Elisabeth? I see the Goblin King’s mouth form the syllables of my name, but I cannot hear him.
Elisabeth!
He shouts something more, but I can no longer understand him. Words blur into an unintelligible muffled drone, and with a chill, Thistle’s words come back to me:
Think you your beating heart the greatest gift you could give? No, mortal, your heartbeat is but the least and last.
The Goblin King shouts something again, and within an instant, my goblin girls appear.
No, not this. No. I returned from the world above. My sister still remembered me. My brother still said my name. As Twig and Thistle fuss over me, I hold the Goblin King’s gaze, looking for answers, knowing he cannot give me the ones I want to hear, because I can hear nothing at all.
JUSTICE
Somewhere in the distance, a violin sang a song of sorrow, regret, and apology.
“Josef?” I murmured, stirring from a dream.
But it was not my little brother. I did not hear Josef’s characteristic clarity in the music; instead I heard a weighty sort of grief, the notes lacquered with years—centuries, perhaps—of loss.
It was the Goblin King.
I gasped and sat up in my bed. Memories of what had passed between us returned in a flash of heat, mingled with the chilling terror of the consequences. I shuddered and touched my ears, listening, hoping, fearing.
“She’s awake.”
That was Thistle’s voice. I turned to see my goblin girls beside me, watching me with flat, black eyes. I could hear again. Relief flooded me, threatening to submerge me under a wave of tears. I had not lost this. Not yet. I still had sight and smell and sense and sound. I threw off my covers and rose from my bed. I wanted to rush to the retiring room, wanted to press my fingers into the klavier, wanted to revel in the music I thought I had lost.
“Wait, Your Highness, wait!” Twig grasped for me, but I hurried out of her reach. “You must rest.”
My limbs were still shaky and I trembled as though I were recovering from a bout of illness, but I did not care. Music roiled and churned within me, pushing at my pores, my eyeballs, my fingers, and I needed to get it out, get it out, or explode.
In the retiring room, I saw that Twig and Thistle had taken the Wedding Night Sonata from my apron pocket and set it back on the klavier, but I was in no mood to compose. Everything was an ungovernable, chaotic mess within me, less music than a cacophony of sound. I sat down on the bench, and pushed, pounded, and played the klavier, pouring into the instrument my relief, anger, surprise, and joy. I improvised, I butchered, I wailed. I gave into the tempest of emotions within me until the storm passed.
In the calm that followed, a violin replied.
I am sorry, Elisabeth.
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 Erlkönig.”
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 Erlkönig 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?