The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  “In the Kingdom of Back,” he began, “the snow layers the forest in white, like frosting on the cakes at the bakery. And the ocean never freezes over. Its water feels warm even in the winter.”

  “Yes,” I whispered, listening half-heartedly. His childlike voice had started to lure me into sleep. “Naturally.”

  “And the ocean has a guardian too, just like the rest of the kingdom has the princeling.” Woferl paused to think. “A faery queen of the night, trapped in an underwater cave.”

  As he went on, I drifted away. The room around me blurred, I sank without protest into the early fog of sleep, and in my dreams Woferl continued with his faery tale. I thought I could see light at the bottom slit of our door, and hear something that sounded like music from a clavier. My music. “Woferl,” I whispered, shaking my brother.

  He halted in his story. “What is it?” he asked.

  Before I could reply, I saw him sit up and turn his attention toward our door. He heard it too. “It’s coming from the music room,” he whispered. His hand automatically found mine.

  “It’s my music,” I said, suddenly afraid. “From my notebook. You recognize it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” Woferl swung his legs over the bed and tilted his head so as to hear it more clearly.

  We stayed like that for a long moment, silent, as the music continued. I shivered.

  “It’s coming closer,” Woferl whispered.

  My hands went to the candlestick on our dresser. I lit it, then held the light out before us.

  The door squeaked, then opened into a tiny sliver. Both of us froze in our places and my face grew hot with fear. I knew it was not our parents, and not Sebastian.

  It was Hyacinth.

  The princeling came accompanied, as always, by the dim blue glow of faeries flitting about him in tiny pins of light. He peered into our bedroom and looked idly around before settling his gaze on us. On me.

  “Nannerl,” he said. His voice wrapped itself around me in an embrace. “I am so pleased to see you again.” And before I could wonder if he’d made himself visible to Woferl too, he turned to my brother and offered him a smile. “The little one is still awake, waiting for an adventure.”

  Woferl grinned back, delighted. “It’s you!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, it seems so,” Hyacinth said.

  “Have you come to steal something again?” Woferl asked.

  I swallowed at his words, afraid of angering the princeling, and elbowed him in the ribs.

  Hyacinth only laughed. The sound pierced my ears. I thought that it would certainly wake Sebastian or our parents. When he stopped, he fixed his eyes on Woferl. “I’ve come to ask a favor from both of you,” he said. “But first, you must follow me. Quickly now.” He frowned at the candle in my hands. I noticed the way he shrank from its warmth, as if, even from a distance, it could scald him. “Leave that. You will not need its light in the kingdom.” And without another word, he vanished from the doorframe.

  Woferl leapt up first. “Let’s go,” he whispered eagerly. Before I could refuse, he had risen and hurried to the door.

  “Woferl, wait—” I started to say, but it was too late. He had already rushed out. I slid my feet into my pair of slippers and followed his path, into our living room and out our front entrance, down the flights of stairs that would lead us to the main street.

  My feet crunched on snow. It surprised me so much that I cried out and stopped in my tracks.

  I stood in the middle of the Getreidegasse with a sky full of stars above my head, illuminated by the brilliant light of two moons hovering over opposite ends of the street. The city was deserted, the dim streetlights fading into the darkness around us. The snow did not look like how I remembered it from earlier that evening, dirty with mud and ice, shoved onto the sidewalks in heaps. This snow was clean and white, untouched. I looked up. All the windowsills were covered in this pure snow, so soft that I thought it would feel like a warm blanket to the touch. I reached down and put my hand against its surface. It fell apart against my fingers.

  The snow layers the forest in white, like frosting on the cakes at the bakery.

  Woferl’s voice echoed somewhere ahead of me. When I looked in its direction, I realized that the little crooked path I’d once seen from our window had now reappeared at the end of the Getreidegasse. It led away from the buildings and toward the dark forest of upside-down trees, and at the forest’s entrance stood the same sign that had been there when I’d last seen it. Now, though, I could read the words.

  “To the Kingdom of Back,” I whispered.

  Next to the sign was Woferl. He waved at me. Somewhere in the forest behind him, I glimpsed Hyacinth’s lean figure heading deeper in. I gathered up the bottom of my nightgown, shook snow from my slippers, and hurried to my brother.

  We walked in silence. The path started with cobblestones, but as we continued, the cobblestones began to fade away, growing sparser, until we walked on dirt lined with blankets of snow. Woferl pressed against me as we passed the trees. Their roots reached up toward the stars and cut the sky into slivers. Their leaves curled at the bottom of each tree, and in them were pools of still, black water, with no bottom that I could see.

  I remembered my own warning about the pools and pulled us away from their edges, lest we fell in. Our surroundings had grown so dark that I could barely make out the path ahead. I tried not to look behind us. Shadows crept into every crevice when there was no light to push back their edges, breathing life into things that shouldn’t exist.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked Woferl.

  His small shoulders trembled. “No,” he lied. “Where do you think the path will lead?”

  “Well, I can’t be sure,” I said, trying to keep him calm. “It is your turn to tell me a story, remember? Tell me, where would you want this path to lead?”

  Woferl smiled. “To the shore!” he exclaimed in a hushed voice. “To the white sand and warm ocean.”

  As he spoke, pinpoints of light caught my attention. They flitted from tree to tree, clusters that glowed blue, the same tiny faeries that had appeared in our music room on the first night. With them came the curious sensation that Hyacinth must be near. Sure enough, one of the lights came to rest in my hand. It felt like a feather.

  This way, it cried. This way.

  And with their light and that of the two moons, our path was illuminated just enough for us to see it winding deeper into the woods.

  We walked for a very long time, until the forest grew darker and darker, and the trees grew closer and closer together. I wondered if perhaps we had missed a trail that could have branched away, that Hyacinth may have gone a different direction. The tiny faeries had faded away too, leaving us wandering alone through a colorless world.

  Finally, when I was ready to turn back, the darkness of the forest began to fade and I saw what seemed like a strange blue light appear on the tree trunks. “Do you see that, Woferl?” I said to him. “Maybe we’re almost there.” He didn’t answer. It was just as well—I did not want him to ask me again whether or not I knew where this path could lead.

  The end to the forest was so abrupt that I stumbled on my slippers. The last of the upside-down trees now stood beside us, and in front of us stretched a shore of white sand that hugged the edge of a deep sapphire ocean, its color interrupted by two perfect silver reflections of the moons.

  I caught my breath at the sight of it. This was the ocean from my very first dream.

  Dozens of blue seashells lay winking against the white sand. Woferl noticed me admiring their color and, on impulse, picked one up and shoved it into his pocket.

  Hyacinth was waiting at the edge of the water. Tonight, he looked more like a boy than ever, his tall, slender frame covered with skeleton leaves, his hair rumpled. His eyes reflected the ocean. “Are you cold?” he asked me.

 
I shook my head. The winter chill that had clung to us on the Getreidegasse and the dark forest path did not exist here, and the ocean’s water lay as still and flat as a mirror’s surface.

  “Good.” The princeling nodded at us. “I have a task for you both.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Hyacinth gave me a sidelong smile and gestured toward the water. “I need a night flower,” he replied. “You can find them at the bottom of this ocean, inside a hidden cave. I’m unable to get there myself. You see, I cannot swim well.”

  “These flowers grow inside an underwater cave?” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied. “This cave is a lovely grotto, and inside lives an old witch, with wrinkled hands and long white hair. I sealed her in the cave long ago with the rising waters, and she has remained there ever since. She has stayed there for so long, in fact, that her feet have become part of the cavern floor. She cannot move from her spot, and her powers, although terrible, weaken when the twin moons are not aligned. Still, you must be careful. She can call great golden fire with her hands and engulf you with its flames. She feeds on the night flowers that grow along the cave walls, and anything else she manages to reach.”

  Woferl’s vision of a guardian for the ocean, I thought. A sudden sadness filled my heart. “She must be very lonely,” I said.

  Hyacinth turned his eyes to me. “Do not take pity on her. She will try to lure you to her with a sweet song, the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard in your life, so potent that sometimes sailors can hear it across many oceans. They call her the Queen of the Night.” He stepped closer to us. “Do not approach her. Do not look into her eyes. Do not talk to her. She is not what she seems.”

  I swallowed, distracted by his nearness, and promised that we would not.

  He turned away from us and pointed out toward the still waters. Not far from the shore lay a series of rock formations, carved from limestone, and when I looked from a different angle, the moonlight washed them into silver.

  “The grotto lies under the water, in those rocks,” he said. “The waters are low right now, so you and your brother will have a bit of time to get the flower. Do not be fooled by this peaceful ocean. It will rise so steadily that you will not realize it until it’s too late.”

  Woferl listened with a determined look on his face. “We are very brave,” he said, looking up at me. “I’m not afraid.”

  The princeling smiled at him. “You are indeed very brave,” he replied, and looked back toward the rocks. “It’s why I’ve chosen you both for this task. Now, you must hurry.”

  I did not feel brave, but Hyacinth looked so calm, and Woferl so eager, that I nodded and started toward the water. The echo of applause from my performance in Vienna, the look of pride on my father’s face . . . they came back to me now, filling me with the memory of joy. I had told Hyacinth I was ready, and so I was. My mind lingered on the night flower that we needed to retrieve.

  I removed my slippers. Then I waded carefully in, holding my breath in anticipation of cold ocean water. But the instant we dipped our feet into it, I realized that it was as warm as a bath, just as Woferl had said. I smiled in surprise. Woferl let out a giggle at the warmth and splashed right into it, getting water all over my nightgown. I looked back to the shore once we’d gone in waist-deep. Hyacinth watched us from where he had sat down in the sand, his stiltlike legs crossed over each other.

  We swam until the rocks in the distance became very close, so that I could make out their jagged edges and the carpets of moss that grew in clumps on their backs. When we were near enough to touch the walls of the rocks, I wiped water away from my face and looked down into the ocean. The water looked lit from below, a brilliant blue. I took a deep breath and submerged myself to get a better view.

  Not far from the surface appeared a crevice in the rock.

  I came back up. “Woferl,” I said breathlessly. “I’ve found the entrance to the grotto.”

  Hyacinth was right. The ocean had not risen yet, and the waters were low. We did not have to dive far to reach the grotto’s entrance. The crevice looked dark when we approached it, but as we swam farther inside it began to grow lighter, the same strange blue light that we had seen when we first saw the beach of white sand. I took a giant gulp of air as we surfaced inside the cave. The water tasted sweet, like diluted honey.

  I could hear nothing in the grotto except the sounds we made—the splash of water, our breathing. The light came from hundreds of flowers that grew along the sides of the limestone walls, black and violet in color, each with a glowing spot of brilliant blue light in its center. The limestone itself looked wet and crystal-like, almost clear. I saw Woferl stare in wonder at the scene. Garlands of heavily scented flowers hung so low from the grotto’s ceiling that I could touch them.

  Then we saw her. She stood in one corner of the grotto where the lights from the flowers shone the brightest, leaning her head against a silver harp, and there she wept silently. A long, tattered gown of white and gold draped against her slender figure. Her hair was snow-pale, like Hyacinth said, and dotted with tiny black flowers. Her skin seemed delicate, the knot of her eyebrows thin and dark. I had been afraid to see her, picturing her as a withered, bony, witchlike faery, but now I felt drawn to this poor creature. Wrinkles on her skin, soft in the blue light, gave her a fragile appearance. Her feet melted into the cavern floor, so that I could not be sure where her legs ended and the rock began.

  Woferl pointed quietly at her shoulders. There, I saw that her wings were faded and torn, hanging limply against her back. She must have fought hard to escape this grotto.

  Woferl guessed what was going through my mind. “She is not what she seems,” he whispered, repeating Hyacinth’s warning.

  Do not look at her. Do not talk to her.

  I turned my face away, my heart pounding. As I did, I noticed the black ivy trailing along the cavern wall behind her. The night flowers that blossomed there were much larger than the rest, their vines coated with angry thorns. These were the flowers Hyacinth had sent us for.

  The witch heard Woferl’s whisper too. She lifted her head and looked around, bewildered, before settling her gaze on us.

  I froze. She must have been very beautiful when she was young, and even now her eyes were large and liquid like a doe’s, framed by long dark lashes and mournful shadows. She stopped crying.

  “Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded very weak.

  Do not speak to her.

  Hyacinth’s warning seemed to echo in the cavern. But the witch’s eyes were so mournful, so intent on me, that I heard myself reply. “Hello,” I echoed. Beside me, Woferl gasped at my disobedience. We hoisted ourselves out of the water and onto the rocky floor. “I am sorry to disturb you.”

  The witch smiled at us. “Not at all, dear child,” she said. “Come closer, please. My children were stolen from my side and I was sealed in this cave. I have been so lonely here, trapped for centuries without a soul to keep me company. Oh! Tell me, little one. What do the twin moons look like outside?”

  I swallowed hard. The words fell from my lips as if compelled by some enchanted force. “They are bright as coins,” I said, “and sit at the opposite ends of the sky.”

  She shook her head back and forth. “Ah, it’s no wonder I am so weak. When they align, my magic shall come back to me, and I will find a way to return home. Have you come to free me?”

  Her voice sounded so hopeful that I immediately felt ashamed. “I’m sorry,” I said. Woferl squeezed my hand tightly. “We haven’t come to free you.”

  The witch’s smile grew wider. “No matter. I have missed the sound of another voice. Come here, children.” She held out her arms to us. “Come here, so that I may see you better.”

  Woferl looked at me with a frightened face. “She is a witch,” he whispered. “Remember what the princeling said?”

  I shot him a warnin
g glare. The faery blinked at us, then giggled. Her voice was strangely lovely, as if she was younger than she appeared. “Don’t be afraid, little boy,” she said to my brother. “I will not hurt you. I know you will not stay long, but I only want to see your faces closely, to touch another’s hand before I return to my prison.”

  My thoughts fluttered, frenzied, through my mind. I did not know how we could pick one of the flowers from behind the witch. One of us would need to distract her, and the other would have to take it. I felt a pang in my chest at the idea of stealing from this lonely creature. Hyacinth’s warnings still lingered in my mind, but they were starting to turn numb.

  Woferl and I exchanged a pointed stare. Then I released his hand and started to walk closer to the witch. She smiled.

  “What is your name, child?” she asked me. Her words had begun to sound like musical notes, as if she sang each sentence she spoke.

  “Maria Anna Mozart,” I said. “I’m called Nannerl.”

  “Nannerl,” the witch repeated. “What a beautiful little girl you are. You remind me so much of my daughter.”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Woferl walking alongside me, each time a tiny step farther away. He was going to steal the night flower. I kept my gaze locked on the witch. “Thank you.” I wanted her to stay focused on me. “What is your name?”

  “I no longer have one,” she said. Her voice caressed me in its folds, full of sweet melodies and muted violins. “I’m afraid I have been here so long that I cannot remember anymore.” The notes in her voice turned tragic, so that they tore at my heart with their sadness. I steadied myself.

  “You look young and strong, child,” she went on. She did not notice Woferl’s widening distance from me—she was too interested in keeping my attention. “You could help me escape.”

  “How would I do that?” I asked. “You are bound to this grotto’s floor.”

  “All you would need to do is take some of the water from the pool,” she said, gesturing toward where we had come in, “and pour it on my feet. It will loosen them from the stone.” Her eyes flickered toward Woferl. He stopped in his tracks, feigning innocence. The witch smiled at him, and I let out a breath.