Presently, the peach perfume faded from the air, my senses cleared, and I heard the music with a mind entire. The magic was gone. There was no angel of music, no divine presence, only the fallible sounds of mortal performance. Beautiful, but human.
Curiosity had returned along with my wits. Something—someone was playing the violin, and the music was closer than ever.
Light shone through a large crack in the wall of the maze ahead of us. A slim, slender silhouette cast a shadow against the passage floors. Der Erlkönig. I did not marvel then that I knew the shape of his body as well as my own reflection.
I watched the Goblin King’s shadow play his violin, his right arm moving in a smooth, practiced bowing motion. Käthe tried to pull me away, but I did not go with her. I moved closer to the light, and pressed my face to the crack. I had to look, had to see. I had to watch him play.
The Goblin King’s back was turned to me. He wore no fancy coat, no embroidered dressing gown. He was simply dressed in trousers and a fine cambric shirt, so fine I could see the play of muscles in his back.
He played with precision and with considerable skill. The Goblin King was not Josef; he did not have my brother’s clarity of emotion or my brother’s transcendence. But the Goblin King had his own voice, full of passion, longing, and reverence, and it was unexpectedly … vibrant. Alive.
I could hear the slight fumblings, the stutters and starts in tempo, the accidental jarring note that marked his playing as human, oh so human. This was a man—a young man?—playing a song he liked on the violin. Playing it until it sounded perfect to his imperfect ears. I had stumbled upon something private, something intimate. My cheeks reddened.
“Liesl.”
My sister’s voice sliced through the sound of the Goblin King’s playing like a guillotine, stopping the music mid-phrase. He glanced over his shoulder, and our eyes met.
His mismatched gaze was unguarded, and I felt both ashamed and emboldened. I had seen him unclothed in his bedchamber, but he was even more naked now. Propriety told me I should look away, but I could not, arrested by the sight of his soul bared to me.
We stared at each other through the crack in the wall, unable to move. The air between us changed, like a world before a storm: hushed, quiet, waiting, expectant.
A moan broke the tension. Käthe. The hooded expression fell over the Goblin King’s eyes, and he was distant and untouchable, Der Erlkönig once more.
“Liesl,” Käthe whispered. “Let’s go. Please.”
I had forgotten my sister’s existence. I had forgotten why I was there. I had forgotten everything but the sight of the Goblin King’s eyes, gray and green and blue and brown together. Käthe pulled at my sleeve, and I followed, running down the corridor hand in hand with my sister. Running before Der Erlkönig could catch us, running before he could trap us again with sweet words and sweet enchantments, and running before I could quite understand the strange, syncopated beat of my sympathetic heart.
PYRRHIC VICTORY
The sky was dark when we emerged from the Underground at last, spangled with endless stars. The moon had not yet risen and I did not know how much time had passed. Were we too late?
I glanced about me. The surrounding forest was unfamiliar, lit with the otherworldly glow of starlight. The trees grew into twisted shapes, sculpted by centuries of wind—or a goblin-led hand. They grew as though striving to dance and roam free, only to be rooted fast and trapped by the earth beneath them. I thought of the stories Constanze had told us of maidens turning into trees and shivered, although the night was curiously mild.
No, we were not too late. I stared at the great open expanse above me. The sky above me was proof, proof I had won. My eyes burned against the light; after what seemed like days buried beneath dirt and roots and rock, the sight of stars was enough to move me to tears.
“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. Käthe 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.
“Käthe,” 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.
“Käthe,” 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.