SNOVIN HALL
the Procházka family estate was a shambles.
If I had thought their home in the environs of Vienna had been odd, it was nothing compared to Snovin Hall, the majestic, tumbledown manor that was the seat of their house. We had driven through the night on the evening of our flight from the city, stopping only to change horses. We slept on the road, ate on the road, and drank on the road, leaving no time to catch our bearings.
Or write a letter.
“Why such haste?” I had asked the Countess. “Surely men and women of your stature could afford more luxurious accommodations and modes of travel.”
“Oh, Otto detests traveling,” she replied. “The food disagrees with him, poor lamb.”
It was true the Count seemed to be a pampered, petted creature, but I couldn’t help but suspect that the Procházkas had other reasons for speed. No time for Josef or me to speak to anyone at a tavern or inn, no opportunity to pass along a message or a note to my sister and François, no chance to . . . escape.
We spoke little on the journey, preferring to doze or watch the surroundings change. The countryside grew colder the farther from the city we drew. The smells and scents of human habitation, barnyard stock, churned mud and trampled hay and woodsmoke gave way to sharp pine, wet stone, deep loam, and dark spaces. Farmlands eventually began to grow more mountainous, more forested, more like . . . home.
Despite my distrust of the Procházkas, I felt a lightening in my chest the closer we drew to Snovin, as though I were letting go of a breath I’d been holding ever since I left Bavaria. Although my brother had kept mostly mum our entire carriage ride, I sensed that he, too, had been waiting to exhale. The quality of his silence shifted as we approached our destination, taking on a waiting, listening quality. Before he had been a fortress, a castle, a burg, but now there was a door in the wall. It could be opened, when the time was right.
Bits of snow drifted lazily like ash, settling on the road as we crested the hill and began our descent into the valley. As the path opened up before us, I gasped as the vista came into view.
Spindly turrets and towers of what appeared to be an ancient castle rose out of the earth like stony fingers reaching toward the sky. A forest encircled the house like a crown of thorns, a tangle of bare branches and the colorless gray-brown of sleeping green studded with gemstones of granite, while waiting clouds heavy with snow rested atop the hills in the distance. Twin waves of homesickness and homecoming overcame me at once, and a queer emotion floated in my chest, as though my heart had become unmoored from my ribs. There was something familiar about the sight before me. It wasn’t the forests or the hills or the dark unknown that was both similar to and dissimilar from the woods around Bavaria where I had grown up; it was the sense that I had seen this exact landscape before, although I could not remember where.
“Beautiful,” Josef murmured. I gave him a quick, sidelong glance; it was the first word he had said in days.
The Count beamed. “Isn’t it? The castle has been in my family for over a thousand years. Each generation of Procházkas has added to or subtracted from the original foundations, so hardly a single stone from the old building remains. Unusual and one of a kind, but not everyone appreciates its unique beauty as you do, young man.”
I did not think it was the castle my brother found beautiful, but the Count was right; the old castle was indeed one of a kind. I thought of the burg I had seen represented on the Procházka crest, but this castle seemed less like a fortress and more like a wattle-and-daub cottage made of borrowed bits from bigger, better buildings. The crenellations and parapets undulated along uneven slopes like the spine of a sleeping dragon, the manor towers and turrets were thrust out at tipsy angles, and gables jutted forth in unexpected places. Yet despite its oddities, there was a picturesque charm about it: a wild, untamed house for a wild, untamed landscape.
“What is that?” Josef pointed across the valley to a large building set into the hills before us, a crumbling ruin looking down upon us like a priest sneering down his nose at the populace.
“That is the old monastery,” said the Count. “It belonged to the order of St. Benedict before it was destroyed several hundred years ago. It’s been empty ever since.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It burned down in a fire.”
As we drew closer, I could see scorch marks painted onto the stones, traces of oily black tears streaming from hollow-eyed windows. “What caused the fire?”
He shrugged. “No one knows. There are stories, of course. There are accounts there was a lightning storm of biblical proportions the night it burned down. Still others say that the ghost of a restless wolf-spirit started it. More likely than not”—he shrugged—“some poor hapless monk fell asleep at his desk while transcribing something and knocked his candle over.”
“Wolf-spirit?” Josef asked.
“There have been tales of spectral wolves and hounds in these parts for as long as I can remember,” the Count said. “The villagers still speak of D’ábel, a monstrous beast with two different-colored eyes like the Devil.”
His eyes fell to the ring on my finger, two mismatched gems winking from a wolf’s silver face. Without thinking, I quickly moved to cover it, not thinking how that gesture would betray its importance to my . . . hosts? Benefactors? Captors?
“An interesting piece of jewelry you have there, Fräulein,” he remarked. He and his wife exchanged glances. “May I see it?”
“I—I . . .” I did not know what to say, or how to decline without calling more attention to it. I myself didn’t want to think too hard about how it had been returned to me. “It—it does not belong to me,” I finished. “It is not mine to share.”
“Curious,” the Countess said. “Is it so precious that you must guard it with your own life?”
I looked down at the ring, scuffed and tarnished with age. The mismatched gemstones—one blue, one green—were small, hardly enough to be considered worth much. Yet whatever its value, it was worth infinitely more to me. I thought of the dream—vision?—I had of the Goblin King, of the shadows crawling over his skin, the crown of horns growing from his head, and remembered his vow.
“One cannot place a price on a promise,” I said shortly. “And that is all I will speak of the matter.”
I felt Josef’s eyes upon me then, a questioning touch. It was the first hint of interest—of engagement—I had felt from my brother in a long time.
“Strange, what weight we place on such trinkets,” the Countess murmured. “What meaning we imbue our possessions. The ring is but a bit of silver, wrought in an unusual shape. Yet it is more than a piece of jewelry. A symbol? A key?”
I said nothing and turned my head to gaze out the window. I watched darkness fall as the sun set behind the clouds, casting long shadows across the valley and across my heart.
* * *
By the time we pulled up the long gravel driveway to the manor house itself, night had fallen entirely, and a thin layer of snow had settled along the roads. The dark was oppressive in these parts, the sort of dense black that had depth and weight, familiar to those of us who had grown up in the wild. Our only source of light aside from the lantern hanging on its pole before our driver were twin torches blazing in the distance, held by two silhouetted figures waiting at the door for our arrival.
“Too late for supper, I suppose,” the Count grumbled. “I wanted some of Nina’s cabbage soup before bed.”
“I’m sure the housekeeper will feed you until your waistcoat pops tomorrow, dear,” said his wife.
“But I want it now,” he said petulantly.
“We’ll see if Nina can send us some trays after we turn down for the evening,” the Countess sighed. “I know you get cranky when you’re hungry. Apologies, children,” she said, turning to Josef and me, though it was too dark to see our faces inside the coach. “We shall have a proper dinner and introduction to Snovin tomorrow.”
“And why you’ve brought us here?” I asked.
I felt the touch of her green eyes on mine. “All shall be revealed. Tomorrow.”
The two torch-wielding silhouettes in the distance resolved themselves into the shapes of a man and a woman; one short, stout, and dumpling-faced, the other tall, thin, and craggy-cheeked. They opened the carriage door as the Count introduced them as Nina and Konrad, the housekeeper and seneschal of the estate.
“Nina will show you both to your rooms,” the Count told us. “Konrad will be along with your things.”
“What things?” I said shortly. We had fled Vienna so quickly, neither Josef nor I possessed anything beyond the clothes on our backs, my brother’s violin, and my portfolio of music scores.
He had the grace to look sheepish in the flickering light. “Ah, yes. Well, could you send for the tailor to take their measurements tomorrow, my love?” The Count turned to his wife instead of his housekeeper, and she looked displeased to be asked.
“As you wish,” she said stiffly. “I shall send for my uncle in the morning.”
Uncle? The Countess had rather low relations for such a lofty position as lady of the estate if her uncle was a tailor.
“Capital,” said her husband. “Now, children”—he turned to us—“I bid you both good night. If there’s anything that makes me grouchier than an empty stomach, it’s lack of sleep. We’ve been on the road a long while and I look forward to laying my head upon an actual pillow. I shall see you in the morning. Sweet dreams.”
And with that, he and his wife swept indoors with Konrad, leaving us alone with the housekeeper.
“This way,” Nina said in thickly accented German. We followed her past the great entrance hall and toward the east wing of the house, down a flight of stairs, up another, through a set of doors, around a corner, then up and down and around and around again until I was thoroughly lost. If I thought solving the hedge maze in the Procházkas’ garden was difficult, it was nothing compared to this.
Our path through the estate was silent, for Nina’s grasp of German seemed to be limited to the two words given earlier, and Josef kept his own counsel. Although he seemed less closed off and withdrawn than before, I still had no idea of what he thought or felt of our strange adventure. Whether he was frightened. Nervous. Excited. Relieved. That face I had known and loved his entire life was opaque to me, as though he wore a mask of his own features.
We passed no one else on our way to our rooms—no footmen, no maids, no gardeners—a stark contrast to the liveried servants at Procházka House. The grounds at Snovin Hall were extensive and would have required a great deal of care, more than what a middle-aged housekeeper and seneschal could provide. The neglect showed in a myriad ways: in the warped wooden window frames, the cobweb-dusted furniture in empty rooms, the birds’ nests and rodent burrows tucked into the exposed eaves and moldering couch cushions. The world outside crept in through the crevices, vines crawling up rotted wallpaper, weeds working their way through the cracks in the floor.
I am the inside-out man.
Soon we emerged into a nicer—or at least, better kept—part of the house. As with their domicile in Vienna, the Procházkas possessed a number of exquisite curios at their country estate: tiny pewter farmers threshing wheat, a herd of bronze sheep leaping over fences, a beautifully ornate clock with golden rings that circled the hours of the heavens. Each of these trinkets were mechanical like the swan in their banquet hall, moving with fluid motions almost too smooth to be real.
We walked up another flight of stairs until we arrived at a long gallery. Nina unlocked one of the doors and we followed her into our quarters, a suite of connected rooms. A large, double-sided fireplace divided our sleeping quarters, with doors on either side that could be shut to maintain our privacy. The fires were already lit, and the rooms pleasantly warm and dry—almost toasty—compared to the drafty corridor just beyond the threshold. The rooms themselves were comfortably appointed, if a bit threadbare. There was a secondhand quality to all the furniture, although they all seemed to be heirloom pieces. A washbasin and pitcher of water stood on the bedside table in the room, but there was no mirror atop the vanity. I thought of the fifty florins the Countess had gifted me in order to lure me to Vienna and wondered why their ancestral seat was in such shabby condition. They had the funds to maintain Snovin Hall, surely.
“Is good?” Nina smiled, her dark eyes nearly lost in the crinkle of dumpling cheeks.
“It’s fine, thank you,” I said.
She nodded and pointed to a cupboard full of linens and candles. “Is good?” she asked again. Then she said something in Bohemian I couldn’t figure out. The housekeeper mimed eating, and after some back and forth, I understood that trays of food would be sent to our rooms.
“Thank you, Nina,” I said.
The housekeeper glanced at Josef, who had kept sullen, silent watch during the entire exchange. He did not offer his gratitude, either genuine or perfunctory, and Nina left us, looking a little disgruntled. Her footsteps tapped out rude, rude, rude, growing fainter in the distance.
We were alone.
For a long time, neither my brother nor I said a word. We had not yet decided whose room was which, but neither of us made a move to claim either as our own. The crackling of the fire filled the space between us, making conversation with the shadows on the wall. There was so much I had to say to Josef, and yet there was nothing to be said at all.
“Well, mein Brüderchen,” I said softly. “Here we are.”
He met my gaze. “Yes,” he said. “We are.”
And for the first time in an age, I saw my brother, really and truly saw him. Until that moment, I had seen Josef as the little boy who had left me behind—sweet, sensitive, shy. My Sepperl. Sepp. But the man who stood before me was not that child.
He was taller, certainly, and lean with his height, towering over me by a head. His golden curls were overgrown, not in the manner that was currently fashionable in the cosmopolitan places of the world, but in the absentminded way of a genius who had more pressing concerns on his mind than his appearance. Time had honed all the softness from his cheeks and chin so that he was no longer the cherub-faced sprite of our childhood, but a gangly-limbed youth. His blue eyes were harder, less innocent, his gaze distant and dispassionate.
Yet there remained that ineffable ethereality in those clear depths that had stirred my protective heart ever since he was a babe in the cradle. Since he had been changed for the child that was the brother of my blood, if not the brother of my heart.
“Oh, Sepp,” I whispered. “What are we doing?”
It was a while before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “I don’t know.”
And just like that, the wall he had constructed around him came crumbling down. The mask fell, and the brother I loved, the gardener of my heart, appeared.
I held my arms open for a hug as though he were still a boy and not a man near full-grown. But Josef walked into my embrace without a second thought, wrapping his arms around me. The tears that had been simmering beneath my lashes ever since I walked away from the Goblin Grove slipped down my cheeks. I had missed my brother, yes, but it wasn’t until this moment that I understood just how much.
“Oh, Sepp,” I said again.
“Liesl.” His was a man’s voice now, deeper and fuller. It carried all the rich resonance of his experiences, and would only grow richer with time, acquired with knowledge like a violin resined with age. My heart beat a painful tattoo, Don’t grow up, Sepp, never grow up.
“How did we get there?” I asked in a muffled voice. “What are we to do?”
I felt Josef’s shoulders lift in a shrug. “What we’ve always done, I suppose. Survive.”
A sober stillness fell over us. We both knew how to survive. We had done it our entire lives, in different ways. It wasn’t just the long cold nights and empty bellies we endured to make ends meet; my brother had long suffered under our father’s crushing expectations. My expectations. I thought I had been helping him shoulder his burdens, yet I had done nothing but add to the weight with my resentment. My arms tightened around him. I did not know how to tell him I was sorry. Not with words.
“Are you frightened?” I asked, unable to look at him. “Of . . . the Wild Hunt? The Procházkas? Of . . . everything? I am.”
There was no reply but the steady beating of his heart. “I’m frightened,” he said at last. “But I think I’ve been frightened ever since I left home. Fear has been my constant companion for so long I think I’ve forgotten how to feel anything else.”
Guilt squeezed my ribs in a painful grip, and fresh tears started in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Sepperl.”
He extricated himself from my embrace. “It’s over and done now, Liesl,” he said in a dull voice. “This is where I live. This never-ending haze of fear and longing and dissatisfaction. Vienna or no, it is all the same to me.”
Worry pierced through my remorse. “What of Käthe? And François? Don’t you want to go home?”
Josef gave a bitter laugh. “Do you?”
I was about to respond that of course I did when I realized I wasn’t sure what my brother meant by home. Vienna? Or the Goblin Grove? Or, I thought with a stab of alarm, the Underground?
We all come back in the end.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I know now that Vienna was perhaps a mistake. But to go back . . .” I trailed off.
“Would be an admission of failure?” Josef asked softly. His voice was gentle.
“Yes,” I said. “And . . . and no.” I thought of the words of the old rector. The queer, the wild, the strange, the elf-touched—they are said to belong to the Goblin King. I had tried so long and so hard to move on that I was afraid of returning to the places where his ghost still lingered. To return to the Goblin Grove would be returning to a self I had outgrown, trying to tuck who I had become back into the seams of another girl. Then I thought of the vision I had had, of Der Erlkönig transformed, tortured, treacherous.
His ring weighed heavily on my finger.
Josef studied me. “What happened?” he asked carefully. He gestured vaguely toward the world outside, toward the forest beyond, the roads back over the Alps to the Goblin Grove. “Did you—did you meet . . . him?”
Him. Der Erlkönig. The Goblin King. My nameless, austere young man.
“Yes,” I said, the word forced from me in a choking laugh. “Yes, Sepperl, I have.”
He sucked in a breath. I could see his pulse fluttering at the base of his throat, his eyes dilating to a depthless black. Interest honed his features to sharp edges. Interest, and envy.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. Where to begin? What did he want to know? What could I tell him? That the stories Constanze told us were real? That there was a fantastic world just below and beyond our mortal ken? The glowing lake, the Lorelei, the glittering cavernous ballrooms, the skittering beetle-eyed goblins, the needle-whiskered tailors? What of the chapel, the receiving room, the mirrors that were windows into another world? How could I reveal that the magic was real . . . without revealing the truth of who—or what—he was?
We all come back in the end.
“I—I don’t know if I can, Sepp,” I said. “Not yet.”
His eyes narrowed. “I see.”
Something about his tone niggled at me. I frowned. “See what?”
“No, no, I understand,” he continued, the corner of his upper lip lifting in a curl. “Special Liesl. Chosen Liesl. You’ve always wanted to be extraordinary, and now you are.”
My mouth fell open and I blinked. It was as though my brother had punched me in the gut; I could barely breathe for the pain. We had been circling each other for a long time, Josef and I, taking swift swipes at each other with razor-keen comments, enough to sting but not enough to wound. A dance of provocation, not injury. We might have been cold and cruel to each other, but this was the first time my brother had been actively malicious.
“Is that what you think of me?” I whispered.
He turned his head away, refusing to answer. Refusing to dignify his underhanded move with an explanation, taking the coward’s way out. Well, two could play at that game. If my brother wanted to fight dirty, then I would gladly oblige him.
“Fine,” I said, my voice hard. “I’m selfish and self-absorbed. But I don’t take my life—my very existence—for granted.” Josef started, and my eyes slipped to his wrists, where he was hastily pulling down his sleeves. Guilt seized me. “Oh, Sepp, I didn’t mean—”
“Enough,” he said softly. And like that, the mask of indifference he had worn before this moment slipped back into place, perfectly still and perfectly blank. “Enough, Liesl. I cry uncle. Let’s go to bed.”
“Sepp, I—”
“I’ll take the other room.” My brother bent to pick up his violin and walked through the open door connecting our quarters. “You should get some rest. It’s been a long journey. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I did not know what to say. I knew that the wound I had dealt him was far greater than the one he had given me and I did not know the extent or depth of the damage. I did not know how to fix it. I did not know how to fix us. So I said the only thing I could.
“Good night,” I said, my throat tight. “Sleep well, mein Brüderchen.”
Josef nodded. “Good night,” he said, slowly shutting the door between us. “Sweet dreams . . . Goblin Queen.”