Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(76)

Was I worried he would run away to the Underground? Did he even know how? Did I know how? I was overcome with a sudden, fierce, unspecified anger. Toward the Underground. The Goblin King. The strange and queer and uncanny that had dogged me my entire life. If I had just been normal, if I had just been ordinary, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be trapped in a house of madmen and dreamers with an unholy host at my back because I wouldn’t be Liesl. I wouldn’t be me.

I wanted to kick and scream. A toddler’s temper tantrum crawled up my throat, and the desire to break and smash and cry made my fingers twitch with pent-up frustration. At times like these, I used to run to the klavier and pound my emotions into the keys, reveling in the cacophony of discord. I used to make noise with intent and purpose, to sound my barbaric and untamed self into the void. More than anything, I wanted that now.

Your music creates a bridge between worlds.

I hadn’t tried since coming to Snovin Hall. To play. To make music. For a while I thought my reticence had been a fear of reprisal, of what my power could do to the fabric of the world. But perhaps my reticence had simply been a matter of reluctance; I had wanted so badly to leave that part of myself behind. The part that had walked the Underground. The part that had married—and loved—the Goblin King. I was so focused on being Elisabeth, alone, I had not thought about what it meant to be Elisabeth, entire.

And that meant embracing my past as well as an uncertain future. I was so determined to not wallow in my misery that I made myself lonely; I pushed away memories and feelings and connections not only to the Goblin King, but myself. I had mourned, but I had not let myself grieve. I had not let myself feel.

Don’t think. Feel.

Determination and drive had returned, and with that came desire. For expression, for fulfillment, for self-destruction. I walked to the virginal in the musicians’ gallery and sat down at its bench. The keys were coated in years—decades, perhaps—of dust, but the strings were still in tune. I pressed my fingers into the notes, wringing chords and phrases from the strings and plucking mechanism. The Wedding Night Sonata had lain unfinished for a long time because I had not known how the story ended. But I realized I had not known how it ended because I had not resolved my own emotions—about my music, about my Goblin King, but about myself most of all.

The Wedding Night Sonata had been about me. My feelings. Rage, anger, frustration, fear had been the first movement. Longing, tenderness, affection, and hope had been the second.

Hatred was the third.

Hatred, and self-loathing.

I knew where to go. I was going to play. I was going to compose. I was going to open my veins and let my music run onto the keys.

I was going to open the veil between worlds.

I should have been afraid. I should have been careful. But I was a Pandora’s box of desperation and recklessness; once opened, I could no longer be closed. I cared about everything and nothing, and I wanted nothing more than oblivion. If drink had been Papa’s vice, then the Goblin King and the Underground was mine.

I waited for the ghostly wail of his violin.

I did not wait long.

Through the mirror, through the glass, through the veil between worlds came the high, thin voice of singing strings. I called, and he answered. A sob hitched in my throat, of both relief and fear. I had wanted to hear him, to see him, to touch him, to hold him in my arms forever, and the notion that I somehow could again was overwhelming. I felt the weight of that release down to my fingertips, pushing my hands into the keys of the virginal.

Yet with the hope came uncertainty. Uncertainty, or regret, for with the Goblin King’s arrival came the heady scent of pine and ice and deep loam, a lifting in pressure in the ballroom.

The barrier was thin, thinning, gone.

I looked up from the keyboard to face a thousand Liesls at a thousand instruments staring back at me from broken-mirrored panels in the musicians’ gallery.

In all, save one.

“Be, thou, with me,” I said.

Der Erlk?nig smiled.


*

The austere young man stands before me, violin in his hands. A soft look lights his dear, familiar, beloved mismatched eyes, and I am overcome with such longing I think I will die. My hands shake as I press the keys of the virginal, no longer aware of what notes I am playing or what melodies the Goblin King is making.

“Be, thou, with me,” I say again.

He lowers his violin and his bow. The music continues on, a repeating ostinato of yes, please, yes, please, yes, please.

“Be, thou, with me,” I repeat, and I rise from the virginal.

The Goblin King lifts his hand to press against the shattered glass. I walk to the reflection to meet him palm to palm, shards of silver slicing into my skin. I welcome the pain, the sharp sting of regret and want wounding me to the quick. Yes, this is oblivion. This is heaven, and this is hell.

Our fingers twine together as we reach through veil and void. His touch is cool, dry, but I feel the thrill of it down to my deepest core. I pull him to me, and he does not resist, passing from reflection into reality. My arms open and he walks into my embrace, bringing with him the scent of sleeping green, earth, roots, rock, and the faint, impossible scent of peaches. The perfume of the Underground surrounds me, and I fall into a fever dream. The ballroom wavers and flickers, the world seen through water and flame, and I am lost.

“Take me,” I whisper. “Take me back.”