Wintersong Read online

  “Might I interest the young lady in red in a few curious trinkets?”

  Startled from my reverie, I looked up to see the tall, elegant stranger once more.

  “No, thank you, sir.” I shook my head. “I have no money to spare.”

  The stranger stepped closer. In his gloved hands he held a flute, beautifully carved and polished to a high shine. Up close, I could see the gleam of his eyes from beneath the hood.

  “No? Well, then, if you won’t buy my wares, would you accept a gift?”

  “A—a gift?” I was hot and uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny. He looked at me as no one had before, as though I were more than the sum of my eyes, my nose, my lips, my hair, and my wretched plainness. He looked as though he saw me entire, as though he knew me. But did I know him? His presence scratched at my mind, like a half-remembered song. “What for?”

  “Do I need a reason?” His voice was neither deep nor high, but there was a quality to it that spoke of dark woods and dry winter nights. “Perhaps I just wanted to make a young woman’s day a little bit brighter. The nights grow long and cold, after all.”

  “Oh no, sir,” I said again. “My grandmother warned me against the wolves that prowl in the woods.”

  The stranger laughed, and I caught a glimpse of sharp, white teeth. I shivered.

  “Your grandmother is wise,” he said. “I’m sure she also told you to avoid the goblin men. Or perhaps she told you we were one and the same.”

  I did not answer.

  “You are clever. I do not offer this gift to you out of the goodness of my heart, but out of a selfish need to see what you might do with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is music in your soul. A wild and untamed sort of music that speaks to me. It defies all the rules and laws you humans set upon it. It grows from inside you, and I have a wish to set that music free.”

  He had heard me sing with the fruit-sellers. A wild, untamed sort of music. I’d heard those words before, from Papa. Then, it had seemed like an insult. My musical education had been rudimentary at best; of us all, Papa had taken the most time and care with Josef, making sure my brother understood the theory and history of music, its building blocks and foundations. I had always listened in on the edges of those lessons, taking whatever notes I could, applying them slipshod to my own compositions.

  But this elegant stranger cast no judgment on my lack of formal structure, my lack of learning. I took his words and planted them deep inside.

  “For you, Elisabeth.” He offered me the flute again. This time I took it. Despite the cold air, the instrument was warm, and felt almost like skin beneath my hands.

  It was only after the stranger disappeared that I realized he had called me by my given name.

  Elisabeth.

  How could he have possibly known?

  * * *

  I held the flute in my hands, admiring its build, running my fingers over its rich grain and smooth finish. A persistent thought niggled at the back of my mind, a sense I had lost or forgotten something, but it hovered on the edges of memory, a word on the tip of my tongue.

  Käthe.

  A jolt of fear stirred my sluggish thoughts. Käthe, where was Käthe? In the milling crowd, there was no sign of my sister’s ridiculous confectionary hat, nor an echo of her chiming laugh. A deep sense of dread overcame me, along with the troubling feeling that I had been tricked.

  Why had that tall, elegant stranger offered me a gift? Was it truly out of selfish curiosity for my sake, or just another ploy to distract me while the goblin men stole my sister away?

  I thrust the flute into my satchel and picked up the hems of my skirts, ignoring the scandalized glances of the town fussbudgets and the hooting calls of village ne’er-do-wells. I ran through the market in a blind panic, calling Käthe’s name.

  Reason warred with faith. I was too old to indulge in the stories of my childhood, but I could not deny the strangeness of my encounter with the fruit-sellers. With the tall, elegant stranger.

  They were the goblin men.

  There were no goblin men.

  Come buy, come buy!

  The spectral voices of the merchants were faint and thin on the breeze, more memory than sound. I followed that thread of music, hearing its eerie melodies not with my ears, but with another part of me, unseen and unnoticed. The music reached into my heart and tugged, pulling me along like a puppet on its strings.

  I knew where my sister had gone. Terror seized me, along with the unquestioned certainty that something bad will happen if I did not reach her in time. I had promised to keep my sister safe.

  Come buy, come buy!

  The voices were softer now, distant and hollow, fading into silence with a ghostly whisper. I reached the edges of the market, but the fruit-sellers were no longer there. There were no stalls, no tables, no tents, no fruit, nothing to suggest they had ever been there. Nothing save Käthe’s lonely form in the mist, her flimsy dress fluttering about her like one of the White Ladies of Frau Perchta, like a figure from one of Constanze’s fairy tales. Perhaps I had reached my sister in time. Perhaps there was nothing to fear.

  “Käthe!” I cried, running to embrace her.

  She turned around. My sister’s lips glistened—red, sticky, and sweet—her pout swollen as though she had just been thoroughly kissed.

  In her hands was a half-eaten peach, its juice dripping down her fingers like rivulets of blood.

  SHE IS FOR THE GOBLIN KING NOW

  Käthe did not speak to me on our walk home. I was nursing a foul mood myself: my irritation with my sister, the unsettling encounter with the fruit-sellers, the shivery longing the tall, elegant stranger had stirred in me—all swirled together into a maelstrom of confusion. A misty quality shrouded my memories of the market, and I could not be certain if it hadn’t all been a dream.

  Yet nestled in my satchel was the stranger’s gift. The flute jostled against my leg with every step, as real as Josef’s bows in my hand. I wondered why the stranger had gifted the flute to me. I was a mediocre flautist at best; the thin, ghostly sounds I could produce on the instrument were more strange than sweet. I wondered how I would explain its existence to Mother. I wondered how I could explain it to myself.

  “Liesl.”

  To my surprise, it was Josef who greeted us at the door. He peered at us from around the posts, hovering uncomfortably on the threshold.

  “What is it, Sepp?” I asked gently. I knew my brother was nervous about his upcoming audition, what it would cost him to show his face to so many strangers. Like me, my brother hid in the shadows; unlike me, he preferred it there.

  “Master Antonius,” he whispered, “is here.”

  “What?” I dropped my satchel. “So soon?” We hadn’t expected the old violin master until the evening.

  He nodded. A wary expression crossed his face, his pale features pinched with worry. “He made good time over the Alps. Didn’t want to get caught out by an early snowstorm.”

  “He needn’t have worried,” Käthe said. Both Josef and I turned to look at her in surprise. Our sister was gazing into the distance, her eyes a glassy glaze. “The king still sleeps, waiting. The days of winter have not yet begun.”

  My pulse beat hard. “Who’s sleeping? Who’s waiting?”

  But she said no more, and merely walked past Josef into the inn.

  My brother and I exchanged a glance. “Is she all right?” he asked.

  I bit my lip, remembering how the goblin fruit had stained her lips and chin with something like blood. Then I shook my head. “She’s fine. Where is Master Antonius now?”

  “Upstairs, taking a nap,” Josef said. “Mother told us not to disturb him.”

  “And Papa?”

  Josef slid his gaze from mine. “I don’t know.”

  I closed my eyes. Of all the moments for Papa to disappear. The old violin virtuoso had been a friend of Papa’s from the Prince-Bishop’s court. Both Master Antonius and Papa had left those
days behind them, but one had traveled further than the other. One had just finished a post as a visiting resident at the court of the Austrian emperor, while the other found solace at the bottom of a beer barrel every night.

  “Well.” I opened my eyes and forced my lips into a smile. I handed Josef his newly repaired bows and gathered an arm about his shoulders. “Let’s get ready to put on a show, shall we?”

  * * *

  The kitchen was a flurry of baking, boiling, broiling. “Good, you’re back,” Mother said shortly. She nodded at a bowl on the counter. “The meat is spiced, so start trimming the lengths.” She stood over a large vat of boiling water, stirring a batch of sausages.

  I put on an apron and immediately began measuring the sausage casing to twist and tie into individual links. Käthe was nowhere to be seen, so I sent Josef to go look for her.

  “Have you seen your father?” Mother asked.

  I dared not look at her face. Mother was an extraordinarily lovely woman, her figure still slim and youthful, her hair still bright, her skin still fair. In the half-light of dusk and dawn, in the in-between hours, in the golden edge of a candle flame, one could see how she had been renowned throughout Salzburg not only for her beautiful voice, but for her beautiful face as well. But time had graven lines at the corners of her full lips and between her brows. Time, toil, and Papa.

  “Liesl.”

  I shook my head.

  She sighed, and a world of meaning lay within that sound. Anger, frustration, hopelessness, resignation. Mother still had the gift of conveying every shade of emotion through voice and voice alone.

  “Well,” she said. “Let us pray Master Antonius won’t take offense to his absence.”

  “I’m sure Papa will be back in time.” I picked up a knife to hide the lie. Trim, twist, tie. Trim, twist, tie. “We must have faith.”

  “Faith.” My mother laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “You can’t live on faith, Liesl. You can’t feed your family with it.”

  Twist, trim, tie. Twist, trim, tie. “You know how charming Papa can be,” I said. “He could coax the trees to bear fruit in winter, he can be forgiven any slight.”

  “Yes, I certainly know how charming your father can be,” Mother said drily.

  I flushed; I had been born only five months after my parents said their vows.

  “Charm is all well and good,” she said, straining the sausages and setting them on a towel to dry. “But charm doesn’t put bread on the table. Charm goes out with his friends at night when he could be showing his son to all the great masters himself.”

  I did not reply. It had been a dream of the family’s once, to take Josef to the capital cities of the world and play his talent for better, richer ears. But we never did tour Josef. And now, at fourteen, my brother was too old to be touted as a child prodigy the way the Mozarts or Linley had, too young to be appointed to any sort of permanent post as a professional musician. Despite his skill, my brother still had years left to learn and perfect his craft, and if Master Antonius did not take him on as an apprentice, then it would be the end of Josef’s career.

  So there was a great deal of hope riding on Josef’s audition, not just for Josef, but for all of us. It was my brother’s opportunity to rise beyond his humble beginnings and show the world what a talent he was, but it was also our father’s last chance to play for all the great audiences of Europe through his son. For Mother, it was a way for her youngest child to escape the life of drudgery and hardship that came with an innkeeper’s lot, and for Käthe, it was the possibility of visiting her famous brother in all the capital cities: Mannheim, Munich, Vienna, and possibly even London, Paris, or Rome.

  For me … it was a way for my music to reach ears beyond just Josef’s and mine. Käthe might have seen my secret scribblings hidden in the box beneath our bed, but only Josef had ever heard its contents.

  “Hans!” Mother said. “I didn’t expect to see you here so early.”

  The knife in my hand slipped. I cursed under my breath, sucking at the cut to draw out the blood.

  “I wouldn’t miss Josef’s big day, Frau Vogler,” Hans said. “I came to help.”

  “Bless you, Hans,” Mother said affectionately. “You’re a godsend.”

  I ripped a strip from my apron to wrap around my bleeding finger and continued working, trying my best to remain unnoticed. He is your sister’s betrothed, I reminded myself. Yet I couldn’t help but steal glances at him from beneath my lashes.

  Our eyes met, and all warmth left the room. Hans cleared his throat. “Good morning, Fräulein,” he said.

  His careful distance stung worse than the cut on my finger. We had been familiar, once. Once upon a time, we had been Hansl and Liesl. Once upon a time we had been friends, or perhaps something more. But that was before we all grew up.

  “Oh, Hans.” I gave an awkward laugh. “We’re almost family. You can still call me Liesl, you know.”

  He nodded stiffly. “It’s good to see you, Elisabeth.”

  Elisabeth. It was as intimate as we’d ever be now. I forced a smile. “How are you?”

  “I am well, I thank you.” His brown eyes were guarded. “And you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “A little nervous. About the audition, I mean.”

  Hans’s expression softened. He came closer and took a knife from the cutting board, joining me in twisting, trimming, and tying the sausages. “You needn’t worry,” he said. “Josef plays like an angel.”

  He smiled, and the frost between us began to thaw. We settled into the rhythm of our work—trim, twist, tie, trim, twist, tie—and for a moment, I could pretend it was as it had been when we were children. Papa had given us keyboard and violin lessons together, and we had sat upon the same bench, learned the same scales, shared the same lessons. Though Hans never progressed much beyond simple exercises, we spent hours together at the klavier, our shoulders brushing, our hands never touching.

  “Where is Josef, anyway?” asked Hans. “Out playing in the Goblin Grove?”

  Hans, like the rest of us, had sat at Constanze’s feet, listening to her stories of kobolds and Hödekin, of goblins and Lorelei, of Der Erlkönig, the Lord of Mischief. Warm feelings began to flicker between us like embers.

  “Perhaps,” I said softly. “It is the last night of the year.”

  Hans scoffed. “Isn’t he too old to be playing fairies and goblins?”

  His contempt was a dash of cold water, quenching the remnants of our shared youth.

  “Liesl, can you come watch the vat?” Mother asked, wiping the sweat from her brow. “The brewers are to arrive at any moment.”

  “I’ll do it, ma’am,” Hans offered.

  “Thank you, my dear,” she said. She relinquished the stirring rod to Hans and walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, leaving us alone.

  We did not speak.

  “Elisabeth,” Hans began tentatively.

  Twist, trim, tie. Twist, trim, tie.

  “Liesl.”

  My hands paused for the briefest moment, and then I resumed my work. “Yes, Hans?”

  “I—” He cleared his throat. “I had hoped to catch you alone.”

  That caught my attention. Our eyes met, and I found myself staring at him, bold-faced and direct. He was less handsome than I was wont to remember him, his chin less strong, his eyes closer set, his lips pinched and thin. But no one could deny that Hans was a good-looking man, least of all me.

  “Me?” My voice was hoarse, but steady. “Why?”

  His dark eyes studied my face, a wrinkle of uncertainty appearing between his brows. “I … I want to make things right between us, Lies—Elisabeth.”

  “Are they not?”

  “No.” Hans stared at the swirling vat in front of him before setting his stirring rod aside, stepping closer to me. “No, they’re not. I … I’ve missed you.”

  Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Hans seemed too big, too close, too much.

  “We were good friends once,
weren’t we?” he asked.

  “We were.”

  I could not concentrate through the nearness of him. His lips formed words, but I did not hear them, only felt the brush of his breath against my own lips. I held myself rigid, wanting to push into him, knowing I should pull away.

  Hans grabbed my wrist. “Liesl.”

  Startled, I stared at where his fingers were wrapped around my arm. For so long, I had wanted to touch him, to take his hands and feel those fingers entwined with my own. Yet the moment Hans touched me of his own accord seemed unreal to me. It was as though I were looking at someone else’s hand and someone else’s wrist.

  He was not mine. He could not be mine.

  Could he?

  “Katharina is gone.”

  Constanze had wandered into the kitchen. Hans and I leaped apart, but my grandmother did not notice the flush in my cheeks. “Katharina is gone,” she said again.

  “Gone?” I struggled to gather my fallen composure and cover my exposed longing. “What do you mean? Gone where?”

  “Just gone.” She sucked at a loose tooth.

  “I sent Josef to fetch her.”

  She shrugged. “She’s not anywhere in the inn, and your red cloak is missing.”

  “I’ll go look for her,” Hans offered.

  “No, I will,” I said hurriedly. I needed to put my mind and body back into their proper spaces. I needed to get away from him and find myself in the woods.

  My grandmother’s dark eyes bored into me. “How did you choose, girlie?” she asked softly. She was hunched over her gnarled cane like a bird of prey, her black shawl draped over her shoulders like crow’s wings.

  The memory of the goblin fruit’s bloody flesh running down my sister’s face and fingers returned to me. Josef is not the only who needs looking after. I felt sick.

  “Hurry,” Constanze urged. “I fear she is for the Goblin King now.”

  I ran out of the kitchen and into the great hall, wiping my hands on my apron. I took a shawl from the rack, wrapped it about my shoulders, and went in search of my sister.