“I’m not him!” he cried. “Josef isn’t real! He was never real!” He looked at me with a feral expression, the pupils of his eyes dilating to drown the blue in a depthless black. Like goblin eyes. “Who am I?” A savage cry tore from his throat. “Who am I?”
“Josef, I—”
But before I could tell him, reassure him, reaffirm him, my brother had turned and gone, vanished into the wild.
achangeling had no name, and no one to call him home.
He fled from the ballroom and into the wild, leaving his sister, his past, and his name behind him. Josef. The name belonged to another boy, another son, another human, and he could not bear to wear it any longer. The wounds upon his wrists itched, and he longed to dig his fingers into the scars and tear off his skin, to cast off the face, the hair, the eyes of a boy who did not exist.
He did not exist.
The changeling found himself standing in a patch of poppies, the bright red blooms curled around his feet like a cat about its master’s legs. Come with us, nameless one, they cooed. Join us.
As he looked up, he saw pops of scarlet, crimson, and vermillion appear like paint drops amid the gray and brown and green of a late winter wild, a river of blood cutting through the woods and up the hill.
Come, the whispers urged. Come.
He did not ask where, or why. The Countess had told him that these impossible flowers were the souls of the stolen, the last mortal remnants of those who had been taken by the Wild Hunt. They were guiding him home, back to the Underground.
The changeling set his feet upon the path of poppies and followed.
Behind him, he could hear his sister calling his name—no, the name of her brother—but he paid her no heed. Josef was gone now; he had never been. The void at the center of his soul made sense now. For years he had thought there was something broken within him, that his inability to feel deeply for anyone was a defect, or a flaw in his making. He cared for his family, or the people he had thought were his blood and kin. He felt affection for his grandmother and her stories, respect for his mother and her hard work, fear for his father and his moods, and fondness for his sisters. Perhaps the changeling even felt love, especially for Liesl, insofar as he could understand it.
Love. He thought of Fran?ois and waited for guilt to pool in his stomach. The changeling thought of his companion’s face—the dark eyes, the tightly curled lashes, the warm skin, the full lips. It was a face that rang a bell deep inside him, that made him want to look and look and look. Fran?ois was beautiful, the changeling knew, but it was not the beauty of his companion’s beloved features that drew him; it was the safety he had found there. He had ever preferred the shadows to the light, and Fran?ois’s love was the nightfall in which he could hide.
But ever since he had come to Snovin, the memory of his beloved’s face returned less and less to him. Even now the exact shade of Fran?ois’s skin, the scent of his cologne, and the timbre of his voice was fading, as though his companion were disappearing into mist or fog. Beloved. It was the only word the changeling could think of when he thought of Fran?ois, for he had no other word for the tenderness within him, the desire to protect, to hold, to kiss. But the changeling knew that his love was not the same as Fran?ois’s love, for the urge to touch was absent and the heat of passion was cold.
I love you, he had told the black boy.
And it was true, or truth as the changeling understood it.
His breath came faster as he climbed the hills behind Snovin Hall, the path narrow and steep. The poppies never ceased their whispering, cajoling, pleading, beckoning him to hurry, hurry. He did not know the reason for their urgency, only that he felt it too as a sort of freedom, an excuse, a reason to run away. The changeling did not care where he was running to, only that he was running at all.
He was surprised when the trail opened up into a wide vista. The poppies led him to a rocky ledge poised over a sparkling lake, a long drop. Looking down into the aquamarine waters gave him a sense of vertigo, as though he were looking up at the sky instead of into dark depths. The changeling saw his reflection below, a pale, sharp-cheeked face staring back at him with a razor-toothed grin.
The changeling touched his face, wondering if knowing the truth of who he was had rearranged his features. All his life—Josef’s life—he had known his hair to be gold and his eyes to be blue. But the youth who peered back at him from the lake had hair the color of unbrushed cotton and eyes as black as obsidian. Yet the face was recognizably his: the same nose, ears, cheeks, chin.
“Who are you?” the changeling whispered.
The reflection smiled. I am you, it replied.
“What am I?” the changeling asked.
Lost, the reflection said.
Lost. The word resounded in the void within the changeling. “How do I become found?” he asked his reflection.
The boy in the lake did not answer. Instead he reached for the surface, and Josef found himself reaching for the mirrored world.
Join me, the reflection said. Join us.
And so Josef fell, down and down and down, into the Underground.
INTO THAT WORLD INVERTED
OBLIVION
i waited one breath too long to chase after my brother.
“Josef!” I screamed. “Sepp!”
The grounds of Snovin Hall rang with my cries as I fled the ballroom after my brother, but nothing but the echoes of startled birdsong returned. Josef had disappeared, vanished, gone to earth, and I did not know how he had run so quickly and so far. No tracks trampled the tangled vines and overgrown weeds, no evidence of trespass or flight. Nothing but crushed poppy petals, scattered underfoot like drops of blood.
“Sepp!” I called again. “Sepp!”
“Fr?ulein?” I whirled around to see Nina standing behind me, a worried look on her face. “Is okay?”
The last thing I wanted to endure was another’s presence, to keep up the mask of civility or a calm countenance. I was neither civil nor calm, and I raged and seethed that I felt compelled to maintain a straight face before her. Who would notice? Who would care? The worst Nina could do was return to the Count and Countess with tales of my rudeness, my unsociability, my erratic moods. Yet despite this, I did not want to frighten her with my monstrosity, the maelstrom that threatened to swallow not just me, but the entire world.
“Yes,” I said, trying my best for a smile. The corners of my mouth shook and quivered, and I felt my lips curling in a snarl. “Everything is fine, thank you, Nina.”
The housekeeper did not look reassured. Instead, she seemed even more concerned. “Is okay?” she repeated, then said something in a torrent of Bohemian I could not understand, accompanied by gestures I could not decipher.
“Yes!” I barked. “Okay. I’m okay.”