His black eyes glittered. “All you mortals are so alike,” he said. “Quick to be born, quick to die. Like mayflies in the night.”
“But,” I said. “Josef is not dead.”
A slow smile spread across his lips. “Are you so certain of that?”
I turned my head away. “What—” I began, my throat hoarse. “What is Josef?”
The changeling did not reply, but I already knew the answer. In some ways, I had always known the answer. My brother died that night I heard him crying, when the fever ravaged his mortal body, leaving nothing but a corpse. Before the scarlatina had taken him, my brother had been rosy-cheeked and hale, a chubby, good-natured baby. The morning after the fever broke, the thing left in his cradle had been sallow and thin, a queer, quiet creature. We all thought it was the fever. But I knew better.
“How can a changeling live in the world above?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “They can’t, except by the power of—”
“—a wish,” I finished. I wanted to laugh. “I know.”
“No.” The changeling’s voice was amused. “By the power of love.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and I was falling. Suddenly it seemed like the rules of the Underground were changing, and I couldn’t grasp their meaning.
“Love?”
The changeling shrugged again. “You love him, don’t you? Your brother?”
Was he my brother? How could I possibly ask myself that? Josef’s nature did not change the fact that he was the other half of my soul, my amanuensis, the gardener of my heart. Of course he was my brother.
“Yes,” I said. “I love him.”
“Then he stayed for you. None of us have lasted long in the world above, you know. Take us far from the Underground and we wither and fade. You called him by name and loved him entire. That is power.”
I feel severed from the land of my birth, and I can feel my talent fade and grow dull. I feel blinded, deafened, muted.
“Oh, Josef.” I pressed my hand to my anguished heart.
“Do not worry,” the changeling said. “He will return to us soon enough. We all come back, in the end.”
UNFINISHED SYMPHONY
Of all my mortal emotions, hope was the worst. All the others were easy to carry and easy to put aside: anger flashed then burned out, sorrow gradually lightened, and happiness bubbled then disappeared. But hope … hope was stubborn. Like a weed it returned, even after I had plucked it away again and again.
Hope also hurt.
It hurt when, night after night, the Goblin King put me to bed with a chaste kiss upon my brow. It hurt when the clover blossoms from my sister faded, then died. It hurt when I never again heard Josef’s violin from the world above, calling my name in A minor.
It also hurt when I thought of the gateway beneath the Underground lake and the threshold beyond.
So I tried my best to stifle hope. Because hope’s twin was despair, and despair was infinitely worse. If hope hurt, then despair was the absence of hurt. It was the absence of feeling. It was the absence of caring.
I wanted very much to care.
But it was getting harder to meet each day with purpose. It was hard to find excitement, joy, or anticipation, even in that which had brought me so much happiness before. The Goblin King and I worked the first movement of the Wedding Night Sonata until it was perfect, until there were no mistakes left. I had heard the Allegro more times than I could count, and while I could no longer find anything I wanted to fix, neither could I find anything I liked about it.
Move on, the Goblin King had encouraged me. Write something else. The next movement, perhaps.
I tried. Or rather, I tried to try. But I couldn’t. I stared at the black and white keys of the klavier, but inspiration did not come. I did not know where to begin or how to proceed. And then I realized I did not know how to proceed because I did not know how the story ended.
What was the resolution of a piece begun in rage, impotence, and desire? How did it finish? I knew the rules, how a sonata should be structured. Three movements: fast, slow, fast. A declaration of theme, a deconstruction, a resolution. But there would be no conclusion, not for me; only a slow, sputtering decrescendo.
Those would be the remaining years of my life.
I had thought I knew impotence. I had thought I knew futility. I had been so wrong.
As long as you have reason to love, Thistle had said.
I had many reasons to love. I touched the faded clover blossoms on the sheet music beside me.
As long as the world above remembers you.
Could I … could I send some sort of message? Could I send proof of my love, the way Käthe had, the way Josef had?
The grove is one of the sacred spaces left where the Underground and the world above overlap.
And then hope flared again, more painful than before.
* * *
There were endless facets to my Goblin King—trickster, musician, philosopher, scholar, gentleman—and I had taken great pleasure in discovering them, one after another. Each new side revealed another dimension, another depth which added to my understanding of my husband.
But there was one facet of him I had uncovered, and it was one I liked not at all: martyr.
It was a while before I understood his curious reticence, his careful distancing. It was even longer before I noticed it, for although my husband was free with his affection—touches upon my face, my hands, my shoulder, my lips—he was a miser in everything else.
The longer you burn the candle …