“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine. Now shoo, the both of you, and leave me alone.”
Thistle crawled atop the klavier and leaned toward me. She breathed in deep.
“Hmmm,” she said. “You smell of hope.” Her lips split in a jagged grin. “Interesting.”
I batted her away. “Get off, you little homunculus.”
“Hope, and sunshine,” Twig added. I jumped when her branch-laden hair scraped against my side. “Like the world above. Like … like her.”
I paused in the gathering of my music. “Like whom?”
Twig yelped as Thistle leaped from the klavier and tackled her to the floor.
“Like whom?” I repeated.
“You raging idiot,” Thistle snarled, pulling handfuls of tufty cobwebs from Twig’s head. “You stupid, sentimental fool.”
“Enough!” My goblin girls flew apart, the force of my will sending them crashing into opposite corners of the retiring room. “You”—I pointed at Thistle—“are dismissed. And you”—I pointed at Twig—“are to stay here and explain yourself.”
Thistle resisted my command as long as she could, her ugly face twisting and contorting with the effort as her fingers, then her legs, and then her body began to vanish. Her head was the last to disappear, her furious grimace lingering long after the rest of her was gone.
Twig groveled at my feet. Bits of cobweb floated in the air like dust motes as she trembled.
“Twig,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know, Your Highness.” She lifted her head. “But I am not supposed to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“About the nameless maiden.”
Time ceased. The flames froze in the fireplace, the cobwebs and dust motes hung like stars.
“Do you mean,” I said softly, “the first Goblin Queen?”
The one who lived.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The nameless, brave maiden. I had forgotten about her, forgotten that she was the first and only one of us to make her sacrifice, and survive.
“How?” I whispered. “How did she escape?”
“She didn’t.” Twig twisted her spindly fingers into gnarled fists. “He let her go.”
Something snapped behind my eyes: pain, explosion, an epiphany. “What?”
She nodded. “Der Erlkönig loved her, and he let her go.”
For a moment, the sharp stab of jealousy gutted me. Der Erlkönig had loved the brave maiden. He had loved her beyond the breaking of the old laws and the end of the world.
“How,” I said in a low voice, “is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Twig whispered. “But their sacrifices were made in love, a love so vast it spanned both the world above and below. Their love was a bridge, and so they crossed it.”
I frowned. “They?”
She trembled even harder at my question. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, and the effort of answering—or not answering—was causing her anguish.
“Twig,” I said. “Are you saying that … that the brave maiden and Der Erlkönig walked out of the Underground—together?”
The gallery of Goblin Kings. The changing face of Der Erlkönig through the ages. A succession? Sons? Heirs? But Thistle had said no union of mortal or the Underground had ever been fruitful. There has always been Der Erlkönig. There will always be Der Erlkönig.
Twig wailed, and with horror, I saw a band of granite grow around her chest, a spreading stain of gray. She moved her fingers and they moaned and cracked, like branches caught in a gale. Bark covered her claws, her knuckles, her palms. My kindhearted goblin girl was turning into roots and rock.
“Stop!” I cried. “Enough!”
But I could not stop her transformation, and she stiffened and twisted, turning into a hideous statue of herself.
“I release her!” I shouted. “I release her from my will!”
Time resumed. Once more, the flames danced merrily in the grate. My goblin girl stared at me, all traces of bark and stone gone from her body.
“Is there anything else I can assist you with, Your Highness?” Twig tilted her head, but I could read nothing in her black, expressionless eyes.
I wondered if I had imagined it all. “No,” I said, my voice shaking. “You may go.”
I half-expected her to vanish the moment I dismissed her, but Twig remained, studying the folded-up Wedding Night Sonata in my hand.
“Whatever you’re planning,” she said, “don’t trust the changelings.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it.
“They are not human, despite how they look. Remember what we told you.”
I hid the pages of music behind me. “What have you told me?”
“They bite.”
* * *
Despite Twig’s warning, I was back at the Underground lake the following day. The changeling dutifully waited for me by the shore, twisting his fingers and shuffling his feet back and forth with nervousness. He reminded me so much of Josef. It was not just in the tilt of his eyes or the angle of his cheekbones; it was in the set of his shoulders, the biting of his lower lip.
“Are you ready?” the changeling asked.
I nodded.
“Do you have your gift for the sunshine girl?”
I nodded again and brought out the copy of the Wedding Night Sonata.
“Good,” the changeling said. “Let us go.”