Birthday? I had forgotten. I had long ceased to mark the passing of days, weeks, hours. The Underground never changed, never transformed with the seasons, and the years stretched out ahead of me, bland and blank. “Is it midsummer?”
“Yes. Everything is warm and lush and green.” The changeling’s voice was as flat as his expressionless eyes, yet I thought I could hear a note of longing in it. His longing echoed in me.
It would be my twentieth summer, in the world above.
“I wish I could see it.” A useless wish. I had the power to bend the will of the goblins to my desire, but this was not one they could fulfill.
The changeling said nothing, but pushed his hands forward, berries still red in his palms.
When we went strawberry picking, Käthe and I used to argue over which were the best berries to gather. She always went for the biggest, whereas I always picked the reddest. She used to say that it was best to have the biggest, because you got the most strawberry for the littlest effort. I would retort that bigger wasn’t always better; the reddest berries, the ones most vibrant and even in color, were always the sweetest.
The berries in the changeling’s hands were small, but each was perfect in its red intensity. They shone like jewels in the dark, and I wished I could want them. That I could crave them the way I once had. But the taste of strawberries, of chocolate, of tart mustard on yeasty bread—they were all gone.
I plucked a berry from the changeling’s hands anyway.
“Thank you,” I said, and took a bite.
Sweetness burst across the tongue. More than sweet; I tasted sunshine in the meadow, lemony greenness, heat. Memories flooded in along with the taste, running down my throat like tears.
I tasted Käthe’s love.
“Oh,” I breathed. “Oh!”
I devoured the rest, shoving them all into my mouth like a child, as many as I could hold. I should have waited, I should have savored, but I didn’t care. Color returned to my world, and I felt my veins run with red.
The changeling was silent as I ate. It wasn’t until I had finished that I caught the look of envy on his face. It was the first truly human expression I had ever seen in a changeling and it startled me.
“I’m sorry.” I wiped the juice from my lips. “I didn’t think to offer you any.”
He shrugged. “It would turn to ashes in my mouth anyway.”
Sympathy flared through me. We weren’t so different, the changeling and I. Neither dead nor truly alive. Along with my sense of taste, all my emotions returned to me with full force. My throat closed with the pity and sorrow I felt for this strange creature. I covered his hands with mine.
Hunger swept over his features, and too late I remembered Thistle’s warning. Careful, they bite.
But the changeling did not move. Instead, he closed his eyes, and pain thumped my chest. He reminded me so much of Josef, his gentle fragility, his ethereal otherworldliness. This changeling lived a half-life, and suddenly I was glad my brother was far from me, far from the fate from which my love had saved him.
Stay away, Sepperl, I thought fiercely. Stay away, and never come back.
“They say love can free you,” the changeling whispered. “That if one, just one person loved you enough, it could bring you back to the world above.” He opened his eyes, those flat, inhuman goblin eyes, and implored me. “Would you love me?”
His words, those little gifts. It was all made clear to me now why this changeling had sought me out. An invisible hand crumpled my heart in my chest. I wanted to gather him in my arms, to soothe him the way I would have soothed my little brother, kissing away the pain from his fingertips after Papa had made him practice his scales so much it tore the calluses. But he was not my brother.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could.
The changeling did not react to my denial. I searched his face for hurt, for anger, but saw nothing but the inhuman, unfamiliar affect of the other goblins.
“I’ll bring more strawberries next time,” was all he said. “Is there anything you want me to give the sunshine girl?”
It was as though a thunderclap rang in the grotto. Silence and shock rang across the lake like a gong, resonating in my bones.
“You … you can do that?”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t see or hear me standing there. But if I can bring you her gifts, then maybe you can leave something for her.”
Hope. Hope so searing it burned me with determination.
“Could you … could you bring me with you?”
The changeling studied me. I could read nothing in his goblin gaze.
“All right,” he said. “Tomorrow. Meet me here tomorrow.”
* * *
I returned immediately to the retiring room and gathered the leaves of the Wedding Night Sonata, the beginnings of a fair copy, the foul papers, and all. I folded them together in haste, a jumble of music and half-coherent thoughts, wrapping them with the length of ribbon my sister had tied around the clover blossoms.
“What are you doing?” asked Thistle.
The goblin girls were by my side, though the room had been empty when I arrived. Sometimes I wondered if they were charged with spying on me in addition to attending to me. Then I felt guilty for the thought. There was no reason the Goblin King had to spy on me, no reason for me to hide my actions.
Until now.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “It is none of your business.”
“Is there anything with which we can assist you, Your Highness?” Twig asked. Of my two goblin girls, she was the kinder one, the one more inclined to offer deference instead of contempt.