She lifted her brows. Who have you wronged?
“My brother,” I choked out. “The Goblin King. The old laws. The world.”
The Underground is not a place for forgiveness, she said.
But neither was the world above. “Please,” I said, holding out my empty hands before her. “I beg of you.”
The Lorelei studied me, and if there could be an expression of pity in those flat, affectless eyes, I thought I detected a glimmer of sympathy.
You cannot cross the threshold of your own free will, maiden, she said. You are taken, or you are summoned, as it was with the changeling who returned to us.
Josef.
“Then take me!” I cried.
She shook her head. You claim him as your brother, mortal, but we claim him as kin. He is of our kind. He belongs with us. He is home.
Home. Tears sprang to my eyes, spilling over my cheeks to the aquamarine waters below me.
You love him, the Lorelei said with surprise. I taste your sorrow and your tenderness. She licked her lips. I have not tasted such things in an age.
“Then take them!” I clawed at my cheeks, trying to grab hold of my tears. “Take it all!”
She smiled again. Would you give up your love for your changeling brother if I asked?
I was stunned. Of all the things the Lorelei could have demanded of me, my love for Josef was the one thing I did not think she would claim. Was it even possible to stop loving Sepperl, the gardener of my heart?
“Could you do such a thing?”
She shrugged. We can claim whatever it is you are willing to relinquish. Your youth, your passion, your talent. You gave us something that was as much a part of you as your eyes, your hair, your skin. What is love but another thing you claim as your own?
The image of my brother rose up in my mind, but not as he was the last time I had seen him: tall, slim, lanky-limbed, with golden hair and eyes as blue as the sky. Instead, the memory of a sickly baby crying in his cradle returned to me, an ugly, twisted, homely thing that I had nevertheless taken into my heart as wholeheartedly as I had the rest of my family.
“No,” I said. “No, I will not stop loving Sepp.”
The Lorelei shrugged again. What are you willing to sacrifice, maiden, to return to our realm?
What did I have left to give? I had given my music, I had given that which I had held sacred and most dear. I had even given my body to the old laws, my breath, my heartbeat, and my senses. What was a person but a mind, a body, and a soul?
A mind.
My sanity.
My moods circled me like pikes scenting blood, swirling around like a vortex about a dark, dark abyss. I gripped my head, grasping at the remnants of my reason like a crown. I held my hands before the Lorelei, and cupped in my palms like a precious jewel was the last of my judgment, my sound mind.
The Lorelei smiled. Her hands mirrored my gesture, and as I lowered my sanity to the water, her palms rose up to meet mine. Her fingers wrapped themselves about my wrists, and I fell, down and down and down, until the world turned inside out.
in a house of the Faithful sat a boy and a girl, one dark, one fair. They had traveled long and hard over hill and dale before settling down and finding a home among friends. Since their flight from Vienna, the changeling Bramble had introduced them to an underworld of actors and artists, musicians and misfits, a family bound not by blood, but loyalty. Through opera houses and theater halls, K?the and Fran?ois found work and friendship playing the fortepiano for the singers and sewing costumes for the actors.
They had escaped the Hunt.
Bramble had been careful to avoid the places where the barriers between worlds were thin, where there were no sacred spaces, following the poppies that led them to safety. If the audience found it odd that troupe members wore pouches of salt about their neck and iron keys in their pockets, then they chalked it up to the foibles and eccentricities of the creative mind.
Touched in the head, they would cluck and shake their heads. Strange. Queer. Wild.
The troubadours wore the badges with pride.
So did K?the and Fran?ois.
They were housed, they were clothed, they were fed, and they were even happy, insofar as they could be happy with constant anxiety gnawing at their bones. Others marveled at their productivity and work ethic, but both Fran?ois and K?the knew that the best and most efficient way to keep worry at bay was mindless repetition.
So he practiced his songs while she perfected her seams, all the while pretending not to notice the growing shadow of fear for Liesl and Josef that hovered over them.
“Play it again,” K?the said. “Play that song for me.”
The girl was tone-deaf, but Fran?ois knew which piece she wanted to hear. Der Erlk?nig, composed by her sister, and performed with such exquisite skill by her brother. Der Erlk?nig was the only time Fran?ois ever heard Josef’s playing sound weighty and down to earth, not ethereal, otherworldly, or transcendent. Performing Liesl’s music was the only time he had ever heard his beloved’s playing sound human.
Sound whole.
At first the members of the theater troupe with whom he and K?the worked and traveled had been bemused by the piece.
I’ve never heard anything like this, said a troubadour.
Catchy, though, said the impresario. Brings to mind a story.
There was a story, but it was not theirs to tell. K?the and Fran?ois both knew it belonged to their sister and beloved, neither of whom could be found, despite the Faithful’s best efforts.
It had been weeks since they had managed to reach out to Liesl through the shadow paths, weeks since they had tried to get her word about the danger she and Josef were in. Every night K?the lit a candle before the dressing room mirror with a bath of salt water and an iron bell beside, but every morning the reflection remained empty of anything but the world in which they lived: chaotic, frenetic, mundane.
Then one morning, the bell rang.
Rehearsals for the latest play had been a disaster, with the playwright adding new lines every third scene while the composer tore out his hair and drank at having to add more bars of music to accommodate the changes. Bramble and K?the ran back and forth between the actors, dropping pins and ribbons in their wake as they tried to finish the costumes before opening night, while Fran?ois feverishly studied the new music as the pages were being rushed to him. In the midst of tumult and disorder of opening night, the ringing of the bell had been lost.
It wasn’t until Fran?ois returned to the dressing rooms for an older draft of the score the playwright had decided he preferred that he noticed the change in the mirror.
“K?the!” he called. “K?the, come quick!”
It was the excitement and astonishment in Fran?ois’s voice that brought her running more than his shouts.