The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  Herr Schachtner laughed loudly. He shared the joke with my father, who chuckled, and then said something in return to my brother.

  The music that filled my head began to fragment, and in the slots between the notes grew guesses at what they could be discussing. Look at the funny faces she makes. See how stiffly she sits. Her tempo is uneven.

  Or, perhaps worse, they weren’t talking about me at all.

  My hands stumbled over each other—I managed to catch this mistake before it ruined the piece, but one of my fingers still slipped off its key.

  The note came out silent, an ugly gap between rising arpeggios.

  Heat rushed to my cheeks. I cast a glance toward my audience to see my father’s eyes dart at me, surprise and disapproval sharp on his face. Herr Schachtner tucked one hand under each of Woferl’s underarms and picked him up to sit upon his lap. My brother’s legs swung idly.

  “Thank you, Nannerl,” Papa said.

  His voice startled me. I hadn’t even realized that the menuett was done, that my hands had already retreated to my lap. The web in the woods was gone. The clouds and butterflies and rain vanished from my mind. No one was listening to me anymore.

  I straightened and rose, trembling, from the bench to curtsy. The floor beneath me swayed in the sudden silence of the room. My father’s smile swayed on artificial hinges.

  From where he sat on the Herr’s lap, Woferl met my eyes with all the innocence of a little boy. His cheeks were round, still flushed from the remnants of a lingering fever that had struck just days ago. His eyes shone as brightly as pebbles winking in a stream. I softened at the angelic face of the brother I loved, even though I did not want to linger on his gaze.

  Do not blame Woferl, Papa would say later. He could not have distracted Herr Schachtner if you had played well.

  Herr Schachtner put his hands together and clapped. “Ah! Splendid, child!” he exclaimed. “You are a true talent.” He turned to my father. “You are absolutely right, Leopold. She plays such smooth measures, and with such control. I’ve no doubt she will perform for royalty when she is older.”

  My father thanked him politely at those words, but I could see the strain in his pride, the disappointment in his expression.

  Herr Schachtner was supposed to say more. He was supposed to be astounded. He should have extended an invitation to us, arranged for me to perform before Herr Haydn and Austria’s other masters of music, offered to introduce me to his friends at court. Suggested a grand tour, to showcase me across all Europe. Just think of the Italians! he should have said. A prodigy hailing from the Rome of the North, worthy of Rome herself!

  But instead, what he said was: When she is older.

  I was not the miracle, destined to be noticed. Already, the Herr had moved on to telling my father a story about an argument between the orchestra’s horns, my brother still bouncing on his knee. My performance was thoroughly forgotten.

  Six weeks, I’d prepared for this. I felt the numb tingle return to my fingertips, and the shame of the note I’d let slip spilling out onto my cheeks.

  I never let notes slip.

  * * *

  Later that night, after Papa had already retired to his chamber, I sat up in bed with my music notebook in my lap, the pages still open to the measures I’d played earlier in the day. As usual, Woferl lay curled lengthwise at my side. I thought about pushing him away, but instead I watched his chest rise and fall in a gentle rhythm, weighing my mood against the incessant complaints that I’d hear if I shook him out of sleep.

  I ran my fingers across the dried ink, replaying my performance in my mind. Finally, I closed it and placed it on my shelf, reaching instead for a round pendant I always kept nearby, its glass surface painted bright blue and black. Faint oil streaks lingered on its surface where my thumbs had rubbed away its glossy sheen.

  Mama noted my silence from where she was gathering up a few of Woferl’s toys on the floor. She sighed. “Remember, Nannerl, your brother is only a child,” she said to me. The skin under her eyes was soft and wrinkled, her hair a mixture of mahogany and silver. “He does not know any better.”

  “He knows what a performance means.” My eyes went to hers. “He distracted Herr Schachtner today. You saw him.”

  Mama smiled in sympathy, her eyes warm with understanding. “Ah, mein Liebling. He means no harm. You played very well today.”

  I looked back down at Woferl. His face was flushed, his waves of brown curls in complete disarray. Mama was right, of course, and out of guilt, I reached over to smooth my brother’s hair. He stirred, yawning like a pause between measures, his tongue tiny and pink.

  “Can you tell me a story?” he murmured, and pressed himself closer to me. Before I could answer, his breathing evened again into sleep.

  It was a request he made almost every day. Sharing stories with Woferl was our constant game—we spun myths of elves and dwarves, chimera that emerged from the dark woods, gnomes guarding the sleeping emperor in the Untersberg Mountain. But we told them to each other in secret, for Papa disapproved of them. At worst, they were stories about the Devil’s creatures, here to torment and tempt us. At best, they were faery-tale nonsense.

  Mama, however, indulged us with them. When I was very small, she used to gather me in her arms at night and whisper such stories to me in a hushed voice. After Woferl came along and Papa complained about our mother filling our heads with fables, I became the one to tell them. They soon turned into something that belonged wholly to us.

  In this moment, his dreaming voice sounded so small, his question to me so true, that I felt my heart soften, as it always did, to him.

  Mama came over to sit with us on the edge of the bed. She glanced at the pendant in my hands that I kept rubbing. It had been my birthday present from her, a trinket acquired when she’d visited our uncle Franz in Augsburg. To give you luck, she’d told me with a kiss on each cheek. Now she looked on as I ran my fingers idly across its smooth surface.

  “Do you need good fortune so desperately?” Mama finally asked, taking my hand in hers.

  My hand tightened against the pendant. “Yes,” I said.

  “And what for, my little love?”

  I paused for a moment and turned my eyes up to her. A silver wolf, Papa had once called her, for although my mother was as steady and graceful as the snow, she was also warm, her eyes alight with intelligence for those attentive enough to notice. It was the gaze of a survivor, a woman who had fought through poverty and debt and somehow carried on after the deaths of the five children who Woferl and I had outlived.

  My own insecurities embarrassed me. How could I explain to her the feelings that pressed against my chest? My mother, who glided through every moment in her life with serenity and grace. Who seemed to have faced every misfortune without fear.

  “Mama,” I finally said. “What are you afraid of?”

  She laughed and leaned over to tap my nose. Her voice was full of vibrato, the music of a fine cello. “I am afraid of the cold, little one, because it makes my bones ache. I am afraid when I hear stories of plague and war.” A graveness flickered in her gaze, as it often did when she thought of her childhood. “I am afraid for you and Woferl, as mothers always are.” She raised an eyebrow at me, and I felt myself drawn into her gaze. “And you?”

  My hands returned to the pendant, its black eye staring silently back up at me. I wondered if it could see into all the drawers and pockets of my father’s mind, if it could tell me if I was still kept carefully in there. If I played poorly again, perhaps my father would lose interest altogether in teaching me. I thought of how the men had looked away from me after my performance today, how little the Herr seemed to have heard of what I played.

  “I am afraid of being forgotten,” I said. The truth emerged fully formed, empowered somehow by being named.

  “Forgotten?” She laughed, a rich, throaty sound
. “What a fear for a little girl.”

  “Someday I won’t be little anymore,” I replied.

  Mama sobered at the words of an old soul emerging from her daughter’s lips. “Everyone is forgotten, mein Liebling,” she said gently. “Except the kings and queens.”

  And the talented, I added in silence, studying my brother’s dark curls. They were words my father had once said. Only the worthy are made immortal.

  With a sigh, Mama leaned toward me and kissed me gently on my cheek. “You will have plenty of years to weigh yourself down with such thoughts. Tonight, love, let yourself sleep.” She turned her back and closed the door behind her, leaving us alone.

  I stared at the door that Mama had just stepped through, then turned to look out at the dark city through our window. In that moment, I made a wish.

  Help me be worthy. Worthy of praise, of being loved and remembered. Worthy of attention when I bared my heart at the clavier. Worthy enough for my music to linger long after I was gone. Worthy of my father. Make them remember me.

  The thought trailed through my mind in a circle. I saw myself seated at the bench again, this time with the Herr never turning away in distraction, my father looking on with pride, the web in the woods unbroken and perfect. I let the image linger so long that when I finally went to sleep, I could still see it imprinted behind my closed eyes.

  I thought no one heard my secret prayer, not even God, who seemed to have little interest in the wants of small girls.

  But someone was listening.

  * * *

  That night, I dreamed of a shore lit by twin moons, each bright as a diamond, both suspended low at the water’s edge. Their images were mirrored perfectly against a still ocean. The line of a dark forest curved along the horizon. The shore’s sand was very white, the seashells very blue, and through the curling sea foam walked a boy. He looked like a wild child, clad in nothing more than black bark and silver leaves, twigs entangled in his hair, a flash of pearly white teeth brightening his smile, and although he was too far away for me to make out his features, his eyes glowed, the blue of them reflected against his cheeks. The air around him rippled with a melody so perfect, so unlike anything I’d ever heard, that I woke with my hand outstretched before me, aching to grasp it.

  That was the first time I ever saw the Kingdom of Back.

  THE WAKING DREAM

  I spent days sitting before the clavier after that first dream, trying in vain to find the perfect melody I’d heard. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to sound quite right.

  “What is it that you keep playing over and over?” Woferl asked me whenever he came to watch me practice.

  “Just something I heard in a dream,” I told him.

  He looked thoughtfully at me, his eyes wide as if searching for the melody too. “But the notes are not the same, are they?” he said.

  I still don’t know how he knew, except that he must have guessed by the frown on my face. “No, not the same,” I replied. “Because what I heard in my dream wasn’t real.”

  Weeks passed, then months, and soon my memory of it blurred. My attempts turned scattered, the tune shifting until it became unrecognizable. Eventually, I let myself believe that maybe it hadn’t been such a perfect melody after all.

  The seasons drifted from ice to rain to sun to wind. The hills that hemmed in Salzburg became white with snow, then green with new buds, then orange and gold, then white once more. My mother fixed my dresses as I grew. I began to hear murmured conversation between my parents at night, about how soon I would no longer be a child, about marriage and what prospects I had, how they would fill my dowry chest. Outside, the New Year’s rifles fired and the star singers visited our door, slapping their arms against the Christmas cold, their voices warm with good cheer. Here and there, I’d catch a snippet of music in the streets that would just barely touch the edges of my memory, reminding me of something from a faraway dream.

  Papa continued my lessons as I aged, filling the notebook he had bought me with menuetts, and I continued to practice the pieces. No more guests came to listen to me. Most days I was glad for it. The clavier was my cocoon of a world, my haven. In here, I could listen to my secrets in peace. But at night I lay awake and replayed the music in my mind, my thoughts circling the wish I’d spoken from my heart.

  In my dreams, I was haunted by the way my father leaned away from me after a lesson, the weight of his disappointment that I couldn’t grasp what he was offering me. I wondered what it might feel like to fade into the air one day. Whether my father would notice it. There was only so much time before I would leave childhood behind and he would stop teaching me entirely.

  One morning, when Papa finished his lessons with me and I closed my notebook carefully, Woferl climbed onto the clavier bench beside me and reached his hands toward the keys. He had grown too, although perhaps not as much as a boy his age should. His eyes still looked enormous in the small, plump set of his face, and when he turned toward the music stand, I could see his long lashes against his cheeks, haloed in the light. He was a fragile child, both in body and health. It made me want to curl my arm protectively around his shoulders.

  “Woferl,” I chided gently. “Papa does not want you to play yet.” My father said he was too young, his fingers too small and tender to press the keys properly. He did not want him to damage his hands. For now, selfishly, I was glad to keep music lessons something between only my father and me.

  Woferl seemed to stare through my notebook, his eyes yearning for somewhere far away. His lashes turned up for a moment as he looked at me. “Please, Nannerl,” he said, scooting closer to me so that he pressed against my side. “Can’t you teach me a little? You are the best player in the world.”

  He had been asking me this for weeks, climbing onto my bench after Papa had left for the day, and each time I had turned him away. But this morning, his expression was particularly coaxing, and my mood was light, my hands warm and sure against the keys.

  I laughed at him. “Surely you don’t think I’m better than Papa,” I replied.

  When I looked at him again, he seemed serious. “I promise I won’t tell.”

  Whatever a promise meant to a small boy. Still, the sweetness of his face made me surrender.

  “You are too far away,” I said at last. “Let’s move the bench closer, ja?”

  Everything about him illuminated. His eyes, his smile, his posture. He let out a soft squeak under his breath as I drew him close to the clavier, then helped him position his fingers against the keys. His hands looked so tiny against mine that I held them in my palms a beat longer, as if to protect them. Only when he made a sound, pushing me to move aside, did I release him.

  “This is a chord,” I said, stretching my own hand out beside his. I played a harmonious trio of notes for him, each key spaced one out from the next, at first all together, then one after the other.

  He watched me in fascination. He was still small enough that he had to use two hands to play it properly, the thumb of his left hand holding down the lowest of the three notes while two fingers of his right hand tapped out the middle and highest notes. E, G#, B. He listened curiously to it, tilting his head this way and that at the sound.

  I smiled and played another chord. He followed my example.

  This was when the first sign appeared. I don’t think that anyone else could have noticed it, not even Papa, who never had the patience to see these things.

  When Woferl pressed down on the keys, one of the notes that he struck sounded very slightly out of tune.

  He frowned, then played it again. Again, the note came out at the wrong pitch.

  I leaned toward him, about to tell him that the string must need tightening. But the frustration that clouded his gaze made me pause. He pressed the key a third time, thinking that it might fix itself, and when it didn’t, he hummed the right pitch in the back of his throat,
as if he couldn’t understand how the same note could be correct in his mind and incorrect outside of it.

  I knew, in that moment, that he had a remarkable ear. Sharper than our father’s, sharper than Herr Schachtner’s. Perhaps even sharper than mine, at least at that age. Already he understood the sound of perfection.

  I now think this was how he first learned that the world was an imperfect place.

  “Very good, Woferl,” I said to him.

  He paused to give me a relieved smile. “You hear it too,” he said, and in that moment, I felt the warmth of his presence in my world, a second soul who understood.

  We played a few more sets of chords before Woferl finally leaned away, looked from the clavier to the window’s golden light, then back to me. “Can you tell me a story?” he asked absently.

  So, he was in a whimsical mood. I glanced toward our parents’ bedroom, as if Papa could still hear us even though he had left hours ago. Mama had gone with Sebastian to the clothier. No one else was home.

  “All right,” I said, and closed my eyes to think of something.

  I still don’t know why it returned to me then. Perhaps it was the chords we’d played together, which still seemed to hang in the air. But there, in the darkness, I found myself hearing the achingly pristine music from my dream years ago. The memory resurfaced of a beautiful young face that I couldn’t quite recall. Of waking with my hand outstretched before me, yearning to stay longer.

  I opened my eyes. The sun was slanting against the floors just so, and a new haze hung about the light in the room. We were bathed in its glow. “There is a forest,” I said, looking down at my brother. “That surrounds a kingdom.”