no one heard the sound of hooves above the music.
The horn and the hound were drowned out by the pipe and the viol, the drumming of horseshoes muffled by the shuffling of dance steps. Black-and-white-clad guests spun over black-and-white-checkered floors, black, white, black, white, red. Scarlet poppies pinned to silk and brocade winked in and out of sight, appearing and disappearing like bloody fireflies against a night-and-day sky.
And outside, the unholy host began to gather.
The dancers twirled and whirled as the hours stretched longer and longer into the evening. Wine-loosened lips and laudanum-muddled laughs came together in dreamy kisses, hands meeting and parting in the minuet like moths to flame. Anonymous strangers behind masks, intimate friends behind closed doors. The murmur of names exchanged only under the cover of darkness, to keep secret and tucked away with one’s discarded stockings and stays.
No one noticed that the Count and Countess had disappeared.
But throughout it all, a pair of dancers kept themselves apart. One dark, one fair. A prince of the sun and a queen of the night. Their fingers intertwined, black skin against white, as they made their way across the ballroom, their steps measured, their movements precise. They were order amidst chaos, logic amidst madness. Slowly, resolutely, they drifted toward the edges of the dance floor and to the gardens, stately and serene, neither betraying a hint of the anxiety and discomfort roiling inside their hearts.
They had noticed their beloved and sister were missing.
And inside, the gathering of gaiety continued on, oblivious to the currents that moved within and without the house. It was the night before Ash Wednesday, when the barriers between this world and the next were thin. Uncanny doings happened at the turning points, at the thresholds, at the twilights and dawns. It was a time of transition, neither night nor day, winter nor spring. It was the nothing hour, when horrors and mischief-makers came out to play.
It wasn’t until a scream pierced the air that the revelries came to a halt.
They’re dead! someone cried. Oh someone help, they’re dead!
A pair of bodies were discovered in the gardens: one dark, one fair. Their eyes were glassy, their lips blue-gray, but most curious and disturbing of all were the twin slashes of silver at their throats.
Elf-struck, the guests whispered in terror and in awe.
Who were they? they asked one another.
For although the assembly was anonymous, each in attendance could guess the person to whom the eyes peering through their masks belonged. Yet even without their disguises, the victims could not be identified. A man and a woman. Neither young nor old. Their respective states of deshabille pointed to their amorous activities when their bodies were discovered in the labyrinth, a respectable pursuit at one of the Procházkas’ infamous and incendiary soirees, yet the clothes of this trysting pair lacked the scarlet poppy that marked them as one of Der Erlkönig’s own.
One of the protected.
Käthe and François stood over the dead, hands pressed to their hearts in relief. They were not Liesl and Josef. If their sister and beloved could not be found, at least it was not their remains that had been discovered.
“You must leave,” said a cracked voice behind them. “You must go.”
Behind them stood a liveried servant of the house, small, sallow-skinned, and frizzy-haired. He had greeted them all upon arriving at the ball, had gifted their sister with a poppy to wear. Käthe remembered him, so starkly different from the other footmen whose features blended into each other’s, utterly indistinguishable despite their bare faces.
“Beg pardon?” she asked.
“You must leave,” the footman repeated. “You are not safe.”
“But Josef—Liesl—” François began, but the servant shook his head.
“It is not their lives that are in danger; it is yours.” His pinched and sallow face was grim. “Come, follow me, meine Dame und Herr. We must get you someplace secure.”
“What are on earth are you talking about?” Käthe snapped. Fear and anxiety made her short-tempered. “What about my brother and sister? Why should we trust you?”
The footman’s dark eyes were grave. “Your brother and sister are long gone,” he said. “And beyond your help.”
Käthe’s brows lifted in alarm. “You haven’t harmed them!”
“No, Fräulein.” He shook his head. “They are with the Count and Countess. Their well-being is no longer your most pressing concern.”
François looked bewildered, eyes darting from the fair-haired girl on one side and the beetling servant on the other. “Käthe,” he said, “qu’est-ce que c’est . . . ?”
She narrowed her eyes at the footman. “Who are you?”
“I am no one,” he answered softly. “A friend. Now hurry, we must get you back inside lest the Hunt return.”
“The Hunt?” François asked.
Käthe paled. “The unholy host?”
The footman turned to her in surprise. “You believe? You have faith?”
She set her lips in a tight line. “I have faith in my sister. She believes in the old stories.”
He nodded his head. “Then have faith in the old stories, if you will not have faith in me. All the tales are true, and believe me when I say that you are not safe here.”
Käthe looked to the bodies of the lovers at her feet. Their eyes were open, staring at the night sky. What sights had they seen before they died? Had they taken ghostly scraps of rotting fabric for wisps of mist? The dull gleam of rusted armor for moonlight upon stone? Had they not believed? Was this why their lives were lost?
“All right,” she said. “Where are you taking us?”
“Home, Fräulein,” the footman said. “Where the Faithful can watch over you.”
She did not think he was referring to their apartments near Stephansplatz. Käthe turned to François. If neither were fluent in each other’s tongue, then they shared a language down to their bones nonetheless. The language of trust, and of faith in their loved ones. After a moment, François nodded and offered his arm to Käthe.
“Mademoiselle,” he said with a bow.
She took his arm with a nod and faced the footman.
“Lead on, Herr . . . ?”
The footman grinned, showing row upon row of crooked, yellow teeth. “You may call me Bramble.” He laughed at their confused expressions. “It was what the villagers called me when I was a babe, found abandoned and tangled in a blackberry bramble.”
“Ah.” Käthe was embarrassed.
The edges of Bramble’s smile twisted, turning sinister, sad. “It’s all right, Fräulein. I am one of the lucky ones. They gave me a name. And a soul.”
François knitted his brow. “A soul?”
“Aye, Herr Darkling,” Bramble said. “A changeling has no name and no one to call him home. But I do. I do.”