“Did … did not the brave maiden love Der Erlkönig?” I asked.
The Goblin King stiffened. “I don’t know.”
I bit my lip and turned my face away, unable to meet his gaze. “I think she did. She must have done. Otherwise, how else … how else could you…”
I could not finish.
“Would you like another story, Elisabeth?” The Goblin King’s voice was tight.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“It is,” he said after a moment, “a story that belongs to me. But I shall leave it up to you to decide whether or not the end is happy.”
I nodded.
“Once upon a time, there was a young man.”
I turned to give him a sharp glance. The Goblin King merely smiled, but whether sad or sweet, I could not tell.
“An austere young man?”
He laughed softly. “Is that what you call … what you call him?”
My cheeks reddened and I was too embarrassed to answer.
“An austere young man,” the Goblin King mused. “I suppose so. Austere, pompous, foolish. Yes, foolish,” he said decidedly. “Once upon a time, there was a foolish young man, who walked the world above in search of wisdom to make him less foolish. One day, he chanced upon a king in the wood, a king underground, who claimed to hold all the secrets of life, love, and Heaven.”
I held my breath. A story that belongs to me. A story of how he had come to be Der Erlkönig.
“The king offered his knowledge to the foolish young man—for a price. The price, said the king underground, is my crown, for which you must give me your soul and your name. The young man, being foolish, agreed to the underground king’s price.”
It was as though all the air had been pulled from my lungs. The austere young man had been tricked—tricked into holding his throne. And that was the truth of the gallery of Goblin Kings. There has always been Der Erlkönig. There always will be Der Erlkönig. I could not breathe for the pity that wrapped its hand about my throat.
“The foolish young man thought it wasn’t much of a sacrifice—after all, a changeling had no soul, and he had never had a name that was truly his own.” The Goblin King’s laugh was as bitter as anodyne. “But as the years wore on, as the weight of immortality grew heavier and heavier, he realized what a fool he truly had been, to have taken the king underground at his word. For no power in the world above or below was worth the torment he felt.”
“Oh, mein Herr.” I lifted my hand to push the hair away from his face, but the Goblin King was not finished with his tale.
“Then, one day, he came across a maiden in the wood.”
“A brave maiden?” I ventured.
“Brave,” he agreed. “And beautiful.”
I scoffed. “This is a fairy tale indeed.”
“Shush.” He touched a finger to my lips. “The maiden was both brave and beautiful, beautiful in ways that she did not see. Could not see, for all her beauty was locked away inside, magic and music, waiting to be set free.”
I was brave and beautiful. It was both a pretty lie and an ugly truth.
“They became friends, the beautiful maiden and the foolish young man. They became friends, and the foolish young man began to remember all that was good and wonderful about the world. About humans. Music, faith, folly, passion. But,” the Goblin King said, “as they grew older, the beautiful maiden forgot the foolish young man. She forgot him, and the foolish young man forgot why he had wanted to be human.”
I cringed.
“So he set out a trap, caught the beautiful maiden, and kept her in a cage. She had a song and he wanted it, so the foolish young man made her sing it again and again until he let her out. But the beautiful maiden dutifully returned to her cage night after night, and for the first time in eternity, the foolish young man thought he could be happy.”
“And was he?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
“Yes,” he said, barely audible. “Oh, yes. He had never been happier.”
My throat closed up.
“But, happy as the foolish young man might have been, the beautiful maiden was not. The cage was killing her, killing her spirit. And gradually, little by little, all that the foolish young man cherished about the beautiful maiden began to disappear. There was nothing he could do but watch her fade into a ghost before his very eyes, nothing unless he ripped out his own heart. Keep her, make himself happy, and watch her die? Or set her free, break his heart, and watch her live?”
He fell silent.
“So how does the story end?”
He met my gaze, and for the briefest moment, I thought those remarkable eyes brightened and deepened in color, just like the portrait of the austere young man, just like the eyes he must have had when he was human.