BRAVE MAIDEN’S END
i knew where Josef had gone. He, like me, was ever drawn to the strange, the queer, and the wild. Lorelei Lake was a threshold, a portal, one of the sacred spaces where the Underground and the world above existed together. It was where I would have gone. It was where I had gone, after the Countess’s startling revelation about her family history.
I ran back to my quarters to retrieve the Count’s compass, which I had never returned. He had claimed it granted me a measure of protection against the Wild Hunt, but I saw now that the greatest danger came not from the unholy host, but my so-called host and hostess. My benefactors, my captors. The Hunt had ever and always been the least of my worries; it had been a symptom, not the disease. I was the disease. I had broken the balance, I had corrupted the Goblin King, I had betrayed my brother, I had set the old laws loose upon the world.
And now it was up to me to make things right.
Back in my rooms, the compass was nowhere in sight. I could have sworn I had left it on the dressing table, but when I returned, it was gone. I upended every drawer and cupboard, combed through every jewelry box and vanity, but the trinket remained missing.
“Looking for this?”
I whirled around to see the Countess standing behind me with her husband’s compass in hand. I went still. She stood there with her green cat’s eyes glowing in a small smile, sharp and piercing. She had managed to sneak up behind me on silent footfalls despite her club foot, or—I thought with a chill—she had lain in wait, hidden somewhere in my rooms until I returned.
“I had thought to take a turn about the grounds.” I hated how my voice trembled and quavered, how my feelings and emotions would always betray any lie I told. “I didn’t want to get lost.”
“Surely you would have become accustomed to Snovin by now,” the Countess replied.
I smiled, but it did not reach my eyes. “I’m not sure I could ever become accustomed to Snovin and its ways.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You could not . . . or will not?”
I said nothing. The Countess sighed, shaking her head with a weary sort of affection. “I see Otto has been at you again.”
“How could you be so cavalier about all this?” I demanded. “All those innocent lives? And for what? To escape your ancestor’s fate? How could you be so selfish?”
“How could you?” she demanded. She limped forward, eyes flashing. “Think, Elisabeth. Our very existence is an abomination to the old laws. The fact that we walk the world above means that the Wild Hunt not only dogs our heels, but those we love as well. And not only those we love, but all else who are good and great and talented, for the fruits of the Underground are art and genius and passion. Would you deprive the world of these gifts, Elisabeth? Is one life worth more than that of thousands?”
“It is when it’s your life,” I retorted. “And mine.”
“What were you planning on doing, mademoiselle?” the Countess asked. “What were you intending to do once you reached Lorelei Lake? Throw yourself into its blue-green depths?”
In truth, I had not thought so far ahead. My only goal was to reach my brother before something terrible happened to him, before he was lost to me forever. To the Underground, or to death.
The Countess saw the uncertainty in my face and leaned closer. I wanted to avert my eyes, to hide my expression, but the last thing I wanted was to betray any hint of my fear. The Procházkas were not worthy of my fear. Craven cowards, the lot of them, and I felt nothing but contempt.
“It wouldn’t do any good, you know,” she said softly. “Ending your life. Ending mine. We are sullied, you see. Our sacrifices are worthless because we have nothing left to give. Nothing the Underground wants. Not anymore.”
I did not care to listen. There was nothing the Countess could say that would sway me from going after my brother. Even if there were nothing I could do to save him, it was better that I tried and failed than to have never tried at all. I began to push past her, but the Countess stood firm, bracing herself against the bedpost in lieu of a cane.
“Why do you think you can’t compose anymore?”
I paused.
“Why does the world seem not enough and too much? It is because you are of both, and neither, Elisabeth. Your mind and body are here, and your soul is elsewhere. I’ve felt it, child. I’ve heard it. The reason your music is a bridge between the Underground and the world above is because of your initial sacrifice. You sacrificed your music. You sacrificed your genius, your talent, and your creativity to the old laws when you crossed the threshold the first time. Any time you play, you reach across that barrier. It makes you whole and broken all at once.”
Her words sailed right into the stormy heart of me, straight down the abyss swirling at the center of the maelstrom. “How—how do you know this?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
The Countess laughed, a bright, merry sound, and it was the ugliest thing I had ever heard. “I know because your face is as transparent as glass. Because you don’t just wear your feelings on your sleeve; your emotions wear you.” Her eyes darkened, the green turning brittle and sharp. “I know because my reckless, feckless ancestor bartered away her children’s freedom, all for the sake of self-preservation. We are the forsaken, Elisabeth. The punishment for our selfishness and our greed is to perpetuate the cycle.”
I pressed my hands to my mouth to muffle my sobs. Special Liesl. Chosen Liesl. You have always wanted to be extraordinary, and now you are.
“No,” I said through clenched teeth. “No. I cannot—will not—believe that is my fate. I will not hurt others with my thoughtless actions, even if it means giving myself up to the old laws.”
The Countess lifted her brows. “Even if you were as selfless as all that, Elisabeth, think you that your return to the Underground will undo all the damage you’ve caused? Oh, child. We can only move forward, not change the past.”
I thought of Josef. I thought of the Goblin King. “I have to try,” I said quietly.
“And just how were you planning on accomplishing that, my dear?” the Countess asked. She held her husband’s compass before her, the trinket glinting in the light of the setting sun. “Return to Lake Snovin to . . . what? Throw yourself in? And then?”
And then what indeed. “Save my brother,” I said. Then I thought of mismatched gray and green eyes consumed by white so pale as to be nearly blue.
The Countess laughed. “And then what? Save your Goblin King?”
It was the fact that she had voiced aloud the hopes I had not even dared to consider that hurt most, even more than the snide dismissal in her tone.
“I have to try,” I said again.
“Oh, child,” the Countess sneered. “If you think you are the one to break the cycle of sacrifice and betrayal, then your arrogance knows no bounds.”
Bile began to rise at the back of my throat, acrid and bitter. “Did not the first Goblin Queen walk away?” I asked. “Did she not go back and wrest her Goblin King away from the clutches of the old laws?”
“And what do you think she left as payment?” the Countess returned.
I fell silent.
“A life for a life, Elisabeth. Death for harvest. It was she who tricked another youth into staying behind, into becoming the next Goblin King. Who then, in turn, went out into the world in search of a bride to remind him of the mortal life that was ripped from him. And in turn, that man thrust the throne upon yet another, and another, and another. It doesn’t end, mademoiselle. Not for us. Not for Der Erlkönig’s own.”
The maelstrom was closing in, the waters of madness threatening to submerge me in their depths. I could not—would not—succumb. I would not drown in despair. If there was anything I had to keep me going, it was that I believed in love—the Goblin King’s for me, my own for my brother. And my sister. And the world above. I had to try, or fail my own sense of self.
“Poor fool,” the Countess said softly, seeing the expression on my face. “Poor, poor fool.”
I snatched the compass from her fingers. “If you will not help me,” I said. “Then do not stand in my way.”
She stared at me for a long moment, saying nothing, though her vivid green eyes held all the words in the world. Then she nodded, and stepped aside.
“Viel Glück, Elisabeth,” she said as I shoved past. “Godspeed.”
* * *
Once outside, I followed the path directly away from the needle onto a hidden trail, up the slopes, and to the mysterious, mirrored lake that reflected another sky. A path of impossible poppies sprang up at my feet, swaying and whispering in an unseen wind.
The souls of the sacrificed. All the hairs along the back of my neck and my arms rose up as though greeting this invisible breeze, as the whispers and murmurs resolved into words.
Hurry, hurry, the poppies urged. It is not too late.
It was not too late. I took courage, and ran.
The clouds overhead were heavy and gray, laden with early spring snow. Fat, wet snowflakes fell in heavy drops, half rain, half ice. Behind me, I could hear the faint drumming of hooves. Or perhaps it was the thudding of my anxious heart in my breast, beating an erratic tattoo of fear and excitement. I raced up the hill, heedless of my tread and where my footfalls lay.
The path quickly turned treacherous, the light dusting of snow turning the dirt underfoot slippery with mud. The trail was narrow, just barely wide enough for a human, even one as small as me. One misstep and I would plunge to my doom. The thought tumbled through my brain, and I could not resist looking over the ledge. It was a long, sheer drop to the valley floor several hundred feet below me, and I could not help but edge closer, lean farther out. There was ever a part of me that loved to face danger, to stare it in the eye and dare it to do its worst. I wanted the knife’s edge of mortality pressed against my throat, to feel my pulse murmuring beneath the blade. I never felt more alive than when I was close to death.
Then the shelf on which I was standing crumbled.
For one piercing moment of clarity, I thought that this was perhaps the truest expression of my fate. That for all I tried to do good by those I loved and for the world, in the end it would be my own arrogance, recklessness, and mania that would trip me up. That would keep me down. That would ruin everything I touched despite my best intentions.
Vines wrapped themselves around my arms and legs, dead shrubs and mountain bushes halting my fall. The Count’s compass continued tumbling to the floor below, the faint tinkle and crack of shattered glass and metal echoing up the hill. There was an audible pop! as something snapped in my wrist, the sound echoing behind my eyes, even as the sharp pain of it felt distant and unreal. Even my screams were stolen from me as the sudden yank preventing me from plummeting to the valley floor drove the breath from my body. I hung above the drop, suspended by roots and vines twined about my limbs, for an eternity, poised forever between life and certain death.
Then beetle-black eyes winked at me from the crevices of the hillside. Beetle-black eyes, long, spindly fingers, branches and cobwebs spun for hair.
Twig.
The brambles wrapped themselves tighter about me and slowly but surely began lifting me back onto the trail, back to safety. Hands appeared, bursting from the mud and rocks as they had when I had tried to escape the Underground, but they were helping me up instead of bringing me down.
They deposited me back to safety on a lower ledge than the one from which I had fallen, and vanished. I lay there for several breaths, trying to center myself back in my body, back to the present, to the pain in my wrist, the mud soaking into the wools and silks at my back, the pebbles pressing into my tender points. My mind was in both the past and future, all the mistakes I made and the regrets I had, and all the choices—both terrible and good—I had come so close to never making again.
When I returned to myself, I was alone.
Had I imagined Twig and the goblin hands? The agony in my wrist carved out all extraneous thought, and I cradled my left hand in the crook of my right elbow. The angle at which it sat was twisted, odd, and unnatural, and the sight of it almost made me queasier than the pain. Gasping and sobbing, I tried to move my left hand with my right, to maneuver my bones back into place. A grind, a click, an unsound deep in my body that resounded in my skull and in teeth, and then, sudden relief. The bliss flooded through me like warmth, and I found I needed to lie down to recover from the dizziness.
I could have lain there forever, succumbing to the aftermath of a whirlwind of fear and exhaustion, but the whispers tugged at me again.
Hurry, mistress, hurry, they cajoled. It is not too late.
I did not want to, but I must. I rose to my feet, hewing close to the hillside this time as I continued along this new path. The compass was gone, but it did not matter. Poppies sprang from crevices and rocks, guiding me to where I needed to go.
I came upon the lake.
This time I arrived at its shores instead of a ledge above its surface. Sparkling waves lapped at a ring of black sand, and light whorls of steam rose from its aquamarine depths. This close to the water, I could detect the slight hint of brimstone wafting from the lake. I shuddered. Perhaps I was wrong and this was not a portal to the Underground, but a hellmouth.
Then came the high, sweet singing of the Lorelei.
I had forgotten how strange, how eerie, how utterly seductive their music was. Tuneless, shapeless, ethereal, and hypnotic, a shimmering symphony of sound rose around me, each note bursting with a different color inside my head. Harmonies and dissonant chords wove strands of imagery, a tapestry of sensation that overwhelmed me, bringing me to my knees.
But I would not succumb.
Picking myself back up, I removed my boots, stockings, bodice, and skirts, steeling myself to wade into the water. Although I knew the lake was warm, I was still shocked by the silky-smooth heat against my skin, almost luxurious with its soothing heat. I could swim in this warmth forever. When I was far enough away from shore, I treaded water, and waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The last time I had encountered the Lorelei, they had been all too eager to drag me down to the depths and drown me. I did not know if it was because I was no longer Goblin Queen, or because I had nothing left to offer the Underground, but the dark, comely shapes slithering beneath the surface of the lake did not rise to meet me.
Presently, I grew tired and swam back to shore, long, pulling strokes that nevertheless did not seem to take me anywhere. My arms and legs felt leaden, my injured wrist tender and sore. It felt as though I would never reach dry land, and I began to worry that I would indeed drown. But I fought this battle every day, fighting upstream against the inevitable, inexorable pull of my own destructive tendencies, and if the body was exhausted, then at least the mind was willing.
When my fingers and toes finally scraped the gravel of the shadows, I crawled out of the lake, soaked and bedraggled and weighed down with more than water. The air was freezing against my skin, and I knew I had to get warm again, lest I die of exposure. I had to stay alive, I had to figure out a way to get Underground, I had to save my brother, and possibly, the entire world. The enormity of the task upon which I had set myself overwhelmed me, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down on the black sand of these shores and bury myself in oblivion.
I was at a loss.
The wolf’s-head ring on my right hand glinted at me. I had forgotten all about it in my tumble from the hillside and just now in my swim in Lorelei Lake, but I was grateful to find it still with me. The band was too large and I had dropped it more than once, but it seemed to cling to me as hard as I clung to it. To my memory of the austere young man who had given it to me.
You may not have had Der Erlkönig’s protection as you walked the Underground, but you always had mine.
He had always been with me. Miles away from the Goblin Grove and in another country, my austere young man had always been with me. Had always protected me. Even in my moments of reckless abandon, he struggled and fought and resisted against the tide of darkness that was corrupting him from within.
All because of me.
I knew then what it was I had to do.
With trembling fingers, I removed his ring. The mismatched gems sparkled in the waning, fading sunlight, brighter and more beautiful than the intense blue and green of the waters before me. I held it in my hands one last time, pressing it to my heart.
“Farewell, my immortal beloved,” I whispered to my clasped fingers.
Then with a cry, I threw it with everything I had into the lake.
Where the silver touched the surface, ripples of glowing light spread outward, illuminating the entire mirror world in its reflection. Up was down and in was out, and a sense of vertigo overcame me at the sight of an entire realm below—above?—me. Was I looking down into the Underground, or was it looking down at me?
A dark, shadowy girl met my gaze. She had my face and my features, but her eyes were the stark, depthless black of goblin eyes. Her dark hair, unbound from the plaits I usually wore in a crown about my head, floated about her. She was naked, her body covered in shimmering scales, and it wasn’t until I saw the webbing between her fingers that I recognized her for what she was.
A Lorelei.
Brave maiden, she said. Why do you call?
“Please,” I said hoarsely to the girl in the mirrored world. “Please, I must go back.”
The Lorelei tilted her head. Why?
To bring Josef back. To free the Goblin King. To calm the demons in my own head. “To make things right,” I said.
She laughed, showing a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. There is no making things right, maiden. There is only reckoning.
“Then I must reckon with those I have wronged,” I replied.
She lifted her brows. Who have you wronged?
“My brother,” I choked out. “The Goblin King. The old laws. The world.”
The Underground is not a place for forgiveness, she said.
But neither was the world above. “Please,” I said, holding out my empty hands before her. “I beg of you.”
The Lorelei studied me, and if there could be an expression of pity in those flat, affectless eyes, I thought I detected a glimmer of sympathy.
You cannot cross the threshold of your own free will, maiden, she said. You are taken, or you are summoned, as it was with the changeling who returned to us.
Josef.
“Then take me!” I cried.
She shook her head. You claim him as your brother, mortal, but we claim him as kin. He is of our kind. He belongs with us. He is home.
Home. Tears sprang to my eyes, spilling over my cheeks to the aquamarine waters below me.
You love him, the Lorelei said with surprise. I taste your sorrow and your tenderness. She licked her lips. I have not tasted such things in an age.
“Then take them!” I clawed at my cheeks, trying to grab hold of my tears. “Take it all!”
She smiled again. Would you give up your love for your changeling brother if I asked?
I was stunned. Of all the things the Lorelei could have demanded of me, my love for Josef was the one thing I did not think she would claim. Was it even possible to stop loving Sepperl, the gardener of my heart?
“Could you do such a thing?”
She shrugged. We can claim whatever it is you are willing to relinquish. Your youth, your passion, your talent. You gave us something that was as much a part of you as your eyes, your hair, your skin. What is love but another thing you claim as your own?
The image of my brother rose up in my mind, but not as he was the last time I had seen him: tall, slim, lanky-limbed, with golden hair and eyes as blue as the sky. Instead, the memory of a sickly baby crying in his cradle returned to me, an ugly, twisted, homely thing that I had nevertheless taken into my heart as wholeheartedly as I had the rest of my family.
“No,” I said. “No, I will not stop loving Sepp.”
The Lorelei shrugged again. What are you willing to sacrifice, maiden, to return to our realm?
What did I have left to give? I had given my music, I had given that which I had held sacred and most dear. I had even given my body to the old laws, my breath, my heartbeat, and my senses. What was a person but a mind, a body, and a soul?
A mind.
My sanity.
My moods circled me like pikes scenting blood, swirling around like a vortex about a dark, dark abyss. I gripped my head, grasping at the remnants of my reason like a crown. I held my hands before the Lorelei, and cupped in my palms like a precious jewel was the last of my judgment, my sound mind.
The Lorelei smiled. Her hands mirrored my gesture, and as I lowered my sanity to the water, her palms rose up to meet mine. Her fingers wrapped themselves about my wrists, and I fell, down and down and down, until the world turned inside out.