The Kingdom of Back Read online

  The ceiling appeared to be formed from a lattice of leaves and fruit. Patches of silver moonlight filtered through to the ground, where edelweiss carpeted the floor in a white blanket. Moss and foliage enveloped every wall. And sitting there, in the center of this strange space, was the most beautiful clavier I’d ever seen, covered with baroque art and wrapped in lengths of ivy.

  No one sat at the bench, even though the velvet cushion upon it had an indent as if someone had just left. When my eyes went up to the clavier’s music stand, I saw with a surge of joy that my notebook was sitting there, waiting for me.

  “It’s here!” I called out into the tunnel, hoping that Woferl would hear me from the shop. I stared in wonder at the clavier. The keys had rounded tips that glowed under the light like polished gulden, and the entire instrument looked carved not from wood, but from marble. I ran my fingers across its surface, searching for the gaps where the body of the instrument should meet the legs, where the hinges of the lid should be screwed into the belly. But there were no gaps. The entire clavier was carved from a continuous slate of marble, as if it had always been molded in this form.

  My hand drifted across the clavier, afraid to touch it and yet unable to bear not doing so. How could something so lovely be real? What would it sound like? I hesitated there for a moment, torn in two directions, before I finally pulled the bench forward so that I could sit. The legs scraped against the moss on the ground.

  My notebook was already flipped open to a menuett in C, the latest piece my father had composed and the same one that Woferl and I had been playing when we first saw the edelweiss against the parchment. The very piece that Woferl had committed to memory from a single session. Even glancing at the written notes filled my mind with its music. I could distinctly hear the measures of the menuett as if I were practicing them during my lessons.

  I lifted my fingers to the keys and touched their glowing surface. The keys were cold as ice. Instantly I drew my hands back, but the burn of it tingled like snow on my tongue, dangerous and enticing. I placed my fingers in position again, savoring the strange chill of the instrument. This time I tried a few notes. The sound hovered in the air, surrounding me, richer in tone than any clavier I’d ever played. My eyes closed. I realized I was humming now, trying instinctively to match that perfect melody around me. My heart fluttered with the thrill of the music.

  A carefree laugh echoed from behind me. “You can have it back, Fräulein.”

  I stopped playing and whirled around to see the speaker.

  There, underneath the shadows and the dripping moss, emerged a figure. Immediately I recognized him as the boy from the music room, the same silhouette who had walked along the shore in my very first dream. Under this new light, his pale skin took on a hint of blue. His grin was quick and lighthearted, his expression as much like a human boy’s as it could be.

  In that moment, I realized that perhaps that first dream was not a dream at all. Nor were the edelweiss growing against my notebook, or the sight of this boy in my music room. Perhaps even this moment was real. The world around me felt so sharp and alive that I couldn’t possibly think otherwise.

  “You can have it back,” he repeated in his perfect voice. “I’m done with it.”

  “Who are you? Where do you come from?” I whispered.

  The boy walked over to the clavier and performed a little jump. He settled comfortably on top of the instrument, then peered down at me with his head propped thoughtfully against one hand. His fingernails clicked against the clavier’s marble surface.

  “From somewhere far away,” he said, “and very near.”

  I tilted my head at him. “That’s not helpful at all.”

  “Isn’t it? You know where it is. You’ve seen it before. You’ve been there.”

  The twin moons hanging silver in the sky. The blue seashells dotting a white beach. A feeling of wistfulness crept over me then, as if I were thinking back on a place I’d once known. I looked at his feet, expecting to see sand between his toes.

  “Where did it come from, then?” I went on. “This place both near and far away?”

  “It’s been around since long before you or me. Everyone has seen it in some way, you know, although most will not remember it.”

  A deep longing lodged in my throat. “Will I get to go there again?”

  “Perhaps. I heard your wish,” he said, repeating what he had told me in the music room. “You want to be worthy of being remembered. By your father, by those your father regards highly. By the world. You’re afraid of being forgotten.” He studied me curiously. “That’s a large wish for a Fräulein to make. Why are you so afraid?”

  My thoughts snapped to my father, how he would look away from me in disinterest if I did not play well. His talks with Mama, the whisper that followed me down the Getreidegasse. A husband, a husband. I thought of fading into the light so quietly that my father might never notice. If I could fill our family’s coffers . . . If I could create with the voice of God given to me, my father would not forget that I was here.

  The voice of God. I thought of this boy’s beautiful words, the music of his voice that trembled on the air of my dream, in that strange and vibrant place. That was it, the perfect sound.

  At last, I met the boy’s eyes. “Papa once told me that if nobody remembers you after you’re gone, it’s as if you never lived at all.”

  His smile widened at that. He looked like he had heard every thought unspoken in my mind. “It’s immortality you seek, then,” he said. “You burn with the ambition to leave your voice in the world. You fear your father will forget about you if you cannot do this. All your life, you have ached to be seen.” He leapt off the clavier, then came to sit beside me on the bench. There, he leaned over, reached out his arm, and touched my chin with his cool, slender fingers. A sigh emerged from his lips. “Oh, Nannerl! You are an interesting one.”

  “Interesting? How?”

  “Your need to leave a memory of yourself long after you have gone. Desire is your lifeblood, and talent is the flower it feeds.” He gave me a sideways look as his hands sought out the clavier’s keys. He began to play a soft melody I did not recognize. It was so lovely that I found myself touching my hand to my chest, steadying myself against the sound. “I can help you . . . but first, we must play a little game.” His grin widened, childlike in its delight.

  My heart lurched in excitement and fear at his words. “What kind of game?”

  “You have your desires, and I have mine.” He leaned his head closer to me. “You want immortality. I want my throne.”

  At last, he was finally answering my question. “Is that who you are, then? A king?”

  The faeries floated around him, their light glowing against us as they kissed his skin. A princeling, a princeling, they whispered, filling the air with the word. Princeling of the forest.

  “My name is Hyacinth,” he said.

  Now I remembered the faeries calling his name the night before. The blue of his eyes certainly matched the flower. Hyacinths, my mother had once pointed them out to me at the market, and I’d brushed my hands against their clustered blooms. Hyacinths are the harbinger of spring and life.

  “What happened to your throne?” I asked him.

  The boy named Hyacinth ignored my question. His expression had suddenly shifted from mischief and mystery to something tragic, a flash of sadness that cut through his trickery. It disappeared as quickly as it had come, but the ghost of it lingered at the corners of his face, pulling me closer to him.

  I looked at my notebook. “And why did you take this?” I asked.

  He started to play again. I breathed deeply at the music. “You made a wish, Nannerl, and so I have come to you. You’ll discover that your notebook will now serve you in more ways than simple lessons at the clavier. Use it as your path to me. You can always find your way to me, Nannerl, if you speak to me thr
ough your music.”

  If you speak to me through your music. I imagined this boy listening to the secrets in my heart, his eyes peering through the web in the woods. His hand taking mine and leading me down an enchanted forest path.

  “What way is that?” I asked him.

  “Why, to my kingdom, of course,” he answered.

  Hyacinth’s words reminded me of my brother’s question from last night. “You say you seek your throne. Are you the guardian of the kingdom, then?” I whispered.

  He turned to me with his secret smile. His eyes glowed against his skin. “I am your guardian, Nannerl. Tell me what you want. I will find a way to give it to you.”

  Tell me what you want.

  No one had ever said those words to me before. A slow, creeping cold began snaking its way down my fingers, until my arms grew heavy with numbness. The boy’s eyes hypnotized me.

  “But be wary of what you wish for,” he went on. “Wishes have a habit of surprising their makers.”

  I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. The cold crept farther up my arms and to my shoulders.

  When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

  I looked around in bewilderment at his sudden absence. I was alone in this strange grotto, my notebook still sitting on the clavier’s stand. With a burst of panic, I grabbed the notebook before it could disappear again, and then I sprang from the bench and turned back toward the tunnel. I called out for Woferl, but only silence greeted me. My stomach turned. He must still be in the main shop—I had to go back to him. Sebastian must have come for us by now.

  “Woferl!” I shouted, running faster as I went. “Woferl, answer me! Where are you?”

  And then, just as abruptly as I’d entered the grotto, I stepped through the door and stumbled right back into the shop.

  Everything looked unchanged from when I’d left it, the hazy air golden under the sun, the shop’s shelves stacked heavy with trinkets. But the tremor of whispers and music no longer lingered in the air. It was replaced instead with the smell of aged wood, the bustle of everyday life outside the shop’s walls. I stood still for a moment, trying to regain my sense of place.

  Woferl looked over from where he was loitering near the windows. “There you are,” he said.

  I rubbed my eyes and glanced behind me. The tunnel had vanished, leaving behind nothing more than a tiny closet overflowing with empty crates.

  Perhaps the dust in the shop had made me sleepy, and my mind had woven for me a web of illusion. The ice-cold burn of the clavier’s keys, Hyacinth’s glowing blue eyes . . .

  “Are you all right?” Woferl asked, his eyes turned up at me in concern. “You look pale.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I answered.

  His eyes darted next to the notebook I clutched in my hand. “Oh! You’ve found it!” he exclaimed.

  I blinked again, still surprised to be holding it. Had it been in my hand seconds ago? Was it all truly a dream?

  “Was it the boy?” he asked rapidly. “Did you see him again?”

  Sebastian came to my rescue before I had to answer. He ducked his head out from below the baker’s signpost, caught sight of us, and nodded. “Fräulein. Young Master. We have prolonged this trip enough.”

  Woferl let the question drop as his attention turned momentarily to coaxing a sweet from Sebastian’s pockets, and I gratefully let him go. My mind lingered on his questions, though, so that the rest of the trip home passed in a fog.

  Everything about the grotto seemed so distant once I was back in the familiarity of the Getreidegasse. But even if it had been a dream, it was a dream that persisted, the same world that kept returning to me day after day, year after year.

  As Woferl pranced around Sebastian trying to make him laugh and give him another candy, I looked back down at my notebook. My fingers closed tightly against the pages. I had left our apartment without it and would return with it right here in my hand.

  The music in the princeling Hyacinth’s voice still played in my mind. It was possible that the grotto was a part of this continuous dream . . . or, perhaps, it was also possible that everything was real.

  * * *

  By morning, Papa had already spoken to Herr Schachtner about Woferl’s newly discovered talent. Not a few months afterward, as if the princeling had sent them himself, letters began to arrive from Vienna. The royal court wanted to hear us perform.

  THE ROAD TO VIENNA

  We waited until the worst of winter had passed before Papa began preparations for our first trip. The cold days dragged by one after the other. Outside, the Christmas snow fell. The Bear and the Witch and the Giant roamed the Getreidegasse and children ran squealing from them in delight. Sometimes as I watched from the window, I thought I caught a glimpse of Hyacinth walking with the wild bunch, his blue eyes flashing up toward me. Then he would disappear, leaving me to think I must have imagined it all.

  During those short winter days, Papa sat at the clavier with Woferl for hours, praising his swift memory and his accuracy, clapping whenever my brother finished memorizing another piece or added his own flourishes to a measure. Woferl hardly needed his instruction. One day, I came into the music room to see my brother holding Papa’s violin, his shoulder barely big enough for the instrument. He was not only teaching himself the strings, plucking each one and figuring out the correct notes as he went—but inventing a tune. He was already composing.

  I’d heard my father call other musicians prodigies before, but they were men in their teens and twenties. My brother was just a child. I stood frozen in place as I watched him. His eyes stayed closed, and his fingers fluttered as if in a trance.

  With me, too, our father turned more serious, extending my lessons, noting my every mistake and nodding in approval each time I played flawlessly. I savored every moment of his attention. Even when I wasn’t at the clavier, I sat with my notebook in my lap, poring over the pages in search of whatever magic Hyacinth had cast on it.

  I could see no visible change in the pages, but something had changed. I could feel the tingle of it in my fingertips whenever I brushed the paper.

  On a day when the spring thaw dripped from the trees, Woferl and I stood outside the arched entrance to our building and watched Sebastian and our coachman drag trunks of clothing across the cobblestones, throwing them unceremoniously into our carriage’s boot. Mama chatted with Papa as they worked. I could see her unfolding and refolding her arms in barely disguised anxiety. She did not want to leave home.

  Their Majesties Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa. I kept my hands folded in my skirts and repeated their names silently. Vienna’s royal court. Mama had said that kings and queens are remembered. Perhaps being remembered by royalty was the same.

  Beside me, Woferl shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying in vain to keep his excitement subdued. His eyes were bright with anticipation this morning, and his brown ringlets brushed past flushed cheeks.

  “What are we going to do for two weeks in a carriage?” he asked me.

  I leaned down toward him and raised my eyebrow. “Having no clavier on the road does not mean you can get into mischief. Papa and Mama will not have it, do you hear?”

  Woferl pouted, and I patted his head. “We will find something to pass the time. The countryside will look beautiful, and soon you will get your instruments back.”

  “Will they have an ear for music, do you think?” he asked me curiously. “The emperor and empress?”

  I smiled at his boldness. “Best not ask that question at court, Woferl.”

  He tucked his hand into mine and leaned against me. I noted how much thinner and stretched out his fingers already felt. The softness of his youth was rapidly disappearing from his tiny hands. “Herr Schachtner said the emperor likes a spectacle,” he said.

  And a spectacle they would get. Woferl’s improvement on the clavier o
nly quickened with each passing week. Papa had to commission a tiny violin for him. Before Woferl, it was unheard of for a child his age to play the violin at his level. That quality of instrument simply did not exist in the shops. Our names now regularly circulated the Getreidegasse, whispers on the tongues of the curious and skeptical that Herr Leopold Mozart’s two children were in fact both musical prodigies. They would say my name first, because I had played for longer. But they saved Woferl’s name for last, because he was so young.

  I tried to keep my unease at bay. I woke up early every morning of the winter to practice, staying at the clavier long after Papa had left for the day. I’d play and play until Woferl would tug on my sleeve, begging for his turn. When I was not at the clavier, I tapped my fingers against the pages of my notebook and hummed under my breath. I spent my days wrapped in the music, lost in its secrets. When I dreamed, I dreamed in new measures and keys, compositions I would never dare write down.

  I was, after all, not my brother.

  Sometimes, over the long winter, I’d also dream of Hyacinth whispering in my ear. Desire is your lifeblood, and talent is the flower it feeds. I’d wake and play his menuett on the clavier, the tune I’d heard in the grotto, wondering whether it would call him back again. Perhaps he was watching us right now as we stood outside our home, his pale body washed warm by the light. Out of instinct, I tilted my head up toward our windows, certain I would see his face there behind the glass.

  “Nannerl.”

  I looked down to see Papa approaching, and straightened to smooth my skirts. He placed one hand on Woferl’s messy head of curls. “Time to head into the carriage,” he said gently.

  Woferl released me, then ran off to hug our mother’s waist, babbling affections all the while.

  Papa touched my shoulder and led me over to the corner of our building, so that we stood partly in the shadow of the wall’s edge. I looked directly at him. I did not do this often; my father’s eyes were very dark and frequently shaded by furrowed brows. It was a stare that dried my throat until I could not speak.