Wintersong(125)

A hiss of pain rose from them all, a collective susurrus like the sighing of branches in the wood. Multi-jointed fingers uncurled from my wrists, my arms, my waist, dropping me to the ground.

It burns! they cried. It burns!

Once released, I coughed and gulped down great gasps of air as all around me, echoes of It burns! It burns! blended with warnings of Your love is killing him into a symphony of discord.

I lay on my side, there on the floor of the dirty corridor, long after the goblin hands had disappeared. For although their voices had faded away, the damning words remained.

Your love is killing him.



I don’t know how long I lay there, crushed beneath the crippling weight of my doubt.

As long as you have a reason to love, Thistle had said. Love kept the wheel of life turning. Love created bridges between worlds. If there was nothing else I had learned, I had learned that love was greater than the old laws.

But uncertainty crept over me on silent wings, whispering in the changeling’s voice: None of us have lasted long in the world above.

I might have lain there in the dust and dirt, save for my promise to the Goblin King. There’s a fire within you; keep it alight. Move or die. If I could not walk, I would crawl. If I did not know the answers now, I would discover them later. While there was breath, there was time. I got to my feet.

And then, faintly, a violin began to play.

I closed my eyes. I had expected obstacles, physical trials to overcome, but the Underground knew to attack me where I was the most vulnerable: my heart.

It’s not Josef. It’s not the Goblin King. It is a trick, I chanted to myself. The mantra had saved me before, when Käthe and I trod these paths to fight our way back to the surface. But the words no longer possessed the power they once had and, almost against my will, my feet followed the sounds to a large cavern.

It was the ballroom. The ballroom that held the Goblin Ball, where the Goblin King and I had danced together for the first time. It was also the room where we had greeted our subjects as husband and wife. But it was empty now, no beautiful or otherworldly decorations, no banquet tables laid with bloody feasts. Yet in the center sat a quartet of musicians: a violinist, a keyboardist, a violoncellist, and a flautist.

The violoncellist and flautist held their instruments in their laps, their hands still. The other two were playing a slow, mournful piece, which I immediately recognized as the adagio from the Wedding Night Sonata. The violinist wore Josef’s face, but no glamour could fool me; the changeling could imitate my brother’s golden curls and delicate features, but he could never, ever recreate Josef’s skill.

In the changeling’s hands, my music was flat and uninspired. The notes thunked and thudded to the floor, carrying no emotion, no weight, no meaning. I had put so much of my frustration into this movement; the desire to go faster, go further, only to be met with denial at every turn. I had wanted the music to unsettle and agitate; instead it merely bored.

I ran forward to snatch my music off the stands, to take it back, when the violoncellist spoke.

“You waste your talent on this drivel.”

I startled. Papa.

“I hear no genius in the notes, no inspiration in their arrangement. This should all be burned in the rubbish heap.” He turned to me. “Ah, Liesl. Do you not agree?”

I closed my eyes. Papa was by turns autocratic and convivial, depending on how many drinks were in him. I could never guess which version of my father I would be facing, so I took care never to face him at all.

“Well?”

I tried to cling to those moments with the Goblin King when we had been both lost and found in my music. When we had both been transported by sound and rapture, when nothing else had existed outside the time we played together. But I could not hold them, as Papa and my doubt wrenched them from my fingers.

“No,” I whispered. “No, I do not agree.”

I could hear the scrape of the chair push back as the violoncellist stood to his feet. A changeling, I told myself. It is a changeling. Not Papa. It can’t be Papa.

“No?” Papa’s voice was closer now, and the stink of stale beer overwhelmed me. “What have I told you, Liesl?”

If I opened my eyes, if I looked my father in the eyes, the illusion would be broken. I would see black goblin eyes in a human face, and know him for a changeling. But I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t face the possibility that it might not be true.

“You will never amount to anything.”

I flinched, expecting the blow of a violin bow like a rod upon my skin. He had broken several bows that way, bent against our backs as punishment.

“You overreach yourself. Grow up and stop indulging in these romantic flights of fancy.”