THE MAD, THE FEARFUL, THE FAITHFUL
there was no more salt to be had.
The food was bland and the guests complained, but we had neither the time, the funds, nor the credit to replenish the stores Constanze had ruined. Still, we managed for a while yet, but when Käthe privately told me that there wasn’t even enough salt for baking, I knew things had become quite dire.
“What do we do?” my sister whispered as we took stock of the stores in the cellar. We had enough flour, root vegetables, and cured meats to carry us over for the next few weeks, but little else. Ever since Papa died, the butchers, the bakers, and the brewers of town had been unwilling to extend his widow and daughters the same credit, and demanded payment in hand.
“I don’t know.” I rubbed at my temples, trying to soothe away a headache growing there. I had not slept well, troubled by dreams I could not remember upon waking. Images melted away like snowflakes when I opened my eyes, but unease remained like a bitter chill long after I had risen. “Are you sure the money is quite gone?”
Käthe fixed me with an exasperated look. I knew as well as she that our coffers were long since gathering dust. The inn held on to profit like a sieve held on to water.
“Perhaps we can ask Hans if we could borrow some salt,” I suggested.
Käthe stiffened. Ever since my sister had ended their betrothal, we had seen little of our erstwhile family friend. He had since married a distant cousin from Munich, and they were expecting a babe come next spring. No, we could not ask Hans. Not anymore.
“What of . . . what of the parish?” Käthe said slowly. “Surely someone at the church could help us.”
I frowned. “You mean accepting charity?”
My sister fell silent. “What other choice do we have?” she said gently.
“We’re not paupers!”
“Yet.” Although her voice was soft, I felt the words like an arrow to my chest.
“Josef could—” But I did not finish the sentence.
“Josef could what?” Käthe’s eyes flashed. “Send us money? How? By what means?” She shook her head. “He has no position, no job, and no master now. We can’t afford to bring him home, nor can we afford to go to him. Our brother is stranded, Liesl, just like us.”
Sepperl. My heart tightened with pain at the thought of my brother so far away. Was he alone? Afraid? Lost? Hurt? Josef was fragile, frightened, and friendless but for François. What would happen to them both without Master Antonius’s protection? Perhaps I could find a way to get to them. To Vienna. Shed our names, our pasts, and start anew. Find jobs. Play music.
“Liesl.”
The ideas came one after another, bubbling up to the surface of my mind faster and faster, fizzing my blood with possibilities. After all, did we not have gifts? Were we not talented? Perhaps I could find work as a music teacher. Perhaps my brother would find a position in a nobleman’s orchestra. Why struggle to keep our heads above water when the present was dragging us down to debtor’s prison?
“Liesl.”
My mind was on boil, the thoughts drifting into steam. We could cut ourselves free and float away. Burn down the inn, dance in the embers, revel in the ashes. We could, we could, we could—
“Ow!” I looked up, startled. Käthe had pinched me. “What on earth was that for?”
Instead of spite, there was an expression of worry on my sister’s face. “Liesl, have you heard a single word I’ve said?”
I blinked rapidly. “Yes. Going to the church. Accepting God’s charity.”
She studied me. “It’s just . . . you had a strange look in your eye, is all.”
“Oh.” I absently rubbed at the red pinch mark on my arm, trying to rally my thoughts into some semblance of order. “Well, you can’t blame me for being a little reluctant to go begging.”
Käthe’s lips tightened. “We can’t feed ourselves on pride, Liesl.”
As loath as I was to admit it, she was right. For a long time, we had managed on our creditors’ goodwill and Papa’s promises to pay. Anything remotely valuable we had owned had disappeared into Herr Kassl’s pawn shop to cover our debts, and we had nothing left to give. The weight of the Goblin King’s ring lay heavy on my breast, strung on a simple length of twine. Whatever the ring’s true value, it was worth infinitely more to me. My austere young man had given it to me when we made our vows, and again when we broke them. The ring was a symbol of the Goblin King’s power, but more than that, it was a promise that his love was greater than the old laws. One could not place a price on a promise.
“I can go if you’d like,” my sister offered. “I can speak with the priest.”
The memory of the church steps lined with salt rose suddenly in my mind. I remembered then that the rector was the oldest person in our village—the oldest save for Constanze, perhaps. A man of the church, but I suspected he was also a brethren of the old faith.
“No, I’ll go,” I said quickly. “I’ll speak with the rector.”
“The rector?” Käthe asked, surprised. “That creepy old bat?”
“Yes.” Dimly, I recalled seeing the rector leaving leftover communion wafers and wine out on the back steps of the church when I was a child. For the fair folk, he had said. Our little secret, Fräulein. I was certain he was one of Der Erlkönig’s own.
Käthe looked skeptical. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“All right,” she sighed. “I’ll let Mother know.”
I nodded. “Wish me luck.”
“It’s not luck we need,” my sister said grimly. “It’s a miracle.”
* * *
The village seemed deserted when I arrived. While the unseasonal cold was keeping most people indoors, the town seemed diminished. Chastened. There was hardly anyone out and about their business, and what few folk I did meet kept their heads down and their gaze averted. There was a touch of tension in all their faces, an anxiety that seemed to permeate the air and make it difficult to breathe. I told myself this wasn’t strange; after all, we had just buried several members of the town, lost to that mysterious plague.
Elf-struck, the voices of the elders whispered in my mind.
I shook off my unease and wrapped my red cloak tighter about me.
The village church stood on the eastern edge of town, its western façade opening directly onto the market square. It was easily recognizable by its crooked belfry, built and rebuilt over the years. Our little town had never been big or grand enough to warrant a more beautiful place of worship; its whitewashed walls were plain and dirty, the nave and altar unadorned. It was, as the stories went, the oldest structure around for miles, built when Charlemagne was still a pagan king.
The church doors were closed between services, but unlocked, open to any pilgrim in search of solace. I had never been much for grace or God, for if I had any holy place, it was the Goblin Grove. I gripped the ring at my throat, feeling a bit as though I were about to do something illicit or naughty. I stared at the wooden doors before me, noticing for the first time that the panels on its face were covered with carvings. They were odd, the figures misshapen and bent, but the details lovingly and intricately carved. My eye fell on the bottom right panel, which depicted a tall, thin figure with curling ram’s horns growing from his head standing in a field of flowers. Roses? Poppies? The . . . devil? I squinted. Something seemed to be scratched along the edges, less purposeful than the rest. Writing? A message?
I knelt for a closer look. There, in Gothic script, were the words: Ich bin der umgedrehte Mann.
I am the inside-out man.
Foreboding ran its icy finger down my spine. I shivered, the hairs standing up along my arms.
“The stranger comes, the flowers leave.”
I jumped, tripping on the edge of my skirt with a startled yelp. The old rector stood beside me, popped up out of nowhere like a toadstool after spring rain. I recognized him by the tufts of wispy cotton that patched his crown and his large, oversized black robes. He was a familiar sight in these parts, usually perched on the steps of the church like a strange little gargoyle, peering at passersby from beneath bushy white brows.
“I’m s-sorry?”
“The inscription. That’s what it says. The stranger comes, the flowers leave.” The rector pointed to panel before me, where the phrase HOSTIS VENIT FLORES DISCEDUNT was carved in Roman letters.
Gone was the horned figure, and in its place was a young man with hands outstretched. A corona haloed his head, while around him lambs frolicked and played. An image of our Lord and Savior, not the devil. Not Der Erlkönig.
I wasn’t going mad. I wasn’t.
I wasn’t. “I—I see,” I stammered.
The rector’s dark eyes glittered. Up close, I could see that cottony hair sprouted from his ears, along his jaw, and the tip of his chin, giving him the appearance of a new-hatched chick. “Do you? You see what is before you, but can you see past the nose on your own face?”
“Beg pardon?” Bewildered and self-conscious, my hand flew up to cover my nose.
But he seemed to take no notice. “You learn much by reading the old histories,” he continued. The old rector maintained the church register, recording the births, marriages, and deaths of the town. “You begin to see patterns. Cycles. You understand that what has come before will come again.”
I had no response to such a cryptic statement, so I held my tongue. I was beginning to regret my visit to town.
“But I don’t imagine you are here to study the old histories, Fräulein,” the rector said with a wry smile.
“I, er, no.” My fingers twisted in the folds of my apron and I steeled myself to ask. To beg. “I have come . . . I have come to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor?” Those tufty cotton-white brows lifted with interest. “What can the house of God do for you, my child?”
I kept my eyes on my feet. “Our—our stores of salt are . . . depleted, Herr Rektor, and I—I would be most grateful for your assistance . . . and your charity.” My angry flush of shame heated the air around my cheeks.
“Ah.” The old man’s voice was neutral and expressionless, but I dared not meet his gaze. “Is it Constanze?”
The question startled me into looking at him. His dark eyes were unreadable, but I sensed a hint of pity in his features. Pity . . . and sympathy.
“Not precisely,” I said carefully. “But she is, in a manner of speaking, involved.”
“Let me guess. She was trying to protect herself from the Wild Hunt.”
I stared at the line of white crystals at my feet. “Yes,” I whispered.
The old rector sighed and shook his head. “Come with me, Fräulein.” He turned and led me to the north side of the church. Unlocking a small door, he held it open and bade me enter. I took care not to disturb the unbroken line of salt on the threshold, stepping into the dimly lit transept.
“Follow me.”
I flinched at the feel of his dry, spindly fingers on my right elbow, but the rector carefully guided me down a small flight of steps as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. At the foot of the stairs, he unlocked yet another door and gestured inside. I frowned, wondering where we were headed. The church cellars?
The door slammed shut behind me, sealing me in complete darkness. I thought of stories of maidens and lovers buried alive in crypts and catacombs, and the creeping sensation of having been locked in a tomb crept up and around my throat.
“Herr Rektor—” I began.
A snap, and then a flame blazed to life, hovering in midair before me like a fairy light. I squinted against the brightness and saw the old rector with a lantern in hand, although I could not guess how he had lit it so quickly with no taper or candle to kindle it.
“We are in the old vestry,” he said in answer to my unasked question. “Priests used to get robed in here before coming up to the chancel through there.” He gestured toward a door on the far side with a tilt of his head. “But Father Abelard prefers to dress in the choir. Says he finds it unsettling down here.”
I found myself rather sympathetic to our priest. “What are we doing here?” I asked.
“We discovered that our cellar had flooded during that brief period of spring warmth last week, so we moved our stores here.”
He cast his light over the space, which was much larger than I had thought. In addition to the barrels of foodstuffs brought up from their cellars, the room was stocked with several shelves, all laden with reams upon reams of dusty paper, parchment, and portfolios. It was only then that I realized that these were the records and history of our little backwoods village.
“Ah yes, my life’s work.” The flickering light of the lantern cast deep shadows, carving strange shapes into the planes of the old man’s face. His nose grew long and sharp, his lips pinched and thin. His cheekbones protruded painfully, giving him a rictus grin. “I have traced the descent of every man, woman, and child in this town,” he said proudly. “The fruits grown from the bed of blood and seed from whence this village had sprung. But there are some families that disappear into time. Stories with beginnings and middles, but no ends.”
“Such things happen in a village as small as ours,” I said. “Mothers, sons, fathers, daughters, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors—over time we all become hopelessly tangled.”
The rector shrugged. “Perhaps. But there are mysteries not even I can unravel. Lives and lines cut off in the middle, vanished, unfinished. Yours is one such family, Fräulein.”
I shot him a sharp look. “Excuse me?”
He smiled, showing the tips of his yellowed teeth. “Did Constanze ever tell you about her sister, Magda?”
Magda. I thought of my grandmother calling Käthe by that name the other night. Mother had dismissed it as yet another sign of Constanze’s deteriorating mind, but I had not known she had had a sister. “No,” I said slowly. “But I have heard the name.”
“Hmmm.” The rector lifted the lantern to a shelf a few inches above his head. He ran his fingers along the spines of years bound in calfskin leather, searching for the right book, the right generation. His fingernails were overgrown and black with dirt and ink. “Ah, here we are.”
He pulled down an enormous tome, nearly as large as he, setting it on the desk with a dusty slam. The book immediately fell open to a page, the leaves settling down on either side of a well-worn seam in the spine. The rector held the lantern aloft and pointed at an entry in the middle with a long, clawed finger.
MARIA MAGDALENA HELOISE GABOR
Magda. Constanze’s sister. My grandmother had been a Gabor before she married.
“Your grandmother’s family was one of the oldest, if not necessarily the most respectable,” the old man said. I bristled. I might not have been a Gabor, but the slight still stung. “Strange and queer, the lot of them. Elf-touched, they were called in the old days.”
I frowned. “Elf-touched?”
The rector’s yellow smile slowly spread wider across his face. “The mad, the fearful, the faithful. Those who dwell with one foot in the Underground and another in the world above.”
All the hairs rose at the back of my neck. There is madness in her bloodline. But was it madness? Or an unseen connection to something greater, something beyond mortal ken? Many of the beautiful and broken branches of my family tree were touched with genius, a drive to create that turned them inside out and upside down. There was my great-great-great-uncle Ernst, a talented woodcarver and carpenter, whose unearthly and transformative figurines were deemed heretical and destroyed. They still told stories of my distant cousin Annabel, whose poetic and twisted ways of speech cast her first as a prophet, and then a witch.
And then there was Papa. And Josef.
And me. Guilt throbbed in me at the thought of the klavier in my bedroom, untouched and unplayed since I had returned from the Underground.
“Magda was the youngest of Eleazor and Maria Gabor’s children,” the rector went on, handing the tome over to me to read. I staggered under its unexpected weight, heavy with heritage and history. “There were three: Bettina, Constanze, and Magda.”
Bettina. I understood better now why my grandmother had called me that. “What happened?”
He gestured to the book before me with his chin. Turning the pages, I moved back and forward in time, the parchment growing thinner with age. Agnes, Friedrich, Sebastian, Ignaz, Melchior, Ilse, Helena, generations upon generations of Constanze’s family. My family. Entire lives sprouted, then withered away beneath my fingers. They were born, got married, had children, died. All recorded in an impersonal hand.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What am I looking for?”
The rector’s dark eyes bored into mine. “The ending. Magda’s ending.”
Frowning, I returned to the book. Babies were born and, if they were lucky, grew old. Some never made it out of infancy; others lived to see several generations of their own children predecease them. There was no rhyme or reason but chance. I didn’t understand why Magda’s ending was so important.
Until I couldn’t find it.
Constanze and Bettina’s lives were well-recorded: their births and baptism, their marriages, their children. Bettina’s story seemed to end with her marriage to Ansel Bergman, but Constanze’s continued on through her children: Johannes, Christoph, Constanze, another Constanze, Georg, another Constanze, Josef, and Franz. Every single one of my aunts and uncles had their deaths written alongside their births, indelibly inked into history.
But not Magda.
I went backward and forward in time, searching for an exit, an ending. But no matter where I looked, there was no further sign of Magda, no marriages, no children, not even a death. Her life was unfinished, and if it weren’t for the fact of her birth, recorded by the rector several decades before, she might have never existed.
“There is—there is no ending,” I whispered.
The rector folded his hands into his voluminous sleeves. “Yes,” he said simply.
“Do you know what happened to her? Did she die? Move away? People don’t just . . . disappear.” I looked up from the tome, spooked and unsettled. “Do they?”
“People don’t disappear, but their stories become forgotten,” he said in a soft voice. “It is only the faithful who remember.”
“And you remember.”
The rector nodded his head. “She was taken. Stolen.” He swallowed. “By the Wild Hunt.”
The world narrowed to a single point of focus before me, the small, steady light of the lantern flame. All else was dark, and I felt myself falling, spiraling down, down, down into the abyss of fear. I tried to recall everything I knew of the Wild Hunt—what they were, who they were, and why they rode abroad—but a cold void of anxiety spun at the heart of my swirling mind. My hand went to the ring at my throat, feeling the comforting bite of the wolf’s head in my palm.
“How?” I croaked. “Why?”
It was a long moment before the rector replied. “No two stories of the unholy host agree. It is said their appearance presages some unspeakable catastrophe: a plague, a war, or even”—he flicked his gaze at my clenched fist—“the end of the world.”
I tightened my grip on the Goblin King’s ring.
“Others say the Hunt rides abroad when there is an imbalance between heaven and hell, between the Underground and the land of the living, sweeping through the world above to claim what is rightfully theirs. The old laws made flesh: given steel and teeth and hounds to reap what they are owed.”
The void at the heart of me was threatening to engulf me whole. “A sacrifice,” I said hoarsely. “The life of a maiden.”
To my surprise, he gave a dismissive snort. “And what sort of sacrifice would a maiden’s life be? A heartbeat? A breath? A touch?”
Think you your beating heart the greatest gift you could give? No, mortal, your heartbeat is but the least and last.
“Then what . . .” But I could not finish. Then what was my sacrifice for? What was his? What was the price to be paid by my austere young man for letting me walk away?
“Oh, child,” the rector said with a sigh. “Life is not the body”—he tapped my hand, the one curled around the Goblin King’s ring—“but the soul.”
“I don’t—I don’t—”
“You don’t understand?” He shook his head. “The queer, the wild, the strange, the elf-touched—they are said to belong to the Goblin King. Their gifts are fruits of the Underground, their genius, their passion, their obsession, their art. They belong to him, for they are Der Erlkönig’s own.”
Der Erlkönig’s own. It was what Constanze had always called us, me and Josef, but I had always thought she meant those of us who believed in the Underground.
“And Magda was taken because of her . . . gifts?”
The rector’s face was grim. “Magda was taken because she believed. It is madness to bear witness to the Hunt, and she was already mad.”
A sudden, chilling thought crossed my mind. “What happens to those who do not believe?”
Through the haze of the flickering lantern light, our gazes met. “I think you know, Fräulein.”
I did.
Elf-struck.