Josef.
He stood on the grounds facing the house. I could not make out anything of his face or features, but I imagined his eyes turned up to the second floor, seeing my white chemise stand out in the murky black of my window. We stared at each other—or not—for several long moments. Our first moment of connection since we had argued. Then my brother turned around and made his way back toward the poppy field and the woods.
I felt as though I had been slapped.
Fine, I thought. You are no longer first in my heart. I waited for guilt to flay the flesh from my bones and leave me bare, but it never did. Nothing touched me but exhaustion and resignation.
I was tired of waiting, tired of longing and hoping and wishing my brother would turn around and appreciate me. That Josef loved me, I had no doubt, but he, like so many others, had taken me for granted. That I would come running to him in Vienna to save him. To bring him home. To be at his beck and call. Fran?ois and I had tried and tried and tried to put him back together after he had fallen apart, but the more we tried, the more the pieces no longer fit.
I thought of K?the then. My sister had once called me a top spinning out of control, and that the slightest wobble would topple me. I hadn’t realized until then how selfish I had been to lay that emotional burden on her shoulders. I wished Josef could see that now.
I am tired of holding your heart.
“I give it back,” I whispered to my brother, lost to the shadows outside. “I give you back your heart.”
Sadness washed over me. Instead of guilt or frustration or anger, in the aftermath of the tempest tantrum, I felt nothing but melancholy. Mania and melancholy, my twin demons. With sorrow came fatigue, a deep and abiding sense of exhaustion. I climbed back into bed.
“I give you back your heart,” I said to the darkness. “And I wish you would give me mine.”
snovin Hall was haunted.
It wasn’t haunted in the usual manner—with ghosts and sprites and spirits. Josef knew how to exorcise ghosts from a house with bells and holy water. He knew how to appease kobolds and H?dekin with offerings of milk and bread, how to safeguard his home from the unseen forces of the world with salt and prayers. But what he didn’t know how to do was cast out the demons from his own head.
The whispers beckoned from every corner of the estate, filling his ears at night so he could no longer sleep. He had taken to wandering the halls after everyone else had risen for the day, playing his violin out in the woods where no one would hear. The playing did nothing to drown out the voiceless murmurs in his mind, but he could at least lose himself in the rigorous, tedious repetition of notes. He would play through every piece he could remember, and some he did not—once, twice, thrice. The first for feeling: the bowing languid and smooth or sharp and emphatic. The second for precision: the fingering exact, the timing rigid. The third for despair: the last resort of an unraveling mind. And when Josef had played through his entire repertoire several times over, he would fall back on his exercises. Scales. Rhythm and tempo practice.
None of it helped.
When he closed his eyes, he could still see his sister’s face when he called her Goblin Queen. It had not been a term of endearment, but an accusation. He could still see the arrow land between her ribs, and the expression of shock and hurt and betrayal both shook him and soothed him. They had both gone away from home and emerged transformed: his sister a woman, he a quivering wreck. Liesl had had Der Erlk?nig while Josef had had Master Antonius when it should have been the other way around. His sister was meant for fame and recognition and public adulation; he was meant for the Goblin Grove.
After nightfall, Josef made his way back to the manor. He was tired, exhaustion carving out blue-black hollows beneath his eyes and cheeks. He wanted to sleep, to rest his head, to forget the image of Liesl’s brown eyes looking at him with such reproach. His very first memory was of his sister’s eyes peering over the edge of his cradle, large and lambent and full of love. He remembered little else from his earliest childhood; in the end, it had been Liesl, always Liesl, who made him feel safe. But he could not forgive her for not being there when he had needed her most, for sending him away when every fiber of his being had cried out to stay.
When he finally returned to the grounds of Snovin Hall proper, Josef looked up at the second story window where he knew his sister slept. To his surprise, he saw her standing there, her pale chemise standing out against the darkness of the room like a ghost. He ached down to his bones, a knot of guilt and resentment and hatred and love tangled in his veins. There was no feeling but ceaseless, never-ending pain at the sight of her standing there, and he wanted to bleed himself to relieve the pressure. To leech himself of bad blood and bad thoughts.
He turned away.
In the distance, he spied the distinct figure of the Countess limping ahead. The dark was complete now, and nothing but stars lit her path, though she strode with purpose and determination. A place and destination in mind, perhaps. The faint stirrings of curiosity fluttered in Josef’s breast, so slight he might have ignored them, save for one thing:
She was following the whispers.
The voiceless murmurs were strongest from the direction of the poppy field, and Josef wondered if she could hear their pulsing sighs like the breeze through weeds. Nameless, they said. Usurper.
He had ignored the whispers the way he had so often pushed away his emotions. The way he had turned away from Fran?ois. If it was not Liesl’s reproachful eyes he saw when he went to sleep, then it was his beloved’s lips. Fran?ois had long since perfected a mask of serene calm, his armor in a world hostile to those of his color, but Josef knew where to find the chinks. It would be at the corners of his mouth, tight with anger, twisted with sorrow. The weight of his sister’s and beloved’s feelings was heavy, and he was tired of carrying their burden. The whispers were just another load to put down.
But tonight he would follow them. Follow the Countess. His footfalls fell softly on dried grasses and broken twigs, for he did not notice the scarlet petals of the poppies wither and die in her wake. The whispers fell silent as she passed.
The stranger came, the flowers left.
It wasn’t until the Countess turned to face him that Josef realized she had known he was there all along.
“Hallo, Josef,” she said softly.
Her voice was lost amidst the shushing breeze, the poppies murmuring run away, run away, run away. But Josef did not run.
“Hallo, madame,” he replied. His own voice was hoarse from disuse, but clear above the whispers.
The Countess’s green eyes glowed in the dark. “Will you not play?”