The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  He glanced at me, but his attention stayed focused on his music. “Sometimes,” he said. “But I also hear them at the same time, as if in four different lines. Each sounds very different.” He shook his head. “Remind me to give the horns something worthwhile to do.”

  I watched him write down another measure. “This is not meant for horns,” I said. The piece was light, full of playful footsteps and dancing scales. I had to giggle. “You are cruel. The violins will have a hard time keeping up with you.”

  Woferl shook his head. He was serious, wholly absorbed in his music. “That’s because Hyacinth is running away from them, and they cannot catch him.” He reached over and pointed to a measure. “You see? He is sprinting through the forest, up a hill, higher and higher, and then when he reaches the top, he slides all the way down. He likes to lead them deep into the forest, so that they cannot find their way out, and then to reward himself, he naps in one of the trees.” His finger guided me across the lines of music, so that I could hear the scenes he explained.

  I smiled, but the mention of Hyacinth unsettled me. Woferl hadn’t forgotten about him. Again, I wondered whether the princeling had been appearing to my brother in his dreams too. Why else would Woferl be thinking of Hyacinth so much that he was writing him into his music? The envy that came with the thought was like a poison in my mind.

  “You are a tease,” I said.

  Woferl dipped his quill into the inkwell again and scribbled faster, so that large droplets of ink splattered on the page and he had to wipe it away with the ball of his fist. The ink smeared across the page, like a child’s painting. “You are a tease, Nannerl. You write music, and then you hide it away.”

  My brother’s words hovered in the air, hung there as if the starfishers from the Kingdom of Back had caught them in their hooks. Suddenly, I felt as if we were not truly alone in the room. A slight movement by the window caught my attention, but vanished when I turned to look directly at it. It had seemed like a ghost of a familiar face, a sharp smile and a pair of bright eyes.

  “I tease only you,” I said to Woferl, nudging him once. “Because only you know it exists.”

  When Woferl laughed, it was someone else, the sound of wind through reeds.

  * * *

  It was not until we arrived in Frankfurt that I began to understand what my monthly courses and longer dresses truly meant.

  Our first performance in the city happened on the Liebfrauenberg.

  Woferl and I did not play the entire time at this performance. The local orchestra performed first, for some time, and then a young woman sung an aria. Woferl played, expectedly, more than I did. I accompanied his violin concerto on the clavier, and performed two other pieces with the orchestra. But for the most part I remained quiet on the sidelines next to my father, looking out into the crowd, and this is when I caught sight of a boy.

  There were many young children there, restless and tugging at the coattails of their parents, and adults, but there were few in between—and he was in between. My eyes skimmed right past him the first time and returned to Woferl, who played on the clavier with a cloth tied over his eyes.

  I looked at the boy the second time because Papa had announced to the crowd that they could test Woferl’s talents for themselves. He challenged the people to sound out a note, any note at all, and see Woferl name it correctly on the clavier. The shouts came fast and furious. I watched my brother take them with a smile, sometimes even with a roll of his eyes, which always seemed to get a laugh from the audience.

  The boy joined in this game too, and that was why I looked at him. He would call out a note, and my brother would name it correctly without a moment’s hesitation. But the boy glanced at me whenever he spoke. I found this curious, even humorous—and did the same, looking in his direction each time I recognized his voice. He wore a faded blue justaucorps, with bright brass buttons that winked in the light, and a simple white wig that came down into a tail behind his neck. He was very pale, like my brother. His brows appeared raised each time I looked at him, as if he were perpetually surprised.

  I found myself unable to linger on his face. Every time I did, the flush would rise on my cheeks, and I would glance away.

  I lost sight of him after the performance had ended and the audience had started to disperse, some of them gathering near the orchestra to speak to us. Papa greeted each person with a smile and a handshake. They would take my hand and bow or curtsy to me. The largest crowds clustered around Woferl, of course, and he continued to perform for them in his own way, climbing up onto the clavier’s bench and singing a tune for them, and then laughing when they cheered and clapped. Each bit of attention he coaxed from the audience made him desperate for more, and his antics grew as his audience demanded them, until he had everyone roaring with applause.

  Somehow, his new tricks prickled my nerves. I felt the tightness of my new dress, the ache in my belly. I felt keenly my height against his, his impressively small stature beside mine. While he soaked up the crowd’s attentions, my hands stayed folded obediently in my lap. My smile remained demure. The older, the less magnificent. My father’s words echoed in my mind.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked away from my brother and saw the boy from the crowd standing there, his eyebrows still slightly arched, a smile on his mouth.

  “Fräulein Mozart?” he said, as if he could not be sure who I was.

  Now that I saw him closely, I noticed that his eyes were a light brown, almost like honey. I curtsied to him. “Nannerl,” I said. “I hope you enjoyed our performance.”

  He bowed to me. “My name is Johann. My family lives here in Frankfurt. I’ve heard about you and your brother for a long time, and when I knew you would be coming to Frankfurt, I had to see both of you.” His smile grew wider. “You were spectacular. I held my breath the whole time.”

  The air was warm in August, but I had not felt it hot against my face until now. I curtsied again in an attempt to hide my blush. My heart fluttered in my chest like a trapped creature, and I worried for a moment that he could hear it.

  “Thank you,” I said in a soft voice. “I’m flattered.”

  “Are you staying long in Frankfurt?”

  I shook my head. My eyes darted nervously to where Papa was still busy greeting others, and then back to Johann. “I think we might be here until the end of the month.”

  “Then I shall try to attend another of your performances.” He smoothed down the edges of his jacket with hesitant fingers.

  I smiled, embarrassed by my silence. My own hands hung awkwardly at my sides. I finally decided to hold them together against my petticoat, even though they felt exposed there. Everything of me, my face and neck and arms, felt exposed. “Thank you,” I said at last. “I would like that.”

  He grinned. “It was a pleasure, truly, to hear you play.”

  Before I could respond, Papa saw us. He looked at Johann first, then back at me, and his eyes flashed in the light like fleeting fire. I swallowed. My father said nothing, but his eyes continued to linger as he approached us, and the line of his jaw had tightened.

  Johann bowed to my father first. “I have never heard a performance like this, Herr Mozart,” he said. “I wish that my parents had come with me. I think they would have enjoyed it.”

  Papa’s expression did not change. “Thank you,” he said, his voice clipped and cold.

  When he said nothing more, Johann bid us a hurried farewell and returned to what remained of the crowd. His eyes darted at me before he left. I did not dare return his look. Papa’s attention was fixed entirely on me now, the others around us forgotten.

  “Who was that, Nannerl?” he said to me.

  I kept my head low, and my eyes downcast. “I don’t know, Papa,” I murmured. “He said his name was Johann. He said he and his family live here in Frankfurt.”

  “I will not have you carrying on a ca
sual conversation with boys like that. Surely you must know better. Do that often, and rumors will spread about you, especially in places like Frankfurt, and especially about a girl as well-known as you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Papa,” I said.

  His gaze wandered away into the crowd. I knew he was searching for Johann, to see if he lingered nearby. “Young ladies with no manners,” I heard him mutter. “Perhaps I should not take you on these trips, if you are going to learn such poor behavior from the locals.”

  On the stage, Woferl was still entertaining the crowd, winking at a group of women to earn laughter and coos from them. The audience responded with delight. My father was unbothered. His frown stayed on me.

  “Papa,” I started to protest. “He only wanted to tell us that he enjoyed our performance. He said nothing else.”

  My father shot me an angry stare. I shrank away at it. “Do not be naïve, Nannerl,” he said. “All men are villains. They want only to benefit. Remember that, and do not speak again to a stranger unless I have given you permission to do so.”

  My heart was beating very fast now. “Yes,” I replied quickly. “Yes, Papa.”

  “Good.” With that, the argument ended. Papa looked away from me and back toward the dispersing people.

  All men are villains.

  He was afraid, I realized, and I wonder now if it was because he knew his proclamation made him a villain too.

  WHO DIRECTS THE ORCHESTRA?

  Papa was pleased with how we performed in Frankfurt. Our purses were full again, our expenses for the trip covered. My father spent the night counting out the coins, nodding and smiling at Mama, and in the morning, he bought her a necklace hung with a sapphire teardrop at its base that shone like starlight. For Woferl he bought a tidy new notebook of paper, so that my brother could continue his relentless composing.

  For me, he bought a new cap to match my dress.

  He was so pleased that when a local count invited him to the opera, my father paid for us all to come with him.

  Woferl and I had never been to an opera before. Papa had always been too worried that we could not sit through a performance without wriggling in our seats. So I tried to keep my composure and remember the lessons Mama had taught me. I needed to behave like a proper young lady. Still, my eyes wandered up to the opera house’s grand, arched entrances and white pillars, and down to its veined marble floors and rich velvet carpets. Gold banisters, curved stairways, and ceilings covered in rich paintings. The nobles attended these every week. I wondered if they still gaped in awe each time, and if the sights and sounds could still take their breaths away.

  Woferl held my hand in earnest and stared so hard at the gentlemen and ladies we passed that I feared I would need to catch him if he fell. We settled with Papa and Mama in our own balcony. In a private box near us, a group of spectators had already taken out their playing cards and started a game, while down below, young men filed through the aisles to flirt with the ladies. They were all beautiful, I thought, women in wide, sweeping skirts and ruffled half-sleeves, their headdresses adorned with feathers, and gentlemen on their arms with shining jackets and bright, blinking canes.

  As they flitted about below, I began to imagine that we were in the kingdom, and that I sat alone on a giant root of an upside-down tree, quietly looking on as the kingdom’s creatures—these colorful birds—gathered below me. I imagined them turned in my direction, staring back up at me, and smiling. I glanced at Woferl, who in turn watched the opera stage in anticipation. When I told him about my vision of the plumed birds, we grinned together at the absurdity of it and tried to think of strange names for them.

  “Papageno,” Woferl declared one of the more ridiculous headdresses, and mouthed the name so comically, Pa-pa-pa-papageno, that he dissolved into giggles.

  I hushed him even as we laughed conspiratorially. “You will get us kicked out.”

  “No, I won’t,” he replied as we rose with the orchestra for the conductor. “I’ll be down there one day, and it will be me they clamor for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I will be before the orchestra,” he said, clapping along. “Someday I’ll write an aria, Nannerl—the most difficult aria ever written, and they’ll clap for me even louder than this.”

  I laughed. “You put yourself above Herr Handel. Don’t you know the king of England himself once stood in delight for his oratorio?”

  A grin of delight crossed his cherubic face. “When I play, the kings of Europe will all stand for the entirety of my opera.”

  He would be directing the orchestra, I realized, and the premonition in his words appeared before me in all its future splendor, him a young man in a red coat, weaving his music to life. I would be on the ground, staring upward to see my brother at the top of the upside-down tree. I would be a lady with feathers in her wig and no quill in her hand, looking on in silence.

  Suddenly, I felt angry at Woferl, though I knew it was not his fault. I thought of his outlandish antics onstage, the way people adored him for it. They would relish him even more when he was grown, fawn over his winking eyes and quicksilver smile.

  And I . . . it was impossible for me to do the same. The truth of that burned in my chest, hollowing me out from the inside. No matter how talented I was, no matter how well I performed or how much I charmed—I could never stand where Woferl would.

  From a higher balcony, I spied Hyacinth with a hand of cards. He turned to watch us, his blue eyes glowing. I looked up by instinct and met his gaze. At long last, he was here. He stared at me for a moment, reading the weight in my eyes, tapping the cards thoughtfully against his cheek. Then, finally, he smiled.

  Woferl waited for me to respond to his declaration about putting on an opera, but I pretended that I could not hear him through the applause.

  THE ARROW

  When Hyacinth visited our bedchamber that night, I was already awake and waiting for him. Somehow, I’d known at the opera that he would come for me tonight. He looked once at my brother, but this time he did not bother to address him. Instead, he let him sleep.

  “You’ve grown taller,” Hyacinth said to me.

  So had he, I realized, his lithe, boyish shape now transformed into something leaner and stronger, and the forest hue of his skin paled even further, white seeping into his hands and arms like frost curls over dew.

  “Why have you come back only now?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

  “I needed to know exactly how to help you,” he replied, flashing me a quick smile. “I was waiting for a sign from you. I finally got it at the opera.”

  He had been waiting for my anger to rise? “How will that help me?” I asked. “Or you?”

  “It is time for you to complete your third task.” He looked over his shoulder, jewels clinking in his hair, toward the moon hanging over the city’s rooftops. He beckoned to me. “But we must hurry tonight, Fräulein. You have only a short time to retrieve what I need.”

  I could feel the threads of his urgency tugging against my heart. My legs swung over the side of my bed, my bare feet crept across the cold floorboards. I followed him out of our inn and into the street, where drunken revelers were still staggering home. None of them seemed to notice me, although one man squinted in confusion as Hyacinth passed him, as if he had seen some kind of shadow rippling against the wall.

  As we went, moss began to cover the street’s cobblestones in a silver blanket. Ivy trailed out from the cracks between the rocks. In the sky, the twin moons shone bright and round as coins, separated now by only a couple of arm’s lengths. Crooked trees arched in between buildings. When I turned to look at them, I noticed that their branches were bare, as if they were roots reaching up to the sky.

  They grew thicker and thicker, until soon they crowded out the buildings altogether, leaving us hurrying along a mossy path that wound through a now-familiar forest. Faeries dot
ted the night air, illuminating our path with their light.

  Hyacinth broke into a run. I struggled to keep up with him as he darted along the path, barely visible in the darkness ahead of me.

  Finally, we arrived in a meadow blanketed with bright silver flowers, their petals dancing in the breeze. Among them lingered the faeries, and when Hyacinth arrived, it was as if all of them came alive at once, their light surrounding us in excitement and their tiny teeth nipping at my ankles. The blue grass beneath our feet waved and sighed.

  “There,” Hyacinth told me, pointing at a yawning arc of stone that connected two cliffs. Rock pillars formed a large circle underneath the bridge, a valley heavily overgrown with trees and brush. “Long ago, this was all a cavern. When the oceans lowered, it collapsed, until all that remains is this arc of stone.” I followed the line of his finger to the underbrush. “Down there, when the moon is shining directly above the land bridge, you will find a golden crossbow fitted with a single arrow.”

  I peered at the stone arc, then the thick growth underneath it. Nothing seemed dangerous here. “Why do you not go in yourself?” I asked.

  The faeries around me quivered, and a hush spread across the meadow. Hyacinth’s playful face looked grave now, even afraid. His eyes lingered on the billowing blue plants that grew within the circle. “It is poisonous ground for me,” he replied. “I cannot enter.”

  I looked at the valley. Then I stepped past the rock pillars and into the circle they formed.

  The faeries did not follow me into the circle. It was as if they were fearful of the vegetation here too, as if it were toxic to them as well. I was entirely on my own. The grasses sighed at my approach and whispered at me to turn back. A strange sense of foreboding clung to the ground inside the pillars, and as I went, it dragged against my legs, so that I felt like I was slogging through deep water.

  When I looked over my shoulder, Hyacinth was nowhere to be seen.