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 Erlk?nig’s own.”
Der Erlk?nig’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, Fr?ulein.”
I did.
Elf-struck.
a king stands in a grove, hooded and cloaked, a tall, elegant stranger. His back is turned, his face gazing into the formless mist around him, both defiant and sorrowful, as the sound of thundering hooves and the bell-like bays of hunting hounds fill the air.
His features are hidden by shadow, but wisps of feathery-white hair peek out from the depths of his hood, a glint of pale eyes mirroring the strange, depthless light around him. In the distance, shapes begin to coalesce, the passing tatters of fog into banners, mist into cresting waves, into horses’ manes, into men. Men with spears, men with shields, and men with swords. An unholy host.
They are coming, Elisabeth.
The king throws up his arm in a violent gesture, as though shielding himself from attack. The force of the movement knocks back his hood, revealing a face both terrible and beautiful. His skin is stretched tight across his cheekbones and patterns of darkness swirl about his hairline, ears, jaw, and neck, shadows staining the skin there an inky black. The darkness crawls up his throat and around his chin, and on his head, rams’ horns grow from a ragged nest of silver hair.
He is both a man and a monster.
His faded eyes held color once, a mismatched blue and gray-green, but now they are pale, so pale his pupils are but a pinprick in a sea of white. But it is not only the colors of his mismatched gaze that are fading; it is his memories, his manhood, his music. He tries to hold on to them with hands that have changed, hands that were once slender and elegant. A musician’s hands. A violinist’s hands.
Elisabeth.
But these memories slip through his fingers, fingers that are now broken, mangled, and strange. His nails are blackened into claws, and there is an extra joint in each finger that had not been there before. He can no longer remember the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin, the scent of her hair, only the smallest snippet of song. A melody, a tune. He hums it to keep sane, to keep human.
What are monsters but mortals corrupted?
The clatter of hooves grows louder, along with the clang of steel and the crack of the whip.
Don’t look, don’t look. Don’t look or you shall go mad.
The king holds his hands before him and covers his face. The host surrounds him, both there and not there. A dangerous company. A wild hunt.
Her name, they say, their voice as one.
The king shakes his head. To give her name to the old laws would be to give up the last of the man he had been, so he swallows it down, feeling it warm the space where his beating heart used to be. He had made her a promise.
Her name, the host repeats.
Still he holds it close, refusing to yield. He will pay the price. He will bear the cost.
The host does not ask a third time. A snap, a lash, and the king throws his head back in a wordless roar of pain. His eyes go pure white, the inky shadows staining his skin, consuming it utterly. The rams’ horns atop his head grow twisted, and his face stretches in an expression of pure, monstrous menace. He climbs atop a stallion, which rears and screams in a hellish cry, its flaming eyes two stars in a night sky. Then he turns and bolts off into the heavens, to claim his own—Der Erlk?nig’s own—and bear them back to the Underground and the old laws.
And as he rides, his heart still beats her name.
Elisabeth. Elisabeth. Elisabeth.
THE USE OF RUNNING
i had been sent home with a measure of salt, enough to last us through the month, if we didn’t let Constanze get her hands on it. And yet the old rector’s tale of Magda, the old laws, and the unholy host haunted me on my way back to the inn, ghostly hoofbeats thudding in my ears. Snippets of story floated across the surface of my mind, and I tried to gather them into something I could hold. When wisps of clouds blew themselves across the face of the moon, Constanze used to say they were the souls of the departed, joining the eternal hunt in the sky. What became of the stolen? What became of my great aunt? I thought of the circle of alder trees we called the Goblin Grove, the suggestive shapes of the trunks and branches, like limbs frozen in an eternal dance.
The shivers that wracked my body had nothing to do with the icy wind blowing through my cloak.
They say the Hunt rides abroad when there is an imbalance between the Underground and the land of the living.
I had crossed the barrier between worlds, had walked away from the Goblin King and my vows last summer. Had my leaving caused a rip in the fabric of the world, allowing the spirits and ghouls and denizens of the Underground to escape? Was I in danger from the Wild Hunt?
My hands were full of salt, but I felt the weight of the Goblin King’s ring against my chest, bouncing with every step like the beating of my heart. If I had upset the ancient balance, then what was his promise worth?