Vines wrapped themselves around my arms and legs, dead shrubs and mountain bushes halting my fall. The Count’s compass continued tumbling to the floor below, the faint tinkle and crack of shattered glass and metal echoing up the hill. There was an audible pop! as something snapped in my wrist, the sound echoing behind my eyes, even as the sharp pain of it felt distant and unreal. Even my screams were stolen from me as the sudden yank preventing me from plummeting to the valley floor drove the breath from my body. I hung above the drop, suspended by roots and vines twined about my limbs, for an eternity, poised forever between life and certain death.
Then beetle-black eyes winked at me from the crevices of the hillside. Beetle-black eyes, long, spindly fingers, branches and cobwebs spun for hair.
Twig.
The brambles wrapped themselves tighter about me and slowly but surely began lifting me back onto the trail, back to safety. Hands appeared, bursting from the mud and rocks as they had when I had tried to escape the Underground, but they were helping me up instead of bringing me down.
They deposited me back to safety on a lower ledge than the one from which I had fallen, and vanished. I lay there for several breaths, trying to center myself back in my body, back to the present, to the pain in my wrist, the mud soaking into the wools and silks at my back, the pebbles pressing into my tender points. My mind was in both the past and future, all the mistakes I made and the regrets I had, and all the choices—both terrible and good—I had come so close to never making again.
When I returned to myself, I was alone.
Had I imagined Twig and the goblin hands? The agony in my wrist carved out all extraneous thought, and I cradled my left hand in the crook of my right elbow. The angle at which it sat was twisted, odd, and unnatural, and the sight of it almost made me queasier than the pain. Gasping and sobbing, I tried to move my left hand with my right, to maneuver my bones back into place. A grind, a click, an unsound deep in my body that resounded in my skull and in teeth, and then, sudden relief. The bliss flooded through me like warmth, and I found I needed to lie down to recover from the dizziness.
I could have lain there forever, succumbing to the aftermath of a whirlwind of fear and exhaustion, but the whispers tugged at me again.
Hurry, mistress, hurry, they cajoled. It is not too late.
I did not want to, but I must. I rose to my feet, hewing close to the hillside this time as I continued along this new path. The compass was gone, but it did not matter. Poppies sprang from crevices and rocks, guiding me to where I needed to go.
I came upon the lake.
This time I arrived at its shores instead of a ledge above its surface. Sparkling waves lapped at a ring of black sand, and light whorls of steam rose from its aquamarine depths. This close to the water, I could detect the slight hint of brimstone wafting from the lake. I shuddered. Perhaps I was wrong and this was not a portal to the Underground, but a hellmouth.
Then came the high, sweet singing of the Lorelei.
I had forgotten how strange, how eerie, how utterly seductive their music was. Tuneless, shapeless, ethereal, and hypnotic, a shimmering symphony of sound rose around me, each note bursting with a different color inside my head. Harmonies and dissonant chords wove strands of imagery, a tapestry of sensation that overwhelmed me, bringing me to my knees.
But I would not succumb.
Picking myself back up, I removed my boots, stockings, bodice, and skirts, steeling myself to wade into the water. Although I knew the lake was warm, I was still shocked by the silky-smooth heat against my skin, almost luxurious with its soothing heat. I could swim in this warmth forever. When I was far enough away from shore, I treaded water, and waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The last time I had encountered the Lorelei, they had been all too eager to drag me down to the depths and drown me. I did not know if it was because I was no longer Goblin Queen, or because I had nothing left to offer the Underground, but the dark, comely shapes slithering beneath the surface of the lake did not rise to meet me.
Presently, I grew tired and swam back to shore, long, pulling strokes that nevertheless did not seem to take me anywhere. My arms and legs felt leaden, my injured wrist tender and sore. It felt as though I would never reach dry land, and I began to worry that I would indeed drown. But I fought this battle every day, fighting upstream against the inevitable, inexorable pull of my own destructive tendencies, and if the body was exhausted, then at least the mind was willing.
When my fingers and toes finally scraped the gravel of the shadows, I crawled out of the lake, soaked and bedraggled and weighed down with more than water. The air was freezing against my skin, and I knew I had to get warm again, lest I die of exposure. I had to stay alive, I had to figure out a way to get Underground, I had to save my brother, and possibly, the entire world. The enormity of the task upon which I had set myself overwhelmed me, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down on the black sand of these shores and bury myself in oblivion.
I was at a loss.
The wolf’s-head ring on my right hand glinted at me. I had forgotten all about it in my tumble from the hillside and just now in my swim in Lorelei Lake, but I was grateful to find it still with me. The band was too large and I had dropped it more than once, but it seemed to cling to me as hard as I clung to it. To my memory of the austere young man who had given it to me.
You may not have had Der Erlk?nig’s protection as you walked the Underground, but you always had mine.
He had always been with me. Miles away from the Goblin Grove and in another country, my austere young man had always been with me. Had always protected me. Even in my moments of reckless abandon, he struggled and fought and resisted against the tide of darkness that was corrupting him from within.
All because of me.
I knew then what it was I had to do.
With trembling fingers, I removed his ring. The mismatched gems sparkled in the waning, fading sunlight, brighter and more beautiful than the intense blue and green of the waters before me. I held it in my hands one last time, pressing it to my heart.
“Farewell, my immortal beloved,” I whispered to my clasped fingers.
Then with a cry, I threw it with everything I had into the lake.
Where the silver touched the surface, ripples of glowing light spread outward, illuminating the entire mirror world in its reflection. Up was down and in was out, and a sense of vertigo overcame me at the sight of an entire realm below—above?—me. Was I looking down into the Underground, or was it looking down at me?
A dark, shadowy girl met my gaze. She had my face and my features, but her eyes were the stark, depthless black of goblin eyes. Her dark hair, unbound from the plaits I usually wore in a crown about my head, floated about her. She was naked, her body covered in shimmering scales, and it wasn’t until I saw the webbing between her fingers that I recognized her for what she was.
A Lorelei.
Brave maiden, she said. Why do you call?
“Please,” I said hoarsely to the girl in the mirrored world. “Please, I must go back.”
The Lorelei tilted her head. Why?
To bring Josef back. To free the Goblin King. To calm the demons in my own head. “To make things right,” I said.
She laughed, showing a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. There is no making things right, maiden. There is only reckoning.
“Then I must reckon with those I have wronged,” I replied.