The Goblin King stood on the threshold between his bedchamber and the retiring room. The path between his room and mine was now connected. He was simply dressed, looking less like a sovereign than a shepherd boy. If he had had a hat, he would have wrung it in his fingers sheepishly. He hovered in the in-between spaces, awaiting my permission to enter. I could not make out the expression on his face.
He cleared his throat. “Are you—are you all right, my queen?”
So distant. So formal. He always called me my dear, said in that sarcastic tone of his, or else it was Elisabeth, always Elisabeth. He was the only one who called me that, and I wanted to be Elisabeth for him again.
“I am fine, thank you, mein Herr.” I matched his distance with my own. The chasm between us grew to twice its size. I ached to bridge it, but did not know how. We had been connected in ways so much more intimate than this. How much more could you bare of yourself when you’d already given everything?
He looked away as soon as my eyes met his. A queer feeling overcame me when I realized I had caught my husband in a moment of unguarded admiration. Admiration. Of me. I felt as though he had walked in on me undressed. Yet he had seen me undressed. My mind, tidied into its proper spaces, fell back into disarray.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
The words came out like an accusation. The Goblin King stiffened.
“Long enough,” was all he said. “Do you mind?”
Liesl would have minded.
“No,” I said. “I don’t mind. Please, sit.”
He gave me a grave nod and the slightest sliver of a smile. As ever, the tips of his pointed teeth poked through that smile, but it wasn’t as threatening as before. He walked to the chaise longue and sat down, leaning back and closing his eyes as I continued to muddle through the piece.
This was intimacy of an entirely different sort. He was inside me, part of me, in the spirit as well as the flesh. At first I thought I was merely giving him a glimpse into my mind, but before long I realized the Goblin King was already in my head. He offered a suggestion here, a revision there, all so deftly and subtly that his voice became mine. With Josef, composing had been something I gave him, something he took and shaped into the finished product. But with the Goblin King, music was something we molded together, just as we had done when I was a child.
I remembered now. All my memories of him came flooding back, ripped from the tide gates by my release. Sweeping away the cobwebs of shame and disappointment, our friendship shone shiny and new. We had danced together in the Goblin Grove, had sung together, had made music together. After I finished a piece, I would rush into the forest to meet the Goblin King. To share my music with him. As I had until my father told me to grow up.
I’m so sorry, I thought. I’m so sorry I betrayed you.
My hands shook on the klavier. The Goblin King opened his eyes.
“Is everything all right?”
I smiled at him, really, truly smiled at him. Warmth filled me, a soft, tickling sensation. It was a long moment before I recognized the emotion for what it was: happiness. I was happy. I could not remember the last time I had been happy.
“What?” He was suddenly bashful.
“Nothing,” I said, but my smile grew broader.
“It’s never nothing with you.” But he smiled too, and its sweetness hurt. He looked years younger with that smile. He was entirely that soft-eyed young man now, no trace of Der Erlkönig in his face.
“Sometimes,” I said, shaking my head, “I wish you didn’t know me so well.”
He laughed. There were no sharp edges to him anymore. The mood changed between us, growing heavier, weightier. We continued working in silence, but thoughts and feelings flowed between us without words, the push and pull, ebb and flow of the music gently rocking us with its sound.
Our conversation wound to a close as I finished working through the theme.
“Beautiful,” the Goblin King murmured. “Transcendent. It—it’s bigger than Heaven and the world above. Just like you.”
Roses bloomed in my cheeks, and I averted my head so he would not see.
“You could change the course of music,” he said. “You could change the world above if you—”
He did not finish his sentence. If I—what? Published my music? Managed to get past the barriers of my name, my sex, my death? My final fate hung between us, an invisible but insurmountable obstacle. I would not change the course of music. I would die here, unheard and unremembered. I tasted the unfairness at the back of my throat, bitterness and bile.
“If the world above were ready for me, perhaps,” I said lightly. “But I fear I am too much for them—and not enough.”
“You, my dear,” the Goblin King said, “are more than enough.”
The compliment from another’s lips would have sounded coy, flirtatious, even arch. A pretty sentiment designed to flatter and then bed me. I had heard such blandishments from guests in our inn, directed even to one as plain as me. Yet I did not think the Goblin King intended to flatter; on his lips, the words sounded like unvarnished truth. I was more than enough. More than my limitations, more than adequate, simply more.
“Thank you.” If I had been Käthe, I would have deflected the compliment with a coquettish wink or a snide remark. But I was not Käthe; I was plain, blunt, and forthright Liesl. No. Elisabeth. Plain, earnest, straightforward, and talented Elisabeth. I took his words for the gift they were, and for the first time, accepted them without pain.