Wintersong

“Don’t look back,” he said.

I nodded. I love you, I wanted to say. But I knew those words would break me.

“Elisabeth.”

The Goblin King was smiling. Not the pointed smile of the Lord of Mischief or Der Erlkönig, but a crooked one. Twisted to one side, lopsided and goofy, it cracked my heart open and I bled inside.

He mouthed a word at me. A name. “You’ve always had it, Elisabeth,” he said softly. “For it is to you I gave my soul.”

His soul. I held my music—our music—to my heart. We were sundered forever, never to be with the other again. The grief shattered me, broke me into sharp, jagged pieces. I wanted the touch of his hand, for my austere young man to put me back together, scarred but whole.

But I was already whole. I was Elisabeth, entire, even if I was Elisabeth, alone. The knowledge of it gave me strength.

I straightened my shoulders. The Goblin King and I held each other’s gazes for the last time. I would not look back. I would not regret. He smiled at me and pressed his fingers to his lips in farewell.

Then I turned and walked away, into the world above, and into the dawn.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

No. But I would never be ready. This day and the day after next and the day after that would be full of unknowns, full of uncertainty. And I would face each one as I was, Elisabeth, entire.

“Yes.”

He gave me a nod, more a gesture of respect than agreement. “Then,” he said. “The whole wide world awaits you.”

I walked to the edge of the Goblin Grove. I placed my hands against the barrier, invisible yet tangible. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself to push through. I stepped past the barrier, and into the forest beyond.

For a moment, I stood there, beyond the edge of the Goblin Grove. The air, warm and mild, did not change, did not grow cold. I had crossed the threshold, and there was no going back. And yet, still I lingered, unwilling to go, unable to stay.

“If—if I could find a way to free you,” I whispered, “would you walk the world above with me?”

My back was to the Goblin King; I could not face him. It was a long time before he answered.

“Oh, Elisabeth,” he said. “I would go anywhere with you.”

“You played them for me; now you should go play them for the rest of the world. Finish the Wedding Night Sonata, Elisabeth. Finish it for us.”

“I will write it for you,” I whispered. “For my immortal beloved.”

It was close, so close to what I wanted to tell him. I love you, I insisted, but my lips would not comply.

“Play it for me,” he said. “Play for me, my dear, and I will hear it. No matter where you go. No matter where I am. I swear it. I swear it, Elisabeth.”

A name came to my lips. I tried to lift my hand, to hold it against his cheek, to tell him I loved him.

“Will I see you again?” I whispered.

“No,” he said. “I think—I think it is better that way.”

“They’re all there,” he said softly. “All your compositions.”

“But,” I choked out. “They were destroyed.”

“Oh, Elisabeth,” he said. “Did you truly think they had been lost? I treasured your music as much as you. I kept it safe. I remembered each and every little thing you ever wrote; after all, had you not played them for me your entire life?” He chuckled. “Did I not say that I was a copyist once?”

“Elisabeth.”

A gentle hand shook me awake. I stirred and groaned, retching up the last bits of lake water from my lungs. In the blurry darkness, I could make out a long, lanky figure, with a shock of silver-white hair around his head like a mane.

My lips shaped a name before I remembered I did not know it.

“Mein—mein Herr?”

“Yes,” the Goblin King said softly. “I am here.”

“H—how?” I croaked.

“You may not have had Der Erlkönig’s protection as you walked the Underground,” he said, a smile in his voice. “But you always had mine.”

I arrived at the shores of the Underground lake.

I had been stripped of everything—my confidence, my esteem, my music—but still I forced myself onward. They could take everything else away from me, but I had myself, entire. Elisabeth was more than the woman who bore the name, more than the notes she produced, more than the people who defi ed her. I was filled with myself, for they could not take my soul.

“So you will forget me,” he said simply. “You cannot love a man with no name.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true.”

“A name is something that belongs to a mortal man.” There was an expression I couldn’t quite decipher in his mismatched eyes. “And the man I was is back there—back in the world above.”

He pulled me close to him. I was nestled in his embrace, against the scar that crossed his heart.

“Find me,” he said, his voice low. “Find me there, Elisabeth. It’s only there, in the world above, that you will find the last bit of me.”

He let me go. But he was not just releasing me from his embrace; he was releasing me. He was releasing the girl who once played her music for him in the wood, the girl he had broken open to set her soul free, the girl to whom he had given himself, entire.

With a hitching breath, I reached into my pocket and withdrew his wolf’s-head ring, the ring he had set upon my finger the night we wed.

The Goblin King shook his head, closing my fingers around the ring. “Keep it.”

“But … is it not a symbol of your power?”

“It is.” He smiled sadly. “But it is only a symbol, Elisabeth. Of my power, yes, but also of my promise to you. Whatever else, I gave that ring to you in earnest, as a husband to a wife.”

Tears slipped from my face, and he wiped them away with his thumbs.

“The foolish young man lets the beautiful maiden go.”

“Yes.” His voice was clotted thick with unshed emotion. “He lets her go.”

I burst into sobs then, and the Goblin King gathered me close, rocking me in his arms as I cried. I cried for the breaking of the foolish young man’s heart. I cried for the happiness we might have had. I cried for the selfishness I could not overcome. I cried for him, for us, but most of all, for myself. I was going home.

“You must leave, Elisabeth,” he said softly.

I nodded my head, unable to speak.

“Choose to live, Elisabeth. There’s a fire within you; keep it alight. Feed that flame with music and seasons and chocolate torte and strawberries and your grandmother’s Gugelhopf. Let it grow with your love for your family. Let it be a beacon to set your heart by, so that you may remain true to yourself.” He stroked my cheek. “Do this, so that I may remember you like this: fierce and full of life.”

I nodded again.

“Are you ready?”

No. “Tomorrow,” I said.

He smiled, then kissed me. His lips were gentle, and in them I tasted a farewell.

I kissed him back. Time did not stop for anyone, least of all me, but in that moment of our kiss, I found a little pocket of eternity.

When he had finished, he turned to me. “Worship,” he said simply. “I came here to worship Him in the only way I can. With the only thing remaining to me that is still pure, still … mine.”

His. Despite what the Goblin King said, the austere young man still lived within him. No magic, no spell, no trick had given my Goblin King his extraordinary way with the violin. The power did not belong to Der Erlkönig; this gift was his, and his alone.

“I can leave,” I offered. “If you would like to worship in private.” I thought of the night I had trespassed upon him here, in this very chapel, and felt shame settle over me like a cloak.

He held my gaze for a long moment. “No, stay,” he said at last. “Stay, and be with me.”

“Elisabeth.”

I still did not face him. I was not ready.

“Tomorrow has come.”

I shook my head, but we were past the point of no return. I had made my choice. I had chosen myself. I had chosen selfishness.

The Goblin King sensed my hesitation. “Don’t regret your decision to live.”

“I don’t,” I whispered. “And I won’t.” It wasn’t a lie, but neither was it entirely the truth.

“Elisabeth.”

I tensed.

“Elisabeth, look at me.”

Slowly, reluctantly, I turned around. There was a light shining in his eyes, a light that would remember me, long after I had faded from both the Underground and the world above. And those eyes … those eyes were brilliant gems. They changed his face utterly. His beauty no longer seemed so unsettling or uncanny, so preternaturally flawless. There was a vividness to his face, and it made him seem young. Vulnerable.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The question fell like a raindrop between us, pinging the glass quiet that enveloped us both.

“I am Der Erlkönig, the Lord of Mischief and the King Underground.”

I shook my head. “No, that is what you are. Who are you?”

“I am the Goblin King, your immortal beloved, your eternal lover.”

He was Der Erlkönig, and he was my Goblin King, but I wanted to know who he was to himself. His name was the last bit of him I could not have.

“No,” I said. “I know who you are.”

Teeth slipped from his grin. “Who am I?”

“You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish.”

The Goblin King did not reply.

“Well?” I asked. “Do I have the right of it?”

“Yes,” he said thickly. “Yes, you have the very soul of me, Elisabeth.”