The night was clear as I made my way into the heart of the wood.
It had rained earlier that day, and a few clouds lingered, but the bright, full face of the moon shone down on me, touching the forest with silver frost. But I would have been able to find my way to the Goblin Grove even if the night had been as black as pitch. The woods and the legends surrounding it were etched into my bones, a map of my soul.
The walk was both longer and shorter than I remembered. The distance from grove to inn seemed to have shortened, but the time it took to reach it seemed to have grown. I came upon the Goblin Grove almost by surprise, the circular ring of twelve alder trees jumping out of the shadows like children playing peekaboo. I hesitated on the edges of the grove. The last time I stood here, I had crossed the barrier between worlds. The Goblin Grove was one of the few places left where the Underground and the world above existed together, a sacred space made holy by the old laws and my memories. I stood on the edge, waiting for a sense of trespass to overcome me as I crossed from one world back to the next.
It did not come.
I entered and sat down with my back against a tree, wrapping my cloak tighter about me.
“Ah, mein Herr,” I said softly to the night. “I am here. I am here at last.”
There was no answer. Even the forest was unwontedly quiet, without its usual sense of patient waiting. I felt awkward sitting here in the dark, like a child who had left home, only to return to find it not as they remembered. The grove was like and not like how I remembered it, but it wasn’t the minute and minuscule failings of memory that made it different; it was the emptiness.
I was alone.
For a moment, I considered going back, returning to the inn where it was warm, where it was bright, where it was safe. But I had promised my sister I would make peace, even if I did not know how. Even if there was no one to hear me.
“I am leaving for Vienna on the morrow,” I said. “I am leaving the Goblin Grove behind.”
I couldn’t help but pause to wait for a reply, even though I knew not to expect it. I wasn’t talking to myself; I was having a conversation, even if I was the only one participating.
“I should be happy. I am happy. I have always wanted to go to Vienna. I have always wanted to see the world beyond our little corner of Bavaria.”
It was getting easier now to speak as though to an audience and not myself. I wondered then if I wanted the Goblin King to respond, or if I merely wanted to leave my heart here before him, before the old laws.
“Is it not what you taught me, mein Herr? To love myself first instead of last?” My words hung before me in a cloud of mist. My wistfulness turned breath, my longing made visible. I was growing colder by the minute, the damp chill seeping through my cloak and into my bones. “Are you not happy for me?”
Again, no response. His absence was nearly a presence, a noticeable, unavoidable void. I wanted to close that void, to seal that abyss, and heal the fractures in my heart.
“I know what you would say,” I said. “Go forth and live, Elisabeth. Live and forget about me.” I heard his voice in my memory, a soft, expressive baritone as rich and warm as a bassoon. Or was it a powerful tenor, as sharp and clear as a clarionet? Time had blurred the details and edges of the Goblin King, turning him from a man back into a myth, no matter how hard I had tried to hold on. To remember.
“Forgetting is easy,” I whispered to the empty air. “Easier than I thought. Easier than I want to admit. Even now the exact colors of your eyes are no longer clear to me, mein Herr.”
I ran my fingers over the still-frozen ground. “But living?” There was nothing beneath my feet or fingers. No sense of thaw, no sleeping green waiting to burst forth. Dead, hollow, lifeless. “Living is hard. You didn’t tell me it would be so hard, mein Herr. You didn’t say a word.”
My limbs were growing numb from the chill, so I got back to my feet, stamping away the myriad prickling needles in my skin. I began to pace throughout the Goblin Grove, agitation and frustration keeping me warm.
“You didn’t tell me living would be one decision after another, some easy, some difficult. You didn’t tell me living wasn’t a battle, but a war. You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
It was more than agitation keeping me warm now; it was anger. It coiled within me, winding me tighter and tighter. My fingers curled, my jaws clenched. I was a spring ready to be sprung. I wanted to tear each alder tree from the earth by its roots, I wanted to claw and dig my way back to the Underground. I wanted to rip and scream and tear and shriek. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt myself.
“I wish you were dead,” I said vehemently.
My voice did not echo in the woods, but the force of my emotions rang in my ears.
“I do,” I repeated. “Do you hear me, mein Herr? I wish you were dead!”
At last the forest took up my cry, a hundred mouthless voices repeating dead, dead, dead. I thought I heard the otherworldly giggles of Twig and Thistle, their high-pitched titters crawling up my skin. The old Liesl would have felt guilty for her uncharitable words, but the new Elisabeth did not. The Goblin King had taught me cruelty, after all.
“You would agree, of course,” I said with a bitter laugh. “No one could punish you harder than you punish yourself. You could have been a martyr. Saint Goblin King, willing to die for me, willing to die for love.
“But I’m not like you,” I continued. “I am not a saint; I am a sinner. I wish you were dead so I could live. If you were dead, I could bury you—in my heart and in my mind. I could mourn you, then let you go.”
I stopped pacing and wrapped my arms about myself beneath my cloak. Now that my anger was fading, the cold began to creep in. I drew the wolf’s-head ring out.
“You live an unlife instead,” I said. I held the ring before me and looked at it. It was old, tarnished, and even a little ugly. “An unlife, a not-death. You exist in the in-between spaces, between sleep and waking, between belief and imagination. I wish I could wake up, mein Herr. I wish I were awake.”
I undid the clasp and removed the chain with his ring from my neck. With a trembling hand, I set it down in the middle of the Goblin Grove.
“I won’t look back,” I said in a choked voice. “Not this time. Because you won’t be there to hold me back. I relinquish you, mein Herr, just as you let me go.” A sob hitched in my throat, but I swallowed it back down, straightening my spine with resolve.