Back in the world above, Mother and Constanze would have chastised me for lying abed so long. The sun doesn’t rest, and neither do we, Mother always said. Even on my worst days, the days when my monthly courses pressed down upon my womb with an iron-hot weight, the days when the futility of my existence threatened to suffocate me, I always found the strength to face the next hour, the next task, the next chore. It was easier not to think of the long road ahead, lest I drown in the mire and muck of my mundane life.
Now without purpose, without responsibility, I did not know how to order my unlife. How to arrange my hours into something meaningful, something worthwhile. The thought of the klavier in the next room taunted me; the notes stained onto my wedding gown cried out to be recorded, remembered. Write it down, a voice inside me urged. It sounded like the Goblin King. Write your music down.
I wanted to. I absolutely wanted to. But a part of me was too raw to even think about looking at the notes I had scrawled on the silk, the rejection, humiliation, and frustration I had laid there. The music I made with Sepperl was safe; my brother had been there to guide me through my errors and correct my mistakes. The bagatelle I had written for him, the piece I had named after the man who inspired the both of us, was also in Josef’s more educated, capable hands. But this—the beginnings of this wedding night sonata—was too shameful.
It is great because it is shameful, the voice inside me said again. It is great because it is true.
I rose from the bed and walked to the retiring room. My weakness did not pass; it grew worse the longer I was awake. I thought about calling for Twig or Thistle, to have them bring me something to eat or drink, but I wanted to be alone. I wanted to cry. I had spent tears of rage, frustration, and sorrow since becoming the Goblin King’s bride, but I hadn’t allowed myself the indulgence of a good sob. The undignified, broken-hearted, mournful wail of ugly tears. The weight of that unreleased cry pressed down upon my lungs and my heart.
I sat down at the klavier. The cry was there, crawling up the edges of my throat, the corners of my nose and eyes, but it would not free itself. I thought of Mother, of Papa, of Constanze. I thought of Josef, and of Käthe.
Missing Josef was a stab to my heart, sharp, piercing, a grave and mortal wound. Missing Josef was learning to live without a part of myself, like losing a limb or a hand. How did one live without a limb or a hand? You learned to live around it, to absorb its emptiness as a part of yourself.
Missing Käthe was yearning for a summer’s day on a winter night. My love for my sister was a constant thing, just as she had been a constant presence in my life, my bedmate since childhood. If Josef was a part of who I was, then Käthe defined me, shaped my borders, filled my negative spaces. She was the sunshine to my darkness, the sweetness to my salty disposition. I knew who I was because I knew who I was not: my sister. Without my sister to define me, I was unsteady, unstable. I had lost the crutch that propped me up.
I could not let them out. I could not let them go. The ghosts of my family were trapped, and I needed someone to turn me inside out, break me apart, rip me open. Let them out. Let them out. Let them out. I could not do it alone. I needed to unburden myself, push that pain into someone else, relieve myself of the unbearable weight of grief. I needed someone to pull my grief from me, draw the poison from the wound. I needed someone to carry my pain for me. I needed a friend.
I buried my head in my arms, tears dotting the black and white keys of the klavier, a slow, steady leak that did nothing to relieve the pressure building inside me.
* * *
My time in the Underground took on a sort of clockwork of its own: sleep, eat, sleep, wander, sleep, eat, sleep, sit at the klavier, sleep, wander, sleep. I spent much of my time in the abode of the goblins asleep. It seemed a luxury at first, after years of rising before dawn. But in time, not even sleep could pass the time quickly enough. I had my first taste of boredom, and I hated it.
Twig and Thistle suggested a picnic down by the shores of the Underground lake. We watched the Lorelei emerge and disappear beneath the surface as a group of changelings played on the far side. Unbidden, the memory of Josef’s face with goblin eyes returned to me. I frowned.
“What are the changelings?” I asked.
Thistle gave me a sharp look. “Why do you ask, mortal?”
I could have punished her for not addressing me properly—I was Her Highness—but Thistle, like Constanze, called me whatever she wanted.
“I’m just curious,” I said. “Are they—are they children? Of the Goblin King?”
Twig and Thistle laughed, their high-pitched cackles splintering and echoing on the shores of the Underground lake.
“Children?” Thistle sneered. “No. No union of mortal and Der Erlkönig has ever been fruitful.”
“Actually—” Twig began, but the other goblin girl cut her off.
“The changelings are nothing, poor fools,” Thistle said. “Neither fish nor fowl, human nor goblin.”
“How can that be?” I watched the changelings on the far side skipping rocks, sending luminescent ripples across the surface. In the shifting, mercurial light of the grotto, they seemed more like a ragtag bunch of children than the elegant creatures with whom I had danced at the Goblin Ball. There was an innocence as well as an agelessness about them. They could have been fifteen. They could have been five hundred. “If they aren’t the children of humans and goblins, then what are they?”
“They are,” Twig said quietly, “the product of a wish.”