in a house of the Faithful sat a boy and a girl, one dark, one fair. They had traveled long and hard over hill and dale before settling down and finding a home among friends. Since their flight from Vienna, the changeling Bramble had introduced them to an underworld of actors and artists, musicians and misfits, a family bound not by blood, but loyalty. Through opera houses and theater halls, Käthe and François found work and friendship playing the fortepiano for the singers and sewing costumes for the actors.
They had escaped the Hunt.
Bramble had been careful to avoid the places where the barriers between worlds were thin, where there were no sacred spaces, following the poppies that led them to safety. If the audience found it odd that troupe members wore pouches of salt about their neck and iron keys in their pockets, then they chalked it up to the foibles and eccentricities of the creative mind.
Touched in the head, they would cluck and shake their heads. Strange. Queer. Wild.
The troubadours wore the badges with pride.
So did Käthe and François.
They were housed, they were clothed, they were fed, and they were even happy, insofar as they could be happy with constant anxiety gnawing at their bones. Others marveled at their productivity and work ethic, but both François and Käthe knew that the best and most efficient way to keep worry at bay was mindless repetition.
So he practiced his songs while she perfected her seams, all the while pretending not to notice the growing shadow of fear for Liesl and Josef that hovered over them.
“Play it again,” Käthe said. “Play that song for me.”
The girl was tone-deaf, but François knew which piece she wanted to hear. Der Erlkönig, composed by her sister, and performed with such exquisite skill by her brother. Der Erlkönig was the only time François ever heard Josef’s playing sound weighty and down to earth, not ethereal, otherworldly, or transcendent. Performing Liesl’s music was the only time he had ever heard his beloved’s playing sound human.
Sound whole.
At first the members of the theater troupe with whom he and Käthe worked and traveled had been bemused by the piece.
I’ve never heard anything like this, said a troubadour.
Catchy, though, said the impresario. Brings to mind a story.
There was a story, but it was not theirs to tell. Käthe and François both knew it belonged to their sister and beloved, neither of whom could be found, despite the Faithful’s best efforts.
It had been weeks since they had managed to reach out to Liesl through the shadow paths, weeks since they had tried to get her word about the danger she and Josef were in. Every night Käthe lit a candle before the dressing room mirror with a bath of salt water and an iron bell beside, but every morning the reflection remained empty of anything but the world in which they lived: chaotic, frenetic, mundane.
Then one morning, the bell rang.
Rehearsals for the latest play had been a disaster, with the playwright adding new lines every third scene while the composer tore out his hair and drank at having to add more bars of music to accommodate the changes. Bramble and Käthe ran back and forth between the actors, dropping pins and ribbons in their wake as they tried to finish the costumes before opening night, while François feverishly studied the new music as the pages were being rushed to him. In the midst of tumult and disorder of opening night, the ringing of the bell had been lost.
It wasn’t until François returned to the dressing rooms for an older draft of the score the playwright had decided he preferred that he noticed the change in the mirror.
“Käthe!” he called. “Käthe, come quick!”
It was the excitement and astonishment in François’s voice that brought her running more than his shouts.
“What?” she cried. “What is it?”
He pointed to the reflection, which showed not the dressing room, but a chamber of roots and rock. Where mannequins stood half-dressed and haphazard around them, weathered and petrified trees were draped with cobwebby lace and rotten silk. Where tables and benches and chairs sat in the world above, the mirror showed troves of gold, silver, and gemstones, a veritable goblin’s hoard of treasure. The only things to remain the same in the reflection as in reality were the bath of salt water, the bell, and the candle, along with Käthe’s and François’s startled faces.
In the mirror, they watched as the shadow Käthe leaned down and picked up something from the bath and dropped it into her apron pocket. The real Käthe reached into her own apron and withdrew a silver ring.
She gave a sharp gasp. “This is Liesl’s!”
The ring in Käthe’s palm was tarnished with age and wear, wrought into the shape of a running wolf with two mismatched gems for eyes.
“A message from the old laws,” said Bramble from the entryway.
Both turned to face the changeling, who had a soft smile on his homely face.
“What does it mean?” François asked.
“It means, Herr Darkling,” Bramble said, “that all is not as hopeless as we feared.”
“What do I do?” Käthe asked. “How do I help my sister?”
Bramble smiled. “Keep it. Safe, sound, and secret. It was given to your care for a reason. You are her lighthouse in the dark, Fräulein, her bulwark against the tide. Be the anchor that brings her back to herself, for without you, she is adrift.”
The girl and boy met each other’s eyes, as the drumming of spectral horse hooves in the distance faded into the tapping of dancing feet upon the stage, as the audience ooed and ahhed at the poppies sprouting between the boards before them like magic. François placed his hand over Käthe’s, enclosing Liesl’s ring between their fingers, as their lips moved together in a prayer for their sister and their beloved.
Keep them safe. Keep them sound. Keep them secret.