Wintersong(94)

He did not reply, only watched as I circled the ring of alder trees, so beloved and so familiar to me. I touched every branch and leaf and trunk, reacquainting myself with old friends. When I reached beyond the ring of trees, I felt my fingers brush against something.

I frowned. There was no fence, no curtain, no physical veil, yet there was nevertheless a sense of trespass.

“The barrier between worlds,” the changeling said. “Cross, and you stand in the world above.”

I gave the changeling a sharp look. The words sounded almost like a taunt. A challenge. But the changeling’s face was as unreadable as ever, and he stood patiently in the grove with me, letting me explore the threshold.

Here and there I found traces of K?the. Bits of ribbon, a scrap of paper with scribbled sketches, and even the beginnings of what looked like a piece of embroidery. I bent down to touch them, and they were real and solid in my hands.

“How is it I can touch and see and smell these things?” I asked, marveling.

“We stand in one of the in-between places,” the changeling said. “These objects are both of the world above and the Underground at once. Until you touch them, they belong wholly to the world above. Until the sunshine girl carries your gift back to her home, it remains Underground.”

I put my hand in my pocket, where the Wedding Night Sonata rested against my hip. “What if K?the doesn’t see my gift?”

The changeling shrugged. “Then it never leaves the Underground.”

I looked beyond the ring of alder trees. Home was so close, yet so far. If only I could just step outside for a moment, run back home and press my music into my sister’s hands.

A perverse thought came to me. What would happen if I should cross? The sun was high in the sky, and the heat of it was fierce upon my skin. It was the middle of summer, and winter had never seemed so far away. I would not be breaking my vows to the Goblin King if I stepped out and then returned … right? I had given myself to him, to the Underground, of my own free will. I would return. I would come back. I pressed my fingers against the barrier.

I glanced over my shoulder at the changeling, who continued watching me with neither censure nor encouragement in his eyes.

First my fingers, then my hand, then my wrist, then my arm.

At last I was fully on the other side. I could not pinpoint the exact moment I had crossed from the Underground to the world above, but I knew the instant I had. My vision brightened, my hearing sharpened, and my breathing eased. I was alive.

I was alive.

I was alive in ways I had not realized I could be: I felt the thrum of blood pulsing through me, the zinging singing in my veins and beneath my skin. Every particle of dust and dirt, the silky feel of hot F?hn winds from the Alps, the faint hint of yeast and rising dough.

The smell of baking bread. The inn. Mother. K?the. I fell to my knees. I was here. I was alive. I wanted to tear all the clothes from my body and run naked through the woods. I wanted nothing—nothing—between life and my body. All my senses sang, an overwhelming symphony of sensation, and I burst into tears.

Ugly, wrenching sobs tore through the forest. I did not care whether God, the Devil, or the changeling judged me. I cried and I cried and I cried, and even as the sorrow gushed forth in a torrent of grief and homesickness and joy, a part of me relished the pain. I had not known, until I had stepped out into the world above, just how stifled, how buried I had been.

I threw out my arms and closed my eyes, as though I could embrace the whole of creation, feeling the intensity of summer sunshine upon my face.

The light changed.

I opened my eyes to see a cloud pass over the face of the sun. But it wasn’t just the veiling of the sun that changed the light around me. It seemed suddenly thinner, weaker, grayer. The hot F?hn winds that ordinarily seared the valleys beneath the Alps kissed my cheeks with a cool breath.

I glanced at the changeling in confusion, and recoiled. His lips were pulled back in a feral snarl, and those black goblin eyes glittered with malice.

Chill hollowed out the air around me, and frost began to rim the edges of the branches and leaves, a delicate lace made of ice.

Winter.

I leaped to my feet and ran back into the Goblin Grove. “Why didn’t you stop me?” I cried.

The changeling laughed, a sharp and brittle sound that pierced my ears. “Because I didn’t want to.”

And then, bursting from beneath the roots of the alders, a myriad of arms and hands. I shrieked and jumped away as they clawed at the earth, a whole host of changelings emerging.

“The Goblin Queen may never again set foot in the world above,” the changeling said. “But you have broken the old laws, mortal, and now we are free to roam the earth.”

“You tricked me!” I rushed forward to grab him, to wrestle him to the ground and strangle the life he so desperately wanted from his body. But he sidestepped my attack with ease, grabbing my wrists in a superhuman grip.

“Of course,” he scoffed. “Of all his wives, you were the easiest to fool. Your soft and tender heart could be shaped and twisted like clay. All it took was a little pity.”

His features shifted. The lower lip softened, his shoulders drooped, his lashes lowered decorously. I gasped as the shadow of my little brother emerged.

“I didn’t even have to change all the way with you. I can, you know. We all can.”

I blinked. I was staring into Josef’s face, perfect in every detail, from the tilt of his nose to the freckles that lightly dusted his cheeks. Perfect save for one small thing: his eyes remained the flat, inescapable dark of goblin eyes.