Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(17)
But if there was anything I learned from my time as Der Erlk?nig’s bride, it was that nothing came without a price.
“This . . . this is a godsend! Think of all we could do for the inn!” K?the counted the fifty florins with all the meticulous exactitude of a miser. “. . . forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine”—she laughed with delight—“fifty!”
I realized then I had not heard that laugh in an age, the halls of the inn silent of its musical peals, as bright as a bell. I had not known then how I had relied upon her laugh to chase away the storm clouds in my heart.
“You’ll come with me to Vienna, of course,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
K?the blinked, surprised by my sudden turn in conversation. “What?”
“You’ll be coming with me to Vienna,” I repeated. “Won’t you?”
“Liesl,” she said, eyes shining with tears. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “It’ll be just like the Ideal Imaginary.”
She laughed again, and the sound was as pure as a spring morning. The what-if games my little sister and I had played as girls had been ways to pass the time, a space we created untouched by the grime and grief of ordinary drudgery. A world where we were princesses and queens, a world as beautiful and as magical as any my brother and I had made together.
“Just imagine, K?the.” I took her hand in mine. “Bonbons and handsome swains waiting on us hand and foot.”
She giggled. “And all the silks and velvets and brocades to dress ourselves in!”
“An invitation to a different ball every night!”
“Masques and operas and parties and dancing!”
“Schnitzel and Apfelstrudel and Turkish coffee!”
“Don’t forget the chocolate torte,” K?the added. “It’s your favorite.”
I laughed, and for a moment, I allowed myself to pretend we were little girls again, when our wants and our dreams were as closely entwined as our fingers. “What if,” I said softly.
“Not a what-if,” my sister said fiercely. “A when.”
“When,” I repeated. I could not stop smiling.
“Come,” K?the said, rising to her feet. “Let’s go tell Mother. We are going to Vienna!”
Vienna. Suddenly, the words on our lips were no longer a wish, but a possibility. I was excited . . . and frightened. I thought of the manic, frantic fantasies I had spun for myself and told myself it was the uncertainty of what we would find there that scared me. I told myself it was the fear of not knowing anyone save for Josef and Fran?ois, of being lost and alone in a big city without our friends and family to guide us. What I did not tell myself was that it was a warning I had heard from a face wrought of goblin fingers, and a promise I was not sure could be fulfilled.
You cannot leave the Underground, mortal, not without paying the price.
I stared at the broken wax seal, the poppy flower torn in half, and wondered if we were running down the wrong road.
there was a kobold in the house, or so the girls of L’Odalisque claimed. A spiteful little sprite, it liked to play pranks on them—stealing trinkets, switching shoes, sullying their silks and ribbons with dust and dirt from the gardens. In close quarters in a house full of women, such things often went astray. A slit stay here, a slashed gown there, bits of tit for tat as they settled scores and slights with one another.
But these tricks were not the ordinary tallies of mundane retribution borne of a jilted lover, a disinterested client, an unpaid favor, the girls of L’Odalisque would protest. They were the cruel and capricious whims of an invisible spirit. No rhyme or reason but chance and discord, not mischief but malice. When Elif lost her mother’s pearl ring. When Aloysia’s perfume was switched for cat piss. When the miniature portrait of L’Odalisque’s late husband in her locket was defaced. The kobold seemed to know exactly where each person’s sore spots were and spared no one. Personal, pitiless, precise.
Maria and Caroline began carrying iron in their pockets. Edwina and Fadime made charms warding off the evil eye. L’Odalisque herself began lining the thresholds with salt, but no spell or superstition kept the sprite at bay.
It’s no use, Josef said in a distant, misty voice. The monster is in the mirror.
By now they were all used to the blond boy’s queer turns of phrase. He never quite seemed tethered to the present, seeming to trod on ether and air instead of earth and soil. Josef was neither innocent nor pure—he lived in a bawdy house, after all—yet there remained an aura of untouchability or distance to him that was both charismatic and off-putting. He was often seen wandering through the receiving rooms and reception halls of L’Odalisque’s at odd hours of the night, silent as a geist floating from chamber to chamber. The rare times he was heard to speak seemed like prophecy from on high, just as cryptic and just as obtuse as the words of an oracle.
Not a kobold, but a king. He rides ahead of the end. My end.
The girls shook their heads with affection and pity. Lost, they said. Laudanum-addled. And then, in lowered voices. Lacking.
Indeed as the days went on, Josef seemed less and less present. Fran?ois watched with despair as time seemed to whittle his companion down to his essence, a being not meant for his world. The sunshine in Josef’s hair faded to the colorless gold of dusk or dawn, the blue in his summer-sky eyes dimming to a cloudy winter gray. He had grown tall and lanky with his height, his skin stretched pale over hollow bones. He was a wisp, a wight, a waif, and Fran?ois wanted nothing more than to breathe life and love back into his beloved’s lungs.