Despite the warnings, I leaned over the edge of my boat for a closer look. Dark shapes stirred beneath the trail of light, and against my better judgment, I reached out to touch it. Where my fingers dipped into the water, more glittering ripples grew, the glowing droplets clinging to my skin when I lifted my hand from the surface. Something soft caressed my palm as I let my hand drift farther and farther into the water, gentle fingers wrapping themselves around my wrist.
The shapes beneath the surface grew clearer, and I saw a young woman peering back at me. Her eyes were an inky black, her hair a pale spring green. Her skin was a marvel: pale and shimmering with a myriad rainbow shades like the scales of a fish. But it was her face that arrested me: wide cheekbones, a flat nose bridge, and pouting lips. She was the loveliest creature I had ever seen.
She emerged from the water, a creature of light and shadows. Her hand lifted to caress my cheek and the singing intensified with her touch. Her glistening lips moved in the changing lights of the grotto, and I leaned even closer to drink in the whispering sounds of her mouth. I wanted to feel that impossible singing in my body. I closed my eyes, and breathed her in.
A discordant screech cut through the music.
Startled, I tumbled back into my barge, sending the boat rocking. The Lorelei hissed in annoyance and dove back underwater. I lifted my fingers to my mouth, still feeling the cool touch of her lips against mine. The nixies thrashed beneath the boat, threatening to capsize me. The discordant screech sounded again and the waters stilled.
The barge had stopped moving now that the Lorelei had abandoned me, and I was alone in the middle of a black lake. The grotto still rang with the echoes of that harsh screech, shattering the crystalline singing that had filled it moments earlier. I sat in my barge, trembling with fear and something more—a shivery sort of anticipation brought on by the near-kiss and near-drowning by the beautiful young woman.
As the disturbances in the flat, glassy surface faded away, so too did the glowing light. Darkness fell over me, broken only by the twinkling of fairy lights and the strange, carved-arm torches at the edges. I did not know how to move forward; I was too wary now to risk putting my hands back in the water, and my barge had no pole or oar with which to propel myself. I wondered what inhuman creature had cried out to drive my seducers away, whether it would come swooping to claim me, now that its rivals had gone.
And then, in the distance and impossibly far away, was the warm, grainy voice of a violin. Suddenly I recognized that discordant screech; it was the sound of a violinist running his bow indiscriminately over his strings, wielding their harsh squeal like a scythe. My treacherous heart lifted—Sepperl, come to rescue me!—but my mind knew better. It was not my little brother. It was the Goblin King.
As the violin continued to play, the barge began to move of its own accord, as though it too were drawn to the music. I held my breath as the Goblin King played a processional, a stately entrance for his mortal bride as the boat bore her smoothly over the dark, glassy water.
It was a long journey to the far shore, and as I drew closer, the music changed. It transitioned from stately processional to something simpler: a repeating melodic motif, a jaunty little tune, something like the warm-up exercises Papa had me and Josef play when we were younger. I frowned. I recognized this little piece. The little notes galloped and skipped about me like children around a maypole, tugging at my memory.
It was mine. The piece was mine.
I had composed a number of little écossaises when I was a young girl, after some traveling French musicians had played at the inn. It was a dance in the Scottish style, they told me, and I had been charmed by its liveliness. The compositions were simple enough and I had written them for the klavier, but hearing them played on the violin brought me images of Josef practicing in the back bedroom. He could not have been much older than six, and me ten.
I had all but forgotten the existence of this little piece, which was probably my best effort in the series. It was gone now, gone with the rest of my compositions in a blaze. And yet, it still lived in the Goblin King’s hands.
The écossaise faded into a Lieder, one I had written in a romantic fit when I was a girl of fourteen. The heat of shame and embarrassment singed me, and I cringed to remember the moody, melancholy maiden I had been, mooning over Hans like the lovestruck child I was.
The Goblin King continued playing my repertoire as the boat reached the far shore. He played from my childhood, through my foolish girlhood, and on to my burgeoning womanhood. Listening to him play was hearing my mind made tangible. He knew exactly when and how to push and give, to give shape to my musical musings as I had imagined them. He played my music like a sculptor, fashioning and molding and building it until it produced a perfect image of myself. Josef played like an angel, but whatever I had composed for my brother was written around him: his strengths and flaws. The Goblin King interpreted me, and showed me a vision of Liesl I had heretofore not known. He played me.
It hurt. Hearing my music like this, played in the hands of someone who understood me so completely—in a way not even my brother had known—hurt. My music was elegant, transcendent, ethereal, and I could not bear to behold its beauty. I longed to pull it back beneath my skin, to hide it away in the shadows where it properly belonged, safe where no one could judge it for its flaws.
The last notes of my music faded over the lake as the barge soundlessly glided to a halt on the opposite mooring. Ahead stood the Goblin King, haloed by the flickering torches behind him. From this distance he seemed forbidding, his tall height accentuated by the long black cloak draped over him and the crown of antlers at his brow. I could not see his face, but the violin and bow hung loose at his sides.