“Yes,” I said. From this vantage point, I could see clear across to the mountains across the way and the sparkling ribbon of silver that cut through the valley floor. “What river is that?”
“Snovin River,” the Countess said. “The Procházkas weren’t terribly imaginative, I’m afraid.”
I strained to see farther, toward Snovin Hall and the mountains beyond. I caught a glimpse of an intense blue-green, that enchanted mirror lake I had stumbled upon when I first learned of the Countess’s lineage. “What is—what is that lake?” I asked.
“You can see it from here?” she asked, sounding surprised.
I nodded.
“Lake Snovin,” she said. “I told you Otto’s ancestors weren’t imaginative.” She laughed, seeing my expression. “But we always called it Lorelei Lake, Adelaide and I,” she continued in a softer voice. Her daughter.
“Lorelei Lake?” I remembered the sense of magic that lingered about the water, the window to another world I had glimpsed in its reflection.
“Yes,” she said. “Family legend boasts of their descent from a Lorelei found bathing in that very lake. It’s the melusine on their shield.”
“Is the water always that color?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” the Countess said. “And the water is always warm. Volcanic activity, I’m told, but we wanted to believe it was magic, Adelaide and I. She believed it was a gateway to the Underground.” Something within her seemed to suddenly snap closed, like a trap on a mouse’s neck. “Come, child,” she said shortly. “Your weight is wearing me down.”
I hopped down from my perch at the window and offered my arm to the Countess as we made our way back down the stairs.
“I do hope your brother will be able to join us for dinner tonight,” she said in a different tone of voice as we emerged through a different door and into a wide, cavernous space. “Perhaps we can get to know him better once you are both settled.”
The abrupt change in conversation startled me, and I did not know how to respond. “Where are we?” I asked, gesturing to the rocky room around us.
“The crypt,” the Countess said. “Most of the brothers are buried in the cemetery at the base of the mountain itself, but their names are carved here, so that they may be remembered long after their remains rotted away.”
I ran my fingers over the letters etched into stone. I thought of the day we buried Papa, of his limestone grave marker standing next to the little wooden crosses of his brothers and sisters—my aunts and uncles, most of whom had died before they had even drawn breath. In time, those crosses would wither and rot away, leaving nothing but their names in the village register behind. And even then, ink faded and paper dissolved to dust. All that remained of a person once they were gone was a legacy, which would linger only as long as you were loved or hated. Immortality was memory.
Evzen, Filip, Andrej, Victor, Johannes, Hans, Mahieu.
I paused over this last name, puzzling over its resonance with me. These were the names of monks dead and gone, their names as anonymous as the faces of strangers in this valley. Yet the name Mahieu rang a bell inside me, as though I had heard that name whispered to me in my sleep.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
I went still. The Goblin King’s voice returned to me, our confessions to each other that last night in the chapel. I had asked him who had taught him to play the violin.
His name was Brother Mahieu.
Then the familiarity of it all unfolded before me. Why I had felt as though I had seen this place before. Because I had seen the monastery before. In a mirror. Underground.
Above the Goblin King’s bed.
the villagers called the boy vl?ek, or “little wolf.” He had a long, lupine face, a cloud of white hair like a mane about his head, and the guttural growls and snarls of a cornered animal. It was hard to say how old the wolf-child was; he was small, no more than the size of the baker’s youngest, Karolína, who was three. The priest thought the boy might be older, for he was as agile as a cat, and more cunning besides.
It was a long time before anyone could come close enough to the child to bathe and tend to his wounds. A long gash ran across his chest and over his heart, inflamed and infected. The priest was afraid the cut would turn septic, but no one could approach the boy without risking a few fingers and toes. The priest himself wore a bandage and poultice about his forearm where the vl?ek had torn out a large chunk with his teeth.
Only Mahieu, another orphan of the Great Winter several seasons past and himself a ward of the church, was able to tame the wolf-child.
Faithful Mahieu, the villagers called him. The youth was good and kind, a lover of growing things and the wild things in the woods. Touched by God, the priest proclaimed. Mahieu could coax even the flowers to bloom in the snow. Little by little, like a shepherd with a recalcitrant flock, the youth called the boy out of the wolf. He taught the child the rudiments of being human, cleanliness, of posture, of manners, of clothing. The process was long and slow, the vl?ek eventually learned to use his fingers instead of claws, wear cotton instead of fur, and eat cooked meat instead of raw. When it came time for the boy to be christened, he did not struggle or resist the dunking of his head in the baptismal font. He was given the name Ka?par by the priest, recorded in the church register along with the note Given to us by the Lord and delivered from the wild and the woods.
The taming was complete, but for one small matter.
The vl?ek did not speak, nor did he respond to his name.
It was not that the boy lacked intelligence, even beyond the animal cunning of his wolf kin. He was quick and clever, solving the puzzles and riddles set for him by the priest, following orders, obediently cleaning the small cell in the church he had been given. He was of the age to be taught the alchemy of language and written speech in the local grammar school, and learned his letters competently alongside the other children of the village.
The boy was not dumb. When given leave to explore the village and the edges of the forest beyond, the townsfolk overheard whispered conversations between the vl?ek and the trees, between the boy and the beasts. It was a tongue half remembered by babies and babblers, a curious murmur and chatter understood only by the innocent, the mad, and Mahieu. What was he whispering? they wondered. It sounded like eldritch spells.
Father, Father, they entreated the priest. There is something wrong with the child.
The good Father tried his best to appease his flock but fear, the priest would come to know, was greater than faith.