Thistle made a face, but disappeared in a twinkling. Twig gave a deep bow, her cobweb-and-branch-laden hair scraping the floor.
“Twig,” I began. “What is that painting above my fireplace?”
An inscrutable expression crossed her face. Between my two attendants, Twig had seemed the more sympathetic one, but I was reminded that despite her kindnesses to me, she wasn’t my friend. But she was the closest thing I had to a confidante in the Underground, and I sorely missed the companionship. I sorely missed Käthe.
“You touched it, didn’t you?” Twig asked.
I nodded.
She sighed. “It’s a mirror, Your Highness.”
“A mirror?” I glanced at it again, but all I saw was the Goblin Grove, blanketed in white. “Then why …?”
“That one,” Twig said, inclining her head toward the gilt-edged piece above the mantel, “was brought from the world above. Like most of the mirrors there, it’s silver-backed. Silver follows her own laws here in the Underground. She won’t show you your reflection; she’ll show you what she wants you to see.”
Josef. Käthe. My heart twisted with pain.
“That’s why we warned you not to touch it,” she said. “Your thoughts, your feelings, your questions—that’s what gets reflected back at you, not your face.”
“Is what the mirror shows me not a true vision, then?” I desperately needed this magic mirror to be real. So I could watch Josef grow up to be the man he was meant to be. So I could see Käthe blossom into the woman I knew she could become. So I would not forget what it was to live, even as life itself forgot me.
Twig’s lips twisted. “I wouldn’t necessarily trust what you see in it, Highness. Silver won’t lie, but it can conceal truths as much as it can reveal them.”
The ghosts of my family sat around us in my chamber, crowding in on the edges of our conversation. I had to talk around them.
“If silver won’t show me my reflection,” I said, “then what will?”
“Still water is best, of course, but in the absence of that, polished jet, bronze, or copper will do.” Twig picked up a round copper basin from the floor. She turned its convex side toward me.
I looked worse than I thought. Tearstains cut grooves through the ash and dirt encrusting my cheeks, but could not disguise the gray shadows beneath my eyes. My face looked sunken, haggard, old, and the copper basin distorted my image back at me—long, pointed nose; stubby, weak chin. Or perhaps I truly was this ugly.
I swallowed. “I look a right mess.”
“That you do,” Twig said cheerfully. “I’ve been told mortals like to bathe, so I’ve been instructed to bring you down to the hot springs. Come,” she said, gesturing to me. “You won’t even have to say I wish.”
I laughed. It felt good to laugh, even for a feeble joke; it relieved a bit of the pressure of grief and homesickness on my heart. It felt good to laugh with someone again, even if she wasn’t my sister. Even if she wasn’t a friend.
Humans were not meant for isolation. We were not meant for loneliness. I glanced back at the ghosts of my family sitting with me in my bedchamber, invisible to the eye, but visible to my heart. I was dead to the world above, but I could not help but reach for comfort and companionship, the way a flower yearns for sunshine in the dark.
* * *
After my bath, Twig and Thistle took me deep into the heart of the Underground, to the center of the goblin city for some proper gowns and dresses. I was curious about goblin ateliers—Thistle and Twig did not wear human clothes; they preferred to wear little skirts woven of leaves and branches and twigs. The fact that goblins had tailors and seamstresses at all intrigued me.
The corridors changed as we wound through the various passageways. Where my room was situated had curved hallways, tunnels rather than broad passages, paintings and portraits and other objets d’art, and dirt floors lined with rugs. The paths by the underground lake were smaller, tighter, and damper—less earthen and more rocky.
As we neared the center of the goblin city, the hallways broadened and expanded into passable avenues. The floor became paved with enormous gemstones, each the size of my head. They glittered beneath our feet as we passed, their surfaces polished by thousands—millions—of feet smoothing them over centuries. On each side of these broad avenues were elaborately carved thresholds, with “windows” cut into the second- and third-story walls to overlook the streets below.
It was wrong. The city was strange, forced, and artificial. It did not teem with life; it was empty. This city had not been grown—it had been made. There was a symmetry to these buildings that seemed antithetical to the goblin aesthetic, a rigid sameness and grace that was as ordered as a Baroque symphony.
“Does anyone live here?” I asked.
“Goblins don’t live in cities,” Thistle said. “We’re not like you humans, wanting to live on top of each other. Most of us are solitary, and we live in barrows connected by family and clan. This,” she said, gesturing to the storefronts around us, “is where we trade.”
“Trade?” I was surprised. “Goblins conduct business with each other?”
The sour look was back on Thistle’s face. “Yes. Obviously.”
There were signs above each open threshold, goblin sigils. Family crests, perhaps. Perhaps this one indicated gold work, that one gem-cutting. I had seen some astonishing works of art in the Underground, works that were far more deftly made than those made by human hands. Goblin-made objects of legend had always been treasure beyond measure in Constanze’s stories; wars had been waged for their possession, empires had fallen to acquire them.