THE OLD MONASTERY
“tell me about your brother,” the Countess said.
The day was mild for late winter, and the Countess and I were picnicking outside. It was the fourth day in a row my brother had not joined the rest of the household—such as it was—for a meal. Any meal. Breakfast, luncheon, tea, dinner, or supper, Josef was conspicuously absent from all gatherings. It was only the crumbs on his plate on the tray outside his door each morning that reassured me he was even eating at all.
“Josef?” I was surprised she had asked about him, then belatedly berated myself for such a selfish, self-absorbed thought. He was the other guest—prisoner—of the Procházkas.
The Countess nodded, slathering a roll with butter. “I’ve hardly seen him since we’ve arrived, although I have heard him playing his violin. Exquisite. Your brother has an extraordinary gift.”
I flinched. Our paths had not crossed since our argument that first night my brother and I had arrived at Snovin Hall, but I did occasionally see Josef on and about the grounds with his violin, lost in whatever private reveries that occupied his mind. His music was more of a presence than his physical self, for I often heard the high, sweet voice of his violin singing away in the abandoned hallways and corridors of the manor house.
“Yes,” I said in a neutral tone. “He does.”
My hostess looked askance at me. “And how is he? I know that this”—she gestured to Snovin, to the manor, to the Underground—“has all been rather overwhelming for the two of you.”
Sometimes I hated those green eyes of hers, which were by turns incisive and empathetic. I did not trust her still, but there were times when I wanted to. There were times I was so lonely for a friend, a confidante, a companion, that I was nearly willing to set aside my distrust to accept her into my life. I was so isolated and removed from everything and everyone I knew and I loved—Mother and Constanze, Käthe and François, and Josef, especially Josef—that I could not help but be tempted to lean into her emotional support the way she leaned on her cane.
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “Josef and I . . . we had a fight.”
I hated admitting this to her, but there was relief in it too.
“About your past as the Goblin Queen?” The Countess’s voice was soft.
I looked up in surprise. “How did you—”
She laughed. “Oh, child,” she said. “There will always be those envious of our gift. The touch of the Underground upon us. I adore Otto, but I cannot pretend he married me solely for love.”
I picked at my luncheon. Josef’s jealousy at my connection with the Goblin King was a festering sore between us, but it wasn’t the only injury slowly turning septic. My brother had more right than most to the Underground and its magic. He was of that magic, even if he did not know it. Even if I did not want him to know it. I was afraid of what that knowledge would do to him. To us.
“How—how do you deal with it?” I whispered.
The Countess paused mid-bite. “With what?”
“With the loneliness.” I dared not look at her.
It was a while before she answered. I could feel those eyes, sharp and searching, on my face, and I did not know whether to shun or welcome her sympathy.
“You have a destiny,” she said at last. “And I will not lie to you and say that it is an easy path to follow. There is no one in living memory who has done what you have done: walk away from the Underground and live. Not even I, the last descendant of the first Goblin Queen, know what that is like.”
I could not swallow for the lump in my throat. I was alone. I would always be alone.
“But if your brother truly loved you, he would understand,” the Countess said softly. “You are both touched by the Underground in your own ways.”
I stiffened, alarm running down my spine. The truth of my brother’s changeling nature was a secret I had shared with no one, not even with the one who deserved to hear it most. “What do you mean?”
She tilted her head, an enigmatic smile on her face. “He has an extraordinary gift with music. It is said that art and genius are fruits of the Underground. We are Der Erlkönig’s own, after all.”
My shoulders relaxed. “I see,” I said. I bit my lip. “But is it enough?”
“For you or for him?” Her eyes were shrewd.
“Both,” I replied. “Either. Jealousy can be poison.”
I should know. I had been jealous of my brother his entire life.
“Only you and he can say,” she said, her voice gentle. “For some, love can overcome jealousy. For others, jealousy will overcome love. Who you are and who he is is a matter only the two of you can resolve.”
I stared down at the half-eaten, torn-apart bread roll in my hands.
“Come,” the Countess said after a bit, brushing crumbs from her hands and skirts. “Let us go.”
“Go?” I looked up to see her putting away the dishes and napkins back into our picnic basket. “Go where?”
“Where I go when I’m feeling sorry for myself.” Her smile was gentle, her expression full of both pity and understanding. “Now, help me to my feet, child, and I shall call Konrad to bring the horses.”
* * *
I did not ride, but according to the Countess, there was no better way to get to the monastery.
“The monastery?” I asked with surprise. I remembered my brother pointing out the burned-out building as we drove into the valley. “But I thought it was destroyed.”
“It was,” she said. “But the ruins are still structurally sound and it boasts some of best views of the valley.”
“Is it . . . is it safe?” I did not mean the ruins.
“From the Hunt?” the Countess asked, guessing at my fear. I nodded. “Yes, as long as you’re with me.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, her green eyes glinting. “There is an ancient protection in my bloodline.” Her green gaze slid to Konrad, who was bringing the horses around. “Because of what my foremother did when she walked away.”
I frowned. “But the Hunt still rides after me. How did she escape retribution?”
The question had been sitting like a burning ember in my chest ever since I had first learned of the brave maiden. Ever since I had seen the gallery of the previous brides in the tailor’s shop Underground, a gown on a dress form the only remaining bit of proof any of them had ever existed. I had received a story and name with each one: Magdalena, Maria Emmanuel, Bettina, Franziska, Like, Hildegard, Walburga. Women who had given themselves to death for a myriad reasons: despair, pleasure, adventure, deceit. But the very first bride—the brave maiden—her name was stricken from goblin memory, her legacy to be forgotten and forbidden by the old laws. How she did escape . . . for good?
“All in good time, my dear,” the Countess said. “Now let Konrad help you up onto your horse, there’s a good lass.”
I eyed the beasts with fear and suspicion. Although we stabled horses at the inn, I had never ridden one before. The Countess assured me that she was a poor rider herself, and that I need not fear, for we would take it easy up the slopes to our destination.
A quarter of an hour later, I was perched precariously atop a white mare called Vesna.
“Named after the goddess of spring,” the Countess said, riding up on her own horse—a dun-colored gelding—and patting Vesna on the rump. For all her claims to be a poor rider, the Countess sat astride her mount with the ease of one raised to a genteel life. She rode for pleasure, not for labor, and kept a brisk pace, leaving me and Vesna to follow as best we could. I wished I were sitting astride my horse, but Vesna had been fitted with a lady’s saddle, and I did not have a lady’s seat. Instead, I clung to her reins for dear life as we jostled and jounced our way up the mountain paths to Snovin Monastery.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the Countess breathed once we reached the summit. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and the morning’s exertions, her eyes bright and sparkling. On her mount she had four good legs, and I could see how the freedom exhilarated her. I, on the other hand, could barely feel my hands for the chill and the death grip to which I had subjected them for the past hour and a half.
“Indeed,” I squeaked, my throat tight with nervousness. I was held together with prayer and stiff muscles, but bit by bit, my bones stopped rattling and I was able to enjoy the scene before me.
My hostess was right, the picture before us was beautiful. Up close, I could see that the monastery had been built of a golden stone that still gleamed despite the ravages of time, and from our vantage point we could see around us for miles. I saw for the first time the nearby town of New Snovin, the red-tiled buildings shining bright in the afternoon sun like poppies in a field. The Countess explained that the town had been moved from its original location years ago due to plague and famine; indeed, we had passed the empty remains of several old houses and cottages on our way to the monastery. It was why Snovin Hall had seemed so isolated; the town immediately surrounding it had been abandoned years before.
We passed under a rusted iron gate into a large stone courtyard that very much resembled a village square.
“It was a castle before it became a monastery,” the Countess said. “In fact, it is the burg represented on my husband’s coat of arms. But as the wars died down and the Procházkas grew prosperous with peace, they built Snovin Hall to be their legacy. We can leave the horses here,” she announced as we approached what appeared to be the charred remains of a stable.
“Is it safe?” I asked, eyeing the rotted wooden beams.
“It’s stood for three hundred years like this, so it can stand for at least another three hours. Now, be a dear and help me dismount,” she ordered.
I scarcely knew how to gracefully get off my own horse without tumbling to the ground, but somehow I managed it without cracking a skull. I moved to help the Countess, but she seemed much more nimble than I despite the club foot.
“Otto doesn’t like it when I come here alone,” she admitted. “He thinks I’m not careful enough of my step.” Her smile was wry. “But I love it up here. There is a certain allure to this place, some dark, shameful part of me that thrills at the beauty of death and decay.”
Walking arm in arm with the Countess, I understood what she meant. The notion of finding death and decay beautiful should have sounded ridiculous and morbid, yet it resonated with me with a sort of romance of its own. I thought of the leaves of the Goblin Grove decomposing into mulch, dissolving into soil, that rich, fertile earth waiting to give way to life with the right touch of sunshine and rain. I thought of Snovin Hall, with its former grandeur slowly moldering into ruin, reclaimed by the land. The difference between sorrow and melancholy, the razor’s edge that divided aesthetic pleasure and emotional devastation.
Again, I felt those green eyes upon my face. “I always knew you were one of us,” she said with a smile. “Those of us who are Der Erlkönig’s own know that we all return to the Underground’s embrace in the end.”
We all return in the end. I thought of Josef, and shivered. “But I thought you—she—the first Goblin Queen—escaped. Free and clear.”
We passed a threshold and into a colonnade surrounding what was once a garden or a lawn. It was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers now, surprisingly green despite the light dusting of snow that covered them. I wondered where the Countess was taking me.
“The view is best from the southeast tower,” she said as though reading my thoughts. We picked our way through the fallen rubble. “Nothing is free and clear,” she said softly. “Not with the old laws.”
I frowned. “Then how did she do it? How did she walk away?” We passed the colonnade and through the door at the base of the tower in question and began climbing a narrow spiral staircase.
Her face grew grim. “When my foremother walked away from the Underground, the Wild Hunt chased her over hill and dale, hither and yon. But she could have escaped their notice if she had been content to merely walk away. After all, a life for a life; Der Erlkönig could have simply found another bride.”
Another bride. Jealousy, sorrow, and hope chased each other through my blood. “Why didn’t he?”
The Countess smiled. “He loved her. He would have no other. And for his love, the old laws punished him.”
My stomach gave a jolt. I remembered the vision I had had leaving Vienna, when the Procházkas had drugged me, when I awoke with the Goblin King’s ring in my hand. The darkness crawling over his skin, the bleached-pale eyes, the horns curing from his feathery hair, the tortured, spindly, multi-jointed hands.
The covenant is undone. It is corrupting us. Corrupting him.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“She returned Underground.”
“What?” It was a twist to the story I had not anticipated. “Why?”
“There is power in a name,” the Countess said. “She found his. His true name, the name he had given up when he became Der Erlkönig. He had placed it within her heart, so that a piece of him would live on so long as her blood still beat and her lungs did breathe. His name was the key that unlocked her shackles, and so they walked together in the world above.”
My own breaths came short, my pulse skipping and fluttering with excitement, fear, joy, and not a little exertion. “How?” I whispered. “How did she find his name?”
“She cut out her heart and laid it bare before her.”
I wasn’t sure if the Countess was being poetic or in deadly earnest. Her expression gave nothing away, and I resisted the urge to reach for the Goblin King’s ring.
I would walk the world and play, until someone called me by name and called me home. My throat constricted, and the tears that were all too close to the surface threatened to spill over once more. My austere young man, trapped Underground and being slowly corrupted—punished—for the sin of loving me more than the old laws. If I could find his name, if I could just free him . . . it seemed too good to be true. A life for a life. But then who became Der Erlkönig after the first was freed? And how?
“Ah, here we are,” the Countess said.
We had reached the top of the stairs, and the space widened around us into a long, high-ceilinged corridor. The fire seemed to have barely touched this part of the monastery. The floor beneath our feet was made of marble, and the walls were lined with a yellow silk brocade. The doors to the monks’ cells were paneled with a rich, dark wood and between them stood some porcelain statues of Christ, which remained intact, as well as a few paintings.
“This room has the best view,” the Countess said, opening a door at the end of the hall. “I envy the brothers who lived here.”
The room was small and dark, with a small window cut some few feet above our heads into the thick outer stone wall of the tower. Panes of glass had filled that window once, but they were smashed and broken, and the wind whistled in, a high, keening sound. There were two narrow beds placed on either side, with a scant foot between them, although I wasn’t sure if more than one monk had lain his head here. The bed opposite the window had a deteriorating coverlet, the threads picked clean by birds and rodents to build their own nests, and a few dusty, moldering robes were piled atop the chest at the foot of the bed. A Bible still rested on the table beside the bed, along with a half-burned candle with wax melted into a pool at its base.
By contrast, its brother bed was entirely bare. No coverlet, no pillow. No mattress, even. The Countess gestured to the frame, indicating I should climb atop it for a better view.
“I’m getting too old for such acrobatics, even without the club foot,” she said. “You go ahead, child. Lean on me.”
Hesitantly, I braced myself against her shoulder and pushed myself up on my toes for a glimpse through the window. I spied something scratched into the mortar surrounding the window frame. Words, etched in a surprisingly clear hand: Wolfgangus fuit hic. Latin. I traced my fingers over the letters, and for the briefest moment, I was connected to the brother who had left just a little bit of himself behind in this world.
Then I looked out over the valley.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Marvelous, isn’t it?” Below me, I could hear the pride in her voice.
“Yes,” I said. From this vantage point, I could see clear across to the mountains across the way and the sparkling ribbon of silver that cut through the valley floor. “What river is that?”
“Snovin River,” the Countess said. “The Procházkas weren’t terribly imaginative, I’m afraid.”
I strained to see farther, toward Snovin Hall and the mountains beyond. I caught a glimpse of an intense blue-green, that enchanted mirror lake I had stumbled upon when I first learned of the Countess’s lineage. “What is—what is that lake?” I asked.
“You can see it from here?” she asked, sounding surprised.
I nodded.
“Lake Snovin,” she said. “I told you Otto’s ancestors weren’t imaginative.” She laughed, seeing my expression. “But we always called it Lorelei Lake, Adelaide and I,” she continued in a softer voice. Her daughter.
“Lorelei Lake?” I remembered the sense of magic that lingered about the water, the window to another world I had glimpsed in its reflection.
“Yes,” she said. “Family legend boasts of their descent from a Lorelei found bathing in that very lake. It’s the melusine on their shield.”
“Is the water always that color?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” the Countess said. “And the water is always warm. Volcanic activity, I’m told, but we wanted to believe it was magic, Adelaide and I. She believed it was a gateway to the Underground.” Something within her seemed to suddenly snap closed, like a trap on a mouse’s neck. “Come, child,” she said shortly. “Your weight is wearing me down.”
I hopped down from my perch at the window and offered my arm to the Countess as we made our way back down the stairs.
“I do hope your brother will be able to join us for dinner tonight,” she said in a different tone of voice as we emerged through a different door and into a wide, cavernous space. “Perhaps we can get to know him better once you are both settled.”
The abrupt change in conversation startled me, and I did not know how to respond. “Where are we?” I asked, gesturing to the rocky room around us.
“The crypt,” the Countess said. “Most of the brothers are buried in the cemetery at the base of the mountain itself, but their names are carved here, so that they may be remembered long after their remains rotted away.”
I ran my fingers over the letters etched into stone. I thought of the day we buried Papa, of his limestone grave marker standing next to the little wooden crosses of his brothers and sisters—my aunts and uncles, most of whom had died before they had even drawn breath. In time, those crosses would wither and rot away, leaving nothing but their names in the village register behind. And even then, ink faded and paper dissolved to dust. All that remained of a person once they were gone was a legacy, which would linger only as long as you were loved or hated. Immortality was memory.
Evzen, Filip, Andrej, Victor, Johannes, Hans, Mahieu.
I paused over this last name, puzzling over its resonance with me. These were the names of monks dead and gone, their names as anonymous as the faces of strangers in this valley. Yet the name Mahieu rang a bell inside me, as though I had heard that name whispered to me in my sleep.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
I went still. The Goblin King’s voice returned to me, our confessions to each other that last night in the chapel. I had asked him who had taught him to play the violin.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
Then the familiarity of it all unfolded before me. Why I had felt as though I had seen this place before. Because I had seen the monastery before. In a mirror. Underground.
Above the Goblin King’s bed.