It was because Käthe had been flirting shamelessly with a handful of Austrian soldiers en route to Munich to oust the French. Pretty girl, they coaxed her in their funny Austrian accents, Come give us a kiss!
“A wanton woman is ripened fruit,” Constanze intoned, “begging to be plucked by the Goblin King.”
A frisson of unease ran up my spine. Our grandmother liked to scare us with tales of goblins and other creatures that lived in the woods beyond our village, but Käthe, Josef, and I hadn’t taken her stories seriously since we were children. At eighteen, I was too old for my grandmother’s fairy tales, yet I cherished the guilty thrill that ran through me whenever the Goblin King was mentioned. Despite everything, I still believed in the Goblin King. I still wanted to believe in the Goblin King.
“Oh, go squawk at someone else, you old crow.” Käthe pouted. “Why must you always be pecking at me?”
“Mark my words.” Constanze glared at my sister from beneath layers of yellowed lace and faded ruffles, her dark brown eyes the only sharp things in her wizened face. “You watch yourself, Katharina, lest the goblins come take you for your licentious ways.”
“Enough, Constanze,” I said. “Leave Käthe alone and let us go on our way. We must be back before Master Antonius arrives.”
“Yes, Heaven forbid we miss our precious little Josef’s audition for the famous violin maestro,” my sister muttered.
“Käthe!”
“I know, I know.” She sighed. “Stop worrying, Liesl. He’ll be fine. You’re worse than a hen with a fox at the door.”
“He won’t be fine if he doesn’t have any bows to play with.” I turned to leave. “Come, or I’ll be going without you.”
“Wait.” Käthe grabbed my hand. “Would you let me do a little something with your hair? You have such gorgeous locks; it’s a shame you plait them out of the way. I could—”
“A wren is still a wren, even in a peacock’s feathers.” I shook her off. “Don’t waste your time. It’s not like Hans—anyone—would notice anyway.”
My sister flinched at the mention of her betrothed’s name. “Fine,” she said shortly, then strode past me without another word.
“Ka—” I began, but Constanze stopped me before I could follow.
“You take care of your sister, girlie,” she warned. “You watch over her.”
“Don’t I always?” I snapped. It had always been up to me—me and Mother—to hold the family together. Mother looked after the inn that was our house and livelihood; I looked after the members who made it home.
“Do you?” My grandmother fixed her dark eyes on my face. “Josef isn’t the only one who needs looking after, you know.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You forget what day it is.”
Sometimes it was easier to humor Constanze than to ignore her. I sighed. “What day is it?”
“The day the old year dies.”
Another shiver up my spine. My grandmother still kept to the old laws and the old calendar, and this last night of autumn was when the old year died and the barrier between worlds was thin. When the denizens of the Underground walked the world above during the days of winter, before the year began again in the spring.
“The last night of the year,” Constanze said. “Now the days of winter begin and the Goblin King rides abroad, searching for his bride.”
I turned my face away. Once I would have remembered without any prompting. Once I would have joined my grandmother in pouring salt along every windowsill, every threshold, every entrance as a precaution against these wildling nights. Once, once, once. But I could no longer afford the luxury of my indulgent imaginings. It was time, as the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, to put aside childish things.
“I don’t have time for this.” I pushed Constanze aside. “Let me pass.”
Sorrow pushed the lines of my grandmother’s face into even deeper grooves, sorrow and loneliness, her hunched shoulders bowing with the weight of her beliefs. She bore those beliefs alone now. None of us kept faith with Der Erlkönig anymore; none save Josef.
“Liesl!” Käthe shouted from downstairs. “Can I borrow your red cloak?”
“Mind how you choose, girl,” Constanze told me. “Josef is not part of the game. When Der Erlkönig plays, he plays for keeps.”
Her words stopped me short. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What game?”
“You tell me.” Constanze’s expression was grave. “The wishes we make in the dark have consequences, and the Lord of Mischief will call their reckoning.”
Her words prickled against my mind. I minded how Mother warned us of Constanze’s aged and feeble wits, but my grandmother had never seemed more lucid or more earnest, and despite myself, a thread of fear began to wind about my throat.
“Is that a yes?” Käthe called. “Because I’m taking it if so!”
I groaned. “No, you may not!” I said, leaning over the stair rail. “I’ll be right there, I promise!”
“Promises, eh?” Constanze cackled. “You make so many, but how many of them can you keep?”
“What—” I began, but when I turned to face her, my grandmother was gone.
* * *
Downstairs, Käthe had taken my red cloak off its peg, but I plucked it from her hands and settled it about my own shoulders. The last time Hans had brought us gifts from his father’s fabric goods store—before his proposal to Käthe, before everything between us changed—he had given us a beautiful bolt of heavy wool. For the family, he’d said, but everyone had known the gift was for me. The bolt of wool was a deep blood-red, perfectly suited to my darker coloring and warming to my sallow complexion. Mother and Constanze had made me a winter cloak from the cloth, and Käthe made no secret of how much she coveted it.