The Enchanted Sonata

by Heather Dixon Wallwork

  “Nutcracker?” she called. No answer—of course.

  What had happened? Clara hazily recalled details—sitting at the piano of Polichinelle’s coffee room. Nutcracker storming off. Being worried about him. So worried it hurt even now. Clara strained to remember more, and couldn’t.

  “Good morning, little layabout,” Mother teased when Clara stumbled into the dining room. Fritz shoveled mush into his mouth. Mother gave Clara a bowl of hot mush, and kissed her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Where’s my nutcracker?” said Clara.

  Mother looked at her blankly. Fritz frowned at her but kept eating.

  “Nutcracker?” said Mother.

  “The one I was given Christmas Eve. By the fairies—ah, in the box that wasn’t marked. You remember, of course? With the book about the Imperian prince, and Krystallgrad and magic? You remember? Wait—did you say it was Christmas? Still?”

  Now Mother looked concerned. She placed a hand on Clara’s forehead, and pursed her lips.

  “Hm,” she said. “What a dream you’ve had! I think you’re nervous about the concert tonight. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

  Dazed, Clara ate, or rather, picked. She couldn’t taste the food. It was like her mouth was numb. She felt so odd.

  Had it been a dream? Clara wondered. She had never had a dream that detailed and real. Perhaps the fairies had sent her back home. She hadn’t seen any fairies, but fairies were tricky, weren’t they? And anyway, why was it Christmas again? Nutcracker had said that magic gets tangled up when crossing through worlds, perhaps it was all tangled now. Clara certainly felt tangled.

  Clara passed the entire Christmas day in a confused daze. Fritz and Mother seemed so sure about the night before that Clara began to question it herself even more. As the day pressed on and Clara practiced Johann’s Sonata, her adventures in Imperia became more dream-like. Mother helped her get ready for the performance, curling her hair and pulling it up, pinning it with lace and flowers. The dress was divinity itself, sloping over her shoulders, cinching just right at the waist, kissing her all over. A confection of soft blue satin and ivory lace. Oddly, she wasn’t nervous for the concert at all. She was simply...confused.

  It was only when she arrived with her family at the concert hall that she felt real and caught up in the moment. She whispered goodbye as they left to be seated, and she was ushered backstage, where her heart fluttered with the smell of burning gaslamps and perfumes. She saw slivers of the audience between the curtains of the eaves, applauding politely after each pianist performed. All the musicians did well. As the final pianist before her bowed to applause, a hand touched the small of Clara’s back. She turned quickly.

  Johann Kahler stood just behind her, a small smile on his lips. His deep brown eyes were squinting at her, shining. Clara’s throat grew tight. She felt every detail of him: the faint hint of cologne; the way his hair had been combed back; the cut of his strong jaw. He was deathly handsome. Clara closed her eyes a touch as he bent forward, still smiling, and whispered: Good luck.

  A warm shiver went up Clara’s back, and it thrilled still as she seated herself at the piano bench and placed her hands on the keys. She glanced out into the audience—only just seeing the distant, dim faces of Fritz and her mother. She smiled, sensing Johann listening in the eaves. With a deep breath, Clara began to play.

  Johann Kahler’s Sonata had never sounded so brilliant. Every note was a flower in a garden of color, the floral perfume on a breeze, the sunlight on petals and leaves. The audience held their breaths collectively, and the melody wove and twined like plaited rose chains. When Clara finished the song, the scent in the air remained.

  The audience rose to their feet with thunderous applause. A chorus of bravo!s sounded as Clara swept a graceful curtsy, and from the eaves, Johann clapped his perfectly white hands together, his face radiant.

  * * *

  An hour later, the concert hall lights had dimmed and the audience had emptied from the theater, leaving the scent of starch and lamplight, mixed with the waft of desserts from the lobby. Everyone would be chatting and enjoying the after-concert refreshments. But not Clara—she remained behind on the stage, sitting at the piano. She touched her fingers to each key, thinking about her unusual dream of rats, candy, a kind nutcracker, and a world of jeweled towers.

  She couldn’t shake it from her head. It had been so real, it made her fingers throb.

  “Stop it,” Clara told herself. Stop thinking about dreams. She had just played spectacularly in a concert that had claimed two years of her life. She was very happy she had done so well! Very happy! Why in the world did she feel so empty?

  Clicked footfalls sounded behind her. Clara didn’t need to turn around to recognize them—they were too perfect to be anyone but Johann’s. Her cheeks colored and she made to stand as he drew near.

  “No—don’t stand up,” came his rich bass voice. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. May I?” He motioned to the piano bench.

  Clara assented, and he took a seat on the bench next to her. Every bit of him seemed to imprint her. The black of his suit, the way he flicked his tails out over the bench, the shine of his shoes. His dark eyes and perfect eyebrows. He was a half-head taller than her sitting, and Clara felt the strength of him beside her, the aura of his masculinity. He pulled his gloves off finger-by-finger, and placed them on the piano’s music shelf.

  “You played very well,” he said. “I have never heard such beautiful music.”

  “Of course you have,” said Clara. “You hear it every day. When you practice.”

  Johann smiled. Clara’s stomach fluttered, but only a little.

  “Would you like to try a duet?” he said.

  “A duet?”

  It was just like Clara had always imagined, Johann asking to sit beside her, his hands brushing hers. Every thought of the past two years had been building to this very moment.

  “We may not have another chance at it,” Johann was saying. “I leave for New York next week. I am going on tour, you see. I do not foresee returning to the Conservatory until next winter.”

  “Yes,” said Clara quietly. “I know.”

  “Shall we play your Christmas Sonata? You play—I will fill in the notes between your delicate hands.”

  Clara began playing automatically, and Johann joined her. Together, their notes doubled on the piano, they sounded...not wonderful. It was simply too much. Too many notes playing at once, too many chords, too many clever little arpeggios and trills, too much of Johann’s hands brushing hers. It should have delighted Clara, but instead, it annoyed her.

  She paused on a B chord—the same chord she had played for Nutcracker the night before.

  B, because you’re brave.

  An image flashed through Clara’s mind, one of Nutcracker leaping in front of her, his sword flashing, fighting off oncoming rats, a glimpse of greys and overturned clumps of snow...

  E, for Emperor...

  An image of Nutcracker looking through the train window, his eyes wistful at Krystallgrad below.

  C, because you’re courageous...and kind…

  Nutcracker speaking to the crowd at Polichinelle’s, his eyes catching Clara with twinkling green...

  Clara removed her hands from the keys.

  “No need to stop,” said Johann. “It was sounding, very, ah—”

  “Pandemonious,” said Clara.

  Johann cough-laughed. “Not quite the word I was searching for,” he said. “Shall we try again?”

  But instead of placing his hands on the keys, he gently touched Clara’s hand, his fingers wrapping around hers. He leaned in close, and she felt his breath on her cheek. Her heart palpitated. It was just like she had dreamed. Every bit of it.

  “Clara,” he said softly, the heat of his breath on her ear. “I’ve never heard a lady play like you did tonight. Can you imagine what we would be like together?”

  I have for the past two years, Clara thought, t
hough she did not say it.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Johann said quietly. “Not until you’ve promised—you’ve promised to—”

  And his voice had grown low, his face leaning in, his cheek just brushing hers. His coarse skin, and then, the warm, the exposed touch of his lips, just at the corner of her mouth.

  Clara sharply turned her head, giving him a mouthful of ringlets and lace.

  “I beg your pardon!” she said, standing quickly and stepping from behind the bench.

  Johann stood, too, his perfect, flawless face turning a rosy pink. He laughed uncomfortably.

  “I usually don’t have ladies do that to me,” he said.

  “Kiss a lot of them, do you?” Clara retorted.

  Johann smiled uncomfortably.

  “I’m sorry, but everything about this feels wrong,” said Clara. “I know—I know it’s actually how I dreamed but...it’s just...wrong. To be true, I hardly know anything about you. I mean...are you the sort of person who would, oh, I don’t know, fight off giant rats?”

  Johann blinked at her.

  “Giant rats,” he echoed.

  “Yes. Bear-sized. Some smaller, more like wolves. But still giant! And all starved!”

  “I’m sorry?” said Johann.

  “Would you always try to do the right thing, even if you were called a pancake-head and everyone thought you were an idiot?”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Johann.

  “Would you still be kind to me, always, even when I only thought about—” Clara choked on the words someone else. Grasping the locket at her neck, she unclasped it and looked at the newspaper Johann, and then the real Johann. Both of them were colorless and flat.

  She didn’t love Johann. Clara knew it that very moment. And what’s more—she never had. Her love for Johann was a twisted ball of grief inside her, gnawing her inside since her father’s death, and all the music he would never play. She’d taken the longing and hurt inside of her and made Johann the balm. She’d fed her Johann obsession with hopes and thoughts and hours of practice until it had entirely consumed her.

  Nutcracker had been right.

  Clara’s skirts swished as she strode past Johann to the middle of the stage.

  “Miss Stahlbaum—” Johann began.

  “I’ve been a child,” said Clara, realizing it aloud. “That’s why I heard A Child’s Dream when I played.”

  Johann was staring at her.

  And I’m still in the dream, Clara thought. I’ve played this enchanted sonata and I enchanted myself! And this is what I’ve been dreaming for years—the concert, the dress, the kiss, the duet, Johann. Now, everything that was once my fondest hope...

  “Isn’t anymore,” Clara finished aloud, to the empty audience chairs. “I’ve let this obsession grow inside me like a rat. But no longer.”

  Clara’s voice echoed to the back of the theater. Somehow, it had the power to blur the stage around her, as though a painter were smearing it with a broad brush, stroke-by-stroke. The velvet curtains blotched red onto the golden stage, Johann’s dark figure blotted, the chairs became smears of color. Even Clara’s dress smeared from blue to Polichinelle red and white.

  Clara gripped her locket, and yanked it from around her neck.

  “I am never feeding this again.”

  She threw the locket into the darkness with all her strength.

  The dream shattered, and the sky turned to stars.

  Clara awoke lying cheek-to-floor beside the coffee room piano, sheet music scattered around her. Through the wall of windows, stars studded the night sky.

  She was here. Back in Imperia. She had broken the spell she’d put herself under.

  Clara pushed herself half up and grasped her bearings. The coffee room. The windows. The hanging plants. The piano behind her. And by her hand, a piece of sheet music, upside-down. It was Illumination Sonatina—or rather, ɐuıʇɐuos uoıʇɐuıɯnןןı. Looking at it this way, the bass clef notes became treble clef, and the treble clef notes plunged into the depths of the lower piano. At this angle, the notes seemed to make new melodies.

  Clara’s brow furrowed, examining the last chord of the piece. Illumination Sonatina had ended on a bright, ringing high chord that filled the room with light. ɐuıʇɐuos uoıʇɐuıɯnןןı, however, began with a dark, somber chord. She knew this chord! She had heard it before, when Erik Zolokov had played it on the Gallery piano.

  Heart pounding, Clara was instantly at the piano, playing ɐuıʇɐuos uoıʇɐuıɯnןןı. The low, rumbling minor-key melody was the exact opposite of Illumination Sonatina. It was somber, cold, dissonant, and as Clara played, the room around her darkened as though the moon had been snuffed out. The lights dimmed, then flickered to a blackness, strangled by the music. Clara felt dark inside. She swallowed; quickly turned the music right-side-up; and struggling to see the notes in the dim light that was left, played Illumination Sonatina.

  Light shone through the windows. The gas lamps burned a brilliant white. The moon beamed glaringly white, and Clara felt the brightness return to her soul.

  Fumbling with the stack of music, Clara found March of the Toys, and turned it upside-down, taking in the completely re-formed melody. If ɐuıʇɐuos uoıʇɐuıɯnןןı countered Illumination Sonatina, then sʎoʇ ǝɥʇ ɟo ɥɔɹɐɯ would…

  A thrill of euphoria ran through Clara. The fairies were right, and Clara had discovered how to break the spell. She needed to find Nutcracker.

  The Palace Gallery was a velvet quiet, the dampened sound of dust on carpet. The snowlight filtered in from the glass ceiling. And the room was cold.

  Clara played herself in with a ringing final chord. The Imperial Palace Prelude had sounded like the tinkle of chandelier prisms, the whisper of servants, the orchestrated clatter of silverware at a grand party, and flowed like the swirls of chased gold. Clara felt like she should shake the grandeur from her like a shower of sparkles.

  She grasped her bearings around her—the piles of nutcrackers, the cabinets of books, the portraits that filled every space of the wall to the ceiling, the glint of the glass tabletop on the War Table. Even that horrible glass dome with the monkey skeleton inside. Who in the world thought that was a good decoration?

  Everything was quiet. The hair on the back of Clara’s neck prickled.

  “Nutcracker?” said Clara.

  Nutcracker hadn’t arrived yet. Clara realized that he must still be on his way to the Palace. She’d gotten there first. Good--she could break the spell and the soldiers would be here to help when he arrived. Clara dug for March of the Toys, found it, and set it on the piano--

  A hand smacked over hers, pinning it against the music stand.

  Clara yelped. The broken blue eyes of Erik Zolokov were suddenly there before her.

  He was laughing gently.

  “You little—” he began, then shook his head. “I’m not exactly sure if I’m annoyed that you stole my compositions or am charmed by the utter pluck of it. You know that stealing is wrong, don’t you?”

  “So is killing an emperor,” Clara snapped.

  Erik Zolokov subdued, and Clara couldn’t pin the expression in his depthless blue eyes.

  “I appreciate,” he said, pointedly changing the subject, “that you can play music as I can. Perhaps one day we will return to that theme and variation. But for now—I really cannot have you interfere with what is about to happen.”

  Clara tugged her hand, hard. Erik Zolokov released it. Clara fell back onto the rug with a loud thump. She got to her feet just in time to see Erik Zolokov bringing the wood flute to his lips.

  With the first note, everything blurred. The portraits. The piles of nutcrackers. Even that awful monkey dome. All the colors blended together in a smeared painting around them as the melody flowed in criss-crosses of streets, staccatoed like raindrops falling on buildings, and chilled the air with sharpness. Far Away Fantastique--that’s what he was playing. And playing. He was playing the entire song, and Clara realized she wa
s being taken away.

  Last note ringing, Clara tumbled onto icy cobblestones. Erik Zolokov landed beside her at a crouch, then straightened without a pause, smoothing his vest. The smell of chimney smoke, wet brick, and horse all hit Clara at once. It was so different than the crisp, fresh air and gingerbread smell of Imperia. Clara recognized it immediately. She was back in her world. In the middle of the street.

  A draft horse reared almost over them, and took off down the street at a run, cart clattering and jingling after it. A man just behind it stared at Clara and Erik Zolokov, then shook himself and took off after the horse, waving milk bottles and yelling Berta! Berta!

  Though the street was unfamiliar, Clara recognized the early dawn skyline. She was home again, in her city. There was the Conservatory dome, in the distance. Nearby, a church bell tanged.

  Shakily, Clara pushed herself up, and found herself helped to her feet by none other than Erik Zolokov. One hand gently at her elbow, the other around her waist. But when she found her feet, he kept on holding her. Just a moment longer. His breath on her neck, his warmth against her, and Clara did not like it.

  “Let go,” she snapped.

  “You know,” he said, releasing her, “I could have left you somewhere between the North Forest and Skoviivat. But I didn’t. I brought you home. Thank you, Master Zolokov.”

  His fingers plucked at the buttons on her Polichinelle’s coat.

  “I beg your pardon!” said Clara, trying to push him away, but he had already stepped back. In his hands he held the sheet music from her coat.

  “The notes are, for the most part, pressed into my soul,” he said, tucking the music into his vest. “But I do need to keep it away from you. Good-bye, Miss Clara.”

  For a moment, Erik Zolokov regarded her with that same unreadable, depthless expression. Then, without another word, he brought the flute to his lips and played the first three notes of a song Clara recognized: The Imperial Palace Prelude.