CHANGELING
“have you heard yet from my sister?” I asked the Count the next morning at breakfast.
He choked on his next sip of coffee, his face turning a reddish purple as he coughed and coughed and coughed. “Hot,” he managed to gasp out, setting his cup back down in its saucer. “Burned my tongue.”
I waited until his fit had passed. “I sent Käthe word when we first arrived. I was wondering if she had sent any reply.”
The Count stirred his coffee with a spoon, though he drank his black without any cream or sugar. “Not that I know of, my dear.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Unlike the Countess, the Count wore every expression, every thought, every feeling on his face. He had an open countenance, and despite his shifty glances, I was more inclined to trust him than his wife.
Especially as she had stolen my correspondence before.
“How often are you able to get the post up here?” I asked. “Is there a way I can perhaps get to New Snovin to see if any letter from Vienna had been received?”
The Count continued stirring his coffee. “I will ask my wife.”
I studied him. “You are the lord of the manor, Your Illustriousness,” I said. “Surely you need not ask her permission.”
He laughed, but it was not a cheerful sound. Instead, it quivered with nerves. “You will find once you become married, Fräulein, that the husband holds far less power than he would have you believe.”
“Is there anything objectionable in my writing to my sister?” I asked.
“No, no, of course not,” he said quickly. He took another sip of his coffee. “Ah, perhaps I will add some cream.” The Count rose from his seat and walked to the sideboard.
I narrowed my eyes. “Is there a reason you don’t want me to write to her?”
The creamer clattered as the Count spilled some, scattering white droplets everywhere. “Blast!”
I got to my feet. “Are you all right, Your Illustriousness?” His anxiousness was suspect, and I followed the trail like a bloodhound on the scent. Despite my exhaustion, I had slept little and ill, thoughts churning through my mind like cream into butter. Ever since I had come to Snovin, it had been one revelation after another, one heartbreak after another, and it wasn’t until the distractions had fallen away that I had begun to ask questions.
If I were the bridge between worlds . . . then what was Josef?
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said, waving me off. “Let me call for Nina to clean up this mess.”
I remembered the upside-down world I’d seen in the waters of Lorelei Lake. On our frenzied flight from Vienna, the Procházkas had reassured us that their friends and associates would care for Käthe and François, but I had not pressed them on the details. In fact, I had asked remarkably few questions since arriving at Snovin, and had received remarkably fewer answers. Their interest in me was clear—I was the Goblin Queen—but their concern for my brother and indifference to my sister and friend were not.
Why Josef and not Käthe and François? Was it simply a stroke of misfortune that my brother happened to be with me the night the Procházkas drugged us and stole us away? Their kindnesses toward us were not insincere, but there was a disingenuousness about their compassion for our welfare at the expense of my sister’s and our friend’s security. Where were they? Why did I sense that the Count and Countess were doing everything in their power to discourage me from reaching out?
“No need to call for Nina,” I said, walking to the Count’s side and mopping up the cream with a napkin. “Or Käthe, I suppose.”
He frowned. “Beg pardon?”
I set down the napkin and looked the Count square in the face. It was the first time we had looked directly at each other since Josef and I had come to Snovin, and I saw in the depths of those twinkling eyes a measure of fear and trepidation. He had the startled, panicked look of a rabbit just moments before the hawk. But who was the hawk? Me, or his wife?
“Your Illustriousness,” I said softly. “Tell me what is going on. With me. With the Hunt. With my brother and sister.”
He swallowed. Those rabbit eyes darted back and forth, searching for a way out, an escape. I thought of the chuckling stranger I had met in the labyrinth of his house in Vienna, the plump-cheeked man in a death’s-head mask. Even then I hadn’t been afraid of him; he was too cheerful, too good-humored, too frivolous to be much of a threat. He was a summer storm, all bluster and wind, but his wife was the lightning strike, beautiful but deadly. It was she I feared.
“I . . . can’t,” he said at last.
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
The Count shook his head. “Both.”
“Why?”
His gaze flicked to the hallway, toward the rooms upstairs. It appeared the Countess was the hawk after all. “Because,” he whispered, “it is not my place.”
Irritation rose like a gorge in my throat. “Snovin is yours. Lorelei Lake is yours. This uncanny legacy is as much yours as it is your wife’s. Be brave and claim what is yours.”
He shook his head again. “You don’t understand,” he said in a strangled voice. “I dare not cross her.”
I thought of the sweet gestures between the Procházkas, the affectionate teasing and comfortable ease with which they carried around the other. The pride with which the Count beheld his wife, the girlish blushes she suffered prettily beneath his charm. His fear seemed odd and misplaced.
Then I remembered his reluctance to speak of the shadow paths in mirrors. How he had gifted me with his compass against the Countess’s wishes. I suddenly realized that he had not only given me his only talisman of safety from the Wild Hunt, but a measure of independence from his wife. With the compass, I need not worry about the unholy host without the Countess’s protection.
There is an ancient protection in my bloodline because of what my foremother did when she walked away.
“Your Illustriousness,” I said slowly. “Just what did the first Goblin Queen do to ensure her escape from the old laws?”
Nothing is free and clear. Not with the old laws.
“It is not my story to tell,” the Count whispered.
“Then why won’t your wife tell me?”
It was a long time before he replied. “Haven’t you heard?” he said with a bitter laugh. “That the tales from House Procházka are more incendiary than most?”
* * *
The Count refused to tell me more.
As frustrated as I was with his inability to divulge anything, I was infinitely more angry at myself. I felt like a dupe, the butt of a jest, hoodwinked by this coward of a man and his fraud of a wife. I threw down the remnants of my breakfast, not caring that it was rude or thoughtless, and stormed out of the morning room.
For a moment, I contemplated returning to Lorelei Lake, to dive into those blue-green waters and swim to my sister on the other side of that mirrored world. If my letters did not reach her, then let my body do so. Let me travel the shadow paths and escape this prison of good intentions and unholy expectations. So what if I were the last Goblin Queen? What if my decision to leave the Underground had all been for naught? I was right back where I was before I became Der Erlkönig’s bride: trapped, stifled, smothered.
But without thinking, I became lost in the bowels of Snovin Hall instead. I had meant to return to my quarters, to wait for Josef, to plot our way out of his accursed valley together somehow, and had made a wrong turn somewhere in the house. I found myself in a room I had never seen before with a large grandfather clock in the corner and a suit of armor on the far side.
The clock chimed the hour.
Gong, gong, gong, gong. I counted the bell strikes, one, two, three, four, but they did not match the hands on its face. Indeed, instead of numbers, symbols were painted around the edge of the clock—a sword, a shield, a castle, a melusine, a dolphin, a wolf, and on and on, an unusual zodiac of eccentric objects. There was something off about the arrangement of figures around the face, and it wasn’t until I counted them that I realized there were thirteen instead of the customary twelve.
All the hairs rose on the back of my neck.
After the gonging echoes faded away, there was an odd, erratic clicking sound. No second hand ticked away the moments, but moreover, the noise was coming from another part of the room.
I turned around.
Behind me, the suit of armor was lifting its arm.
Pulse pounding, I watched as the artifact moved of its own accord, animated by nothing but its own inanimate intelligence. Goblin-made, I realized, imbued with the magic of the Underground. Its fingers curled, all save one, which remained pointing in a direction down the corridor.
I followed where it led, down to a set of doors I had never seen. They were tall, reaching from floor to ceiling, and ornately carved with grotesques—leering satyrs, screaming nymphs, and snarling beasts. The doors were gilded once, but the gold had flaked and worn off with age, leaving nothing but rusted iron beneath. I glanced over my shoulder at the suit of armor still pointing its arm. It nodded, once, twice, the squeal of ancient metal grinding against itself grating on the ears.
I pushed open the doors.
Searing white brightness burned my eyes, and I threw up my hands against the light. When the world returned after temporary blindness, I saw that I was standing in a ballroom.
Surrounded by mirrors.
They caught the light of the morning sun, reflecting and refracting the rays to an almost uncomfortable intensity. There were no shadows anywhere in this prism room, for even the cracked and broken floors were polished to a high shine. The forest had begun creeping in on this space years ago, and now it was as much a part of the wild outside as it was the house. Roots burst through the tiles beneath my feet, climbing up the shattered walls, and down the wooden door frames on either side—one leading back into darkness, the other into the light.
The doors to darkness slammed shut.
I jumped, but a breeze from the broken windowpanes ruffled my hair, like a reassuring sprite sent to soothe my ruffled nerves. No malicious magic here, though the ballroom was steeped in the uncanny and unknown. A thousand Liesls stared back at me from broken mirrored panels, our eyes wide with wonder, our complexion wan with weariness.
Mirrors. Every other reflective surface in the house had been covered, including polished stone and brass and copper. It seemed strange that the Procházkas had not bothered here, but perhaps it had taken too much effort. The ballroom was not much larger than the one in their Viennese Stadthaus, but the mirrors and ceiling height gave it the illusion of a much bigger space.
I explored the panels, lightly touching the cracked silvered glass, and discovered two walls I could slide aside like a screen. To my surprise, I found an array of old and dusty instruments as well as some chairs and music stands—a musicians’ gallery. A clever construction, for the musicians could remain hidden out of sight while they played for the guests, opening up the entirety of the ballroom for dancing. I ran my hands over the violoncello and an old viol, the strings long since rotted away, leaving trails in dust as thick and as white as snow. An ancient virginal with an inverted keyboard sat off to the side, its lid closed, its bench still standing. It was likely similarly rotted and decayed inside, but I couldn’t help but press a few keys despite myself, feeling a sharp pang for the clavichord I had left behind in Vienna.
The notes rang in tune.
I snatched back my hand, my myriad reflections mirroring the gesture out of the corner of my eye. Something else moved beyond the edges of my vision, half a breath later than the rest. Looking around, I searched for a rat or some other vermin scurrying about when I found myself staring into a pair of blue eyes.
Liesl?
“Käthe?” I asked, not daring to breathe.
Our images ran forward, hands outstretched, as though we could grab each other through the glass. Behind me, a thousand Liesls trailed behind, all running for my sister standing in the shadow paths.
Liesl! she said in a voiceless cry. Liesl, where are you?
“I’m here, I’m here,” I said, choking on the salt taste of my tears as they ran down my cheeks.
Where is here? Käthe squinted, as though trying to peer into my world from the mirror.
“Snovin,” I said. “Snovin Hall.”
The Procházkas’ house?
“Yes! I’m here, I am safe. I am well. Where are you?”
Get out of there! Käthe said, her eyes round with terror. You must leave at once!
“How?” I asked. “Have you received my letter? Is there any way you could send help?”
Oh, Liesl, she said. We’ve been trying for weeks to send word. The night of the black-and-white ball, two people were found dead in the gardens, their throats slashed with silver, their lips blue with frost.
“Elf-struck,” I whispered.
Yes, Käthe said. Bramble found me and François and brought us to the Faithful for safety.
“The Faithful? Who is Bramble?”
The Faithful are those who have been touched by the Underground, like you and me. Those with the Sight, or those who have escaped the clutches of the old laws. They are keepers of knowledge, and a family bound by belief, not blood. Oh, Liesl, you must leave. You’re in terrible danger!
My throat tightened. “The Faithful? Der Erlkönig’s own?”
My sister’s reflection shook her head. The Procházkas call themselves Der Erlkönig’s own, but they are not of the Faithful. The Faithful keep watch, but the Procházkas do harm.
“Do harm? How do you mean?”
Do you remember the stories of the young girl they took under their wing? How she disappeared and a young man was found dead on the grounds of their country home?
A cold, sinking feeling settled into my bones, weighing me down with fear. “Yes. Rumors—”
They’re not rumors! Käthe screamed, but no sound escaped her lips. No one knows what they do up there in the remote hills of Bohemia, but they are not to be trusted. That maiden and the youth were not the first. Her name was Adelaide, and she was one of the Faithful.
Adelaide. The Procházkas’ so-called daughter. My fingers went numb.
Bramble has been teaching me of the shadow paths, she went on. But they know, Liesl. They know to cover the mirrors, to hide their faces from the unseen world. They made a terrible sacrifice to the old laws to escape the Wild Hunt.
“What?” I cried. “What did they do?”
Blood of the Faithful, unwillingly given, to seal the barriers between worlds.
“How do you know this?” I clenched my fists with despair. “Who told you?”
Bramble, she said. A changeling.
I no longer felt my heart beating in my chest. “A changeling? Are you sure?”
My sister tore out her hair. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m sure! All that matters is that you and Josef get out of there!
“How? Where do I go? How will you find me?”
You must— She cut herself off abruptly.
“Käthe?”
Oh no, she said, her face pale with fright. He comes.
“Who?”
I can’t stay long, Käthe said. Der Erlkönig will find me. Her expression was hard. Go. Get yourself to the nearest town and follow the poppies.
“The symbol of House Procházka?”
No, she said. The souls of those stolen by the Hunt. The souls of the Faithful. They protect us still, Liesl. They— Her eyes grew wide with panic. I must go.
“Käthe—” But my sister was gone, leaving nothing but the stunned image of my own face staring back at me. “Käthe!”
“Liesl?”
I whirled around. Josef stood behind me, confusion writ across his features.
“Sepperl!”
“Liesl, who were you talking to?” He carried his violin case, as though he had come to the ballroom to play like a musician in the gallery.
“You didn’t—did you see . . . ?” But I couldn’t finish the sentence. Of course he hadn’t. Even now I was beginning to doubt my conversation with my sister, surrounded by static reflections of Josef and myself—skepticism and concern on his face, fear and a crazed expression on mine. I looked like a madwoman, I realized, my hair in disarray, my eyes wild and overlarge on my face. I laughed, and even my laughter sounded insane.
“Perhaps you should have a seat,” Josef said carefully. He set down his violin and pulled forth a chair from the musicians’ gallery. He gently led me to it and sat me down, his touch tentative and unsure, as though I were a nervous filly about to bolt.
“Sepperl,” I said, my voice shaking. “Am I going mad?”
He cocked his head and smoothed the strands of hair away from my face with calloused fingertips. “Does it matter?”
I burst into laughter again, but it sounded more like sobs. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Josef grew still. “Try me,” he said quietly, pulling up another chair.
So I did. I told him of Lorelei Lake, of the shadow paths, the covered mirrors. I told him of the year I spent Underground as the Goblin King’s bride, the slow death and agony of falling in love and knowing it would not last. The slipping away of my senses, the diminishment of all that was good and great in the world. I told him of the Wedding Night Sonata, and why I hadn’t been able to finish it, for the selfish act of my decision to walk away had doomed my austere young man to corruption and the world above to the ravages of the Wild Hunt. I told him and I told him and I told him, until my lips were cracked, my throat was parched, and my words had finally run dry.
My brother did not answer immediately. In the silence that followed my tale, he rose to his feet and began pacing the length of the ballroom. Although his expression was calm, there was an agitation and anger to his footsteps.
“Sepp—”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he interrupted.
“I didn’t know how—” I began, but he cut me off with an angry retort.
“Horseshit.” I flinched. I had never heard my brother swear before, and the word sounded even filthier coming from his lips. “You told Käthe.”
Not all of it, I wanted to say. Not all of it at all. But I had told her enough, and it was more than what I had told Josef.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why her, of all people?”
“Because she had been there,” I said tartly, unexpectedly stung on Käthe’s behalf. “Because she had seen.”
“I’m not talking about the Underground,” he said. “I’m talking about him.”
Him. The Goblin King. I was taken aback, surprised by the vehemence in his tone. The Goblin King was the beginning and the end of my time Underground, yet he was also the least and most magical part of it at once. Compared to the glowing lake, the singing of the Lorelei, the twisting of time and space, the fairy lights, the glittering caverns and halls, our love seemed almost mundane. There had been no grand romantic gestures, no sweeping declarations of feeling, no fighting to be with each other against all odds. We had simply, though not always quietly, broken each other apart and put ourselves back together again. It was not a story in which I thought my brother would be interested.
“What do you mean, Sepp?”
“I mean him,” Josef said again, punctuating the word with an emphatic jab of his bow. “And you.” He pointed the tip of his bow at me, hovering right above my breast like a blade. “You always called me the gardener of your heart,” he said softly. “But you have gone and grown your flowers without me.”
It was then I understood that he had not been hurt by the fact I hadn’t told him about my time Underground; it was that I had not shared with him anything about my feelings as Goblin Queen. We had always bared our souls to each other, our deepest thoughts and darkest emotions, often without speech. My sister had been my confidante through words and actions, but my brother had ever been the keeper of my secrets.
“Oh,” I said. I did not know what else to say. “I’m sorry, Sepperl.”
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you trust me?” he asked, and in his voice, I heard the little boy I had thought I had lost.
I give you back your heart. Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. “I don’t know.”
But I did know. He was no longer first in my heart. Josef and the Goblin King shared the space where my soul lay within my breast, along with Käthe and François and Constanze and Mother. My capacity for love had not diminished; indeed, it had only grown with each person I let in, but the formless, undifferentiated love I had felt in childhood only grew more defined with age and time. There were parts of myself I was willing to share with my sister, parts that were given to my brother, and still other parts that had been claimed by an austere young man.
Josef’s stare was hard. Accusatory. “I think you do.”
He always did know me best.
“What is it you want to hear from me, Sepperl?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “I’m sorry? I’ve already apologized to you.”
“But what is it you’re apologizing for?” he shot back. He lowered his arm, his bow hanging limp by his side. “You didn’t tell me for a reason. That’s why you feel so guilty. You’re hiding something from me, Liesl, and I don’t like that. You and I were always open with one another.”
“Were we?” My eyes strayed to his wrists. His arm twitched, as though he were resisting the urge to cover himself. “Tell me, Sepp, have you always been honest with me?”
He stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
I stood up. “Then you had no right to pry either!”
“Fine!” he exploded. “Fine! What do you want to know? That Master Antonius beat me? That he subjected me to every humiliation under the sun and then some? That he twisted my longing for home, for the Goblin Grove, into a shameful, infantile indulgence? I couldn’t talk to anyone, Liesl. Anyone. I had François to protect me, but he didn’t understand. Couldn’t. How the farther away from home I went, the less I felt whole. The less I felt real. I was a sham of a boy, the husk of a man, an imposter of a human being. It was only when I played your music that I felt any sort of connection to . . . to life.”
Take us far from the Underground and we wither and fade.
I felt my face drain of blood. And Josef noticed.
“What?” he asked. “What is it, Liesl?”
Would it grant him peace of mind, if he knew the truth of what he was? Or would it merely serve to alienate us even further? Would he hate me for not telling him sooner? If Josef resented me for keeping the Goblin King to myself, how much more would he despite me for not giving him a piece of his own history?
“What is it?” he demanded. “What do you know?”
“It’s because,” I whispered, my voice catching on the edges of my emotions. “It’s because you’re a changeling.”
His lips went white. I waited for my brother to say something, to do something—anything—other than stand there. But he was as still and silent as a statue, almost as though he had been replaced again by another entity. I hated myself for the thought.
“Sepp?” I asked in a small voice. “Talk to me, Sepp.”
“How dare you.” My brother did not sound like himself, and for the first time in my life, I felt as though I did not know him.
“Sepp, I—”
“Don’t.” He threw up his hands, his violin and bow still clenched in his fists. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.” I wished the words weren’t so insufficient.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Sepp—”
“Stop calling me that!”
Josef threw aside his instrument, the cherry wood body of his violin clattering across the broken marble floor, the neck snapping off from the rest. I cried out, but the bow followed soon after. “Josef, please—”
“I’m not him!” he cried. “Josef isn’t real! He was never real!” He looked at me with a feral expression, the pupils of his eyes dilating to drown the blue in a depthless black. Like goblin eyes. “Who am I?” A savage cry tore from his throat. “Who am I?”
“Josef, I—”
But before I could tell him, reassure him, reaffirm him, my brother had turned and gone, vanished into the wild.