Clara turned her attention to the nutcracker, whose large form barely fit inside the small bunker. She still found herself frightened of him, though she became less and less frightened each time he banged his head against the ceiling beams. He stooped as he lit the fire and pulled a kettle from the corner bin, moving with jointed stiffness, his back unbending, his head huge, tufts of white beard and hair sticking out at odd angles from under his hat.
Clara blearily examined him, the words from the book returning to her as she thawed. Words like Volkonsky and matryoshka and Imperia. Imperia. She was in Imperia. There were fairies. There were giant rats. The world was a blur of jewels and glittering forests, and the blur focused to the nutcracker in front of her. Moving. Living. A giant toy swishing water in the old kettle.
No, not a toy. A prince!
“Oh!” said Clara, throwing aside the blanket and leaping to her feet in a valiant effort to curtsy. “Your Highness.”
Her frozen feet gave way underneath her, and she hit the bunker floor with a resounding thump.
The nutcracker made an effort to help her up, but Clara quickly got to her feet without his help. “No, no, I can do this,” she said. She dipped into a curtsy and only made it halfway before tumbling to the floor.
The nutcracker’s painted brows furrowed at her.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” he said.
“I’m fine!” Clara stumbled back to her feet, but tripped and fell onto the bed.
“Yes, you seem fine,” said the nutcracker.
Clara fiercely pulled her feet into submission, tossed her dripping blond hair back, grasped the post of the cot for balance, and dipped into a perfect, flawless curtsy.
“Your Highness,” she graced. She remained penitently bowing her head.
The nutcracker coughed.
“That will do,” he said.
Clara collapsed onto the cot, relieved. The nutcracker poured black liquid into a tin mug and pushed it into her hands, which made them burn. Coffee.
“I—I should be making this for you,” said Clara, embarrassed.
The nutcracker dismissively waved it away. “I won’t hear of it. The greatest rulers serve their people, my father always believed that so...I do too. Anyhow,” he added smugly, “it wouldn’t turn out as good as mine. I was the best in my regiment at coffee-making. Try it. Go on.”
Clara obediently took a sip. She did not like coffee unless it had more sugar than actual coffee, but was pleased to discover that the steaming bitter stuff warmed every part of her. She took another sip, looked up, and nearly choked.
The nutcracker had folded down in front of her, almost face-to-face, and was scrutinizing her so intently that his painted green eyes bored into hers.
“Why did the fairies send me to you?” he said.
“I-I-I don’t know,” Clara sputtered, coughing. “It must have been a mistake.”
“The fairies don’t make mistakes,” the nutcracker said firmly. “They make no sense at all, but they don’t make mistakes.”
Clara let this sink in, and it only made things more confusing. She wrapped the scratchy blanket tighter around herself, thinking about the mess she was in and the concert that night, and out of habit she absently pulled the locket out and clicked it open, shut, open, shut, without looking at the picture inside.
The nutcracker was speaking, making more sense of it than Clara could.
“I suspect the fairies made me small in your world so I wouldn’t frighten you,” he said. “It could be that. Magic also gets tangled up crossing through worlds. That’s the rumor, anyway. All sorts of mix-ups, especially time. A lot of time can pass here and none there. I know it’s a mess but at least we’re back home and I know where we are. The magician left us in the North Forest.”
“Oh,” said Clara.
“Drink more coffee, you look as though you might burst into tears.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” said Clara, consciously not bursting into tears. “Thank you, Highness.”
The world Highness seemed to visibly depress the nutcracker, and with great jointed movements, he sat beside Clara. The cot bent with his weight. He stared blankly into the planks of the grey-washed wall. They sat in silence, long enough for the cup between Clara’s hands to turn lukewarm. He couldn’t bend, but his straight back was leaning forward, his shoulders and eyes down, his face in his hands.
Clara wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was pitiable to see a giant wooden toy so sad. She wanted to touch his shoulder, but supposed that would be deeply inappropriate. At last, the nutcracker spoke:
“Just Nutcracker will do, I think,” he said to his paddle-hands. “I’m not a prince anymore. My kingdom is in chaos and everyone is in a panic and I’m a—a—a useless toy and I still haven’t any idea how the magician did it or how to fix it. And if I can’t fix it...then he’s right, I don’t deserve to be the emperor.”
The wind whistled in pitches of gale outside.
“Cabbage,” said Clara, surprising herself. “Of course you deserve to be emperor. And of course you can fix this. It’s obvious how, isn’t it?”
The nutcracker’s head turn-slid to face her.
“It’s music, of course!” said Clara.
The nutcracker’s great green eyes stared at her blankly.
“Music?” he said.
“Of course!” said Clara fervently. “That’s how the magician did all this! Don’t you remember from the book last night? How he played his music?”
The nutcracker shook his head, which sounded like wood scraping.
“I don’t remember much last night,” he said. “I was still all wooden and tangled then. I remember your name, and a little of the book. And the song you played for me. How it made me feel alive again. I could never forget that.”
Clara blushed a little, but didn’t know why, and hurriedly spoke, excitement building within her. Music was something she knew quite a bit about.
“When the magician played the song that turned the children and soldiers into toys,” she said, “it sounded like it was little toys marching. It was playful, jaunty, and light. And when he played the song that made him vanish, it was distant, like a far-off field or landscape. And he played it so beautifully, so perfectly. And somehow, it made the songs he played magic!”
The nutcracker stared.
“Magic music?” he said.
“Of course,” said Clara excitedly. “Music is a sort of magic anyway, isn’t it? You can sing a baby to sleep, or wake them up again with song. You hear music, and it makes you want to dance. It’s already a bit magic.”
“Or when you can’t remember the words to a song and it’s stuck in your head the rest of the day?” said the nutcracker.
“Er,” said Clara.
“You know,” said the nutcracker, tilting up a little. “That’s very odd but I suppose it’s possible.”
“It is and it is,” said Clara. “He played his flute again to bring us back here. Music caused all these spells—so music can break them!”
The nutcracker’s bright green eyes brightened.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. At the very least, we can find the magician and take his flute away! That will keep him doing any more magic. There’s a telegraph station not far from here, at the Abbey Station. We could get the word sent out, and make our way to Krystallgrad. Form a militia and send out spies to see where the magician is hiding.”
“Yes!” said Clara, adding: “You’ll fix this. I truly believe that, too. The song I composed last night at the spinet...all those chords about bravery and courage and you as an emperor? You know, it all just came to my fingers. It was...almost magic itself. I don’t think it would have come to me if it wasn’t true. I know it wouldn’t have.”
The nutcracker’s head slid to face her, and his painted eyes took her in.
“Thank you, Clara,” he said.
Amazing, Clara thought. How alive he was. The arcs of wood grain beneath his paint. The curve of his teeth, the sq
uint of his eyes as he smiled at her.
Clara smiled back, and stood quickly. Thinking about playing the piano had again reminded her of the concert, and the light through the planks on the wall told her it was just before dawn. She needed to get back. How, she wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t stay here.
“Thank you,” Clara said, hurrying to the bunker wall where the greatcoats hung, suddenly, embarrassingly aware she was in a nightgown. She quickly pulled a heavy coat on. It smelled of musty gunpowder. “The coffee really did help,” she added. “And thank you for helping me through the snow and...rats and things. You’ll do wonderfully finding the magician and breaking the spell, I’m sure of it. Ah—how do I get home? What direction do I go in?”
“East, supposedly. Wait, you’re not going, are you?”
Clara threw open the bunker door and was blasted by snow and ice. She gripped the locket at her throat, Johann’s face came to her mind, and she gritted her teeth and pushed her way into the blue dawn snowfall, toward the light. How long would it take to walk to her world? Hours, probably, but she would still have time to practice and take a nice, hot bath.
The nutcracker stood, hitting his head on the ceiling with a clang, and ducked to hurry out after her.
“Miss Clara—” he began.
“I have to go home, I’m sorry,” said Clara, already shivering. She trudged on in the direction she guessed was east. “I have something very important—something imperative—to be to tonight. I cannot miss it.”
“Home,” said the nutcracker behind her. “You can’t mean—your actual home? In your world?”
“Of course,” said Clara.
“Clara, you can’t go to your world without magic. It’s impossible. No one has ever walked that far. And there’s rats, they’ll sniff you out and tear you up. If you don’t freeze to death first. See here, your face is already red.”
Clara knew she was being stupid, but what else could she do? She struggled over a frozen log. Nutcracker stepped over it easily, leaving rectangular prints behind Clara’s boot prints.
“I’ll find the fairies, then,” said Clara stubbornly. “They’ll take me back.”
“Ah—the fairies don’t exactly work like that, you see. They’re madly fickle. My father nearly died at the hands of fairies. And he was the emperor! You can’t depend on them, Clara.”
“I—I can’t stay,” said Clara. “I can’t!”
“Please come back,” said the nutcracker, and this time there was pleading mixed with the frustration in his voice. “You’ll die. The fairies gave me to you, I can’t just let you run off and freeze to death huddled under a log with rats eating the skin off your face. Clara. Please.”
The tone of the nutcracker’s voice made Clara slow, and stop. Her soggy hair twisted in strands with the wind. She turned, taking him in, a silhouette of pink and grey in the snowy mist.
“I’ll get you home,” he said. “As soon as I can. We’ll find this magician and sort out how to send you back.”
Clara bit her lip—she couldn’t feel it—and looked up the mountainside.
The trees rose above her in spikes, piercing the sky in endless jags. Though her fingers had frozen around the locket, it burned hot in her fist.
“Please,” said the nutcracker. “Just give me the chance.”
Perhaps it was because Clara knew he was right. Perhaps she knew that if she carried on, the wind would slice through her like an edge of broken glass, and it wouldn’t take long to be buried in snow. Or perhaps it was something more—the plea in his voice, the strain of a fallen prince, desperately wanting to rise as an emperor. Clara swallowed.
“Before eight o’clock tonight?” she said.
There was a pause.
“Before eight o’clock,” the nutcracker agreed.
Clara exhaled, and still gripping the locket, placed her trust in him. She slogged her way through the snow, until she clearly saw the nutcracker’s face, weary with relief.
He gave her his arm, and they began back down the mountain.
“The person in that locket must mean quite a lot to you,” he said.
Dawn turned the jagged trees into a forest of pink and yellow stained glass. The nutcracker led the way with broad strides and Clara hurried after, hopping into each of his broad rectangular footprints. He helped Clara over the uneven, frozen terrain, assuring her that the Abbey station wasn’t far, just over the next two ravines and through a copse of trees, no trouble at all. They’d send out news on the wire, catch the next train, and be to Krystallgrad before the sun was even above the trees. He spoke excitedly of border strategies and ammunition stock and how to find the magician, and kept a wary eye out for rats, which he warned could make an appearance at any moment.
To Clara, the North Forest was just a kaleidoscope of trees. Beautiful, but the same in every direction. As the sun crested the rim of the mountain above them, however, and they reached the first ravine, Clara recognized where they were: the exact spot the magician had left them the night before. It was easy to recognize; dead rats were still strewn there.
The snow was a rumpled mess. Clara picked out where Nutcracker had pushed himself out of the snow and where Clara had huddled. There was something else, too: the red book with golden letters that read Clara and the Nutcracker Prince. Clara suddenly remembered, it had come with her last night. Now, she quickly picked it up and brushed the snow off, shaking the pages and wiping it with her greatcoat sleeve.
“That’s a fairy book,” said the nutcracker. “You’ll want to keep that. Gifts from the fairies are rare.”
Clara opened the fairy book and flipped through the pages. To her surprise, more words had been added to the story. It had ended with He is coming, and the next page, which had been blank before, began a new chapter! It carried on, detailing Clara’s story: how she had played the spinet in the drawing room, and then how she had fallen asleep. The fairy book told of the magician’s music, the forest, the rats, even the bunker.
The story stopped mid-page, ending with Clara Stahlbaum walked through the snow with the Nutcracker Prince, hurrying to the Abbey Station telegraph office (approximately seven miles NW). Clara stared. The book was fascinating...and sort of creepy, too.
The nutcracker read over her shoulder, and he was smiling. It was an odd smile, of course: two slats of teeth curving upward, his eyes painted crescents.
“That’s fairy magic for you,” he said. “It will very probably narrate our journey for us.”
“They give me a magic book,” said Clara, closing the fairy book, “but they won’t use their magic to take me back home. Or fix this mess! It doesn’t make sense.”
“That has been the question of the ages,” said Nutcracker wryly. “As the great Imperian philosopher Kriistianov opines, Why Do Fairies Let Bad Things Happen to Good People?”
“Why do they?” said Clara.
“How should I know? I couldn’t get past page ten. Driest tome I’ve ever set my eyes on. Kriistianov just rambled for pages and pages. You know, when I’m emperor, I will make it absolutely clear on penalty of death that prolific does not mean profound.”
Clara was laughing. The nutcracker began laughing along with her. Clara couldn’t help but like his good nature. He’d been through quite a lot the last few hours, yet he still smiled. She surveyed his towering red figure, the joints at his elbows and knees, the great tufts of white hair, the Imperian insignia painted on his shoulder. It looked to be...a two-headed fairy?
“What is it like?” said Clara. “Being made of wood? Does it hurt? Can you feel your heart beat? Does it beat?”
Nutcracker became thoughtful.
“Do you know that feeling,” he said, “when you stick your finger in your ear, and wiggle it around a bit?”
“Um,” said Clara.
“It feels a lot like that.”
Clara decided to be silent for a while.
They hurried on through the snow and up the hill, and Clara played the chords of Johann’s song w
ith her frozen fingers inside the greatcoat pockets. She thought about the concert. She wondered how she would get back, and how the nutcracker would find the magician and convince him to break the spell. The nutcracker, it seemed, was thinking the same thing, for his painted black brows were knit and his rows of teeth gritted together. When he turned and saw Clara equally downcast, he rearranged his expression into a smile and the rows of his teeth curved upward, and his eyes became half-moons again.
“There now, Miss Clara,” he said. “It will be all right. I’m certain you’ll be home by nightfall.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Clara.
“Just Nutcracker,” said the nutcracker. “I don’t want anyone to know that I’m the prince. Not until I’ve earned their respect.”
“Well...if you wish it, si—your—Nutcracker,” she stammered.
The Nutcracker smiled his big, broad smile. In a toy-ish way, he really was like the description from the fairy book. Big ears, remarkable smile, eyes the color of Imperian emeralds. Tall and lanky, too, especially as a wooden toy. His legs were like pillars.
“The good news is, I did see a fairy this morning, not far from here. So they are helping us. Sort of. Having the fairies on our side, that’s very encouraging.”
“Didn’t you just say that fairies are fickle?” said Clara.
“Ah,” said Nutcracker.
“You said they nearly killed your father.”
“Ah,” said Nutcracker, who to Clara’s surprise, was grinning. “Well, yes. They did. Very nearly. But it turned out to be good luck after all. In a way.”
“You’d better tell me the story,” said Clara.
“Well, you see, it happened twenty years ago,” said Nutcracker, obliging in his deep, woody tones as they hurried on. “My father was thirty years old, a deathly shy emperor, and a suitable empress, apparently, couldn’t be found. He and Drosselmeyer even fought about it. It seemed as though my father would be the last in the line of Volkonsky’s.
“And then, one day, my father, Emperor Friedrich the Second, rode into a meadow and straight into a blessing of fairies…”
The Enchanted Sonata Page 8