Shadowsong Quotes

“It isn’t life that keeps the world turning; it is love.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“For all that I could not bear my own silence, I wanted the voices of the world around me to disappear. Solitude was different from loneliness, and it was solitude I was seeking.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You didn’t tell me living would be one decision after another, some easy, some difficult. You didn’t tell me living wasn’t a battle, but a war. You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Once there was a little girl, who played her music for a little boy in the wood. She was an innkeeper’s daughter and he was the Lord of Mischief, but neither were wholly what they seemed, for nothing is as simple as a fairy tale.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Perhaps I loved the monstrous because I was a monster. Josef, the Goblin King, and me. We were grotesques in the world above, too different, too odd, too talented, too much. We were all too much.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“What are monsters but mortals corrupted?”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You can be running toward something or running from something, but you cannot do both at once,” she said gently.
But my sister did not laugh, “Ah,” she said softly, “but what’s the use of running” – she lifted her eyes to mine – “if you are on the wrong road.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“All that remained of a person once they were gone was a legacy, which would linger only as long as you were loved or hated. Immortality was memory.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Madness is not a gift,” I said angrily.
“Nor is it a curse,” the Count returned gently, “Madness simply is.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“For love is our only immortality, and when memory is faded and gone, it is our legacies that endure.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Your music is a bridge. Play it, and we shall always be together. Play it, and I shall always remember. You. Life. What it means to love. For your music was the first and only thing in this world that kept me human, the first and last thing I give back to you.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You are the one who showed me a way to myself, when I was lost in the woods. My teacher, my playmate, my friend. You allowed me to forgive myself for being imperfect. For being a sinner. For being me.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“It is not the wolves you need fear, but the sheep skins they wear.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“I am merely mortal," I said hoarsely. "Not magic."

"Are you so certain of that, my dear?”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Take me,” I whisper. “Take me back.”
The green and gray of the Goblin King’s eyes flash white and blue, white and blue, the pupils shrinking to a pinprick of black. The corners of his lips curl, close—so close—to mine.
As you wish, my dear.
As you wish.
A breath, a sigh, a kiss, and we are met.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“How I could make myself understand. The restlessness, the anxiety within me. The feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction, my frustration with my inability to execute my ideas on the page, either in words or in song. I could not catch my own mind, my thoughts racing past in a blur, like fingers rushing through sixteenth notes without regard to tempo.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“I give you back your heart," I said to the darkness. "And I wish you would give me mine.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“But I fought this battle every day, fighting upstream against the inevitable, inexorable pull of my own destructive tendencies,”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“I want away. I want escape. I want a life lived to the fullest—filled with strawberries and chocolate torte and music. And acclaim. Acceptance. I cannot find that here.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“Presently, I grew tired and swam back to shore, long, pulling strokes that nevertheless did not seem to take me anywhere. My arms and legs felt leaden, my injured wrist tender and sore. It felt as though I would never reach dry land, and I began to worry that I would indeed drown. But I fought this battle every, fighting upstream against the inevitable, inexorable pull of my own destructive tendencies, and if the body was exhausted, then at least the mind was willing.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“And at the center of the room, a girl. A woman. She sits at the klavier with eyes closed, playing their song. Their story.
Elisabeth.
Her image flickers, wavers, a reflection seen on the edges of a candle flame. The shadows wriggle and writhe with curiosity, and with tremendous effort, the monster holds them back.
Please, he whispers. Please, let me have this one thing.
As he plays, the darkness recedes. From his skin, from his hair, the weight of the rams' horns on his head lightening. Color returns to the world and to his eyes, a mismatched blue and green as the monster remembers what it is to be a man.
Elisabeth.
He sits down on the bench beside her, begging her- beseeching her- to open her eyes and see him. Be with him. But she keeps her eyes closed, hands trembling on the keyboard.
Elisabeth.
She stirs. He sucks in a sharp breath and lifts his hand to stroke her cheek with fingers that are still mangled, broken, strange. His touch passes through her like a knife through smoke, yet she shivers as if she can feel the brush of his fingers in the dark places of her soul, her body, her heart. She is as insubstantial as mist, but he cannot resist the urge, the itch, to kiss. He closes his eyes and leans in close, imagining the silk of her skin against his lips.
They are met.
A gasp. His eyes fly open but hers are still closed. Her hand lifts to her mouth, as though the tingle of their unexpected caress still lingered there.
"Mein Herr," she sighs. "Oh, mein Herr."
I'm here, he says. Look at me. Be with me. See me. Call me by name.
Yet when she opens her eyes, she stares through him, not at him. The darkness hisses and crawls, the shushing sound of branches in an icy wind. She drops her head into her hands, her shoulders hunched, and the sound of her crying is more bitter than even the coldest winter night.
No! he cries. He wants to comfort and caress her, but he cannot hold her, cannot touch her. He is a ghost in her mind, voiceless, silent, and incorporeal.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You live an unlife instead,” I said. I held the ring before me and looked at it. It was old, tarnished, and even a little ugly. “An unlife, a not-death. You exist in the in-between spaces, between sleep and waking, between belief and imagination. I wish I could wake up, mein Herr. I wish I were awake.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“But I love it up here. There is a certain allure to this place, some dark, shameful part of me that thrills at the beauty of death and decay.”
Walking arm in arm with the Countess, I understood what she meant. The notion of finding death and decay beautiful should have sounded ridiculous and morbid, yet it resonated with me with a sort of romance of its own.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“How did we get there?” I asked in a muffled voice. “What are we to do?”
I felt Josef’s shoulders lift in a shrug. “What we’ve always done, I suppose. Survive.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“You always called me the gardener of your heart,” he said softly. “But you have gone and grown your flowers without me.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“One cannot place a price on a promise.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“She played her song for the Goblin King every spring, every year, to bring the world from death back into life. And when the little girl's gnarled and aged fingers could no longer hold her bow, her children and students picked up her song and continued to play, one long, unbroken melody that stretched across time and memory. On and on and on, for as long as the seasons turn and the living remember all that is good and beautiful and worthwhile in the world. For love is our only immortality, and when memory is faded and gone, it is our legacies that endure.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“When I pull my hand away, my fingertips are not stained red, but silver. I stare at my nails, trying to make sense of what I see when out of the formless gloom, a monster emerges.
I do scream when a pair of blue-white eyes appear, a pinprick of black in their center. Slowly, a shape coalesces into being- a long, elegant face, whorls of inky shadows swirling over moon-pale skin, ram's horns curling around pointed, elfin ears. He is more terrifying and more real than the vision I experienced in the labyrinth. But worst of all are the hands, gnarled and curled and with one too many joints in each finger. With a silver ring around the base of one. A wolf's-head ring, with two gems of blue and green for eyes.
My ring. His ring. The symbol of our promise I had returned to the Goblin King back in the Goblin Grove.
Mein Herr?
For a brief moment, those blue-white eyes regain some color, the only color in this gray world. Blue and green, like the gems on the ring about his finger. Mismatched eyes. Human eyes. The eyes of my immortal beloved.
Elisabeth, he says, and his lips move painfully around a mouth full of sharpened teeth, like the fangs of some horrifying beast. Despite the fear knifing my veins, my heart grows soft with pity. With tenderness. I reach for my Goblin King, longing to touch him, to hold his face in my hands the way I had done when I was his bride.
Mein Herr. My hands lift to stroke his cheek, but he shakes his head, batting my fingers away.
I am not he, he says, and an ominous growl laces his words as his eyes return to that eerie blue-white. He that you love is gone.
Then who are you? I ask.
His nostrils flare and shadows deepen around us, giving shape to the world. He swirls a cloak about him as a dark forest comes into view, growing from the mist. I am the Lord of Mischief and the Ruler Underground. His lips stretch thin over that dangerous mouth in a leering smile. I am death and doom and Der Erlkönig.
No! I cry, reading for him again. No, you are he that I love, a king with music in his soul and a prayer in his heart. You are a scholar, a philosopher, and my own austere young man.
Is that so? The corrupted Goblin King runs a tongue over his gleaming teeth, those pale eyes devouring me as though I were a sumptuous treat to be savored. Then prove it. Call him by name.
A jolt sings through me- guilt and fear and desire altogether. His name, a name, the only link my austere young man has to the world above, the one thing he could not give me.
Der Erlkönig throws his head back in a laugh. You do not even know your beloved's name, maiden? How can you possibly call it love when you walked away, when you abandoned him and all that he fought for?
I shall find it, I say fiercely. I shall call him by name and bring him home.
Malice lights those otherworldly eyes, and despite the monstrous markings and horns and fangs and fur that claim the Goblin King's comely form, he turns seductive, sly. Come, brave maiden, he purrs. Come, join me and be my bride once more, for it was not your austere young man who showed you the dark delights of the Underground and the flesh. It was I.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“We look amazing," I repeated, as if I could make up for our brother's rudeness.
And we did look amazing. Käthe and I were dressed as an angel and a demon, but to my surprise, my sister had chosen to be the devil. She looked majestic in her gown of black velvet, her golden curls draped with black silk and lace, cleverly twisted together and pinned to resemble horns growing from her head. She had rouged her lips a bright red, and her blue eyes looked imperious from behind her black mask. For a moment, the image of moldering gowns on dress forms rose up in my mind, a polished bronze mirror reflecting an endless line of faded Goblin Queens. I swallowed.
The dress my sister had made for me was nearly innocent in its simplicity. Yards and yards of fine white muslin had made a floating, ethereal gown, while Käthe had somehow fashioned a brocade cape into the shape of folded angel wings, which grew from my shoulder blades and cascaded to the floor. She had braided gold into a crown about my head for a halo, and I carried a lyre to complete the picture.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong