*
I was running out of time.
With no sunrise or sunset to mark the passing of days, I counted the hours by the fading of K?the’s hair, the withering of her flesh, the growing pallor of her complexion. The curves about her breast and hips disappeared, and the skin beneath her eyes thinned to a bruise-black.
My sister was dying.
The Goblin King paid frequent tribute to her in his role as the Hungarian count. I watched my sister and the Goblin King fawn and simper at each other at these outings, at dinner, at the goblin revels he insisted on holding every night. Another night of goblin wine, another night lost to indulgence.
Every moment lost was another victory gained for the Goblin King.
His eyes seemed to tell me so, whenever our gazes met over my sister’s head. Which was often. I felt the touch of his eyes on my skin at all times, an insistent caress that compelled me to look at him. Although I did not admit it aloud, the sight of K?the on his arm drove me mad with envy. She was a pawn in our game, and I knew it; she was the bait to my temper, and I knew it, yet I could not brush off the nettle-stings of jealousy. I missed my klavier, where I could let those staccato notes of frustration and futility burst forth in a torrent of song.
In my moments alone, I wandered the labyrinthine passages of the Underground. Goblins scuttled back and forth underfoot, their black eyes shining at me from the corners like beetle carapaces. At my request, Twig and Thistle brought me stacks of paper and a lead pen. I tried to mark the various pathways in the Underground, but the tunnels shifted and twisted and changed every time I thought I traversed down a familiar way. More often than not, I scribbled little throwaway melodies and musical thoughts in the margins of my maps.
K?the too was determined to distract me. She had seen my maps, but her eyes lingered on the notes, not the paths. She insisted I sit at her desk and compose, and supplied me with pretty paper and fancy nibs, her fantasy of how a composer truly worked: in beauty, in isolation, and in silence. My sister, so kindhearted, so blind.
“Come!” she said one day—night?—clapping her hands. “I have a gift for you!” She gestured to her goblin attendants, who brought in gown after gown after gown.
“What’s all this?” I asked as K?the shooed her attendants away again.
“For your debut, you ninny,” she said.
“What debut?”
She gave me an exasperated eyeroll. “Honestly, Liesl, it’s a wonder you’re even able to function sometimes. The debut of your latest symphony, of course. Manók has arranged for a concert to be held in the receiving hall.”
The strength of my sister’s fantasy world overwhelmed me sometimes, so much I could no longer tell where the edges of her dream ended and mine began.
I let K?the dress me in whatever gown she thought best suited me and let her fuss with my hair. For a moment, it was like we were children again, the touch of her gentle fingers on my scalp as familiar as the lullabies Josef and I used to play for each other.
“There,” she said once she had finished. “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” I laughed. “No need to flatter me with lies, K?the.”
“Stop it.” She slapped my shoulder. “Just because you grew up in a backwater town doesn’t mean you have to dress like a peasant all the time, you know.”
“If it were only feathers that could transform a sparrow into a peacock.”
“A sparrow is beautiful in its own way,” K?the said severely. “Don’t force yourself to be a peacock, Liesl. Embrace your sparrow self. Look.” She gestured to the bronze mirror before me.
It was not my reflection that caught my eye, but hers. The full scope of my sister’s transformation hadn’t been clear until I saw her face in the bronze mirror. How many times had I watched K?the primp and prepare before the mirror in our bedroom, her apple-plump cheeks and sparkling eyes glowing with health? The bones of her cheeks and jaw jutted painfully now, angular and almost masculine. Her chin was as sharp as a dagger, her nose long, her lips thin. Her eyes were overlarge in that wasted face, and with a start, I realized I was looking at me. No, my sister. Faded away to a wisp of her former self, K?the and I looked the same, save for our different coloring.
“See?” She smiled, a rictus grin. “Ready to face the whole, wide world.”
K?the hadn’t done much in the way of face paint or powders; she’d merely touched my lips with rouge and brushed out my brows. In the flickering fairy lights of the Underground, my sallow complexion evened into a creamy pallor, the angles of my face imposing rather than thin. This was the face I had seen every day of my life growing up—plain, angular, horsey—yet in this new environment, I glowed with an otherworldly light. A sparrow in its nest.
“I wish…” K?the began, then frowned.