The Kingdom of Back Read online

  Woferl grinned at that. He clapped his hands. “What kingdom?” he asked. “What forest?” This was the game between us. He would ask me questions. I would invent answers for him, and slowly, our story would grow.

  “It is a place where moss and flowers coat the floor,” I said in a hushed voice. “Trees grow in thick bundles. But, Woferl, they are not trees like what we know.”

  “What are they like?”

  Now my dream returned in glittering pieces: the moon, the sea, the black line of woods, and the strange shapes of the trees. The boy walking through the sea foam. I lowered my voice and gestured him closer. My imagination wandered free, constructing the rest of what this fantasy of a land might be. “They stand upside down, with their roots pointing up to the sky and their leaves curling against the ground, forming deep pools of rainwater along the lone path. You must be careful, for they feed on those who slip and fall in.”

  Woferl’s eyes turned round as coins. “Do you think ghosts live there?”

  “All manner of creatures do.” I pondered on what to tell him next. “They are not what they seem. Some are good and kind. Others will tell you they are one thing when they are another. You must follow the good ones, Woferl, and if you do, they will lead you to a shore with sand white as snow.”

  Woferl had forgotten everything else around him now. He stared up at me with such an intent face that I laughed at his attention. My fingers danced across the clavier’s keys as I played a few light notes for him. To my pleasure, every note drew his admiration, as if he could not get enough of this world I’d chosen to share with him.

  “Come here,” I suddenly said, putting my arm around him. “I know a piece that sounds just like this forest, if you want to hear it.”

  Woferl giggled as I turned to a blank page in my notebook, careful not to crinkle the edges of the paper. I took a deep breath, then attempted yet again to reconstruct the music I’d heard in my sleep. I thought of the snippets of sounds from the streets that would awaken my memories, and added them to the melody.

  Note by note, a strange song emerged from another world.

  Woferl’s fingers danced in the air. He hummed the tune under his breath, his pitch perfect, and a part of me knew that he must be the only other person in the world who could hear the same beauty I could. “Can I play it like you, do you think?”

  “When your fingers grow a little.” I gripped the bottom of our bench, then stood and pulled it toward the clavier. Woferl’s hands scooted closer to the keys. “Would you like to try?” I asked him.

  Woferl did. He mimicked my notes. And again, I found myself pausing to notice that he could remember everything I’d played, that even with his small hands, he could follow along almost as if he’d been practicing with me for days.

  I watched him in wonder, and within that wonder, a small twinge of something—envy, fear—took root. The feeling sat cold against my chest. The wish I’d made so long ago came back to me in a sudden wave. Make them remember me.

  That was when it first happened.

  Woferl saw it before I did. He sucked in his breath and cooed in delight, and then stretched his little arms toward the open pages of my notebook. I looked at what had captured his attention.

  There, right on the first page, was a tiny cluster of grass blades and three beautiful white blooms of flowers, all growing from the parchment at a straight angle. I blinked, hardly believing what I was seeing. They were edelweiss flowers, treasures of the Alps.

  “Don’t touch them, Woferl,” I whispered, pulling his arm back.

  “Are they real?” he asked.

  I leaned closer to inspect the strange sight. Edelweiss did not grow at such low altitudes, and certainly not out of music paper. They were flowers of the mountains, plants that men sometimes died seeking out for their beloveds. Mama once told us that the Virgin Mary herself had blessed our land with edelweiss by dusting the mountains with stars.

  And yet, there they were—snow white, their petals thick and velvet, their edges hazy in the glow of the afternoon. A clean, fragile scent hung in the air. The light in the room seemed very strange now, as if perhaps we were part of a waking dream.

  “They must have come from the forest,” I said. I reached one finger out.

  My brother made an irritated sound. “You said not to touch them.”

  “Well, I’m older than you.” I let my finger skim the surface of one flower. The petal felt like the collar of my winter coat, fuzz against my fingertips. I drew my hand back. Part of the color came away when I did, leaving a streak of white across my skin like paint.

  “I’m going to tell Papa,” he said.

  I grabbed his hand. “No, don’t. Please, Woferl? Papa will think I’ve been filling your head with silly stories.”

  He looked at me for a moment, his expression wavering between emotions. I patted his cheeks gently in the way that our mother did. It was this that finally won him over. I saw the resistance go out of him, the sway of his body toward me as he savored the affection. He scooted back beside me. I rubbed the streak on my skin between two fingers, watching as it smeared and faded away into the air. Perhaps it had never been there at all. When we glanced back to the notebook’s open pages, the edelweiss had disappeared. Beside me, Woferl held his breath, waiting for the dream to return. My hands trembled.

  But that was not all. When my finger had touched the flower petal, I’d heard a distinct musical note. No, something more than that. A sound too perfect to be from this world. A secret. I could tell by my brother’s expression that he had not heard it. I played it over in my mind until I realized the note was not a note at all, but a sweet and beautiful voice that bubbled with bright laughter. I knew, immediately, that it belonged to the boy by the ocean. It spoke only one sentence.

  I can help you, Nannerl, if you help me.

  THE BOY FROM ANOTHER WORLD

  I think it all strange now, of course—a boy from another world, born from somewhere in my dreams. But the voice was very real then. I thought about it late into the night, turning it this way and that in my mind in an attempt to make sense of it, aching to hear its perfection one more time.

  Woferl lay next to me in our shared bed and watched me with bright, sleepless eyes. Finally, he propped himself up on one elbow. “Do you think we’ll see the edelweiss flowers again?” He leaned toward me. He was still so small that his arms sank almost entirely into the folds of the bed. “Did they come from the forest in your story?”

  I sighed and rolled over to look at him in a knowing manner. “Perhaps,” I said, to appease his curiosity. “I don’t know. But I do know I’m quite tired. Aren’t you?”

  Woferl stared back innocently at me. “Yes. But you know everything, Nannerl. Don’t you also know what the forest is like?”

  His chatter distracted me. All I wanted was to close my eyes and drift off to sleep with that musical note again in my mind. I sighed. “If I tell you a little more of the story, will you go to bed?”

  “Yes,” he promised in a rush.

  I couldn’t help smiling at his eagerness. “All right.” I snuggled closer and wrapped my arms around him. “The forest is very large,” I went on. My imagination loosened again. The world from my dream reappeared in my mind, parts of it blank and waiting for me to fill them in. “Larger than anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “Larger than Salzburg?” Woferl asked.

  “Yes, much larger than Salzburg. Or Vienna. Or all of Austria. It is an endless place.”

  Woferl shifted in bed so that he could look at me. “Nothing is bigger than all of Austria,” he declared.

  I laughed. “Well, this place is. And while edelweiss is only in the Alps here, in the forest they grow everywhere, because it is their birthplace, where all such flowers come from.”

  Woferl made an impressed sound at that. “It must be a special place.”

 
“Well, a special forest needs a guardian, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded without hesitation. “Of course it does.”

  A memory glimmered in my mind of an outfit stitched together from black bark and silver leaves. A smile of white teeth. “Because you have said so,” I replied formally, “the forest has a guardian now.”

  Woferl leaned eagerly toward me. “Who is it?”

  “Well, who do you think it is?”

  “An imp?” He was picturing the ones from old German tales, wicked pranksters who could shift into the shape of a rabbit or snatch children from their cradles.

  “Surely not just any imp, Woferl?” I insisted. “They aren’t clever enough on their own to guard an entire forest. They need someone to help them with their plans.”

  Woferl considered this with a serious face. “A faery princeling, then, of the forest.”

  A princeling. The memory in my mind sharpened further. A pair of glowing blue eyes, twigs tangled in hair. A voice too beautiful for this world. I yearned toward the thought. “A princeling,” I agreed. “Someone unafraid to play pranks on trespassers to drive them away. Someone clever and lovely enough to lure in whomever he wants, someone capable of conducting the forest’s symphony. Someone”—I thought for a moment, then winked at my brother—“wild.”

  A crash sounded out from the other side of the wall.

  I bolted upright in bed. Woferl’s eyes turned wide, illuminated by an edge of moonlight slipping into our room. The living room had fallen silent again, but we did not dare move. I tried to keep my breathing even, but I could feel Woferl trembling at my side, and his fright stirred my own. Where was Mama’s voice or Papa’s steps, someone who should check on the noise? We heard nothing. I glanced toward our closed bedroom door. Even though I heard no footsteps, I did see a faint light wander back and forth under the door.

  I tucked my feet into my nightgown. It suddenly seemed very cold.

  After a long silence, I finally loosened my knot of legs and swung them over the side of the bed. Perhaps Mama or Papa had tripped over something and needed help. I couldn’t hear their voices, though.

  Woferl stared at me. “Are you going out there?” he whispered.

  I turned my eyes back toward our bedroom entrance. Lights still reflected from its bottom slit, hovering. It did not look like candlelight or the light of a fireplace or sunlight. I motioned for Woferl to stay in bed, then crept over and peered out into the living room.

  There, on the other side of our door, drifted a world of fireflies.

  It did not occur to me that I might be dreaming. The air seemed too alive. The fireflies were everywhere, too bright to be an illusion.

  I’d never seen so many, certainly none in the winter. They clustered the most brightly near the music room. One flew so close to my face that I stepped back and blinked, afraid it would land on me. But perhaps they were not fireflies at all—for in that moment, I glimpsed a tiny figure behind the light and caught sight of slender arms, legs as fine and delicate as flower stems. It made a bell-like sound before darting away.

  I wandered out of our room, awed into silence. Moonlight spilled through the windows to paint patterns on the floor. Outside, I could see the dark outlines of the Getreidegasse’s buildings asleep under the stars. The tiny creatures’ glow gave our flat a strange color, somewhere between this world and another. I wanted to say it looked yellow, or blue, but I could not. It was like describing the color of glass.

  The shadows stirred near the music room’s door. I turned toward it. My feet moved forward on their own, and my brother followed close behind. The dots of light drifted aside for us, letting us carve a dark blue trail through their golden mist.

  Someone was humming near our clavier. When I saw him, I gasped and lifted a hand to point in his direction.

  The boy swiveled to face us. He flashed me a smile that revealed pearl-white canines.

  He was taller than I, his frame as young and willowy as a dancer at the ballet. His skin glinted pale in the moonlight, and his fingers were long and lithe, his nails sharp. Sapphire hair tumbled shining down his back, and among the strands hung twisted trails of black ivy, shimmers of moss and forest, night and jewels. His eyes were large, luminous, and wondrously blue. They glowed in the darkness and lit up his lashes. His lips were full and amused. When I looked closer, I noticed the catlike slant of his pupils. His cheekbones were high and elegant in his youthful face, and he looked so unbearably beautiful that I blushed at the sight of him.

  Of all my memories, this first meeting remains the sharpest.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  Beside me, Woferl’s eyes were round with awe. “Are you the guardian from the forest?” he added.

  The boy—the creature—tilted his head at me. “You don’t know?” he replied. There was a wildness about his voice, like wind that made the leaves dance, and I recognized it immediately as the sound I’d yearned toward in my dream. This is who whispered to me at the clavier, the same boy I’d seen walking beside the ocean in my dream.

  It was him, and he was here. The breath in my chest tightened in fear and excitement.

  Was he an imp, as Woferl had first suggested? I’d seen black-and-white ink drawings of those gnarled little creatures in collections of faery tales, legends, and myths, but this beautiful boy bore hardly any resemblance to them. It was as if he were the original mold and the drawings merely his crooked shadows.

  When I said nothing, he smiled and beckoned to me. Several of the fireflies danced close to him now, tugging affectionately at his hair and kissing his cheeks. He brushed them away and they scattered, only to return to hover around him.

  “You are the Mozart girl,” he answered. “Maria Anna.”

  “Yes,” I whispered back. “But I’m called Nannerl, for short.”

  “Little Nannerl,” he said, his grin tilting playfully up at one side. “Of course.” The way he said my name sent a shiver down my spine. He turned to look at the clavier, and the gesture set the jewels in his hair clinking. “The girl with the glass pendant. I heard your wish.”

  How could he have heard something I only held in my heart? A wave of fear rose in me that he might say it aloud. “You were the one in my dream,” I replied.

  “Was it your dream, Nannerl?” His fanged smile gleamed in the darkness. “Or are you in mine?”

  The lights hovering about his face twinkled. Hyacinth! they cried at him with their tiny bell voices, and he cocked his head at their calls. “Go back to bed,” he said. “We will talk again soon.”

  Then, he reached out to the clavier’s music stand, grabbed my notebook, and tucked it under his arm.

  Woferl cried out before I did, his baby hands stretching out toward the boy. “He’s stealing your notebook!”

  The boy shot me one last glance. “There is a trinket shop at the end of the Getreidegasse,” he said. “Come tomorrow, and I will return your music to you.” He didn’t wait for me to reply. Instead, he turned his back to us and threw himself at the window. My cry choked in my throat.

  The glass shattered and the boy blended in with a thousand glittering shards that spilled from the frame. His figure vanished as he fell to the street below. Woferl and I both darted to the windowsill. There, the scene made me step back in shock.

  The Getreidegasse, its shops and carriages and silent iron posts, had disappeared. In its place lay a forest thick with upside-down trees, their roots reaching up to the stars, their leaves spreading out on the ground like velvet pools. Twin moons washed the scene into ivory and blue. A faint hum lingered on the night breeze, that same perfect, enticing melody from my dream, whispering for us to come closer. A trodden path wound its way from our building far into the forest’s belly, deep into somewhere we could no longer see, where it faded away into the darkness.

  A crooked wooden signpost stood right at the forest’s entr
ance, pointing to the path. I squinted to read what it said, but couldn’t make out the letters.

  The music hanging in the air made my hands tremble, and a sudden urge surged in me. I tugged on Woferl’s hand. “Let’s follow him!” I whispered.

  Woferl obeyed without hesitation. Our feet took flight. I unlocked our flat’s front door, swung it open, and hurried out with my brother. My nightgown hugged my thighs as I ran, and the winter floors numbed my bare feet. I ran down the stairs and past the archways, down the third and second stories, down, down, all the way down until I stumbled to a halt at the arched entrance leading to the main street.

  I blinked.

  The forest, the moons, the upside-down trees, the trodden path, the sign. The music. They were gone. The Getreidegasse had returned to normal, the bakery and winery and the pubs, their wrought-iron signs dangling quietly over their doors, shutters closed and flags pointed up toward the sky. In the distance loomed the familiar, black silhouette of Hohensalzburg Fortress, below which curved the silver ribbon of the Salzach River. I simply stood there, trembling from the cold, clutching the edge of my gown, starving to hear more of the melody from that other world.

  Woferl came panting behind me. I caught him right as he ran toward the street, and pressed him close to my side. He looked as surprised as I did.

  “Where did he go?” he asked. His breath rose in cloudy wisps.

  A sick feeling crept into my stomach. I did not look forward to seeing Papa’s face when he found out that the notebook had gone missing. He would think I’d lost it and shake his head in disappointment. Beside me, my brother noticed my crestfallen expression and sobered immediately, slumping his shoulders and lowering his eyes.

  “Woferl. Nannerl!”

  The familiar voice startled me. Both of us whirled around in unison. It was Mama, her hair tucked underneath a nightcap, racing down the steps toward us. Her hands clutched at her coat. The image of our mother looked so real, the lines of her face so defined in contrast to the halo of light that had surrounded the boy. Suddenly, I felt how solid the ground was beneath my feet, how biting the chill was in the air. She frowned at me. I am afraid of the cold, Mama had told me before, and I turned my eyes down in shame for forcing her out here on an autumn night.