HE IS FOR DER ERLKÖNIG NOW
“fräulein? Fräulein!”
I felt a pair of hands upon my shoulders, and I hissed and lashed out like a panicked cat. I struck something soft, and a muffled grunt filled my ear as strong hands wrapped themselves about my wrists.
“Fräulein?” the voice repeated, holding my flailing limbs close. “My dear, it’s all right, you’re fine. You’re safe.” The words repeated themselves in a shushing murmur, a soothing, repetitive sound that pulled all my disparate parts back to myself.
Through my haze of fear and madness, a face came into focus. Round, rosy cheeks, black button-bright eyes, a startled shock of frizzy, iron-gray whispers framing a concerned mouth.
The Count.
“Nina! Bring the young lady something to drink. Tea, perhaps, or something stronger.”
I noticed the housekeeper standing behind my host with a worried expression on her broad face. Her dark eyes widened at the sight of blood running down the broken mirrored panels, and her hands went up to cover her mouth with her apron.
“Nina!” The Count repeated his request in Bohemian, and the housekeeper snapped to attention. She bobbed a quick curtsy and bustled out of the room as fast as her legs could carry her.
“Are you all right?” The Count peered into my face, taking in my red-blotched cheeks, my swollen eyes, and unkempt hair. He then took in the ripped bodice, the tattered skirts, my general state of deshabille and the angry red welts upon my arms. “What happened?”
I had no defenses left, no strength to muster, no dignity to lose. But even so, I would have kept my mouth shut and my madness quiet were it not for the gentle sympathy and understanding in my host’s expression. Nothing crumbled my armor faster than compassion and kindness, and soon every last detail of my days came spilling out. The chink in my defenses became a breach, I was open and vulnerable, and I did not care. The Count listened without saying a word to me ramble incoherently about my fight with Josef; my guilt and reckless disregard for anything other than my worthless, selfish self; my grudging longing for the Goblin King; my fears of becoming a burden, for who could bear the weight of my disgusting soul with all its attendant madness and mania? I told him everything and nothing, unable to corral my thoughts into a semblance of order.
Presently, Nina returned with a tray laden with things for tea and a small philter of a dark, brownish liquid. The Count led me back to the bench beside the virginal and dismissed the housekeeper, pouring me a cup of tea himself.
“What is that?” I asked, stopping him before he could tilt the vial of unknown solution into the brew.
“Laudanum,” the Count said. At my terrified expression, he set down the vial and handed me my tea untouched. “I mean no harm, Fräulein, I swear to you upon my brother Ludvik’s life.”
I paused in sipping my drink. “Your brother?”
He nodded. “Aye. My twin brother. I was the elder by seven minutes.”
I set down my cup. There was a sadness in the Count’s eyes and a resignation in his tone, although his shoulders seemed tight with unexpressed tension. He was an older sibling. I felt our shared sense of responsibility and resentment as eldest children.
Then I frowned. “Was?”
It was a moment before the Count understood my question. “Oh.” He went to pour himself some tea, but Nina had brought only one set. He swirled the laudanum between his fingers. “Yes. He died when we were twenty years old.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
The Count nodded unhappily. “You understand, Fräulein. How you both chafe at and embrace the obligation thrust upon you. You take it upon yourself to safeguard the lives and hearts of your younger siblings, however ungrateful they might be. Although Ludvik was my twin, I was firstborn, still expected to become the next Count Procházka und zu Snovin upon our father’s death. Therefore, it was my duty to watch over him.”
I picked my cup back up and carefully took a small sip of tea. It was chamomile, and only chamomile. I continued sipping.
“I failed.” The Count contemplated the tincture of opium in his hand. “I failed in my duty, and it was Ludvik who paid the price.”
Like Josef. I reached out to touch the Count’s sleeve. He did not notice me.
“He was . . . special, my brother,” he continued slowly. “Elf-touched, as they would have said in the old days. Sharp-eyed and present one moment, raving and oblivious the next. He could see goblins and fairies and elves, and I always envied him that gift. Although my family had ever been the watchdogs standing guard at the threshold between the Underground and the world above, very few of the Procházkas had—if ever—been a part of the magic.”
“What do you mean?”
The Count opened the philter of laudanum. I eyed it suspiciously, but my host placed the vial to his lips and drank. I started, wondering if I should stop him, if he was poisoning himself. I was no physician, but I did not think one could drink so much without poisoning oneself. Wiping his lips, the Count put the empty vial in his pocket and turned to me, his dark eyes large and dilated, lambent and shining as though wet with belladonna.
“We are the ordinary and the mundane,” he said. “Perhaps by design, or perhaps by fate. Perhaps it takes a certain sort of mind to withstand the maddening uncanniness of Snovin, but my family have ever and always been seneschals and stewards to the line of the first Goblin Queen.”
“The brave maiden,” I said.
His lips twisted into a smile of self-loathing. “Is that what you call her? A strange notion of bravery you must have, Fräulein. If by bravery, you mean butchery, then I might be inclined to agree with you.”
Somehow I didn’t think he was speaking of his wife’s illustrious forebear.
“Do you know what it takes to escape the old laws for good?” the Count asked. He forced the words through sticky lips, as though fighting his own body’s impulse to silence him.
“The Countess said there is an ancient protection in her bloodline,” I said slowly. Drops of nervousness were trickling down my spine, and I eyed the ballroom exits, wondering if I should call for Nina now. “Because of what the first Goblin Queen did when she walked away.” I frowned. “But she never did say what that was.”
And now I did not trust that she ever would.
The Count laughed, but the sound was bitter, raw. “Oh, child,” he said, and there was genuine pity in his voice. “Nothing comes for free. A life for a life. Death for spring. You know this.”
I did. The trickle of nervousness became a stream of fear. I remembered my conversation with the Countess on our excursion to the old monastery, of how the old laws had punished the first Goblin King for letting her go. Of how the brave maiden had returned Underground to save him by finding his name and setting him free. I thought of my own austere young man, of those eyes I knew so well becoming lost to cold and night and frost. Even if I did find his name and unlock his soul, there was the man I loved and the monster I craved. I did not know how to free one without losing the other.
“Ludvik was the good twin,” the Count said suddenly. I was surprised by this sudden turn in conversation. “The good twin, and pure. There were those who called him elf-touched, and those meaner still who called him simple. Thickheaded. Mad.”
I did not like where the story was headed, but my host continued without a second glance in my direction, eyes fixed straight ahead, staring at something not before him, but within him.
“There were rather more of us in the old days,” he said. “Der Erlkönig’s own, that is. But science and reason have thinned our ranks, and now only the mad, the fearful, and the faithful remain. Even my own family, despite their sacred charge to safeguard the barriers between worlds, had let Snovin fall to ruin and decay. There was no one else, you see. No one else to pay the price.”
“What price?”
He gave me a hard look despite the laudanum coursing through his veins. Despite the opium dreams and the poppy milk, the Count was still present, still clearheaded, still aware. Too aware. I was beginning to understand why it was he partook of the drug. The weight of belief was too much to bear alone.
“Innocent blood.”
I recoiled. “What?”
A slow, syrupy smile began to spread across the Count’s face like blood through water. “Elena told you of ancient protections in her bloodline. Blood is part of it, yes. But not hers. The Wild Hunt and the old laws still find her an aberration, a mistake. The first Goblin Queen cheated them not only of a proper sacrifice, but Der Erlkönig as well. As punishment, they would hound her and her kin to the ends of time, lest she pay in blood.”
Realization was dawning within me, an inevitable, inexorable revelation I did not want to face. Not yet. Not yet.
“Whose blood?” I whispered.
The Count pulled the philter of laudanum from his pocket, although it was empty. He gazed longingly at it, searching for the oblivion that had not yet come. “It was easier then,” he murmured. “Easier when there were still those who left out gifts of bread and milk for the goblins and fairy kind. Easier when superstition ruled and science did not. The Faithful were easy prey.”
With growing horror, I thought of Käthe’s warning words in the mirror. Blood of the Faithful, unwillingly given, to seal the barrier between worlds.
I thought of the poppy field growing outside on the grounds of Snovin Hall. The souls of those stolen by the Hunt, my sister had said. The souls of the Faithful.
The souls of the sacrificed.
“But as time went on, the Faithful became wise to our ways,” the Count went on. “And they went underground. Not,” he said with a chuckle, “to the realm of the Goblin King, but to ground. Into foxholes, through the shadow paths, and into darkness. And so,” he said, his voice thin, “we turned to our own.”
My blood ran cold. “Ludvik?”
His dilated eyes met mine. “He was Der Erlkönig’s own, after all.”
I gasped, my hands flying up to cover my mouth. Do you remember the stories of the young girl they took under their wing?
“And . . . Adelaide?” I swallowed hard. “The girl who died . . . was she truly your daughter?”
The Count turned the empty vial over and over in his hand. He could not answer, and that was answer enough.
“How did she die?” I asked.
“She drowned,” the Count whispered. “In Lorelei Lake. They always return, you know. The changelings.”
I was startled. “Changelings?”
He nodded his head. “She was such a beautiful child,” he crooned to himself. “Such a beautiful baby. Here, and gone. A mayfly. We tried to keep her safe, Elena and I. We tried to keep her whole. But in the end, she wanted to return home.”
Josef.
“I must go,” I said, rising to my feet in a panic. “I must find my brother. I must save Josef.”
“There is nothing you can do for him,” the Count said sadly to my fleeing back. “He is for Der Erlkönig now.”