by Marie Lu
The grass at the bottom of the valley grew tall enough to come up to my waist, and the blades were rough, chafing against my nightgown. I waded through it, searching for a glint of gold in the shadows. Overhead, the moons shifted slowly closer, half exposed and half hidden behind the arching rock.
I searched in a circle until the waving grasses and rock pillars made me dizzy, then turned my face up to the sky. The twin moons gradually moved into position. As they did, the light in the valley dimmed, and a glowing outline formed as the moons beamed from either side of the land bridge. It formed two arcs of light against the grass, as bright as if the blades were glowing silver, shifting wider and wider until the rock pillars surrounding me were entirely illuminated.
The ground beneath me suddenly shifted. I stumbled, looked down, and there, glowing from within a new crack in the earth, was a golden crossbow with a single arrow notched on it, its tip frighteningly sharp.
I let out a cry of triumph and bent down to pick it up. My hand closed tightly around the crossbow’s cool handle. A numbing tingle rushed through my arm. I sucked in my breath at the sensation, but still pulled the crossbow close to me and wrapped both my arms around it.
“I have it, Hyacinth!” I called out, turning to head out of the circle of rock.
As I walked, my arms felt more and more locked around the crossbow, and the weight of the weapon seemed to pull me backward with each forward step I took. A great wind blew through the valley, sending the grass billowing like an open sea. The world swam around me. I shook my head to toss hair out of my eyes. Beyond the pillars, I could see the silhouette of Hyacinth waiting for me, calling my name . . . but the faster I tried to run, the farther away the pillars seemed to get, lost in the waving landscape.
The numbness in my arms began to spread. With it came the whisper of a thousand voices brushing past my ear.
Faeries come, but they cannot leave. They fear the poison of these grasses.
Somewhere through the dullness crowding my mind came the sharp stab of panic. “I am not a faery,” I replied, but my tongue felt slow, dragging against the floor of my mouth.
You are the one who poisons the land.
“I am . . .” The words scraped against my lips.
You are not meant to be in the kingdom.
With all my strength, I dragged my thoughts out of me and shouted them into the wind’s tide. Words that I suddenly wished I could shout before an audience instead of hiding in my quiet curtsy. “I am a composer named Nannerl!”
All of a sudden, the wind gave way—disappearing as abruptly as it had come. I stumbled forward and fell into the grass. As I pulled myself up, I noticed the grass had gone still again, and before me loomed the circle of rock pillars. The whispers were gone, the air lighter.
I clutched the golden crossbow tightly to my chest, lest it vanish, and ran the final few steps past the pillars. A great gasp burst from my lips as I passed the rocks. I could breathe properly again; my limbs no longer felt crushed under an invisible weight. I turned in the direction of Hyacinth and hurried to him.
He’d grown tall enough that I had to tilt my face up to him. “You have done it, Fräulein!” he said, wonder in his voice. Then he placed his cool hands against my face and kissed me.
I froze, caught like a butterfly in his hands. His lips seemed dusted with sugar, sweet and ice-cold, cleansing away the last of the sacred valley’s pull. This is what it’s like to kiss a boy, I thought through the shiver that washed over me.
Johann flashed unbidden through my mind. His raised brows, his quick smile, the way he’d made my heart dance in my chest. But where heat bloomed on my cheeks for him, Hyacinth’s touch brought winter with it, the glitter of fresh snow, the feathers of frost that lined a frozen river’s surface.
When he finally pulled away, I swayed in place, unable to speak for a moment. My fingers came up to brush against my lips. They tingled, cold to the touch.
“Why,” I whispered at last, “did the valley speak to me?”
His smile wavered. “What did it say?”
I repeated for him what I’d heard. You are the one who poisons the land. You are not meant to be in the kingdom.
He shivered at the words, turning his face away from me as if in great pain. The glow of his eyes reflected blue soft against his cheeks. Around him, faeries came to comfort him and caress his face. “This place yearns to keep us out,” he murmured, casting a glance toward the arching bridge. “Come, Nannerl, let us leave this behind.” And before I could ask him anything more about it, he took my hand and began to lead me back the way we’d come.
THE CHTEAU
In the morning, Hyacinth was nowhere to be seen.
The light beaming into our room had no quaver of the unusual. But the dream of the kingdom seemed startlingly real today. Perhaps it was the memory of Hyacinth’s cool hands against my face, pulling me in toward him. The ice of his kiss lingered, so that when I brought a finger up to run along my lips, my skin still felt cool to the touch.
I lay there for a moment, unmoving, trying to remember all the details. Something in my heart felt strangely light and empty. What would happen now? What would Hyacinth do next?
A sudden impulse gripped me and I looked to where Woferl lay at my side. He slept soundly, his small body curled into a ball underneath the blankets. A soft murmur came from his lips. I watched him, noting the flush of his cheeks. When I reached out to touch his forehead, his skin was burning with heat.
* * *
For two weeks, a fever wracked Woferl’s body. Every evening, he tossed and turned, his brow beaded with sweat, murmuring deliriously until he’d finally fall into a troubled sleep.
Mama blamed the sickness on the fact that Papa had worked us so relentlessly for the past few weeks. Papa blamed it on the cold and the wet air. I sat at Woferl’s bedside and watched him quietly. My thoughts dwelled on how my brother had looked when stricken with scarlet fever, how I’d told him the story of the castle and then imagined the shadows floating around his chamber.
The tasks I’d completed for Hyacinth stayed with me. I thought through each one as I watched my brother grimace in his sleep, dark circles bruising the skin under his eyes. Surely it was all a coincidence, the way Woferl’s illnesses seemed to line up with these vivid dreams I had.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that his illnesses were linked to the kingdom and to my tasks there. It felt as if my brother’s fate and the princeling’s and mine were all tethered together as tightly as a violin string. Woferl’s hot hand pressed against mine. I held on to him and stared at his pitiful figure, his eyes dancing under their lids. His lips moved silently. Now and then, they seemed to form Hyacinth’s name, as if his essence was hanging somewhere in the air. But I heard nothing.
Was my brother dreaming of the princeling? Was Hyacinth visiting with him secretly?
A spark of envy burned in my heart, followed immediately by guilt.
If I were the one lying sick here, I knew my brother wouldn’t hesitate to stay by my side every evening, humming to me little tunes that he’d written, kissing my cheeks, and asking me to grow stronger. He wouldn’t sit in silence and allow jealousy to invade his mind. The realization made me tighten my grip on his hand.
Would it change what I did for Hyacinth, if I knew that the link between all our fates were real? I lowered my eyes, ashamed that I didn’t know the answer right away. He was so small for his age, his body so vulnerable. I thought of all the times he would curl close to me for protection, and my heart softened in affection. I lowered my face to his and whispered for him to get well.
Night after night, I returned to hold Woferl’s hand and watch the shadows dance across his face. I stayed until, slowly, slowly, he began to pull out of the darkness. The fog disappeared from his eyes. He began to look alert again. He would wake up in the morning and ask for parchment and ink.
* * *
I believe that Papa must have felt some regret for his behavior during this time. He had worked Woferl and me relentlessly for weeks, making us go over and over our pieces, watching us practice late into the nights even when Woferl shivered from the cold. His outburst at me over Johann seemed to guilt him too. While we waited for Woferl to recover, he told me that our audiences felt compelled to speak to me, that I was an alluring talent. Sometimes he fumbled over his words, grew frustrated with himself, and turned his eyes away from me.
I don’t know if it had anything to do with me witnessing him at his writing desk weeks ago, or if my task for Hyacinth had pleased the princeling enough to earn me a bit of luck.
Whatever the reason, after Woferl recovered from the fever, Papa decided to give us a day of reprieve shortly after we arrived in France, taking us to visit La Roche-Guyon with no performances planned.
La Roche-Guyon was a small commune in the northern part of the country. The La Rochefoucauld family had invited us to visit their château, and Papa never missed a chance to develop new relations with nobility. He lined me up with my brother on the day we were to meet them and warned us not to mention where we would next visit, that the last leg of our journey would take us to Great Britain.
Woferl found this a great source of mischief. “Do you think Papa will be angry with me, if I do mention it?” he said to me.
I gave him a stern look. “If Papa says not to do it, then don’t,” I replied. “You’ll get nothing out of it.”
Woferl tapped his shoes in a rhythm against the carriage floor. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” I let the conversation end there, and did not reply when Woferl spoke again. I knew perfectly well why Papa would ask us to do such a thing, and the La Rochefoucauld family would be grateful for it, as the end of the French and Indian War did not leave a sweet taste in their mouths for the British.
We arrived in La Roche-Guyon on a bright, blue morning, up to the top half of a large hill where the road ended at a cobblestone walkway. It was a warm day, not unlike the afternoon when we had performed in Frankfurt, and the sun seared my cheeks as we walked, leaving a slight blush on my skin.
It reminded me of the heat on my face when I’d spoken to the boy named Johann. If he were here, would he comment on the sky, the river, the color of my dress against the sandstone walls? Would he take my hand in his, or push loose strands of my hair behind my ear, the way Hyacinth had done?
I shook my head, embarrassed, and pushed my thoughts away. Lately, I’d caught myself dwelling on the dream of my kiss and wondering what such a sensation might feel like in my world, with Johann. I’d seen my father kiss my mother before, although he didn’t put his hands against her face and pull her toward him. She didn’t lean toward him with wonder in her eyes.
Would kissing Johann feel like theirs? Polite and distant? Or would it feel like the brush of cold sugar, sweet and wintry and intimate, from Hyacinth? Would it be something different altogether?
Papa glanced back at us once. I immediately lowered my head, afraid that he might have seen my daydreams spelled out plainly on my face. The blush on my cheeks deepened.
Madame Louise-Pauline de Gand de Mérode and her husband were already waiting for us. The young lady greeted Mama with delicate, gloved hands. “It is a pleasure to have your company,” she said to my mother. Her face looked pale and sickly, like she had just recovered from several weeks in bed, but I marveled at her voice, calming and full of warmth.
Monsieur Louis-Alexandre, a severe man outfitted with a long face, shook hands with Papa and spoke quietly to him before nodding at both Woferl and me. I curtsied whenever someone took notice. Woferl followed my lead in this, thankfully, but I could see his eyes darting here and there, eager to explore our new surroundings in this foreign country, his mouth twitching with curiosity.
“You will behave yourself, won’t you, Woferl?” I whispered to him when our parents began to follow the La Rochefoucaulds up the cobblestone walkway. We walked behind them, far enough to talk amongst ourselves.
“I’ll try,” he declared. “But I need to tell you something.”
“Oh? And what’s that?”
Woferl lifted a finger and pointed up toward the château that we now headed toward, the castle that belonged to the La Rochefoucaulds. “We should go to the very top,” he said. “I saw someone waiting for us up there.”
I followed his finger until my eyes rested on the château too. At first, I didn’t think much of it, as I simply did not recognize it. It looked like an old fortress tucked into what was once a cliff, with heavy brick towers and tiny, glassless windows. It sat high up on the hill, so that from where we stood we could see the banks of the Seine River.
I looked back at Woferl. He only stared at me, his expression confused, as if he couldn’t understand why I did not see what he saw.
“We should go to the top,” he said again when we stepped inside the keep’s heavy doors. Ahead of us, Papa and Sebastian were listening intently to the monsieur, while Mama talked to the madame in a low voice. I felt Woferl pull at my hand.
“Do not wander off,” I whispered to him. My fingers tightened around his.
But Woferl would not listen. “I want to go to the top of the tower.”
I took a deep breath to steady myself, and tried to turn my attention to what our parents were saying. Woferl kept his eyes on the stairs. They spiraled up and disappeared around the edge of the wall, partially illuminated by the child-size windows that opened to the river scene below. I could not guess what made Woferl so restless. He was still a young boy, and perhaps today was simply a day of mischief for him.
Without warning, Woferl slipped his hand out from mine and darted toward the stairs. I sucked in my breath sharply. “Woferl!”
Papa turned to see my brother scampering up the stairs, and before he could utter a sound, Woferl had vanished. He shot me a reproachful look. I curtsied in apology to the monsieur and madame, murmured something I knew they could not hear, and then hurried to the stairs myself. I heard Papa stop Sebastian from following me.
“Let her bring him back,” he said. “It is her responsibility. At any rate, she will need to learn how to be a mother soon enough.”
The words pricked me like thorns as I gathered my petticoats into my arms and ran. Again, I felt my anger shift in the direction of my brother. If he would only listen and do what he was told, Papa wouldn’t feel the need to say such things.
The stairs were high and slanted and old, crumbling in some places, the middle of each step worn down into curves from centuries of travelers. My shoes tapped a rhythm against the stones that began to sound like the beginning of a melody. I called out for Woferl again. Somewhere ahead I could hear his footsteps, but they were very far away now.
“Nannerl!” his small voice called back down to me. He sounded like a muted violin. “Hurry, won’t you?”
“Come back down immediately!” I shouted up to him.
“But Hyacinth told me I should come up here! Don’t you want to join me?”
I froze. Hyacinth had told him? Immediately, I thought back to the mornings when my brother would wake with a dazed look on his face, as if he’d had dreams he couldn’t explain. I remembered the way his eyes would dart about under their lids in his feverish sleep.
I looked up at the winding stairs. A faint presence of music hung in the air, reaching out from another world. A tremor shook through me, and suddenly I felt afraid. What had Hyacinth been telling him, that he had not told me?
“Woferl!” I called again, finding new strength in my fear.
The stairs continued on. Now and then, as I passed a window, I would catch a glimps
e of the bottom of the hill and the moat and the river, and see patches of sky and sunlight. The scene was very familiar to me, and I began to slow down so that I could better see the view at the next window. My shoes rubbed against something slippery. When I looked down, I noticed that some of the steps were wet now, as if fresh from a rainstorm.
I climbed higher and higher. My breaths began to come in gasps, and yet still I could not hear Woferl answer my calls. My irritation grew. I told myself that I would not sit with him at practice tomorrow, to punish him, and that when he would ask me for help in his compositions, I would refuse. Woferl would not remember what he did to me, though. He would simply pout at me later, and ask why I did not care for him anymore.
I paused by a window to rest, careful not to sit on the wet parts of the stairs. Outside I could hear the wind in the trees and the sounds of the river, but they seemed distant too, as if everything in the world was far away from the stairs that I sat on. I gazed out the window, lost for a moment in my thoughts. A melody floated in the breeze and disappeared before I could fully grasp it.
That was when I first noticed it. The sky had grown a little darker, a scarlet tint to the clouds, and the rush of the river suddenly seemed very loud. The moat looked wider than I remembered. The window grew smaller, and I leaned back, suddenly afraid that it would close around my head.
Through the shrinking opening, I thought I saw a dark figure float around the base of the keep, shrouded in black tatters, and shapeless. My hands started to tremble.
The château no longer looked like a château at all. It had become the castle on the hill.
When I looked out the window again, I could see someone waiting on the other side of the river.
The water appeared dark now, its bottom indistinguishable from the murky depths, and strange shadows glided under its surface, fragments of a massive creature with a long tail.
The figure on the other side of the river was Hyacinth.
