The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  Still. Six sonatas. Woferl had written two during our stay in the country. He would happily write four more. But in such a short amount of time? We must have dipped farther into our savings than I thought, for Papa to agree to such an impossible deadline. Had our landlord, Herr Hagenauer, sent Papa a letter again, asking for our rent?

  “Very well,” my mother said, and that was that.

  So we prepared and packed. Woferl began writing in earnest. I’d wake to see him asleep with a quill still in his hand, an unfinished page of music crumpled under his arm.

  * * *

  On the day we were to leave, Papa helped the coachman drag our things into the boot and paid the last of our fees to the innkeeper. He was in a good mood this morning, humming a strange tune under his breath that I didn’t recognize. I kept my face turned down and concentrated on checking my trunks and tidying my dress, tying my new hat securely with a veil.

  I watched my father as we rode. He talked in a low voice to my mother, trying to convince her that the payment the Dutch offered was well worth what they asked.

  “That is because what others cannot do, Woferl can,” he said, turning to my brother with a rare smile. “It is the miracle they seek, and you are it.”

  I waited for Papa’s glance to fall on me too, to include me in his good mood and the miracle that was our family. But he ignored me and went back to his conversation with Mama. I swallowed and looked out the window.

  We rested, spent the night at an inn, and crossed the Channel the following day. When our carriage finally clattered over a bridge overlooking one of The Hague’s canals and we looked out to see a towering opera house crowded with people, Papa exclaimed how right we were to have come here, how glad he was for all of us.

  On our first night in The Hague, Woferl snuggled close to me in bed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  He shook his head and refused to lift his head. “I’m afraid of my nightmares,” he whispered. As he said it, something shifted in the dark corners of the room.

  * * *

  When I stirred the next morning, hazy with the fog of unremembered dreams, Papa was already bustling about, tugging on his coat while Mama adjusted his collar. “It is the perfect gift,” he was saying to her.

  I sat up in bed and watched as my father set a book on the room’s desk and then hurry out the door. Mama followed behind him.

  My eyes went back to the book. Vaguely, I remembered that Papa was planning to bind Woferl’s music for the prince and princess into a volume. I blinked, surprised to see the book already finished. Woferl had been writing nonstop, but I thought I knew how much he had finished and how much more he had yet to go. Had he really already composed enough for the book? The volume seemed a good thickness. Papa must have included some of my brother’s older works, in an attempt to fill it.

  Out of curiosity, I rose from the bed and went over to the writing desk to peek at the volume before Papa and Mama returned. Behind me, Woferl continued to sleep. With delicate fingers, I ran a hand across the front of the book and then opened its cover.

  At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It was like a mirror, except in a sheet of black notes. I knew these notes. Every single one.

  I flipped the first page, then the next, then the next, faster and faster.

  I closed my eyes, dizzy, expecting to wake up out of this dream and be back in my bed. But when I opened my eyes, the volume was still here in my hand. My music was still staring back up at me.

  My music. Not Woferl’s. Mine.

  My hands were shaking so hard now that I feared I would tear the fine paper. I let out a gasped sob and took a step back—stumbling so that my legs gave way—and sat on the floor with my dress spilled in a circle around me. In the corner, Woferl stirred slightly in bed and rubbed his face sleepily. “Nannerl?” he murmured. “What is it?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t understand.

  How could this possibly have happened? I looked in a daze around the room, then pushed myself up and rushed to my trunk. I rummaged through it frantically. My clothes, shoes, hair ties all went flying, until finally I stared down at an empty bottom.

  I steadied myself against the trunk.

  The neat little stack of my folded parchments, all the compositions I’d created and carefully stored away over the past months. They were gone.

  In bed, Woferl sat up now, more awake and alarmed at the expression on my face. “Are you all right?” he said. “You’ve turned so pale.”

  The world spun around me. “Did you tell Papa, Woferl?” I whispered, the words springing unbidden out of me.

  “What?” Woferl replied. And when I looked him directly in the eye, he did not blink. He was a picture of confusion, pale from the hurt in my words. His gaze flitted to the mess of my belongings strewn around my trunk.

  “Did you tell Papa about my compositions?” I said. My voice trembled.

  Understanding suddenly blossomed on my brother’s face, followed by horror. “I would never,” he said.

  I leaned against my empty drawer. My thoughts spun over and over until I swayed. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But I forced myself back onto my feet and stumbled over to look at the volume still open on the table. The pages were there. The notes were there. And my compositions were gone from my trunk, stolen away by my father.

  Or by a princeling.

  Hyacinth, Hyacinth, Hyacinth. The name tolled like a bell in my thoughts.

  I’d been so foolish to think that he had somehow stepped quietly out of our lives. Here he was again, flitting his fingers through the air. He had always known where to hit me the hardest, had been waiting to use this against me should I ever turn my back on him. I had given up my end of our bargain. In return, he had taken my wish and given it to my brother instead.

  This was Hyacinth’s revenge. The cruelty he had planned for my punishment.

  Woferl called to me again from bed, but I could barely hear him. I paged through each piece in the volume until I reached the end.

  Six of my sonatas, with minor changes. They had been published in a bound volume, like I’d always dreamed of, but they did not have my name anywhere on them. Instead, they were signed by Woferl.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had stolen my music.

  THE AGREEMENT

  I did not scream or cry. I did not answer Woferl when he continued to ask me if I was all right. I did not change my demeanor around Sebastian or breathe a word of it to my father or mother.

  What was the use?

  Instead, I turned my fury inward and let it consume me.

  Later the same afternoon, I retired to bed early, dizzy and sore. By the next day, I’d developed a fever that made my skin hot to the touch, and started to vomit. My muscles ached so much that I had to bite back my tears. Sebastian carried me to my bed that day. My skin turned white and slick with sweat, my eyes grew swollen and tired. Rose spots appeared on my chest. My hair, drenched with moisture, stuck to my neck and forehead and shoulders in strings. I struggled to breathe, my lungs rasping from the effort.

  Mama, in a panic, sent for a doctor that the Dutch envoy recommended and brought him to our hotel the same evening. He hovered over me in a haze of color, so that I could barely make out his grave face. He told my mother that my heartbeat had slowed, that I might be in serious danger. He bled me, then fed me a bitter tonic and left.

  I drifted in and out of sleep. Days melted into one another. I had difficulty understanding what happened around me, except that the date to perform for the princess and prince—to deliver the volume of music to them—came and went. Papa and Woferl attended without me.

  Sometimes I thought I saw Papa standing near my bed, talking in hushed tones with my mother. Other times Woferl’s face appeared, tragic and fearful, and tried to speak to me. I recalled his soft hands in mine. I thought I heard him say, over
and over again, that he was sorry, that he didn’t know what to do or say. That he had no idea.

  I would turn my face away whenever he was near. I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  I don’t know whether Woferl protested to Papa about what he had done with my music. It was difficult for me to recognize when I was awake and when I was dreaming. But no one in our family spoke about it, at least not to me. I did not even question it. I knew the reason why. To my father, it must have seemed like a simple and obvious decision.

  We needed the money, Woferl would be unable to finish the volume in time, and here were a dozen finished pieces of music written by me that could never be published under my own name. Of course my father wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice my work this way.

  As the weeks dragged on, my sickness grew worse. I began to have nightmares several times a day, thrashing in my sleep, and Mama and Sebastian would come in and murmur comforting words to me. My father prayed at the foot of my bed. I saw my mother had a pair of faded wings on her back, and her feet appeared molded to the floor as if she were the faery trapped in the kingdom’s underwater grotto. She would linger there and cry. My brother squeezed my hand and asked me questions that I couldn’t understand. The floor of my bedroom swayed with a blanket of edelweiss, and strange mosses and mushrooms covered my bedposts. Two moons, not one, would illuminate the floor from my window, their positions growing steadily closer together in the night sky.

  Sometimes, I saw Johann sitting at my bedside, his face grave. Are you happy? he’d ask me. I would open my mouth and say nothing at all.

  My thoughts grew muddied and confused. At times I couldn’t remember why I was so angry, exactly what had cut into my chest and pried my ribs open, letting my soul leak away.

  One night I saw the dark, shapeless figures float past my window, the hooded ghosts from the castle on the hill with their twisted hands and tattered cloaks. I wanted to make them disappear, and bring more candles into my room like I’d once done for Woferl when he had fallen ill. But no one was in the room with me. So I simply stayed there and watched the shapes with growing fear, helpless until the dawn finally chased them away.

  On a particularly bad night, I stirred awake with Hyacinth’s name on my lips. I had been calling for him in my sleep. The shadows of my room sighed and breathed. I waited in my delirium, dreading, anticipating his return.

  * * *

  As I continued to deteriorate, news came to my father that my six sonatas had been well received by the Princess Carolina, and that everyone marveled at the miracle of Woferl’s ingenuity. The Dutch envoy that had pursued Papa from London to France dined with my family, Mama later told me, and during the lunch thanked my father for making his decision to come on such short notice.

  Papa returned, his pockets heavy with coin.

  Mama did not speak to me about my misfortune, not directly, but she came the closest, telling me the story of the Dutch envoy with pauses and hesitations. She would not have wanted to add to my pain, if I had not specifically demanded to know.

  Later that same night, Papa came to see me in my bedroom. I thought he should have looked happier, for the princess had paid him well for my music. Instead his eyes appeared hollow, his brow furrowed. He came in with a hunched back and settled himself down in the chair next to my bed, and took one of my hands in his. I could barely feel it through my haze of fever, but I remembered how cold his skin was.

  “You must be brave, Nannerl,” he said. “I know your fever must give you much suffering.”

  I tried to focus on Papa’s face, but my vision blurred and worsened my headache. “Am I dying?” I said. A part of me even hoped, bitterly, that it was true, if only to see whether my father would wince.

  Papa continued to hold my hand. “The princess sends her sympathy and well wishes. She told me she will pray for you. Woferl tells me repeatedly that you will get well soon. He tells me he has seen to it.” He smiled at the thought, and then shifted, somehow uncomfortable. I wondered idly if the chair hurt his back. After a moment, he spoke again. “I do not like to see you in such a state,” he said, more softly this time. “I’ve grown used to Woferl’s bouts with sickness, but I am not used to you . . .”

  The part of me that was my father’s daughter wanted, in spite of everything, to tell him I would be all right, to not worry. But I only lay there and looked at him, unwilling to give him this relief, wishing I could cause him even more pain.

  He looked at me for a long time, studying my face. I wondered if he would say anything to me about what had happened, if he would finally acknowledge it. I waited, watching the room grow hazy and sharp and then hazy again, struggling to focus on my father’s expressions.

  He prepared to say something, then spoke as if he had changed his mind. “Woferl has said to me many times that he wants to stay by you. Why have you not asked for him?”

  I did not speak. What was there to say? My father had taken my music and handed it to my brother, yet I was the cruel one who did not ask for him.

  “Do not be angry with him, Nannerl,” Papa said. His eyes were solemn, but not stern. I thought that he even pitied me a little—or perhaps he meant the pity for Woferl. “He loves you and worries very much about you.”

  When I still did not speak, my father had the grace to look down, embarrassed. After a while, he finally rose and left, shaking his head and muttering something under his breath that I could not hear.

  I started to weep. I wept in earnest, silently and bitterly, unable to hold back my grief any longer. I could not stop. My tears formed rivulets down the sides of my face, wetting my cheeks and my ears, soaking my already damp hair. They spilled onto the pillows, forming dark circles.

  He tells you to play, so you play. He tells you to curtsy, so you curtsy. He tells you what you are meant to do and what you are meant not to do, so you do and you do not do. He tells you not to be angry, so you smile, you turn your eyes down, you are quiet and do exactly as he says in the hopes that this is what he wants, and then one night you realize that you have given him so much of yourself that you are nothing but the curtsy and the smile and the quiet. That you are nothing.

  * * *

  Days passed, then weeks. We left The Hague for Lille, even though it took all my strength just to sit up. I could feel myself slipping away. My breathing became raspier, my coughs more frequent, as if I could not lift a terrible stone from inside my chest. I could see the knuckles and bones of my fingers very easily now. Woferl would stand and wait by my bedroom door, looking on with large, tragic eyes. Mama wept several times when she came to sit with me. She held my hand, speaking so much to me that sometimes I did not have the energy to understand it all.

  “Be brave, Nannerl,” she would say, just like Papa. I did not know until later that she meant for me to be brave in the face of death. My parents had already arranged a date for the priest to read me my last rites.

  Finally, two weeks later, when I had truly started to believe that I would die without seeing Hyacinth again, he came to me.

  I did not recognize him at first. My bedroom had grown very dim, for the candle had burned low and the darkness had crept up to it. I’d become used to seeing the hooded figures floating outside my window. I saw them now, their shapes creating moving shadows on the wall. In the corner of the room grew patches of mushrooms and vines, red and poisonous.

  I blinked sweat out of my eyes. Tonight the shadows had real weight to them, like living things. It took me a long time to realize that one of these shadows was Hyacinth.

  He did not look like how I remembered him. His once-pale skin and spikes had bled as white as the color of dead birch in winter, and his blue eyes had turned gold. He was even taller than when I saw him at the château. His figure loomed over me, and when he smiled, his mouth grew so large and frightening that I wanted to close my eyes. He had sharper teeth now too, thousands of needles lined up in a row. I cou
ld barely see his pupils anymore—the gold color was so pale that it blended in with the whites of his eyes.

  Even though he frightened me, his face remained as smooth and beautiful as it had always looked.

  “What a state you are in, Fräulein,” he said. His voice sounded different, filled with rasps, although still wild and haunting. “Did you call out to me because you missed me?”

  I felt too weak to lift my head. My lungs heaved and I burst into a fit of coughing. When he sauntered over to the edge of my bed, I simply stared at him and concentrated on breathing.

  Hyacinth’s eyes burned into me. “Tell me, my Fräulein, how have you fared since the last time I saw you?”

  “You told me that you were my guardian.” My voice came out hoarse and soft. “And then you lied to me. You have been visiting Woferl in secret. You gave my wish to my brother.”

  He shook his head sympathetically at me. “My poor darling,” he said in a voice laced with honey. One of his hands came up toward me and pressed against my cheek. I jumped at the coldness of it. “Your brother was the one who betrayed you. Can’t you see that? He has taken from you what history would have praised you for. He will be remembered, while you will be forgotten. That is why you called out for me, is it not? Look at you, Maria Anna Mozart, here on your deathbed and struggling for your next breath. I have already seen it, you know. Your time has come. If you die tonight, history will know you only as your brother’s sister, a girl with a beautiful face and modest achievements. A commoner.”

  I closed my eyes. I’d thought I was ready to see him, but his words stung me.

  “Do you still love your brother, Nannerl?”

  “Yes.”