I shook my head, but not in answer to her question. My head felt thick, my eyelids heavy.
“I have heard extraordinary rumors about you, young lady,” she continued in a soft voice. “Rumors about the . . . otherworldly nature of your music.”
I laughed, but it sounded twisted, warped. “I am merely mortal,” I said hoarsely. “Not magic.”
“Are you so certain of that, my dear?”
I flushed both hot and cold at once. I shivered uncontrollably, small, tiny tremors all over my body although the room was too close, too warm. I broke out in a sweat, but my skin felt clammy. “What . . . what . . .” I thought of the glasses of sherry my brother and I had drunk before we came down to perform. “What have you put in my drink?” I slurred.
A soft thud. Josef crumpled to a heap on the floor, his violin jangling as it struck the ground, his bow arm outstretched and pointed toward the Countess, an accusatory finger.
“Sepperl!” I cried, but the words were dampened, deadened, numb. I pressed my fingers to my lips, but I could no longer feel them.
The room was growing smaller, the air was stagnant around me, dank and rank with the sickly sweet smell of rotting flowers. I could not breathe, I could not get out. My limbs felt thick and heavy, and there was an iron band of pressure at my brow. I turned to the Countess.
“Why?” I asked weakly, trying in vain to keep my balance through the room swaying and tilting around me.
“I’m sorry, Elisabeth,” the Countess said, and there was genuine sorrow in her voice. “But I promise this is for your own good.”
“K?the—”
“Your sister and the dark-skinned young gentleman are taken care of,” she promised. “They shall come to no harm.”
I was falling, falling through the ground, an endless void opening up beneath me. “Who are you?” I croaked.
“You know who we are.” I heard the Countess’s voice as though from far away, miles or years distant. “We are the mad, the fearful, the faithful. We are those who keep the old laws, for we are Der Erlk?nig’s own.”
*
Elisabeth.
I open my eyes but I do not know where I am. The world around me is hazy, murky, formless, as though seen through mist, or fog, or cloud. My breathing echoes strangely, both echoing and muffled at once, and my heart beats louder than a gong.
Elisabeth.
My pulse quickens, the drumbeats of my blood rising in pitch. I turn around, a name on my lips, an ecstatic shout in my heart. Mein Herr, mein Herr!
Elisabeth.
His voice is far away, coming from a great distance. I wander aimlessly through the flat gray, searching for shapes, for light, for shadow, for anything to give my surroundings weight and depth. Where was I? Was I dreaming?
Howling rises all around me, the bell-like baying of hounds. It rings in my rib cage, resounding in my chest. I feel it crawling up my throat, a ripping, tearing sound, silver-sweet and sharp. I want to scream, not in pain, but in stark, raving madness. I scratch at my neck, hard enough to draw blood, but whether to free my voice or keep it trapped, I don’t know.
Elisabeth!
When I pull my hand away, my fingertips are not stained red, but silver. I stare at my nails, trying to make sense of what I see when out of the formless gloom, a monster emerges.
I do scream when a pair of blue-white eyes appear, a pinprick of black in their center. Slowly a shape coalesces into being—a long, elegant face, whorls of inky shadows swirling over moon-pale skin, ram’s horns curling around pointed, elfin ears. He is more terrifying and more real than the vision I experienced in the labyrinth. But worst of all are the hands, gnarled and curled and with one too many joints in each finger. With a silver ring around the base of one. A wolf’s-head ring, with two gems of blue and green for eyes.
My ring. His ring. The symbol of our promise I had returned to the Goblin King back in the Goblin Grove.
Mein Herr?
For a brief moment, those blue-white eyes regain some color, the only color in this gray world. Blue and green, like the gems on the ring about his finger. Mismatched eyes. Human eyes. The eyes of my immortal beloved.
Elisabeth, he says, and his lips move painfully around a mouth full of sharpened teeth, like the fangs of some horrifying beast. Despite the fear knifing my veins, my heart grows soft with pity. With tenderness. I reach for my Goblin King, longing to touch him, to hold his face in my hands the way I had done when I was his bride.
Mein Herr. My hands lift to stroke his cheek, but he shakes his head, batting my fingers away.
I am not he, he says, and an ominous growl laces his words as his eyes return to that eerie blue-white. He that you love is gone.
Then who are you? I ask.
His nostrils flare and shadows deepen around us, giving shape to the world. He swirls a cloak about him as a dark forest comes into view, growing from the mist. I am the Lord of Mischief and the Ruler Underground. His lips stretch thin over that dangerous mouth in a leering smile. I am death and doom and Der Erlk?nig.
No! I cry, reaching for him again. No, you are he that I love, a king with music in his soul and a prayer in his heart. You are a scholar, a philosopher, and my own austere young man.
Is that so? The corrupted Goblin King runs a tongue over his gleaming teeth, those pale eyes devouring me as though I were a sumptuous treat to be savored. Then prove it. Call him by name.
A jolt sings through me—guilt and fear and desire altogether. His name, a name, the only link my austere young man has to the world above, the one thing he could not give me.
Der Erlk?nig throws his head back in a laugh. You do not even known your own beloved’s name, maiden? How can you possibly call it love when you walked away, when you abandoned him and all that he fought for?
I shall find it, I say fiercely. I shall call him by name and bring him home.
Malice lights those otherworldly eyes, and despite the monstrous markings and horns and fangs and fur that claim the Goblin King’s comely form, he turns seductive, sly. Come, brave maiden, he purrs. Come, join me and be my bride once more, for it was not your austere young man who showed you the dark delights of the Underground and the flesh. It was I.
His words send a thrill through me, galvanizing me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and my body responds to the honey in his voice, even as my mind finds it bitter, rancid. No, I say. Never.
Der Erlk?nig’s eyes narrow, and the mist between us thins and retreats. But it is not cloud or fog in the distance; it is the spectral forms of ghostly horsemen, scraps of clothing hanging off shriveled flesh and ancient bone. The unholy host. Their eyes are milky, shining with an absence of light, of life, and at their feet are hounds made of darkness, their eyes the red of blood, of hell, of . . . poppies.
Poppies.