Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(90)

“By whom?” the changeling demanded.

The goblin girls exchanged glances. “We do not speak her name,” said Twig.

The first Goblin Queen.

“She loved him,” Thistle said. “And she was selfish. When the Goblin King let her go, she returned to the Underground to claim him. To steal him away. And in his place she left another. A mewling, frightened lad,” she sneered. “Who lasted barely a breath before finding another to take his place.”

“But you, mischling,” Twig said softly. “You understand what it is to love the world entire. You have walked amongst mortals, you have lived amongst them. You have even loved them, in the only way we fey know how. Distantly. Dispassionately. But it does not mean it is any less deep.”

The changeling stared at the dagger in his sister’s hand, still wet with her blood. “But I have no soul to give,” he said.

“She gave you a name,” Twig said gently. “And you took it to forge your own soul.”

Sepperl.

The man beside him was shaking his head, but did not say a word in protest. The changeling took the weapon from his sister’s hand.

“Oh, Josef,” the man said. There were tears in his mismatched eyes, and there was great compassion in their blue and green depths. “You don’t have to do this.”

But he did.

“Take care of her,” he whispered to the man beside him. “She deserves to be loved.”

The man nodded his head, but could not speak. Josef heard him anyway. I will.

The old laws were silent and watchful as the changeling took the dagger.

And pierced his own heart.





A WHOLE HEART AND A WORLD ENTIRE

the shadows shift and stir, and my brother separates himself from my reflection, from my thoughts, and emerges as himself, whole and entire beside me.

“Liesl,” he calls softly.

“Sepperl. Is it you? Or are you me?”

“I am you,” he says. “And you are me. We are the left and right hands of a single fortepianist. We are part of a larger whole, greater than us, greater than the world.”

My sanctuary is dark, for not even the flame atop the altar can lift the despair around me. The candle I had cut from my cage of bones lies discarded, cold and dead, beside the plinth. “What do I do, Sepp?” I say in a hoarse voice. “How do I choose?”

“You don’t,” he says simply.

“What do you mean?” I can still hear the echoes of the old laws in my ears, ringing with such force and authority. Pay the price, and the other goes free.

“You don’t,” he repeats. “For the choice is mine.”

“No!” I lunge forward and take my brother by the hand. “You can’t.”

“Why not, Elisabeth?” The Goblin King stands beside Josef, his form and figure as I had always known him. His mismatched eyes a faded green and gray, his face lean, his hair in silver-white-gold disarray about his head.

“Because . . . because . . .” But I cannot find the right words to say. This choice should be mine. It had always been mine.

“Stop being so selfish,” Josef teases. “Let us take on the burden for once.”

“I’m trying not to be,” I say in a small voice. “Selfish, that is.”

“Have you learned nothing from your time Underground?” The Goblin King stoops to pick my candle off the floor. “What was it I asked you oh so long ago?”

“When will you learn to be selfish,” I whisper. “When you will learn to do anything for yourself?”

“And when will you learn to let others do things for you?” The Goblin King hands my candle to my brother, who relights my flame with the marsh light in his own heart.

“Is this real?” I dare not voice the question louder than a murmur.

“What is real?” the Goblin King asks.

I shake my head. I do not know.

“Reality is what you make of it, Elisabeth,” he says. “The same as madness. Whether or not this is real matters not to me, but it matters to you. Therefore, which is it? What would you rather have it be?”

The feel of his skin against mine, the scent of his musk, the taste of his lips. The Goblin King has height and breadth and weight in my hands, and I watch the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes in and out. In and out. I have a sudden memory, or rather, a vision of the future, but one so closely lived as to be memory. I remember the two of us lying in bed, side by side, our bodies sticky with satisfaction and wrapped in the warm glow of easy comfort. I remember how the features of his face grow sharper with age, the skin thinning to reveal the fine lines and bones beneath. I remember the silver-white-gold of his hair turning white with frost, true white now, not the enchanted glitter of magic and the Underground. I remember how we grow old together.

“Real,” I say.

“Then name me.” His eyes are solemn. “Give me back to myself, Elisabeth.”

“But I do not know your name,” I tell him, my tongue tripping over my tears.

“You have always had it,” he replies. He presses his hand against my chest. “You have carried it ever and always, bringing remnants of me back into the world above.”

The monastery. I think of the names hewn into the stone walls of the catacombs, brothers long dead and gone. Mahieu, I remember. But that is not the Goblin King’s name. I realize then that I do know it, in bits, in pieces, in dreams. A wolf-boy, a feral child, a name carved into a windowsill.