Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(5)

Once we were finished with supper, K?the cleared the plates while I began the washing up.

“Come,” Mother said, extending her arm to Constanze. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“No, not you,” my grandmother said with disgust. “You’re useless, you are. The girl can help me upstairs.”

“The girl has a name,” I said, not looking at her.

“Was I talking to you, Elisabeth?” Constanze snapped.

Startled, I lifted my head from the dishes to see my grandmother glaring at K?the.

“Me?” my sister asked, surprised.

“Yes, you, Magda,” Constanze said irritably. “Who else?”

Magda? I looked at K?the, then at Mother, who seemed as bewildered as the rest of us. Go, she mouthed to my sister. K?the made a face, but offered her arm to our grandmother, wincing as Constanze gripped it with all her spiteful strength.

“I swear,” Mother said softly, watching the two of them disappear up the stairs together. “She grows madder by the day.”

I returned to washing the dishes. “She’s old,” I said. “It’s to be expected, perhaps.”

Mother snorted. “My grandmother remained sharp until the day she died, and she was older than Constanze by an age.”

I said nothing, dunking the plates in a clean tub of water before handing them to Mother to dry.

“Best not indulge her,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Elves. Wild Hunt. The end of the world. One might almost think she actually believes these fairy stories.”

Finding a clean corner of my apron, I picked up a plate and joined Mother in drying the dishes. “She’s old,” I said again. “Those superstitions have been around these parts forever.”

“Yes, but they’re just stories,” she said impatiently. “No one believes them to be true. Sometimes I’m not sure if Constanze knows whether we live in reality or a fairy tale of her own making.”

I said nothing. Mother and I finished drying the dishes and put them away, wiped down the counters and tabletops, and swept up what little dirt there was on the kitchen floor before making our separate ways toward our rooms.

Despite what Mother believed, we were not living in a fairy tale of Constanze’s own making, but a terrible, terrible reality. A reality of sacrifices and bargains, goblins and Lorelei, of myth and magic and the Underground. I who had grown up with my grandmother’s stories, I who had been the Goblin King’s bride and walked away knew better than anyone the consequences of crossing the old laws that governed life and death. What was real and what was false was as unreliable as memory, and I lived in the in-between spaces, between the pretty lie and the ugly truth. But I did not speak of it. Could not speak of it.

For if Constanze was going mad, then so was I.





the boy’s playing was magic, it was said, and those of discerning taste and even deeper pockets lined up outside the concert hall for a journey into the realms of the unknown. The venue was small and intimate, seating but twenty or so, but it was the largest gathering for which the boy and his companion had ever played, and he was nervous.

His master was a famous violinist, an Italian genius, but age and rheumatism had long since twisted the old man’s fingers into stillness. In the maestro’s prime, it was said Giovanni Antonius Rossi could make the angels weep and the devil dance with his playing, and the concertgoers hoped that even a glimmer of the old virtuoso’s gifts could be heard in his mysterious young pupil.

A foundling, a changeling, the concertgoers whispered. Discovered playing on the side of the road in the backwoods of Bavaria.

The boy had a name, but it was lost amidst the murmurs. Master Antonius’s student. The golden-haired angel. The fair youth. His name was Josef, but no one remembered, save for his companion, his accompanist, his beloved.

The companion had a name as well, but there were none who thought it worth noting. The dark-skinned boy. The Negro. The servant. His name was Fran?ois, but no one bothered to use it, save for Josef, who held his beloved’s name on his lips and in his heart.

The concert marked Josef’s introduction to cultured Viennese society. Ever since France had beheaded or expelled the nobles from their borders, Master Antonius found his coffers growing lean in his adopted Parisian home, with wealthy patrons emptying their funds into Bonaparte’s army. So the old virtuoso left the city of revolution and returned to the city of his greatest triumphs with the hopes of hooking golden fish with younger, prettier bait. At present they were hosted by the Baroness von Schenk, in whose salon the performance was to be held.

“Do not fail me, boy,” the maestro said as they stood in the wings, waiting for their entrance. “Our livelihood depends on you.”

“Yes, maestro,” Josef said, his throat hoarse. He had slept ill the night before, his stomach knotted tight with nerves, his dreams broken by the half-remembered sound of thundering hooves.

“Keep your head together,” Master Antonius said warningly. “None of this whining and crying for home. You are a man now. Be strong.”

Josef swallowed and looked to Fran?ois. The youth gave a slight reassuring nod, a gesture not lost on their teacher.

“Enough,” Master Antonius growled. “You,” he said, pointing to Fran?ois, “stop indulging him, and you”—he pointed to Josef—“pull yourself together. We cannot afford to lose our heads now. We will start with a few selections I have composed, then we will move on to the Mozart as planned, ?a va?”