“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh, come and see!”
I had crawled out from the roots of an enormous oak tree, through a rabbit hole scarcely large enough for the rabbit. K?the and I had wandered the endless corridors for what had seemed like days on end. The tunnels had grown narrower and narrower, the finishes rougher and rougher, the niceties of civilization gradually disappearing until we crawled on our hands and knees. I was proud of my sister; she never once complained of the dirt on her dress, the rocks beneath her palms, or the roots tearing at her hair. I had taken heart from her courage, and never faltered, even when despair clung to my ankles as the passageways began shrinking around us.
“K?the,” I called. “Come and see!”
I turned to help my sister out, but all I could see were her beautiful blue eyes in the shadows of the oak.
“K?the,” I repeated. “Come.”
She did not move. Her eyes darted to a point behind me.
“What is the matter with you?” I knelt before the tree and reached for my sister. “We’re done. We’re finished. We’ve escaped the Goblin King.”
“Have you?”
I turned around. The Goblin King stood before me in a clearing, dressed in leather trousers and a roughspun jacket. Were it not for the pallor of his skin, or the sharp tips of his teeth poking through his smirk, I might have taken him for one of the local shepherd lads. But he was not a shepherd lad. He was both too beautiful and too terrible.
“Have I not?” I gestured to the night sky. “I have beaten you and your godforsaken labyrinth.”
“Ah, but are we not, in some ways, all trapped in a labyrinth of our own making?” the Goblin King asked lightly.
“A philosopher as well as a king,” I muttered. “How charming.”
“Do you find me charming, Elisabeth?” His voice was a velvet purr.
I searched his face for the soft-eyed young man, a hint, an anchor I could cling to. But I could find none. “No.”
The Goblin King pouted. “You wound me.” He moved close, bringing with him the scent of ice and sweet loam. He took my chin in his long, elegant fingers and raised my gaze to his. “And you lie.”
“Release me.” I trembled, but my voice was steady.
He shrugged. “As you wish.” He pulled away, and the absence of his touch was a sudden chill. “I don’t see your sister with you.”
I sighed. K?the, so brave until now, had suddenly turned mulish in his presence. She remained hidden in the roots of the great oak, unwilling to come out into the open.
“Then help me free her from the tree,” I said.
He raised his brow. “With nary a please? Tsk, tsk, where are your manners, Elisabeth?”
“I wish you would free K?the from the tree.”
The Goblin King bowed. “Your wish is my command.”
The oak tree split open from root to tip, revealing a terrified K?the at its heart. She was tightly curled into a ball, hiding her face between her knees, her shoulders shaking with fright.
“K?the, K?the.” I took her into my arms. “It’s all right. It’s all over. We can go home now.”
“Not so fast.” The Goblin King stepped forward. “We are not yet finished.”
My sister cringed and buried her face into my shoulder.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “We had a wager.”
“Did we? Remind me.”
Sometimes it was all too easy to forget that Der Erlk?nig was ageless, ancient, older than these hills. “That I would find my way out of the Underground and bring my sister,” I said through gritted teeth. “And lo, here we stand, in the world above.”
“Is that what you think?”
Dread began to grow inside me, rising waters of panic, drip by drip. “What do you mean?”
“A valiant effort, Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said. “But you have lost.”
At his words, the forest about me changed. What I had taken for trees smoothly changed into columns of stone, leaves into bits of ragged cloth, and the night sky froze and cracked, like a pond icing over in winter. K?the gave a quiet sob against my shoulder, and what I had taken for the chattering of her teeth was in fact a repeated refrain: too late, too late, too late.
“No,” I whispered. “Oh no.”
We were still Underground.
“Yes,” he said, the word a soft, sibilant caress. “I win.”
I gripped my sister tighter to me.
“Well,” the Goblin King amended. “I will win, once the full moon rises on the new year.”
I stiffened. “It hasn’t risen?”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “You are close. Too close for comfort, in fact.” He waved his hand. The icy sky rippled, and the stars returned, weak and watery, as though seen through a reflection upon the surface of a lake.
“We stand upon the threshold, you see,” he said. “The world above lies beyond that veil.”
K?the sucked in a sharp breath as she turned to face the stars. They bathed her face and hair in silver and she closed her eyes, as though to shut out the sight of freedom, so close yet so far.
“How long before the moonrise?” I asked.
“Not long,” the Goblin King said. A grin spread across his face. “Not long enough for you to escape, at any rate.”