I wondered who had built the chapel. High above me, illuminated stained glass windows depicted various scenes, not from the life of Christ or the acts of the Apostles, but of Der Erlkönig and his brides. On the right, a series of panels showed a golden-haired woman clothed in white and a dark horned figure. The seasons progressed along with the panels as the maiden in white grew pale and thin. The very last window showed the maiden dying in the horned figure’s arms as another woman in blue stood behind them.
The windows lining the left-hand side showed a young man in red, riding a white horse through a forest as little hobgoblins and grotesques cavorted at its feet. As the windows went on, the young man encountered a mysterious horned figure in the woods, a nimbus of darkness surrounding him instead of a halo of light. As the young man knelt at the figure’s feet, the dark gloriole enveloped them both, and in the following panel, a shadowy gray man rode away on a white horse, leaving the young man in red with a crown of antlers upon his head.
The answers had always been here. But I had never thought to look for them in the house of God.
I knelt before the altar beneath the crucifix. I was an indifferent believer at best, a possible heathen at worst, having believed in God the way a child believes without question that tomorrow will come. Neither prayer nor catechism were particularly valued in my house, but I bowed my head before the sanctuary.
I did not know how to ask for courage or resolution. I did not know how to ask to stay the march of time, just for a little while. I was not ready to face the world above. Not yet.
There were no mirrors to the outside world in the chapel, but I imagined the Goblin Grove in the predawn lined with dark, with the faintest blush of blue lightening the blackness. The hour when the kobolds and Hödekin come out to play, Constanze used to say. I imagined the colors of the sky lightening and changing, a change so slight and gradual it might not be happening at all. In the world above, that would be my life, each second of each day passing with so little fanfare that the thought of dying was nothing more than the thought of dawn just beneath the horizon.
I had never given much thought to growing old, and the woman I would be when I was my grandmother’s age. Would I be like my grandmother, wizened and crabbed? Or someone more like Mother, whose fine lines and faded hair were graceful touches of wisdom rather than age? I touched my fingers to my cheek, still smooth, still young. As I aged, those cheeks would sink, the skin losing its firmness, its shape.
Käthe would have been horrified at the thought, but the idea of growing old gave me comfort. To grow old was to have lived a full life. Not all of us were so privileged as to have a full life. And now that privilege would once again be mine.
“Elisabeth.”
The Goblin King stood at the foot of the aisle, violin in hand.
“I didn’t think you were especially devout, my dear,” he said, an amused expression on his face.
“I’m not.” I got to my feet, dusting the dirt from my knees. “But I came seeking fortitude.”
His eyes were soft. “Fortitude for what?”
“To face tomorrow.”
The Goblin King smiled, full of compassion and sympathy, striding up the aisle to stand beside me. “And did He answer?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “It may be He already gave you the answer, but you have not the understanding to see it,” he said softly. He tapped a finger against my heart. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“Well, I would appreciate it if the Lord were a little less mysterious and a little more straightforward.”
He chuckled. “So say we all.”
I rolled my eyes before my gaze fell to the instrument in his hands. “What’s that for?”
In answer, he began tuning the violin. Plink, plink, plink, plink. Instead of tuning the strings to their standard intervals, the Goblin King tuned them to different pitches. He unstrung the middle D and A strings and crossed them before stringing them back to their pegs, leaving him with a scordatura I had never heard used before. Plink, plink, plink, plink. G, then another G, D, and another D. His ear was good. The Goblin King ran his bow over each string with a smooth, practiced motion as he fine-tuned their pitches, and I watched how easily his hands and fingers moved across the violin, familiar like old friends who had grown up together.
When he had finished, he turned to me. “Worship,” he said simply. “I came here to worship Him in the only way I can. With the only thing remaining to me that is still pure, still … mine.”
His. Despite what the Goblin King said, the austere young man still lived within him. No magic, no spell, no trick had given my Goblin King his extraordinary way with the violin. The power did not belong to Der Erlkönig; this gift was his, and his alone.
“I can leave,” I offered. “If you would like to worship in private.” I thought of the night I had trespassed upon him here, in this very chapel, and felt shame settle over me like a cloak.
He held my gaze for a long moment. “No, stay,” he said at last. “Stay, and be with me.”
I had demanded every last bit of him last night. His body, his lust, his name, his trust. But there were corners of his soul I dared not ask to reveal; even as I understood the need to hold some things sacred to yourself alone. His piety was one of them. The enormity of what he was granting me whisked my shame from me, replacing it with a sense of awe.
There were no pews in this chapel; there had only ever been one member of the faithful. So I sat down on the steps of the sanctuary, folded my hands, and let myself be with him, to accept this gift.