snovin Hall was haunted.
It wasn’t haunted in the usual manner—with ghosts and sprites and spirits. Josef knew how to exorcise ghosts from a house with bells and holy water. He knew how to appease kobolds and Hödekin with offerings of milk and bread, how to safeguard his home from the unseen forces of the world with salt and prayers. But what he didn’t know how to do was cast out the demons from his own head.
The whispers beckoned from every corner of the estate, filling his ears at night so he could no longer sleep. He had taken to wandering the halls after everyone else had risen for the day, playing his violin out in the woods where no one would hear. The playing did nothing to drown out the voiceless murmurs in his mind, but he could at least lose himself in the rigorous, tedious repetition of notes. He would play through every piece he could remember, and some he did not—once, twice, thrice. The first for feeling: the bowing languid and smooth or sharp and emphatic. The second for precision: the fingering exact, the timing rigid. The third for despair: the last resort of an unraveling mind. And when Josef had played through his entire repertoire several times over, he would fall back on his exercises. Scales. Rhythm and tempo practice.
None of it helped.
When he closed his eyes, he could still see his sister’s face when he called her Goblin Queen. It had not been a term of endearment, but an accusation. He could still see the arrow land between her ribs, and the expression of shock and hurt and betrayal both shook him and soothed him. They had both gone away from home and emerged transformed: his sister a woman, he a quivering wreck. Liesl had had Der Erlkönig while Josef had had Master Antonius when it should have been the other way around. His sister was meant for fame and recognition and public adulation; he was meant for the Goblin Grove.
After nightfall, Josef made his way back to the manor. He was tired, exhaustion carving out blue-black hollows beneath his eyes and cheeks. He wanted to sleep, to rest his head, to forget the image of Liesl’s brown eyes looking at him with such reproach. His very first memory was of his sister’s eyes peering over the edge of his cradle, large and lambent and full of love. He remembered little else from his earliest childhood; in the end, it had been Liesl, always Liesl, who made him feel safe. But he could not forgive her for not being there when he had needed her most, for sending him away when every fiber of his being had cried out to stay.
When he finally returned to the grounds of Snovin Hall proper, Josef looked up at the second story window where he knew his sister slept. To his surprise, he saw her standing there, her pale chemise standing out against the darkness of the room like a ghost. He ached down to his bones, a knot of guilt and resentment and hatred and love tangled in his veins. There was no feeling but ceaseless, never-ending pain at the sight of her standing there, and he wanted to bleed himself to relieve the pressure. To leech himself of bad blood and bad thoughts.
He turned away.
In the distance, he spied the distinct figure of the Countess limping ahead. The dark was complete now, and nothing but stars lit her path, though she strode with purpose and determination. A place and destination in mind, perhaps. The faint stirrings of curiosity fluttered in Josef’s breast, so slight he might have ignored them, save for one thing:
She was following the whispers.
The voiceless murmurs were strongest from the direction of the poppy field, and Josef wondered if she could hear their pulsing sighs like the breeze through weeds. Nameless, they said. Usurper.
He had ignored the whispers the way he had so often pushed away his emotions. The way he had turned away from François. If it was not Liesl’s reproachful eyes he saw when he went to sleep, then it was his beloved’s lips. François had long since perfected a mask of serene calm, his armor in a world hostile to those of his color, but Josef knew where to find the chinks. It would be at the corners of his mouth, tight with anger, twisted with sorrow. The weight of his sister’s and beloved’s feelings was heavy, and he was tired of carrying their burden. The whispers were just another load to put down.
But tonight he would follow them. Follow the Countess. His footfalls fell softly on dried grasses and broken twigs, for he did not notice the scarlet petals of the poppies wither and die in her wake. The whispers fell silent as she passed.
The stranger came, the flowers left.
It wasn’t until the Countess turned to face him that Josef realized she had known he was there all along.
“Hallo, Josef,” she said softly.
Her voice was lost amidst the shushing breeze, the poppies murmuring run away, run away, run away. But Josef did not run.
“Hallo, madame,” he replied. His own voice was hoarse from disuse, but clear above the whispers.
The Countess’s green eyes glowed in the dark. “Will you not play?”
He knew she meant the violin. “Have you not heard?”
She inclined her head. In the dim light of the stars above, Josef could see her mouth forming words, but they were drowned out in the cacophony of voiceless warnings. Beware, beware, beware!
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”
She only smiled. The Countess reached down to pluck a flower, and Josef flinched at the soundless scream of pain.
“Do you know why the symbol of House Procházka is the poppy?” she asked.
He did not answer.
“It is said,” the Countess said, “that Jaroslav Procházka founded his house at the site of a great battle, where so many soldiers had fallen and stained the fields red with their blood.” She brought the petals up to her nose, and though Josef knew the flower was odorless, he thought he could smell the slight tang of copper on the air. “The house was built to honor their sacrifice, and this field of poppies planted to commemorate their passing.”
Josef glanced at the shriveled and desiccated petals at her feet, black and brittle.
“Try as I might, I never did find any evidence of a battle here,” the Countess went on. “But that isn’t to say that blood hasn’t been shed.”
Beware, nameless one, beware.
“What do you mean?” Josef wasn’t sure whether he was asking the Countess or the poppies.
“My family comes from a long line of butchers,” she said. “Not nobly born was I, despite my uncanny lineage. My father was a butcher, my mother a fancy French whore. How far the first Goblin Queen’s descendants have fallen. From Der Erlkönig’s bride to tinkers and tailors, butchers and bakers. But Snovin”—she breathed in deep the scentless flower—“was where we always returned.”
“Why?” Josef asked.
“Do you know that the heir of the first Goblin Queen is always a stranger?” She laughed. “Foreigners, commoners, the lowly born. Yet we are drawn here because this placed is soaked with innocent blood, and all the Goblin Queen had been was a butcher in the end.”
Run away, nameless one, run away.
“Impossible poppies,” the Countess said. “Blooming in late winter. A place teeming with magic if there ever was one, and the stories say that the flower is all that remains of the souls of the stolen.”
“Stolen by whom?” Fear was beginning to seep in through Josef’s numbness along with the cold.
“The Wild Hunt.” Her green eyes were sharp, even in the dark. “The elf-struck are dead, but the elf-touched are trapped.”
He looked down to his feet, the poppies scattered across his boots like drops of blood. “Do they protect us? From the Hunt, I mean.”
“The unholy host cannot be appeased by anything but a sacrifice,” the Countess said softly. “It is the ancient bargain we’ve struck. A life for a life. Our lives. Our livelihood.”
Josef frowned. “Sacrifice?”
But the Countess did not immediately reply, kneeling down to pluck another poppy from the field. It dulled immediately between her fingers, turning purple and black with decay. She stepped forward and tucked it behind his ear.
“The gifts of Der Erlkönig are not to be taken lightly. But in the end, the fruits, like all bounties, must be harvested.”
There was no reply but the moan of the wind through the trees.
“Go to sleep, Josef,” the Countess said gently. “Not long now until spring.”
He turned and obeyed, walking back to Snovin Hall as though in a trance. Darkness deepened, then lightened. The sky behind the hills lifted from densest purple to crushed, faded lavender, and the shadows retreated. Josef climbed into bed and watched as, one by one, the stars began to wink out, disappearing from the night like fireflies in summer. Silhouettes took on shape and texture, details grew clearer and brighter, and a world at peace began to stir and rise to greet the day. It wasn’t until the first ray of dawn struck the foot of his bed that Josef remembered that harvest was in the autumn while planting was in the spring. Everything was inside out in this strange and unexpected place, and as he drifted off to sleep, he wondered when the whispers had finally gone silent.