shadows. Thistle.

“I know.” The Goblin King had not taken his violin from its stand in the retiring room. It rested in the hands of a leering satyr, its clawed fingers running down the curves of the instrument. Yet I could still hear those faint, ghostly strains, familiar yet unrecognizable. “Do you hear that?”

Thistle’s bat-wing ears twitched. “Hear what?”

“The music,” I said. I ran my fingers over the Goblin King’s violin. “I thought it was Der Erlk?nig.”

We listened. The playing was too faint for me to identify what I was hearing, but Thistle’s ears were sharper than mine. After a moment, she shook her head.

“I hear nothing.”

Did she lie? It would be like my goblin girl to mislead me, but Thistle watched me with an unreadable expression on her face, neither mocking nor sympathetic. For once, I thought she might be telling the truth.

Perhaps it was all in my mind. I heard music in my mind at all times, but it was never quite this literal. This music wasn’t within me; it was beyond me.

Thistle watched me, perched atop the klavier like a cat, her sharp little claws scoring marks into the scattered notes I had made on the Wedding Night Sonata. “What do you want?” she sneered.

If it had been Twig attending, she would have brought me a platter of food, a mug of tea, a new robe, or any other number of small creature comforts without my having to ask. But Thistle chafed at my unspoken wishes, finding ways to fulfill my orders to the letter if not in spirit.

My stomach rumbled. For the first time in ages, I realized I was hungry. More than hungry, I was starving. I swayed on my feet, suddenly lightheaded.

“It would be nice,” I said mildly, “if you could find me something to eat.”

Thistle scowled. I hid a smile; she hated it more when I was nice than when I was demanding. She snapped those spindly-branch fingers and presently, changelings materialized out of the shadows with plates piled high with roasted boar, slices of venison, turnips, and bread. I noted a salver of strawberries in one of the servitors’ hands and my mouth watered.

“The food isn’t…?” I gave Thistle a questioning glance.

“No glamour,” she said. “It doesn’t work on the Goblin Queen anyway.”

I needed no further encouragement. The changelings disappeared into the shadows again and I tucked in with gusto, devouring the food before me with no thought for the niceties. The juice from the roast filled my mouth, rich and flavorful. I could taste the sweetness of rosemary, sage, and thyme, the smokiness of the roasting fire, the saltiness of the crust.

“You’ve still got an appetite,” Thistle remarked. “Surprising.”

I paused mid-bite. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “They all stopped eating in the end.”

I said nothing and continued eating.

“Are you not curious?” Thistle asked when it became clear I wouldn’t rise to her bait. “Curious about your fate?”

I tore off a piece of bread. “What else is there to know? My life is given to the Underground, and I may never again set foot in the land of the living.” I thought of the days spent at the klavier, the nights spent in the Goblin King’s hands, and my cheeks warmed. “I am dead to the world above.”

The longer you burn the candle …

The food stuck in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it down.

Thistle brought the salver of strawberries over to me. “You know what your bargain entails, but not what it portends.” She grinned, her teeth jagged and sharp.

I sighed. “Out with it, Thistle,” I said. “You want to tell me, so go ahead.”

She set the salver at my feet. “The first fruits of your sacrifice,” she said, picking up a strawberry in her long, many-jointed fingers. “Interesting. Early in the year for strawberries. Your favorite?”

I thought of the wild strawberry patch in the meadow by the inn. I was born in midsummer, and the patch always bore fruit by my birthday. It would be a race to see who could eat more: me, my sister, or the creatures of the forest. K?the and I would steal away from our chores as often as we could to fill our bellies, our red-stained mouths always giving us away.

“Yes.” I loved strawberries because they tasted of more than sweetness; they tasted of stolen summer afternoons and laughter. “They were always my favorite birthday gift.”

Thistle laughed. “First to bloom, first to fade. Enjoy your strawberries while you can, then; the taste will soon fade to ash in your mouth.”

“How so?” I picked up the salver and set it on my lap.

“Do know what it means to live, Your Highness?” I rolled my eyes. I was plagued on all sides by philosophers. “Life is more than breath and more than blood. It is”—Thistle ate her strawberry with relish—“taste and touch and sight and sound and smell.”

I looked at the salver in my lap. Each berry was at its peak ripeness, its flesh a perfect bright red.

“The price you paid was not the remaining years of your life, you know. Think you the old laws could be bought so cheaply? No. It is not just your heart, but your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your tongue they demand.” She licked the sticky juice from her fingers. “Little by little, they will take your sight, your smell, your taste, your touch, a slow feast. Your passion, your vivacity, your capacity to feel, all sucked dry. And when you are nothing but a faded shade of your former self, then at last, you will die. Think you your beating heart the greatest gift you could give? No, mortal, your heartbeat is but the least and last.”