OBLIVION
i waited one breath too long to chase after my brother.
“Josef!” I screamed. “Sepp!”
The grounds of Snovin Hall rang with my cries as I fled the ballroom after my brother, but nothing but the echoes of startled birdsong returned. Josef had disappeared, vanished, gone to earth, and I did not know how he had run so quickly and so far. No tracks trampled the tangled vines and overgrown weeds, no evidence of trespass or flight. Nothing but crushed poppy petals, scattered underfoot like drops of blood.
“Sepp!” I called again. “Sepp!”
“Fräulein?” I whirled around to see Nina standing behind me, a worried look on her face. “Is okay?”
The last thing I wanted to endure was another’s presence, to keep up the mask of civility or a calm countenance. I was neither civil nor calm, and I raged and seethed that I felt compelled to maintain a straight face before her. Who would notice? Who would care? The worst Nina could do was return to the Count and Countess with tales of my rudeness, my unsociability, my erratic moods. Yet despite this, I did not want to frighten her with my monstrosity, the maelstrom that threatened to swallow not just me, but the entire world.
“Yes,” I said, trying my best for a smile. The corners of my mouth shook and quivered, and I felt my lips curling in a snarl. “Everything is fine, thank you, Nina.”
The housekeeper did not look reassured. Instead, she seemed even more concerned. “Is okay?” she repeated, then said something in a torrent of Bohemian I could not understand, accompanied by gestures I could not decipher.
“Yes!” I barked. “Okay. I’m okay.”
I could feel the press of fury and frustration building behind my eyes, a growing headache. I was tired of keeping a tight rein on the feral beast I was inside, and I was tempted to let go, to unleash the wolves and hounds of mania and recklessness upon her. I don’t know what it was Nina saw in my expression, but a strange sort of pity crossed her face. Pity was the last emotion I wanted from her, and I felt my gorge rise.
“Come,” she beckoned. “I show you.”
“Unless you can show me my brother, I don’t care,” I snapped. If she did not understand my words, she could at least understand my tone.
“Come,” Nina said again. Her tone was firm, a mother’s voice, and I did not resist.
She led me back into the ballroom, gently picking up the pieces of Josef’s violin that he had thrown to the floor. A part of me—the part not submerged in the depths of my own feelings of self-loathing and despair—mourned the loss of such an instrument. It wasn’t just that it had been a beautiful Del Gésu; it was that it had survived not only years of wear and tear and abuse, but Papa’s constant pawning off to Herr Kassl’s for drinking money. The housekeeper held the neck and the body out to me in separate hands. I shook my head; I did not know if it could be salvaged.
Nina gave me stern look, as though I were being a fool. I resented being treated like a petulant child by a woman I did not know, to whom I was not beholden in any way. I shook my head again, but she harrumphed before taking the neck of the broken violin and gently removing the scroll.
Ornamental scrolls were not common, and the finial of this particular instrument had been carved into the shape of a woman. Nina pressed the finial into my hand, and I wrapped my fingers around the figure. The woman’s face had been carved with her mouth open in perpetual song, but in certain angles she looked as though screaming with joy . . . or terror. I was discovering more and more with each passing day that the line that divided those emotions was honed finer than the keenest razor.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I said it more to send Nina away than from any sense of actual gratitude.
“Is okay?” she repeated.
No, it was not okay. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be okay.
The housekeeper eyed me warily, as though I were a fragile china shepherdess poised on the edge of a shelf. I forced another smile for Nina, and this time, I did not bother to swallow the growl that escaped my throat. She took the hint, and left.
I looked through the broken windows of the ballroom to the world outside. I should have gone after my brother. I should have tried to find him. I should have gone looking until my eyes went dim and my throat went hoarse, for I was afraid. For him, and of him. Of what he would do. To me, but to himself most of all. I should have, I should have, I should have.
But I did not.
Instead I was trapped in the quicksand of my own mind, reliving each and every mistake I had made with Josef. Every misstep revealed another, and another, and another, a long line all the way back to when we were children. I should have protected him from Papa. I should have seen how miserable our expectations made him. I should have brought him home to the Goblin Grove the instant I understood how it was killing him.
I should have told him he was a changeling.
Sooner. Better. At all. The truth of Josef’s nature was not my secret to withhold, and yet I had. I hadn’t wanted to tell him because . . . because deep in my heart, I knew I would lose him. He would hate me for not telling him, and the longer I held on to the truth, the more he would hate me for my selfishness. It no longer became for Josef’s own good that he did not know; it was for my own peace of mind.
Was I worried he would run away to the Underground? Did he even know how? Did I know how? I was overcome with a sudden, fierce, unspecified anger. Toward the Underground. The Goblin King. The strange and queer and uncanny that had dogged me my entire life. If I had just been normal, if I had just been ordinary, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be trapped in a house of madmen and dreamers with an unholy host at my back because I wouldn’t be Liesl. I wouldn’t be me.
I wanted to kick and scream. A toddler’s temper tantrum crawled up my throat, and the desire to break and smash and cry made my fingers twitch with pent-up frustration. At times like these, I used to run to the klavier and pound my emotions into the keys, reveling in the cacophony of discord. I used to make noise with intent and purpose, to sound my barbaric and untamed self into the void. More than anything, I wanted that now.
Your music creates a bridge between worlds.
I hadn’t tried since coming to Snovin Hall. To play. To make music. For a while I thought my reticence had been a fear of reprisal, of what my power could do to the fabric of the world. But perhaps my reticence had simply been a matter of reluctance; I had wanted so badly to leave that part of myself behind. The part that had walked the Underground. The part that had married—and loved—the Goblin King. I was so focused on being Elisabeth, alone, I had not thought about what it meant to be Elisabeth, entire.
And that meant embracing my past as well as an uncertain future. I was so determined to not wallow in my misery that I made myself lonely; I pushed away memories and feelings and connections not only to the Goblin King, but myself. I had mourned, but I had not let myself grieve. I had not let myself feel.
Don’t think. Feel.
Determination and drive had returned, and with that came desire. For expression, for fulfillment, for self-destruction. I walked to the virginal in the musicians’ gallery and sat down at its bench. The keys were coated in years—decades, perhaps—of dust, but the strings were still in tune. I pressed my fingers into the notes, wringing chords and phrases from the strings and plucking mechanism. The Wedding Night Sonata had lain unfinished for a long time because I had not known how the story ended. But I realized I had not known how it ended because I had not resolved my own emotions—about my music, about my Goblin King, but about myself most of all.
The Wedding Night Sonata had been about me. My feelings. Rage, anger, frustration, fear had been the first movement. Longing, tenderness, affection, and hope had been the second.
Hatred was the third.
Hatred, and self-loathing.
I knew where to go. I was going to play. I was going to compose. I was going to open my veins and let my music run onto the keys.
I was going to open the veil between worlds.
I should have been afraid. I should have been careful. But I was a Pandora’s box of desperation and recklessness; once opened, I could no longer be closed. I cared about everything and nothing, and I wanted nothing more than oblivion. If drink had been Papa’s vice, then the Goblin King and the Underground was mine.
I waited for the ghostly wail of his violin.
I did not wait long.
Through the mirror, through the glass, through the veil between worlds came the high, thin voice of singing strings. I called, and he answered. A sob hitched in my throat, of both relief and fear. I had wanted to hear him, to see him, to touch him, to hold him in my arms forever, and the notion that I somehow could again was overwhelming. I felt the weight of that release down to my fingertips, pushing my hands into the keys of the virginal.
Yet with the hope came uncertainty. Uncertainty, or regret, for with the Goblin King’s arrival came the heady scent of pine and ice and deep loam, a lifting in pressure in the ballroom.
The barrier was thin, thinning, gone.
I looked up from the keyboard to face a thousand Liesls at a thousand instruments staring back at me from broken-mirrored panels in the musicians’ gallery.
In all, save one.
“Be, thou, with me,” I said.
Der Erlkönig smiled.
* * *
The austere young man stands before me, violin in his hands. A soft look lights his dear, familiar, beloved mismatched eyes, and I am overcome with such longing I think I will die. My hands shake as I press the keys of the virginal, no longer aware of what notes I am playing or what melodies the Goblin King is making.
“Be, thou, with me,” I say again.
He lowers his violin and his bow. The music continues on, a repeating ostinato of yes, please, yes, please, yes, please.
“Be, thou, with me,” I repeat, and I rise from the virginal.
The Goblin King lifts his hand to press against the shattered glass. I walk to the reflection to meet him palm to palm, shards of silver slicing into my skin. I welcome the pain, the sharp sting of regret and want wounding me to the quick. Yes, this is oblivion. This is heaven, and this is hell.
Our fingers twine together as we reach through veil and void. His touch is cool, dry, but I feel the thrill of it down to my deepest core. I pull him to me, and he does not resist, passing from reflection into reality. My arms open and he walks into my embrace, bringing with him the scent of sleeping green, earth, roots, rock, and the faint, impossible scent of peaches. The perfume of the Underground surrounds me, and I fall into a fever dream. The ballroom wavers and flickers, the world seen through water and flame, and I am lost.
“Take me,” I whisper. “Take me back.”
The green and gray of the Goblin King’s eyes flash white and blue, white and blue, the pupils shrinking to a pinprick of black. The corners of his lips curl, close—so close—to mine.
As you wish, my dear.
As you wish.
A breath, a sigh, a kiss, and we are met.
Ice runs through me, knife slashes of cold up and down my body. His fingertips leave searing trails of frost against my skin, and I no longer know whether or not I’m dying by fire or by freeze. Inky darkness trails up my arms and legs in whorls of black, and I can taste the sickly-sweet bitterness of opium—or blood—on my tongue. It has never hurt like this before, both inside and out. I shouldn’t want it. I shouldn’t crave it.
But I do.
Meine Königin.
He calls me his queen, and I drink in the words, letting them fill me inside and out. The Goblin King’s hands find the seams of my gown, and I feel the laces of my stays snap one by one, the light tinkling of shattered glass as the frozen ribbons fall to the floor.
“Mein Herr,” I breathe. I am excited and frightened, elated and afraid, and tears slide down my cheeks. I’m sobbing and shaking, but the Goblin King holds me even tighter, as though only he can hold me together.
“No,” I whisper. “Break me. Let me fall apart.”
Punish me. Destroy me. Let me suffer the consequences of being my abject, ignoble self. I was no longer Elisabeth, entire, but Elisabeth, obliterated. There is no tenderness in the Goblin King’s rough touch, and it leaves me in tatters. I hated myself enough to be wiped from existence and memory, and I press myself harder against the keen edges of him. I do not deserve to be remembered. I do not deserve to be loved.
Hands wrap themselves about my throat, a cage of bones like a collar, and he claims me as his. The Goblin King’s lips stretch in a feral grin, the tips of his teeth gleaming in the light like a wolf’s bared to the sun. I should not have run away from the Underground. I should not have hurt my brother. I should not have doomed the world. Yes, please, yes. I am a sinner, a villain, a wretch. I am worthless, the most despicable of women.
Elisabeth.
The Goblin King’s voice is changed, a desperate urgency in his tone that only stirs my blood. I feel my pulse pounding everywhere—my ears, my throat, my wrists, my chest, my thighs—a persistent rhythm echoing in my body. It sets the tempo of our encounter, but I sense him pausing, chafing, resisting.
Elisabeth, please.
The cracking, creaking sound of twigs breaking or bones snapping, and the fingers of his hands twist and gnarl. Too many joints in his fingers, too little color in the Goblin King’s eyes. I stare into them, blue and white, then gray and green, as I watch the face of a man emerge from the monster in my arms.
Elisabeth.
It is the vulnerability in his voice that stops me, not the danger dressed in black with eyes of ice and death. I am holding them both, my austere young man and the Lord of Mischief, and they are one and not.
Der Erlkönig smiles.
The Goblin King cries.
With a scream, I shove him away, but I am tangled in his embrace—my skirts in shreds about my ankles, my bodice falling off my shoulders. Der Erlkönig laughs, a soundless cackle that makes my ears pop with pressure.
I have you now, Goblin Queen. You are mine.
Elisabeth!
With tremendous effort, my austere young man takes hold of himself, releasing me from his grip.
Go! Run!
He retreats back through the window between worlds, back into reflection, back to the Underground.
“Mein Herr!” I shout, striking at the broken mirror with bare fists. My hands leave bloody streaks against the glass, but for all my begging and pleading, the Goblin King does not return. My screams are as shattered as the panels in the ballroom, fractured and refracted in the topsy-turvy shambles of my mind.
Run, and nothing but his whispered echo remains.