Wintersong (Wintersong #1)(98)

I understood the Goblin King’s apology as clearly as though he had spoken the words before me. Music had always been the language we shared, a language of love, of laughter, of lamentation. I let him play and play and play until at last I set my hands upon the keyboard and played my mercy.

I thank you, I forgive you. I thank you, I forgive you.

But the violin sang over my absolution, an ostinato of guilt and shame. I tried to join him in the music, to find an accompaniment, a basso continuo, but the Goblin King kept changing the tempo, the key, the time signature, variation upon variation of remorse.

I am a monster. I am a monster. I am a monster.

It went on and on, and I could not get a word in edgewise.

“Fetch him,” I commanded Thistle, who was absentmindedly shredding a pile of discarded foul papers. “Fetch Der Erlk?nig.”

She made a face but did as I asked. But when she returned, she returned alone.

“Where is he?”

For the first time ever, I thought I detected a hint of sheepishness about Thistle’s expression. She mumbled an excuse.

“His Majesty will not come,” said Thistle.

I knew the Goblin King was not bound to my will as my goblin girls were, but I sent Twig to fetch him, hoping the kinder of my two attendants could convince him. But she, too, returned alone.

“What, is Der Erlk?nig too ashamed to face me?” I asked. “I would rather he make his apologies to my person than through his violin.”

“He is in the chapel, Your Highness,” Twig said.

“We do not disturb him when he is in prayer,” Thistle added.

I looked at them, astonished. “What? Surely you goblins don’t give two figs for his God?”

Thistle crossed her arms. “We don’t.”

“We do not trespass upon sacred spaces,” Twig said. “A courtesy you mortals never gave us. We abide by the old laws, but if nothing else, we respect His Majesty’s faith, for who are we to deny the uncanny and unknown?”

This surprised me. In all of Constanze’s tales, goblins had no honor or morals, quick to lie and steal and cheat to get their way. But who was I to question the old laws?

“Fine then,” I said. “I would deprive him of his voice. Fetch me his violin.”

My goblin girls exchanged glances. It would be a useless command.

I made a noise of disgust. “All right. Leave me be, and I shall call him another way.”

Twig and Thistle gave each other another glance, then faded away.

I waited.

I waited for the Goblin King to finish, for the guilt to run dry. I waited for the violin to fall silent so I could make my reply.

I organized my papers and began work on the second movement of the Wedding Night Sonata, the adagio.

You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.

Through the large mirrors lining the retiring room, I watched the river ripple through Salzburg, letting the mood serve as my inspiration. I heard the delicate pizzicato plinks of a violin, droplets of ice melting into spring and summer. Beneath that, the murmuring susurration of a flowing brook. Arpeggios on the fortepiano. I made notes on the paper in front of me. The key had not yet resolved in my mind, but I thought it might be C minor.

I modulated the arpeggios up and down, not with any purpose, just to play with the sound until I heard something that struck me. Nothing, so I began to expand the arpeggios. Better. Some chromatic color. There was tension building there beneath the notes. I liked it. I recognized it. It was the unbearable weight of desire.

I left no room for the Goblin King to reply.

The first movement had been about anger and impotence. The theme thwarted, the melody reaching and never quite resolving its potential until the end. The second movement would be about loss, and about dreams just out of reach. The world above. My body. His body. The throb of desire beat beneath it all, marrying these two movements together.

I made notes to revise the allegro with these new thoughts.

Softer. Gentler. The slower tempo of the adagio lent itself to a more meditative, melancholy air, but I did not want complacence and resignation. No, I wanted the melody to unsettle and disturb him, even as it beguiled and tempted him. Rising notes, a pause, then resolution. Modulating higher. The same pattern, a pause, then resolution. I thought of the Goblin King’s hands, sliding over my skin. A laden pause, then a painful grip. Over and over again. Leaving his mark upon my person. I made my marks on the score.

I leaned into the notes, my body pushing and pulling with the music. I closed my eyes and imagined the Goblin King standing behind me, his hands resting about my shoulders. Sixteenth notes in a chromatic scale. Those same hands, fingers splayed, running down my throat to my collarbone, down my shoulders, down my décolletage. Falling notes, glissando, slower eighths. I let out a sigh.

There was an echo of that sigh in the room.

Let the Goblin King listen to me now. Let him hear my frustration and forgiveness.

As I played, as I composed, I waited. I waited for the soft touch of a hand against my hair, the whisper of a breath upon my neck. I waited for his shadow to fall across the keys, for teardrops to fall on my shoulder. I waited and waited and waited until the sun came up, until the darkness faded to show no trace that the Goblin King had ever been there.

*

It didn’t work. I had been so certain—so sure—that my music, the music he had so desperately wanted of me, would be enough to draw the Goblin King from his guilt. But as the minutes, the hours, the days passed, my husband kept his distance. He had not touched me, not spoken to me, not looked at me since our disastrous encounter after he brought me back from the world above.