Wintersong(91)

I straightened my shoulders and steeled myself to meet his gaze. The Goblin King’s lips were twisted in a sneer, but his eyes were sad.

“Down here,” I said, “I have found myself. Down here, I have space to be. It is a gift I never looked for, and I cherish it.”

“It wasn’t a gift.” The Goblin King picked up the salver of strawberries and presented it to me. I picked the biggest, reddest one. “It is merely a consolation prize.”

He rose to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“The game is finished. I’m tired.”

“Do you accept my answer, then?”

He looked at the big, red strawberry in my hand. “No.”

“Then what is your forfeit?”

The set of his mouth tightened. “Finish your strawberries, Elisabeth. That is what I claim of you.”

A strange request, but I did as he asked. I took a bite. And gagged.

I tasted nothing.

I stared at the strawberry in my hand, its flesh still succulent and soft, the juice still running down my fingers. I could still smell its sweet perfume, a promising treat. But without its taste, the berry was nothing but mushy flesh and grainy skin. My stomach turned.

The Goblin King said nothing, only watched as I ate berry after tasteless berry, as I paid my penalty.





THE THRESHOLD

“I have a present for you.”

It was the changeling again, the one with whom I had spoken on the shores of the Underground lake. I was there again, hiding from my goblin attendants. During my uncounted hours, I often found myself listless; unable to compose, unable to play, and unable to eat. The flesh about my ribs had thinned to reveal a cage of bones, my cheeks sunken to expose a death’s-head grin. Food had lost all its savor, a fact Thistle never failed to notice or relish whenever she brought me my dinner tray. I ate to spite her, but it was hard, so much harder when all pleasure was gone from the eating.

The changeling had his hands cupped around an object, offering it to me as though it were a precious thing, a baby bird.

“Another?”

He nodded. His palms opened like a flower, and at their heart, there lay a bloody mass. I gasped.

The changeling tilted his head, his flat, black eyes watching me with no expression. Then I realized that it wasn’t a dying creature in his hands; it was a bunch of strawberries, bruised, battered, and bleeding.

“Oh,” I said, a bit breathless. “Thank you.”

“They’re not from me,” he said. “They’re from the sunshine girl.”

K?the. The sunshine girl. The first smile in an age touched my lips, and my spirits, dead and dull, stirred within me.

“An offering in the grove?”

The changeling nodded again. “I saw her from the shadows. She spoke your name and wished you happy birthday.”

Birthday? I had forgotten. I had long ceased to mark the passing of days, weeks, hours. The Underground never changed, never transformed with the seasons, and the years stretched out ahead of me, bland and blank. “Is it midsummer?”

“Yes. Everything is warm and lush and green.” The changeling’s voice was as flat as his expressionless eyes, yet I thought I could hear a note of longing in it. His longing echoed in me.

It would be my twentieth summer, in the world above.

“I wish I could see it.” A useless wish. I had the power to bend the will of the goblins to my desire, but this was not one they could fulfill.

The changeling said nothing, but pushed his hands forward, berries still red in his palms.

When we went strawberry picking, K?the and I used to argue over which were the best berries to gather. She always went for the biggest, whereas I always picked the reddest. She used to say that it was best to have the biggest, because you got the most strawberry for the littlest effort. I would retort that bigger wasn’t always better; the reddest berries, the ones most vibrant and even in color, were always the sweetest.

The berries in the changeling’s hands were small, but each was perfect in its red intensity. They shone like jewels in the dark, and I wished I could want them. That I could crave them the way I once had. But the taste of strawberries, of chocolate, of tart mustard on yeasty bread—they were all gone.

I plucked a berry from the changeling’s hands anyway.

“Thank you,” I said, and took a bite.

Sweetness burst across the tongue. More than sweet; I tasted sunshine in the meadow, lemony greenness, heat. Memories flooded in along with the taste, running down my throat like tears.

I tasted K?the’s love.

“Oh,” I breathed. “Oh!”

I devoured the rest, shoving them all into my mouth like a child, as many as I could hold. I should have waited, I should have savored, but I didn’t care. Color returned to my world, and I felt my veins run with red.

The changeling was silent as I ate. It wasn’t until I had finished that I caught the look of envy on his face. It was the first truly human expression I had ever seen in a changeling and it startled me.

“I’m sorry.” I wiped the juice from my lips. “I didn’t think to offer you any.”

He shrugged. “It would turn to ashes in my mouth anyway.”

Sympathy flared through me. We weren’t so different, the changeling and I. Neither dead nor truly alive. Along with my sense of taste, all my emotions returned to me with full force. My throat closed with the pity and sorrow I felt for this strange creature. I covered his hands with mine.