Wintersong(88)

I wanted very much to care.

But it was getting harder to meet each day with purpose. It was hard to find excitement, joy, or anticipation, even in that which had brought me so much happiness before. The Goblin King and I worked the first movement of the Wedding Night Sonata until it was perfect, until there were no mistakes left. I had heard the Allegro more times than I could count, and while I could no longer find anything I wanted to fix, neither could I find anything I liked about it.

Move on, the Goblin King had encouraged me. Write something else. The next movement, perhaps.

I tried. Or rather, I tried to try. But I couldn’t. I stared at the black and white keys of the klavier, but inspiration did not come. I did not know where to begin or how to proceed. And then I realized I did not know how to proceed because I did not know how the story ended.

What was the resolution of a piece begun in rage, impotence, and desire? How did it finish? I knew the rules, how a sonata should be structured. Three movements: fast, slow, fast. A declaration of theme, a deconstruction, a resolution. But there would be no conclusion, not for me; only a slow, sputtering decrescendo.

Those would be the remaining years of my life.

I had thought I knew impotence. I had thought I knew futility. I had been so wrong.

As long as you have reason to love, Thistle had said.

I had many reasons to love. I touched the faded clover blossoms on the sheet music beside me.

As long as the world above remembers you.

Could I … could I send some sort of message? Could I send proof of my love, the way K?the had, the way Josef had?

The grove is one of the sacred spaces left where the Underground and the world above overlap.

And then hope flared again, more painful than before.

*

There were endless facets to my Goblin King—trickster, musician, philosopher, scholar, gentleman—and I had taken great pleasure in discovering them, one after another. Each new side revealed another dimension, another depth which added to my understanding of my husband.

But there was one facet of him I had uncovered, and it was one I liked not at all: martyr.

It was a while before I understood his curious reticence, his careful distancing. It was even longer before I noticed it, for although my husband was free with his affection—touches upon my face, my hands, my shoulder, my lips—he was a miser in everything else.

The longer you burn the candle …

There was a hesitation whenever he touched me now, a conscious gentleness that infuriated me. The door had been opened between us, and I wanted him to walk in and treat my body like home. But there was a line he would not cross, for although I felt his ardor in every kiss, every caress, he never entered. If I could still laugh, my laugh would have been heard even in the world above.

It was not my shame that stopped us now; it was his guilt.

“You are not attending,” I said one evening after dinner.

“Hmmm?”

We had just finished playing a series of suites in G minor by a composer unknown to me. The Goblin King had an entire repertoire of music, a library of librettos and portfolios stolen from the world above. Many of the composers’ names were lost to time, but I wondered if something of their ghosts didn’t stir each time their music was played. At first I had thought these compositions the work of the same man, for they were all written in the same hand, until the Goblin King admitted he had copied the notes down himself.

“I was a copyist once,” he said. Then he shut his mouth and did not say another word, although I pressed and pestered until his patience snapped.

He was immediately contrite afterward, which only needled me more. In the space between his anger and his apology, I had felt that spark of flame between us, and for the briefest moment, all my senses flared to life, as intense and potent as they had been in the world above.

But his guilt dampened my fire and my hope.

“You are not attending,” I repeated. “You were playing by rote; I could hear the emptiness.”

The emptiness was not just in his playing. It was in the silences between us. Where the quiet had once been full, full of music and communion, now it was hollow.

The Goblin King’s bow, still poised over the strings, trembled in his grip. The horsehair bounced lightly against the bridge, producing a nervous, fidgety sound.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ve been up long into the dark hours of the night these past few days.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one. I could see the dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes, and had heard from both Twig and Thistle that the Goblin King did not sleep, but spent his time wandering the winding passages of the Underground.

“Then let us rest,” I said. I clapped my hands, and Twig and Thistle appeared, one bearing a decanter of brandy and a glass, the other a salver of strawberries. I poured the Goblin King a drink and held it out to him.

He did not miss the significance of the gesture. “I’m fine, Elisabeth.”

I shrugged, then took a sip myself. The liquor was weak and watery.

“Well,” I said. “How shall we pass the time, then, mein Herr?”

“I am at my lady’s command,” he said. “Your wish is my desire.”

“Is it?” I rose from the klavier and took a step forward. “Then I think you know just how I would like to pass the time.”

The Goblin King raised his bow like a sword and his violin like a shield between us. “Not tonight, my dear.”