Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones

Author:S. Jae-Jones [Jae-Jones, S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan House
Published: 2017-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

WEDDING NIGHT

We emerged directly into the goblin revels.

At the center of the large cavern that had served as the ballroom was an enormous bonfire, around which the twisted shapes of goblins danced. A gigantic boar was speared and spitted over the fire, and the smell of roasted meat was overpowering. There were no lights in this cavern: no torches, no fairy lights, no candles burning away in their unsettling candelabras shaped like human arms. Only the flames of the bonfire, its bloody, inconstant fire growing shadows instead of throwing light.

I shrank away from the scene, but the Goblin King held my hand firmly.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured into my ear. “Remember my troth.”

But I was afraid. I had danced and feasted at the Goblin Ball, but this was something entirely different: wild, untamed, and feral. The Goblin Ball, hosted by the Goblin King, had had a veneer of civilized behavior overlaying its orgiastic abandonment, but there were no such niceties now. This was not hedonistic indulgence; this was savagery. I could smell blood—freshly spilled. It smelled of copper and iron and flesh. Twining, writhing shapes copulated in the corners of my vision, and I thought of the little objet d’art in my barrow room that depicted the nymph and the satyr. Music wailed on pipes and horns and catgut lutes—rude, rustic, without refinement. The goblin wine took the edges off my fear, but the chill of it still ran through my veins.

“Come,” the Goblin King said. “Let your subjects pay tribute to their new queen.”

He led me down the steps into the throng. Bodies and fantastical faces crowded me on all sides, leering and cheering at me, their spindly fingers like brambles in a hedge, catching on the edges of my dress, my veil, my hair. A little hunchback of a hobgoblin skipped up beside us and offered me a flagon of wine.

“Ah, the music maiden,” it said. “She smolders still. Tell me, mistress”—it winked at me—“does His Majesty fear to set you alight?”

I blinked, trying to place where I had seen its face before. The hobgoblin hummed a familiar little tune, and I caught the scent of summer peaches.

The goblin market.

It cackled when it saw recognition bloom across my face, and cackled even harder at the blush on the Goblin King’s cheeks. “Only a breath, Your Majesty. A breath, and she bursts into flame.”

The Goblin King grabbed the flagon from the hobgoblin’s spindly hands. He threw back his head and downed the wine, heedless of whatever spilled from his lips and coursed down his throat like blood. Then he offered me the flagon, and grinned.

I was taken aback by that grin. It was all sharp edges and pointed teeth. His hooded eyes twinkled maliciously, and he was the Lord of Mischief once more. Which was the mask and which was the man? Der Erlkönig or the austere young man to whom I had said my vows? I stared at him as I took the flagon from his grasp. Neither

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