* * *
“Toys?” said Nikolai, after he was dressed and the Master-of-the-Suite had explained everything he knew. Somehow, all the children in the empire—even cities as far away as Belamore—had been lured into the streets and turned into small toys. Parents had risen with the early light, found their children gone, followed their snowy footprints, and discovered dolls, nutcrackers, games and books. Fathers who had gone to wake their sons up to milk the cows, and found them across the farm paths as rocking horses. Parents who, in a panic, ran out the doors to the chaos of other Imperians, crowding through the streets, yelling and blockading the roads and scouring the prospekts for lost toys.
“Yes, Highness, toys,” said the Master-of-the-Suite.
“Actual toys?” said Nikolai.
“Yes, Highness.”
“Toys, as in, bang bang boom boom rat-a-tat-tat?”
“Ah—yes? Highness?”
The attendant hurried after Nikolai as he strode down the halls. He paused a moment by a maid with curly red hair, who was leaning against the wall, sniffing and clutching a doll. The toy, made of cloth and rags, had the same curly red hair.
“Berta? May I?” Nikolai said, and the maid hesitated, and handed the doll to him. Nikolai gently examined it, touching its face, squeezing its hand. Nothing inside but stuffing, that was clear. The toy looked eerily like Berta’s little girl, Roda, who often ran through the halls, swiping her polish cloth at the furniture. Whenever she saw Nikolai, she would duck behind a chair.
Nikolai stared, and after a moment, handed the doll back to Berta, who tucked in into her arms. She began crying anew. Nikolai strode on, anger now speeding his steps. It wasn’t just that the children had been turned to toys—it was that his Palace’s children and his Empire’s children, had been turned to toys.
“Why would the fairies do this?” he said to no one. “Have we done something to offend them?”
“The fairies, sir?” said the attendant, who had been running after Nikolai.
“They’re the only ones who know magic, aren’t they?”
“Yes—but—fairies are good,” said the attendant. “They wouldn’t do something like this.”
Nikolai stopped and pivoted around.
“Yes, I would like to think that,” he said. “But let us suppose for one moment that a person actually did know how to use magic and could turn the children into toys. That doesn’t explain how that person was able to do it to every child in the Empire. He’d have to take every stop on the Trans-Imperian railway to reach them all. That’s thirty-two hundred miles. Even at a speed of seventy-five miles-per-hour—which would risk danger of derailment—it would be forty-two-point-six-six-six hours to circle the empire. And that doesn’t include the auxiliary rails, either. A person could go at the speed of one-hundred-and-five, but that would overheat the boiler and only shorten the time by a little over twelve hours so it’s hardly even worth mentioning. If this wasn’t the fairies then who was it?”
There was a pause.
“It wasn’t the fairies,” the attendant said staunchly. “They wouldn’t do this.”
Nikolai sighed.
“Well,” he said, not unkindly. “Perhaps not. We need telegraphs sent out to every part of the empire. Perhaps there’s someone who was awake and saw what happened. That would be important to know.”
“General Drosselmeyer has already done that very thing,” said the Master-of-the-Suite.
Of course he has, thought Nikolai, chest falling with disappointment.
“General Drosselmeyer is, in fact, waiting for you in the Gallery,” said the attendant. “He wishes to speak with you.”
Of course he does, Nikolai thought.
“Tell our most esteemed regent,” said Nikolai, “that I will be there...presently. After that, Master Grigory, you’re dismissed to find your family. We’re in a state of emergency, you don’t need to be attending me.”
The Master-of-the-Suite gratefully bowed. Nikolai pivoted and grimly strode on. That was the beautiful thing about the word presently. It could mean several minutes, or it could mean several hours. And Nikolai needed several hours.
* * *
Sun rays were just splaying over the mountains as Nikolai rode through the gardens and away from the Palace. Through the garden gates and the massive gate of the giant city wall, Nikolai saluted to the soldiers who stood guard, and rode into mountain paths above Krystallgrad. The brittle December air stung his face, and the pine branches whipped past him.
Fairies. If he were to find them anywhere, he’d find them in the meadow.
Nikolai had bridled his horse, Kriket, himself, and the horse’s hooves beat the ground, turning up chunks of snow and dirt. At times, the mountainside became steep enough to see over the dense treetops and into the Imperian valley. In the distance, the Palace’s brilliant domes rose above a layer of fog. They glittered gold as the morning sun.
The prince wrapped the reins another time around his gloved hands, and urged his horse higher into the forest. His hands were all knuckles—not at all suited for penmanship or leading ladies in dances or using sorbet spoons. They were huge, like his ears, and it was only upon second glance that one could see past the ears and hands and feet to recognize that the prince was actually a bit handsome, with eyes the color of Imperian emeralds, hair dark as a Krystallgradian night, and a frame tall enough to mount a horse at a leap.
But it was his wide smile that merited the most attention. For when he smiled—and it was often enough, for the Prince was good-natured—it lit up his entire face, which lit up the whole room. Everyone who saw it agreed: it was remarkable.
For now, Nikolai’s face was a picture of deep concentration as he urged Kriket on, leaping over fallen logs and branches. He calculated the speed of his horse by estimating the distance ahead and sorted out how fast the trees whipped by, only slowing when he saw a rat trap.
He pulled Kriket up to the trap, taking a moment to examine the large metal teeth from his mount. Rat traps were large, because rats were large. This one was about the size of a carriage wheel and hadn’t been sprung yet. The dried horse meat in the center lay untouched.
Nikolai warily kept an eye out. He was now, technically, in Rat Territory. He hadn’t reached the barbed trenches nor could he yet smell rat—the rancid, filthy smell of matted fur and dried blood mixed with excrement—but he needed to be careful. He at least had the sense to bring his army rifle, now slung across his back, and had a dagger at his hip. If he had to, he’d fight them. He needed to get to the meadow.
Chasing the shadows along the mountain ridge, Nikolai dismounted moments later in a small meadow. The snow lay an unrumpled blanket to the edges of the trees.
Nikolai was familiar with this meadow. His father, Emperor Friedrich II, had first brought him to it when Nikolai was just six.
“Only the Imperian emperors know of this place,” his father had told him, helping him down from the horse. “My father, and his father before him, and all their fathers. It is a sacred place, halfway between heaven and earth. The fairies often come here.”
“Fairies?” said little Nikolai, fascinated. “Have you seen one?”
“Yes. A long time ago. But I am certain they still come here. You will come here, too, when you are emperor and are faced with a challenge. You can pray here, or simply think. Perhaps you, too, will even see a fairy. They are good luck, you know.”
And Nikolai had seen one—once. But that had been years ago, just after his father had been assassinated. Long enough for the memory of the tiny wings and glistening light to fade.
Nikolai allowed Kriket to rest while he stepped forward, looking about for any flash of light.
Nothing.
“Why are you doing this?” Nikolai called to the empty meadow. “Why did you turn the children into toys? What have we done to offend you? Let me know so I can make it right.”
The meadow remained silent.
Nikolai wasn’t expecting an answer, not really.
Even if a fairy was there, he doubted very much that they could understand what he said. Nikolai sighed and leaned against a craggy tree. He was going to be the emperor in two months and felt, more strongly than ever, that he didn’t deserve it.
Nikolai started. He looked around sharply. That unsettling feeling again. The reek filled the meadow just as he saw yellow eyes glint through the trees.
Rat!
Nikolai swept the rifle from his shoulder and aimed, but the rat lunged towards him and before a shot could be fired, the rifle had been knocked away, and he and the rat were tumbling full-fight in the snow. The creature clawed, tearing Nikolai’s greatcoat with its naked paws. Nikolai managed to grasp the dagger at his waist and slashed back. The rat snarled, twisting back, and its tail whipped Nikolai’s face, leaving a stinging welt.
A jumble of limbs, claws, teeth. Nikolai’s vision seared. He sliced the rat’s paw, grabbed its hind leg, and flipped it off its feet. In a moment he’d thrown his entire strength at the rat, pinning it by its neck against a birch tree. The rat writhed. Nikolai’s hand pressed so hard against its soft throat that he felt its pulsing heartbeat. Fur fluttered to the snow, cut by the dagger Nikolai held to its neck.
Nikolai hated rats. The Imperian army had fought them for hundreds of years. They were endless, spawning in litters, growing to the size of wolves and bears within a year. They broke through barbed fences and attacked towns, tearing down barn doors, gorging on sacks of barley, clawing their way into houses in hopes of finding plump babies in their cradles. For almost two years Nikolai had fought alongside his regiment, firing at rats until his eyes stung with gunpowder and his shoulder ached from the rifle’s kick, slicing through their fur until his uniform was drenched in rat blood. He’d fought rats from off his fallen comrades, because if he didn’t, the rats would eat the bodies.
“You are on human land, rat!” Nikolai snarled, though of course the rat could not understand him.
The rat shut its eyes and opened its mouth, and—oddly—a letter dropped out from between its pointed teeth. It slit the snow by Nikolai’s boot, sticking upright. Surprised, Nikolai noticed the cursive writing on the envelope:
Prince Nikolai Volkonsky.
The rat seized advantage of the moment and lashed at Nikolai, drawing blood at his wrist, and twisted out of his grip. In a second, it had bounded off, running into the darkness of the forest with a kick of white. Nikolai ignored the blood at his wrist and picked up the envelope, bent and torn from rat teeth and damp with rat saliva and snow. It was addressed to him. In very fine penmanship, too. The prince looked up into the line of trees, searching for the rat. Rats were...rats. Rats couldn’t write. A human had to have written this.
“How—” he began, and the forest behind him exploded into hundreds of glowing yellow eyes.
Kriket reared and neighed as the eyes blurred and leapt from between the birches and pines, snarls filling the air. Panicked, Nikolai snatched Kriket’s reigns and threw himself onto the horse as countless rats poured from the forest into the meadow, their tails snapping against Kriket’s legs and flank. Nikolai flailed for balance atop the rearing horse, the river of greys and blacks swarming past him. Bristling fur. Glinting teeth. Spattered snow. Throat-choking fear.
When the prince finally regained control of Kriket, his heart still pounding, the meadow was empty. The sun shone above the trees. Birds chirruped.
Hundreds of paw prints had trampled the meadow’s blanket of snow.
And jutting from the landscape like shards of glass: envelopes. At least fifty of them. Nikolai unsteadily dismounted and retrieved one.
Prince Nikolai Volkonsky. And the next—Prince Nikolai Volkonsky. Identical letters. Prince Nikolai Volkonsky. Prince Nikolai Volkonsky.
Prince Nikolai Volkonsky opened one with shaking hands, and read it. The blood drained from his face. It became suddenly clear: The fairies were not who he was looking for. Quickly mounting Kriket, Nikolai urged him out of the meadow and down the mountainside, back to the Palace.
Of the thousands of halls, ballrooms, bedrooms and towers of the Imperial Palace, the Gallery nested in the exact center. Rare wood patterned the floor. Glass tiled the ceiling, and through it, one could see the onion domes above. Displays of curiosities from emperors past filled the room. Not tastefully. It was difficult to make things like a monkey skeleton in a glass dome tasteful.
A baroque piano, legs of twisted gold, stood in the far corner, lighted by arched windows that lined the walls, between which was crowded innumerable portraits of Volkonsky emperors and their families.
Nikolai’s eyes were always drawn to his parents—his father with dark hair and kind eyes, and his mother with a mischievous smile and glittering green eyes. Prince Nikolai had never known his mother (she had died from illness not long after his birth), but every time he saw that portrait, he liked her all over again.
In the center of the Gallery stood the War Table, a heavy piece of furniture that had a map of Imperia underneath glass. On it lay strategically placed tiny toy rats and tiny toy soldiers. Nikolai had learnt in his youth to never touch the table or play with the figures.
When Nikolai entered the Gallery later that morning—his hair mussed and his back aching from Kriket’s rearing—General Drosselmeyer was pacing behind the table, impatiently clicking his pocket watch open and shut. At the sight of Nikolai, the General turned on him, his gray eye flashing.
“Where have you been?” he snapped. “We are in a state of emergency! A fine emperor you will be, Nikolai, running off when there is trouble!”
Nikolai eased himself into a chair in front of the War Table, trying to keep from shaking. He couldn’t let the General see him tremble like this; he needed to at least act like a prince. With an air of sprezzatura, Nikolai tossed several rat-stained open letters onto the glass. They slid, knocking over several soldier figures. Prince Nikolai Volkonsky.
“It has been three h—” The General stopped. “What are those?” he said.
“Letters,” said Nikolai.
“From whom.”
It wasn’t even a question. Nikolai waved his hand, assenting to let Drosselmeyer read them. The General impatiently flipped the letter from the closest envelope, smartly unfolding it, and read:
Your Most Excellent Grace, Prince Nikolai Volkonsky, etc. etc.:
Are they not fine little toys? What craftsmanship! I particularly liked the children from the candy shop, turned into little matryoshka dolls. How very droll.
Now that I have your attention, I would beg an audience with you. Tonight, at six o’clock, please prepare for my arrival at the Palace. Forgive me for playing the part of the uninvited guest, but you know how busy life gets.
Yours sincerely (and presently),
In neat penmanship was signed the name:
Erik Zolokov
Nikolai watched the General’s face grow paler and paler as he read. That was a little surprising; the General had a spine of iron. He wore his red General’s uniform with numerous medals on it every day; he probably even slept in it. Years ago he’d lost his left eye to the rats, but an eyepatch hadn’t stopped him from fighting in the army. And when Nikolai’s father was killed, all the General had told Nikolai was: “If you expect to be the next emperor, Nikolai, there had very well be a marked improvement in your lessons.”
It was strange indeed to see the General shaken like this.
“Erik Zolokov,” said Nikolai, when Drosselmeyer had finished reading. “Do you know who that is?”
“I do not,” said the General shortly.
“He doesn’t say anything about why he turned the children into toys. Or even how. Or even what he wants!” said Nikolai.
And because Drosselmeyer wasn’t saying anything, Nikolai barreled on with the whole story, from being swarmed by rats to reading the letters to wondering if the magician could control the rats.
“If this Erik Zolokov turned the children into toys, then he can turn them back,” Nikolai finished. “He want
s an audience with me. Specifically me. Perhaps I can convince him to turn them back.”
Drosselmeyer snapped to attention.
“Don’t be a fool, Nikolai,” he said sharply. “He’s not someone you can reason with. He’s coming to kill you, obviously!”
Nikolai tempered his voice into his even-toned Emperor voice, not allowing the hurt of fool to show in his face.
“Just because my father was killed,” he said, “doesn’t mean that everyone wants to kill the emperor. At any rate, if he wanted to kill me, wouldn’t he have done it already? He could have, with the rats. He can somehow control them. No, General, I think he wants something else.”
“Our imperative is to keep you alive.”
“Oh,” said Nikolai. “Well. I certainly agree with that.”
“You don’t even have an heir,” said Drosselmeyer.
Nikolai kept his face expressionless.
“We will have telegrams sent,” said Drosselmeyer. “We will send out for the city records across the Empire and find out who this Erik Zolokov is.”
“Already done,” said Nikolai, straightening. “I sent word just before I came here.”
Drosselmeyer looked affronted.
“Then we will also telegraph the regiments,” said Drosselmeyer, rebounding. “We will bring every soldier we can spare to the Palace tonight. We will meet this magician as an army.”
“Do you think armies are really the best way to fight magic?” said Nikolai.
Drosselmeyer’s piercing gray eye fixed on Nikolai. Nikolai had nothing to lose, so he dove onward.
“We need to think differently. What if…” Nikolai tugged his ear and looked thoughtfully up at the glass ceiling. “What if we just tried talking to him? At least find out why he did all this? He does seem fairly civil in his letter.”
“Have you run mad?” Drosselmeyer snapped. “He turned all the children into toys! He has no scruples! Do you really think he can be talked to? Of all the frustrating aspects of this, the most frustrating of all is that you refuse to take it seriously!”
The Enchanted Sonata Page 3