Käthe and I were alone in the passageway. The air grew still and warm, the silence about us stifling. I began humming, a tuneless hum that was more resignation than reassurance. Käthe slid her hand into mine and squeezed it comfortingly, her palm surprisingly warm.
I glanced down at the flute by my side. It was smoking slightly, but not from heat. Frost rimmed its joins, the frozen wood of its body almost too painful to hold. I brought it back up to my mouth, my lips sticking to the ice-rimmed metal embouchure. A sigh misted across the surface as I began to play once more, my breath forming clouds before me.
* * *
It was my first encounter with Der Erlkönig on that long, endless night, but it would not be the last. Over and over again, he appeared before me, taunting me, misleading me, tricking me. I stood stalwart and unwavering, walking past his apparitions and through his illusions. It was easier, somehow, when I thought of him as the terrifying and enigmatic figure of myth from Constanze’s stories, rather than the Goblin King with whom I had danced as both a child and a young woman. There was nothing of my Goblin King within Der Erlkönig.
Each triumph against Der Erlkönig strengthened my resolve and determination, but I grew overconfident. I had bested his supernatural tricks; I had not reckoned on his psychological ones.
I was playing the flute again—I alternated between singing and playing in an effort to preserve both my voice and my breath—when I heard the violin.
I who had grown up with Papa, I who had nurtured Josef’s developing virtuoso talent, had never, ever heard such playing as this. The violinist played a piece I did not know. I did not recognize the composer, though I thought I could hear Bach’s contrapuntal intricacy, Vivaldi’s elegant expressiveness, and Handel’s grandiose charm within the piece. There was devotion in every strain—devotion, reverence, ecstasy—and I nearly wept from the beauty of it. I stopped humming.
The scent of summer peaches filled the corridor.
Even Käthe seemed moved, though she couldn’t tell the difference between a concerto and a chaconne. My sister swayed on her feet, closing her eyes as though trying to listen with greater attention.
The music came from somewhere just beyond reach. Hand in hand, Käthe and I followed the sound to where it seemed loudest, the most clear, the most affecting. But there was no musician standing before us, no one to congratulate on the exquisiteness of his or her playing. In fact, the music seemed to come from behind the earthen wall of the passageway, in another room, another hall, another world. I pressed my ears to the dirt, struggling to get closer to the source of that sound.
I clawed at the earth, digging, digging, searching, reaching. The music grew louder as I pressed myself into the dirt, burying myself deeper and deeper into the Underground. The moving earth shifted and stirred about me, the dirt falling back on my shoulders as I dug and tunneled closer to the music.
I did not know to where I was digging, or to whom. I did not know if it was to freedom, to the world above, to the unknown musician, to Josef, or to the angel of music himself. I only knew that I could not die without having beheld the face behind the magic.
“Sepperl!” I cried. Or perhaps it was the name of God. Dirt filled my mouth and my nostrils, but I did not care.
“Liesl!”
Through earth-packed ears, I thought I heard a cry. My name, perhaps. A voice I once knew.
“Liesl, please.”
Hands on my shoulders, pulling and tugging and dragging me away.
“No!” My throat was clogged with dirt, and I choked on it. The music was fading and I wept at its loss.
“You can’t do this. You can’t leave me here to do this alone.”
Something wet fell on my face. Rain? How it could possibly rain underground?
A few more drops. Then another. They were warm, so warm. Almost living. Like no rain I had ever felt. A drop slid to the corner of my mouth and I tasted it. Salt.
Tears. They were tears.
Käthe was crying.
“Liesl, Liesl,” she keened, clutching me to her chest, rocking us back and forth.
“Käthe,” I croaked, then coughed, spitting out bits of dirt, mud, and even leaves. My lungs were raw, each breath drawn over gravel and charcoal. As my wits returned, I saw I was buried up to my neck in the loose dirt and rocks of the corridor floor, digging my grave with my bare hands.
“Oh, thank God!” My sister worked furiously at my bodice and stays, trying to loosen the strings to help me breathe. I coughed and retched and coughed and retched until the bile ran clear.
In the distance I could still hear the ghostly strains of that angelic violin, but my sister held me tightly in her grip, my face in her palms.
“Stay with me.” Her blue eyes searched mine. “Right here. Don’t listen. It’s not real. It’s not Josef. It’s not Papa. It is the Goblin King. It is a trick.”
It’s not Josef. It’s not Papa. It is the Goblin King. It is a trick. I repeated those words like a refrain, drowning out the sweet music that enveloped me and threatened to steal my senses. The scent of summer peaches was stronger than ever, only now it held the whiff of putrefaction.
Goblin glamour, I realized.
Käthe brushed the mud and blood from my face and helped me to my feet, leading me down the long, labyrinthine corridor.
Dear, sweet, unmusical Käthe. Each time the spell of the violin tightened its stranglehold about my wits, my sister gripped my hand all the harder. It hurt, but I relished the pain; it reminded me of who I was and what I was doing. I was Liesl. I was Käthe’s older sister. I was rescuing her from the Goblin King. I was saving her life. Only now it was my little sister saving mine.