Shadowsong by S. Jae-Jones EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: S. Jae-Jones
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Historical Romance eBooks
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- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE SUMMONS
A bsolutely not,” Constanze said, thumping the floor with her
cane. “I forbid it!”
We were all gathered in the kitchens after supper. Mother was
washing up after the guests while Käthe threw together a quick meal
of spätzle and fried onions for the rest of us. Josef’s letter lay open and
face up on the table, the source of my salvation and my grandmother’s
strife.
Master Antonius is dead. I am in Vienna. Come quickly.
Come quickly. My brother’s words lay stark and simple on the page,
but neither Constanze nor I could agree upon their meaning. I
believed it was a summons. My grandmother believed otherwise.
“Forbid what?” I retorted. “Replying to Josef?”
“Indulging your brother in this nonsense!” Constanze pointed an
accusing, emphatic finger at the letter on the table between us before
sweeping her arm in a wild, vague gesture toward the dark outside,
the unknown beyond our doorstep. “This . . . this musical folly!”
“Nonsense?” Mother asked sharply, pausing in scrubbing out the
pots and pans.
“What nonsense, Constanze? His career, you mean?”
Last year, my brother left behind the world he had known to follow
his dreams—our dreams—of becoming a world-class violinist. While
running the inn had been our family’s bread and butter for
generations, music had ever and always been our manna. Papa was
once a court musician in Salzburg, where he met Mother, who was
then a singer in a troupe. But that had been before Papa’s profligate
and prodigal ways chased him back to the backwoods of Bavaria.
Josef
was the best and brightest of us, the most educated, the most
disciplined, the most talented, and he had done what the rest of us
had not or could not: he had escaped.
“None of your business,” Constanze snapped at her daughter-inlaw. “Keep that sharp, shrewish nose out of matters about which you
know nothing.”
“It is too my business.” Mother’s nostrils flared. Cool, calm, and
collected had ever been her way, but our grandmother knew how best
to get under her skin. “Josef is my son.”
“He is Der Erlkönig’s own,” Constanze muttered, her dark eyes
alight with feverish faith. “And none of yours.”
Mother rolled her eyes and resumed the washing up. “Enough with
the goblins and gobbledygook, you old hag. Josef is too old for fairy
tales and hokum.”
“Tell that to that one!” Constanze leveled her gnarled finger at me,
and I felt the force of her fervor like a bolt to the chest. “She believes.
She knows. She carries the imprint of the Goblin King’s touch upon
her soul.”
A frisson of unease skittered up my spine, icy fingertips skimming
my skin. I said nothing, but felt Käthe’s curious glance upon my face.
Once she might have scoffed along with Mother at our grandmother’s
superstitious babble, but my sister was changed.
I was changed.
“We must think of Josef’s future,” I said quietly. “What he needs.”
But what did my brother need? The post had only just come the day
before, but already I had read his reply into thinness, the letter turned
fragile with my unasked and unanswered questions. Come quickly.
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