Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(15)

In the end, words had been insufficient. Music was the language my brother and I shared down to our bones. Melodies were our sentences, movements our paragraphs. We spoke best when we let our fingers do the talking—mine over my keyboard, his over the strings. It was in our playing, not my letters, that I could make Sepperl understand.

How I could make myself understand. The restlessness, the anxiety within me. The feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction, my frustration with my inability to execute my ideas on the page, either in words or in song. I could not catch my own mind, my thoughts racing past in a blur, like fingers rushing through sixteenth notes without regard to tempo.

The hoofbeats grew louder.

With a start, I realized that the hoofbeats weren’t in my mind, but the sound of an actual horse riding down the road. I glanced over my shoulder and beheld a rider in black, his dark cloak streaming out behind him like wings. Beneath the brim of his hat, his hair was pale, the planes of his face narrow and sharp. His horse was a large black stallion, its eyes wild and teeth bared, a creature running straight from the mouth of hell.

My heart stopped. It couldn’t be—could it?

As the horseman drew nearer, I saw that his eyes were a simple twig brown, not a mismatched green and gray. The white hair was nothing but a wig between the tricorn hat. And still my excitable heart leaped and trembled like a skittish thing, searching for the familiar in every unknown, every unfamiliar thing.

It was not the Goblin King.

Of course it wasn’t the Goblin King.

The rider rushed past, and I jumped out of the way to avoid being splattered. I watched the horseman and his steed disappear around a bend in the road, feeling a strange combination of relief and disappointment. I had not been sleeping well, of course my mind would conjure specters where there were none. And yet the expectation—the hope—that I might see my Goblin King again was the dagger with which I stabbed myself. It couldn’t be. It cannot be. I must move on.

Then, to my astonishment, the horse and its rider came galloping back.

I paused by the side of the road, waiting for the horseman to pass again, but instead he slowed at the sight of me, bringing his steed from a gallop to a trot, a walk, a stop.

“Fr?ulein Vogler?” the rider asked.

I was stunned. “Y-yes?” I managed. “I am she. How can I help you?”

The rider did not answer, but reached into the satchel at his side. A courier, I realized. A postman. Then my heart lifted. Josef!

He pulled out a small leather pouch, leaning down to hand it to me. The pouch was rather heavy for its size, and clinked musically as I accepted it. Mystified, I was about to open the pouch to examine its contents when the courier handed me a letter.

All else was forgotten as I snatched the letter from his hands, not caring whether or not I bent or battered the edges. I had been waiting for word—for an explanation—from Josef for so long that I was past caring about such trivial matters as polite manners or social niceties.

The weight of the paper was heavy and expensive, faintly perfumed with a sweet scent that lingered despite the many miles it had traveled. The letter bore an official-looking wax seal, a crest with the image of a flower pressed into it. A rose, or a poppy perhaps? It did not seem like something my brother would send—the paper, the ink, the scent were all wrong—yet I clung to hope, because I wanted to believe my brother would send for me. Would write—really write— to me, instead of leaving me behind.

“Who sent this?” I asked.

But the postman, having delivered his message, merely tipped his hat to me and rode off. I watched him disappear down the road, then returned to the letter in my hand and turned it over. My heart stuttered, tripping over its excitement and dread. There, written in an unfamiliar, elegant, educated hand, was an address:

To the composer of Der Erlk?nig.


*

“Is everything all right?” K?the asked once I got home. A pile of chopped root vegetables and salt pork lay on the sideboard, while a pot of water bubbled away above the stove. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost!” She laughed, but sobered at my expression. “Liesl?”

With trembling hands, I handed the small leather pouch out for my sister to hold.

“Is that the salt?” she asked with a frown.

“No.” I set the salt down on the table, then set the leather pouch down beside it. It clinked musically. “But it might just be our miracle.”

K?the sucked in a sharp breath. “What is it? Who’s it for? And who’s it from?”

“I think”—I swallowed—“I think it’s for me.”

I held up the letter, with the words To the composer of Der Erlk?nig clearly visible in stark, black ink. Its faintly sweet, cloying scent perfumed the air, clashing horribly with the onions and herbs my sister was prepping for supper.

“But it must be from a very important person,” K?the observed. “Look at the paper! And”—she squinted—“is that a crest?”

“Yes.” Upon closer examination, I thought the seal might be a poppy, not a rose. A strange choice.

“Well, are you going to read it?” My sister went on with making supper. “Let’s see what this mysterious nobleman wants with the composer of Der Erlk?nig, eh?”

I broke the wax sealing the letter and unfolded the page. “Dear Mademoiselle Vogler,” I read aloud. “Forgive me for this most unconventional and improper method of correspondence. You and I are strangers to each other, but pray do not be alarmed when I write that I feel as though we have already been acquainted.”