“Her life would sustain the king’s, the king’s life would sustain the denizens of the Underground, and their lives would sustain the earth and make things grow. The king accepted her bargain, and when the new year turned, spring came again.”
In its own way, it was a beautiful story, more like the parables and fables of good Christian martyrs Mother told us than Constanze’s tales of hobgoblins and mischief. Virtuous people, persistent people, people who sacrificed themselves for the greater good of all, these were the heroes of Mother’s stories. Like the brave maiden of the Goblin King’s tale.
But Käthe was not the brave heroine of Mother’s stories; she was the foolish, beautiful girl of Constanze’s. Who was the brave maiden of the Goblin King’s tale?
“But the story doesn’t end there, does it?” I asked.
“The story has no end,” he said roughly. “It goes on and on and on and on unto eternity.”
The Goblin King’s eyes were sad, or regretful. His eyes were not like those of the other goblins—those dark, ink-black orbs that hid all intent. It was difficult to read the faces of the goblins around me; their eyes flat and inscrutable, their features twisted and alien to the natural eye. But there was sympathy between myself and the Goblin King, a language of our bodies that I understood.
“So you want my sister to die,” I whispered, “so the world can live.”
He said nothing.
“If,” I began, and then cleared my throat. “If you lose the game, what happens? Will—will spring never come? Will the world above live under eternal winter?”
His face was grave. “Are you willing to take that risk?”
An impossible choice. The life of my sister … or the fate of the world. I had thought my stakes were high, but I saw now that the Goblin King’s was even higher.
“What will happen to you if I win?” I whispered.
A smile crossed his lips, but the corners were downturned, more sad than satisfied. “You know,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s ever asked.”
Then he vanished in a swirl of wind and dead leaves.
* * *
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 Käthe’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 Käthe 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.
Käthe 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 Käthe 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 Käthe 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, Käthe.”
“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.”