A KINGDOM TO OUTRUN
the coach was to arrive in the morning.
To my surprise, that evening, several folk from the village paid a visit to send us off with gifts, well-wishes, and unsolicited advice. The baker and his wife brought sweets, the butcher brought meats, and the brewer delivered several kegs of beer to toast our departure. The inn’s guests mingled with the rest of the crowd, and before long, there was an impromptu celebration. I was touched by everyone’s coming and appreciated their gestures of goodwill, even if their advice was not quite as well received.
“Mind you watch after your sister, Liesl,” Frau Bäcker said. “Beauty has its own blindness, and we don’t want our Käthe falling in with a bad crowd.”
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” her husband chimed in. “And we needn’t worry about any men trying to take advantage of you.”
My grin tightened into a grimace, but I thanked them for the cake, which was a glorious confection of moist white sweetness. We did not have sugar to spare for such luxuries at the inn, so it had been an absolute treat, even if it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
But before long, one by one, our well-wishers slipped out the door and into the deepening night, leaving our hearts heavy with anticipation, apprehension, and not a little affection for the tiny town Käthe and I were so eager to escape. Mother insisted we retire to bed early and not worry about the chores, for we needed our rest for the morrow. By the glitter in her blue eyes, I suspected our mother wanted to retreat to the refuge of the kitchen to spare us the sight of her tears.
Constanze had passed the evening locked upstairs in her bedroom. Although I knew it was probably for the best, her unsociability stung. She had deigned to make an appearance for Josef’s farewell celebration, after all.
I was being unreasonable, of course, but a strange sort of melancholy had taken hold of me on our last night in the inn. I should be happy. I should be excited. My life was stretching out before me, a golden path lit by opportunity, a shining city of possibility on the other side. Yet I felt a curious sort of detachment from the prospect, as though I were experiencing my joy at a degree of remove.
There was a shadow on my soul. I could see the sensations I should be feeling, the consequences that I should be fearing, but everything was dark, murky, vague. A veil was between me and my inner heart. I thought of the old rector’s dire warnings and of Constanze’s terror of the Wild Hunt. I knew I should worry. I knew I should care. But all I felt, this night before the rest of my life, was exhaustion and fatigue.
Even Käthe noticed my unusual reticence. “Would you like to pass the night with me, Liesl?” she asked, once everyone else had retired. We were sitting in the main hall before the fire, watching the flames burn down into embers. “I know I could use the company. It would be like old times, yes?”
As little girls, my sister and I had shared a bed while my brother had his own quarters downstairs. Back then, I had thought privacy the height of all luxury, wondering what it would be like spend a night without another treading on my dreams. And while I cherished having my own retreat, there were times when solitude had more weight than the feel of another’s limbs crowding my sleep.
“No, it’s all right,” I said, staring without seeing into the fire. “You go on ahead, Käthe. I’ll . . . I’ll retire soon.”
I could see her reach out, then withdraw, her mouth twisting as it struggled to find words of comfort. I wanted to lift my hand, to meet her concern with reassurance, but I could not. My shadow enveloped me in a shroud, and I could not move.
My sister rose to her feet and made to head up the stairs up to her bedroom, when she paused. “Liesl,” she said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Go to the Goblin Grove.”
Even the astonishment that knifed me felt dull. “What?” I asked.
“Go to the Goblin Grove,” she repeated. “Make your peace and say your farewells. You cannot have a new beginning without an ending. Go, and be free.”
I toyed with the ring on its chain about my throat. “I’ll consider it.”
“What is your problem?” Käthe’s eyes flashed, her voice filled with sudden vehemence. I was taken aback by the force of her anger, but more than that, I was envious. I wanted the strength of her convictions because my own resolve was weak. “What is it you’re afraid of? I am tired of bearing your emotional burdens, Liesl. I cannot carry them forever. I am not your crutch.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
She began pacing back and forth before the fire. “Ever since you came back from—from where you’d been, you’ve been barely holding yourself together.” Before I could protest in my defense, she went on. “You’re hot, you’re cold, you’re up, you’re down, you’re fast, you’re slow. I can’t keep up with you sometimes, Liesl. You’re like a top spinning out of control, and I’m continually watching—waiting—for any wobble that might topple you.”
I was stunned. Was I so changed by my time beneath the earth? I was a different Liesl—no, Elisabeth—than I had been before I entered the realm of the goblins, but I was still the same me. Still the same soul. Still self-indulgent, selfish, selfless, savage. I had shed my skin to emerge anew, more me than before. But had I always been this insufferable? Had I always been so tiresome?
“I—I—” Words withered on my tongue. “I didn’t mean—I’m so sorry, Käthe.”
Her expression softened, but I could see that even my apology wearied her. She sighed. “Don’t apologize, Liesl,” she said. “Do. Stop wallowing and go find closure. Absolution or resolution or whatever it is, I am tired of holding your heart. Give it back to the Goblin Grove if you must. I can no longer carry it.”
My eyes burned. I could feel Käthe’s pitying glance, but did not look at her. A hot tear slipped from beneath my lashes, and I tried very hard not to sniff. Stop wallowing, she had said. It was hard.
My sister leaned over and pressed a kiss to my brow. “Go to the Goblin Grove,” she said. “Go, and make peace.”
I went.
* * *
The night was clear as I made my way into the heart of the wood.
It had rained earlier that day, and a few clouds lingered, but the bright, full face of the moon shone down on me, touching the forest with silver frost. But I would have been able to find my way to the Goblin Grove even if the night had been as black as pitch. The woods and the legends surrounding it were etched into my bones, a map of my soul.
The walk was both longer and shorter than I remembered. The distance from grove to inn seemed to have shortened, but the time it took to reach it seemed to have grown. I came upon the Goblin Grove almost by surprise, the circular ring of twelve alder trees jumping out of the shadows like children playing peekaboo. I hesitated on the edges of the grove. The last time I stood here, I had crossed the barrier between worlds. The Goblin Grove was one of the few places left where the Underground and the world above existed together, a sacred space made holy by the old laws and my memories. I stood on the edge, waiting for a sense of trespass to overcome me as I crossed from one world back to the next.
It did not come.
I entered and sat down with my back against a tree, wrapping my cloak tighter about me.
“Ah, mein Herr,” I said softly to the night. “I am here. I am here at last.”
There was no answer. Even the forest was unwontedly quiet, without its usual sense of patient waiting. I felt awkward sitting here in the dark, like a child who had left home, only to return to find it not as they remembered. The grove was like and not like how I remembered it, but it wasn’t the minute and minuscule failings of memory that made it different; it was the emptiness.
I was alone.
For a moment, I considered going back, returning to the inn where it was warm, where it was bright, where it was safe. But I had promised my sister I would make peace, even if I did not know how. Even if there was no one to hear me.
“I am leaving for Vienna on the morrow,” I said. “I am leaving the Goblin Grove behind.”
I couldn’t help but pause to wait for a reply, even though I knew not to expect it. I wasn’t talking to myself; I was having a conversation, even if I was the only one participating.
“I should be happy. I am happy. I have always wanted to go to Vienna. I have always wanted to see the world beyond our little corner of Bavaria.”
It was getting easier now to speak as though to an audience and not myself. I wondered then if I wanted the Goblin King to respond, or if I merely wanted to leave my heart here before him, before the old laws.
“Is it not what you taught me, mein Herr? To love myself first instead of last?” My words hung before me in a cloud of mist. My wistfulness turned breath, my longing made visible. I was growing colder by the minute, the damp chill seeping through my cloak and into my bones. “Are you not happy for me?”
Again, no response. His absence was nearly a presence, a noticeable, unavoidable void. I wanted to close that void, to seal that abyss, and heal the fractures in my heart.
“I know what you would say,” I said. “Go forth and live, Elisabeth. Live and forget about me.” I heard his voice in my memory, a soft, expressive baritone as rich and warm as a bassoon. Or was it a powerful tenor, as sharp and clear as a clarionet? Time had blurred the details and edges of the Goblin King, turning him from a man back into a myth, no matter how hard I had tried to hold on. To remember.
“Forgetting is easy,” I whispered to the empty air. “Easier than I thought. Easier than I want to admit. Even now the exact colors of your eyes are no longer clear to me, mein Herr.”
I ran my fingers over the still-frozen ground. “But living?” There was nothing beneath my feet or fingers. No sense of thaw, no sleeping green waiting to burst forth. Dead, hollow, lifeless. “Living is hard. You didn’t tell me it would be so hard, mein Herr. You didn’t say a word.”
My limbs were growing numb from the chill, so I got back to my feet, stamping away the myriad prickling needles in my skin. I began to pace throughout the Goblin Grove, agitation and frustration keeping me warm.
“You didn’t tell me living would be one decision after another, some easy, some difficult. You didn’t tell me living wasn’t a battle, but a war. You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
It was more than agitation keeping me warm now; it was anger. It coiled within me, winding me tighter and tighter. My fingers curled, my jaws clenched. I was a spring ready to be sprung. I wanted to tear each alder tree from the earth by its roots, I wanted to claw and dig my way back to the Underground. I wanted to rip and scream and tear and shriek. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt myself.
“I wish you were dead,” I said vehemently.
My voice did not echo in the woods, but the force of my emotions rang in my ears.
“I do,” I repeated. “Do you hear me, mein Herr? I wish you were dead!”
At last the forest took up my cry, a hundred mouthless voices repeating dead, dead, dead. I thought I heard the otherworldly giggles of Twig and Thistle, their high-pitched titters crawling up my skin. The old Liesl would have felt guilty for her uncharitable words, but the new Elisabeth did not. The Goblin King had taught me cruelty, after all.
“You would agree, of course,” I said with a bitter laugh. “No one could punish you harder than you punish yourself. You could have been a martyr. Saint Goblin King, willing to die for me, willing to die for love.
“But I’m not like you,” I continued. “I am not a saint; I am a sinner. I wish you were dead so I could live. If you were dead, I could bury you—in my heart and in my mind. I could mourn you, then let you go.”
I stopped pacing and wrapped my arms about myself beneath my cloak. Now that my anger was fading, the cold began to creep in. I drew the wolf’s-head ring out.
“You live an unlife instead,” I said. I held the ring before me and looked at it. It was old, tarnished, and even a little ugly. “An unlife, a not-death. You exist in the in-between spaces, between sleep and waking, between belief and imagination. I wish I could wake up, mein Herr. I wish I were awake.”
I undid the clasp and removed the chain with his ring from my neck. With a trembling hand, I set it down in the middle of the Goblin Grove.
“I won’t look back,” I said in a choked voice. “Not this time. Because you won’t be there to hold me back. I relinquish you, mein Herr, just as you let me go.” A sob hitched in my throat, but I swallowed it back down, straightening my spine with resolve.
“Goodbye,” I said. I did not turn around. “Farewell.”
I half expected, half hoped I would feel a ghostly hand upon my shoulder as I left, as I stepped foot from the Goblin Grove. But as it had been when I left the Underground, there was no touch, no half-whispered plea to stay. I couldn’t help but look for him anyway, my Goblin King. I gasped, my hand going to the ring I no longer wore at my throat. I could not be sure, but I thought I saw a tall, dark figure standing among the trees, watching me as I walked away.
Then I blinked and the figure was gone. Perhaps he had never been there, my madness made manifest from the mournful yearning of my muddled mind. I turned away and walked back home, toward my future, toward the mundane.
I almost made it to the inn before the tears fell.