Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(24)
My limbs were growing numb from the chill, so I got back to my feet, stamping away the myriad prickling needles in my skin. I began to pace throughout the Goblin Grove, agitation and frustration keeping me warm.
“You didn’t tell me living would be one decision after another, some easy, some difficult. You didn’t tell me living wasn’t a battle, but a war. You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
It was more than agitation keeping me warm now; it was anger. It coiled within me, winding me tighter and tighter. My fingers curled, my jaws clenched. I was a spring ready to be sprung. I wanted to tear each alder tree from the earth by its roots, I wanted to claw and dig my way back to the Underground. I wanted to rip and scream and tear and shriek. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt myself.
“I wish you were dead,” I said vehemently.
My voice did not echo in the woods, but the force of my emotions rang in my ears.
“I do,” I repeated. “Do you hear me, mein Herr? I wish you were dead!”
At last the forest took up my cry, a hundred mouthless voices repeating dead, dead, dead. I thought I heard the otherworldly giggles of Twig and Thistle, their high-pitched titters crawling up my skin. The old Liesl would have felt guilty for her uncharitable words, but the new Elisabeth did not. The Goblin King had taught me cruelty, after all.
“You would agree, of course,” I said with a bitter laugh. “No one could punish you harder than you punish yourself. You could have been a martyr. Saint Goblin King, willing to die for me, willing to die for love.
“But I’m not like you,” I continued. “I am not a saint; I am a sinner. I wish you were dead so I could live. If you were dead, I could bury you—in my heart and in my mind. I could mourn you, then let you go.”
I stopped pacing and wrapped my arms about myself beneath my cloak. Now that my anger was fading, the cold began to creep in. I drew the wolf’s-head ring out.
“You live an unlife instead,” I said. I held the ring before me and looked at it. It was old, tarnished, and even a little ugly. “An unlife, a not-death. You exist in the in-between spaces, between sleep and waking, between belief and imagination. I wish I could wake up, mein Herr. I wish I were awake.”
I undid the clasp and removed the chain with his ring from my neck. With a trembling hand, I set it down in the middle of the Goblin Grove.
“I won’t look back,” I said in a choked voice. “Not this time. Because you won’t be there to hold me back. I relinquish you, mein Herr, just as you let me go.” A sob hitched in my throat, but I swallowed it back down, straightening my spine with resolve.
“Goodbye,” I said. I did not turn around. “Farewell.”
I half expected, half hoped I would feel a ghostly hand upon my shoulder as I left, as I stepped foot from the Goblin Grove. But as it had been when I left the Underground, there was no touch, no half-whispered plea to stay. I couldn’t help but look for him anyway, my Goblin King. I gasped, my hand going to the ring I no longer wore at my throat. I could not be sure, but I thought I saw a tall, dark figure standing among the trees, watching me as I walked away.
Then I blinked and the figure was gone. Perhaps he had never been there, my madness made manifest from the mournful yearning of my muddled mind. I turned away and walked back home, toward my future, toward the mundane.
I almost made it to the inn before the tears fell.
late one morning, in early spring, a coach bearing passengers en route to Vienna arrived at an inn in Bavaria.
Two girls waited hand in hand to join them, one dark, one fair. Their clothes were simple, their belongings few, and though one was pretty and the other plain, they had the look of sisters. They bore mirrored expressions of hope and hollowness, like two halves of a whole. The passengers shuffled and grumbled, groaned and shifted, making room for the girls—one plump, one thin. The sisters took each other’s hands as the dark-haired one stared straight ahead, unwilling to acknowledge the demons only she could see.
Meanwhile, over the mountains and a country away, two boys—one dark, one fair—walked the streets of Vienna side by side, en route from one home in the gutter to another in a finer part of the city. A footman dressed in poppy red had been dispatched to ferry their belongings to their new apartments, but their only possession was a single, slightly battered violin. Passersby shifted and shuffled, avoided and averted their gaze from the sight of the boys’ hands intertwined—one black, one white.
The dark-skinned boy knew that luck did not smile upon those of his color or class, and distrusted the sudden good fortune that brought a green-eyed woman to the house of L’Odalisque, searching for him and his beloved. The woman had come bearing gifts: an offer of patronage and a letter written in a hand unfamiliar to Fran?ois, but precious to his fair-haired companion.
I am honored by your faith in my work and humbly accept your generous offer. Please convey all my love and affection to my brother, Herr Vogler. I implore you reassure him that his family have not abandoned him, just as his ever-loving sister prays that he has not forgotten her.
Yours most gratefully,
Composer of Der Erlk?nig
Fran?ois did not trust the green-eyed woman. He had learned long ago that nothing came without a price. But Josef still had faith, still believed in fairy tales and hope, magic and miracles. Josef took the letter.