The wheelwright ignored their whispers, ignored their words. By day he fixed their wheels, but at night he built an empire of trinkets and toys. He carved and cut, he whittled and whistled, and slowly, from scraps of wood, he founded a fantastic fairyland of goblins and bears and wolves and forests.
It was the children who noticed them first. As their parents conducted their business with the wheelwright, they picked up the goblins and bears and wolves from the scrap pile and played with them on the sawdust-and dirt-covered floor. Their parents saw only the smudges in the corner, grown now into piles of earth, loam, and the grasping, spidery roots of dead trees. But the children saw a kingdom of the possible in the wheelwright’s discarded scraps of imagination, and the wheelwright, the memory of childhood still clinging to his face, brought himself down to their level and played.
At first the townspeople were charmed and not a little sympathetic by the wheelwright’s childlike behavior. A good father, they agreed, he will make a good father someday. But the longer the wheelwright lingered in the realm of make-believe, the less enchanting his behavior seemed to be. The figurines he carved, at first so exquisite, now seemed grotesque, less the work of a man yearning for children than a man stunted.
The madness grew larger than the shadows in the corner. It was no longer possible to enter the wheelwright’s shop; dirt covered every inch of the floor, dead branches and twigs creeping in through the windows and doors. And still the wheelwright continued to carve, adding to his collection of figurines stories that matched their outlandish shapes. Half men, half bears, wolves with human eyes, goblins shaped like alder trees.
Soon even the children came to dismiss him. They liked the wheelwright’s stories, and they especially liked his toys, but the man himself made them uncomfortable. He played with them, but he was not one of them. He was too old, despite the lost look in his eyes, the look of a child abandoned. The look of an orphan. One by one, the children stopped coming to his shop and one by one, his figurines disappeared, down dirty shirtfronts and little trouser pockets. The wheelwright was left alone once more.
So when he brought tales of a ghost boy in the woods, no one was surprised. The wheelwright was lonely after all; the Great Winter had stolen his wife, his unborn child, and his parents in one fell swoop.
Just another sign of his madness, they said, eyeing the dirt now spilling from the wheelwright’s windows, doorways, and lintels. Another symptom of a mind gone awry.
The ghost child was marvelous, or so the wheelwright claimed. A boy, a fine specimen of a lad, with wolflike grace and eyes of two different hues. We must find him, the wheelwright said. We must save him. Spurred on by his passionate pleas, searchers combed the forest far and wide for any sign of a human child in the wild, but there was nothing—not a scrap of hide nor hair.
After weeks of fruitless forays into the forest, the townspeople had had enough.
It is time, they said, to lay the wheelwright to rest. Let him be given unto God, where he might find solace and healing.
The church prepared a bed and the good burghers of the town marched in on the wheelwright’s shop, where none had set foot for days. There was more than dirt and grime covering the windows and doorways; there were vines, roots, and dead trellis roses crawling over the walls like spidery bruise veins.
No one had heard the spectral hoofbeats pounding for days.
The townspeople called the wheelwright’s name, but no one answered. They knocked, they pounded, they pleaded, but there was nothing. Nothing but muffled, ominous silence.
When at last they were able to break down the door, the townspeople found not a shop but a tomb. The wheelwright’s shop was filled to the brim with dirt and loam and leaves and twigs—and the strange sight of scarlet poppies scattered like drops of blood amidst the decay and decrepitude. But the strangest sight of all, surrounded by the fractured figurines of bears who walked like men and wolves with men’s faces, was a little boy with hair the color of snow and eyes of two different hues.
A wolf boy.
The townspeople caught the child, who snapped and struggled and fought like the feral animal he was, and bore him to the church, where a bed had been laid for the wheelwright. But of the wheelwright himself there was no sign. No trace of hide nor hair, nothing left but one last grotesque figurine: a willowy youth with the wheelwright’s face and a goblin’s pointed grin.
THE OLD MONASTERY
“tell me about your brother,” the Countess said.
The day was mild for late winter, and the Countess and I were picnicking outside. It was the fourth day in a row my brother had not joined the rest of the household—such as it was—for a meal. Any meal. Breakfast, luncheon, tea, dinner, or supper, Josef was conspicuously absent from all gatherings. It was only the crumbs on his plate on the tray outside his door each morning that reassured me he was even eating at all.
“Josef?” I was surprised she had asked about him, then belatedly berated myself for such a selfish, self-absorbed thought. He was the other guest—prisoner—of the Procházkas.
The Countess nodded, slathering a roll with butter. “I’ve hardly seen him since we’ve arrived, although I have heard him playing his violin. Exquisite. Your brother has an extraordinary gift.”
I flinched. Our paths had not crossed since our argument that first night my brother and I had arrived at Snovin Hall, but I did occasionally see Josef on and about the grounds with his violin, lost in whatever private reveries that occupied his mind. His music was more of a presence than his physical self, for I often heard the high, sweet voice of his violin singing away in the abandoned hallways and corridors of the manor house.
“Yes,” I said in a neutral tone. “He does.”
My hostess looked askance at me. “And how is he? I know that this”—she gestured to Snovin, to the manor, to the Underground—“has all been rather overwhelming for the two of you.”
Sometimes I hated those green eyes of hers, which were by turns incisive and empathetic. I did not trust her still, but there were times when I wanted to. There were times I was so lonely for a friend, a confidante, a companion, that I was nearly willing to set aside my distrust to accept her into my life. I was so isolated and removed from everything and everyone I knew and I loved—Mother and Constanze, K?the and Fran?ois, and Josef, especially Josef—that I could not help but be tempted to lean into her emotional support the way she leaned on her cane.
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “Josef and I . . . we had a fight.”
I hated admitting this to her, but there was relief in it too.
“About your past as the Goblin Queen?” The Countess’s voice was soft.
I looked up in surprise. “How did you—”