The silk gown rustled gently. There was a draft in my barrow room. Shivering, I rose to my feet in search of that spectral breeze when I stumbled across a threshold.
I blinked. My barrow room had been sealed, shut, and locked with a key. The door was still there, but next to the hearth was an arch that had not been there before. The breeze came from the space beyond the threshold.
I glanced over my shoulder. Evidence of my fury and frustration was still scattered over the floor. This was my room. That was my bed. That was my wedding gown, still hanging from its post. Not wanting to put the dress back on, I wished for a dressing gown. I found one on my bed, rumpled and wrinkled as though it had been tossed rather than magicked there. I put it on, and stepped into the darkness.
Fairy lights winked into existence the moment I crossed into this new room, fluttering slowly, as though they struggled to wake. Their soft glow illuminated another set of rooms, larger and grander than my barrow bedchamber, yet somehow still small and intimate in scale. Standing in the center was a klavier.
My breath caught. The instrument was beautiful, made of a rich, warm, dark wood that gleamed under the fairy lights. I ran my hands reverently over the keys, polished to a dull shine. It was a full octave larger than the klaviers in our inn, and when I pressed a key, a clear, full sound filled the room. None of the tinny, brassy resonance that plagued the instruments at home.
I lightly tapped out a melody, allowing myself to fall into a reverie. I had been lost, but now a piece of myself had been returned to me. Then I noticed the stack of paper and ink on a small table beside the klavier.
Staff paper. Parchment already lined with a musical staff, waiting only for a clef, a key, and a signature. I stiffened.
Another trick, I thought. Another taunt of the Goblin King.
The room held the silent echoes of a mocking laugh. I was tempted to dash the inkwell against the keyboard and tear the staff paper to shreds. But the memory of a tall, elegant stranger in a marketplace stayed my hand. A tall, elegant stranger who approached a plain, homely girl because he had heard the music within her and wanted to set it free.
My fingers twitched, longing to work my hands into the keys, longing to set my feelings to paper. The wedding gown hung in my bedchamber, so close, yet so far away. I wanted to take its ash and turn it to ink.
But I didn’t.
I turned and walked back to my barrow room, the fairy lights winking out one by one, snuffed out like candles. I did not know what time it was. The painting of the Goblin Grove above my hearth showed the thin gray scene of snow falling. The hour could be predawn. It could be late dusk. It was hard to tell, the light flattened by the gentle snow falling down on its black branches.
I squinted. I could swear the snow was falling. Moving. The snowflakes were coming down, settling across the wintry landscape. Whether it was the lack of sleep, or the crusty remnants of tears blurring my vision, I could not tell. I moved closer.
My eyes were not playing tricks on me. The snow was falling on the Goblin Grove in the world above. It was like a window, a view I might have seen from my bedroom back at the inn. I was pierced with a sudden yearning for home. For Josef. For Käthe. Mother and Papa. Even Constanze. I even missed the girl I had been: Liesl the dutiful daughter, the loving older sister, the secret composer. If my life had been stunted, at least I had known my place. What place had I here? Who was I in the Underground? A neglected queen, an unloved, unravished wife. A maiden still. I found rejection wherever I went, even among the goblins.
My humiliation was still raw and tender within me, so I focused on the enchanted painting instead. The Goblin Grove beckoned, and I reached for the portrait, against the warnings of Twig and Thistle.
I was startled when my fingers met glass. I leaned forward to examine it, and my breath covered its surface in mist, completely obscuring the Goblin Grove in fog.
When the mist cleared, the scene had changed. I stumbled backward, tripping over the broken furniture and shattered knickknacks in my chamber. I cut my palm on something sharp, but I scarcely noticed the pain. Instead of the Goblin Grove, a young man sat at a writing desk, scribbling furiously.
“Sepperl!”
He did not hear me. Of course he did not hear me. My little brother was taller than when I saw him last—taller, thinner, leaner. He dressed like a gentleman now, his frock coat of pastel blue brocade, his breeches of fine satin, fine lace crowding his throat. He looked prosperous and, I thought with a pang, like a person I would not recognize in passing.
The door behind him opened, admitting François. Josef’s face brightened, and my breath hitched in my throat. My brother had once looked at me that way, as though I held his soul in my hands. But his soul was no longer in my care; I had been replaced.