Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(3)

He let me go.

In all our years of sitting at Constanze’s feet and listening to her stories, not once did she ever tell us what came after the goblins took you away. Not once did she ever say that the Underground and the world above are as close and as far as the other side of the mirror, each reflecting the other. A life for life. How a maiden must die in order to bring the land back from death. From winter to spring. She never told us.

But what our grandmother should have told us was that it isn’t life that keeps the world turning; it is love. I hold on to this love, for it is the promise that let me walk away from the Underground. From him. The Goblin King.

I do not know how the story ends.

Oh, Sepp. It is hard, so much harder than I thought to face each day as I am, alone and entire. I have not stepped in the Goblin Grove in an age because I cannot face my loneliness and remorse, because I refuse to condemn myself to a half-life of longing and regret. Any mention, any remembrance of those hours spent Underground with him, with my Goblin King, is agony. How can I go on when I am haunted by ghosts? I feel him, Sepp. I feel the Goblin King when I play, when I work on the Wedding Night Sonata. The touch of his hand upon my hair. The press of his lips against my cheek. The sound of his voice, whispering my name.

There is madness in our bloodline.

When I first sent you the pages from the Wedding Night Sonata, I thought you would read the through-line in the music and resolve the ideas. But I must own my own faults. I walked away, so it is up to me to write the end. Alone.

I want away. I want escape. I want a life lived to the fullest—filled with strawberries and chocolate torte and music. And acclaim. Acceptance. I cannot find that here.

So I look to you, Sepp. Only you would understand. I pray you will understand. Do not leave me to face this darkness alone.

Please write. Please.

Please.

Yours in music and madness,

Composer of Der Erlk?nig





To Maria Elisabeth Ingeborg Vogler

Master Antonius is dead. I am in Vienna. Come quickly.





EVER THINE




I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all.


—LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, the Immortal Beloved letters





THE SUMMONS


“absolutely not,” Constanze said, thumping the floor with her cane. “I forbid it!”

We were all gathered in the kitchens after supper. Mother was washing up after the guests while K?the threw together a quick meal of sp?tzle and fried onions for the rest of us. Josef’s letter lay open and face up on the table, the source of my salvation and my grandmother’s strife.

Master Antonius is dead. I am in Vienna. Come quickly.

Come quickly. My brother’s words lay stark and simple on the page, but neither Constanze nor I could agree upon their meaning. I believed it was a summons. My grandmother believed otherwise.

“Forbid what?” I retorted. “Replying to Josef?”

“Indulging your brother in this nonsense!” Constanze pointed an accusing, emphatic finger at the letter on the table between us before sweeping her arm in a wild, vague gesture toward the dark outside, the unknown beyond our doorstep. “This . . . this musical folly!”

“Nonsense?” Mother asked sharply, pausing in scrubbing out the pots and pans. “What nonsense, Constanze? His career, you mean?”

Last year, my brother left behind the world he had known to follow his dreams—our dreams—of becoming a world-class violinist. While running the inn had been our family’s bread and butter for generations, music had ever and always been our manna. Papa was once a court musician in Salzburg, where he met Mother, who was then a singer in a troupe. But that had been before Papa’s profligate and prodigal ways chased him back to the backwoods of Bavaria. Josef was the best and brightest of us, the most educated, the most disciplined, the most talented, and he had done what the rest of us had not or could not: he had escaped.

“None of your business,” Constanze snapped at her daughter-in-law. “Keep that sharp, shrewish nose out of matters about which you know nothing.”

“It is too my business.” Mother’s nostrils flared. Cool, calm, and collected had ever been her way, but our grandmother knew how best to get under her skin. “Josef is my son.”

“He is Der Erlk?nig’s own,” Constanze muttered, her dark eyes alight with feverish faith. “And none of yours.”

Mother rolled her eyes and resumed the washing up. “Enough with the goblins and gobbledygook, you old hag. Josef is too old for fairy tales and hokum.”

“Tell that to that one!” Constanze leveled her gnarled finger at me, and I felt the force of her fervor like a bolt to the chest. “She believes. She knows. She carries the imprint of the Goblin King’s touch upon her soul.”

A frisson of unease skittered up my spine, icy fingertips skimming my skin. I said nothing, but felt K?the’s curious glance upon my face. Once she might have scoffed along with Mother at our grandmother’s superstitious babble, but my sister was changed.

I was changed.

“We must think of Josef’s future,” I said quietly. “What he needs.”

But what did my brother need? The post had only just come the day before, but already I had read his reply into thinness, the letter turned fragile with my unasked and unanswered questions. Come quickly. What did he mean? To join him? How? Why?