The Kingdom of Back

by Marie Lu

  We dined with Herr Schmalecker’s family that night. I spent my time moving my slices of baked chicken around with my fork, my thoughts clouded with visions of Hyacinth. Outside we could hear the sounds of merriment continuing late into the night, but in the living room it was quiet, except for Herr Schmalecker’s booming voice.

  “How long will you stay in Vienna this time, Leopold?” he asked my father. I glanced to Papa. He looked tired, although he kept a civil tongue.

  “We’ll stay until the marriage, and perhaps several weeks after.”

  “How splendid!” Herr Schmalecker laughed loudly. “I saw the princess-bride in public a day ago. She stood on the palace balcony with the majesties. What a lovely one. She”—he paused to wave his fork at my father—“and the youngest one, that little Antonia, will make the best children, I tell you.” I looked to Herr Schmalecker’s side. His wife, a frail young creature with pale, dusty skin, sat eating her supper without a word to her husband. Two of his children played together with a bit of carrot underneath the table, and a third child slept at the table with her head tucked in her arms.

  Papa did not tell Herr Schmalecker to speak of the princesses in more proper terms. If Woferl had said something similar, he would have surely sent him away to bed without his supper. I concentrated on the festive sounds outside and continued to pick apart my food.

  The celebrations intensified as the days passed. On one occasion, Woferl and Mama and I accompanied our father to see the opera Partenope, and on another we attended a ball to toast our happiness for the princess-bride. I sat in the balcony and spent most of the time distracted, my eyes darting frequently to the seats around us. That slender figure. Those glowing eyes. I searched and searched for him until I was exhausted.

  We went out daily, perhaps so that Papa could distract himself from wondering when the court would call for us to perform. Woferl practiced religiously on the clavier and violin when we stayed in our rooms. He continued to compose, this time starting on a new symphony that kept him up late into the night and sometimes early into the morning.

  I continued to compose too, but I always waited to begin my work until the house had fallen silent, lest my new work end up again in Papa’s hands. The noise from the festivities helped me to conceal my soft movements—my feet on the cold floor, the dipping of a quill into its inkwell, the faint scratching on paper. As I wrote, the composition I’d been developing grew louder, changing from its soft opening into something harsher, as if the noise from outside had agitated it. My hands shook now when I added to it, so that I had to stop at times to rest and steady myself.

  The days passed by. Hyacinth did not appear. I slept poorly, always alert for some glimpse of his shadow moving through the house or his figure waiting in the city’s alleys.

  Then, finally, in the second week of our stay, he came to me.

  * * *

  In the first days of October we attended another opera, Amore e Psiche, a romance of sorts between the love god Eros and a mortal beauty. We watched the princess Psyche hunger to see her lover’s face, only to be punished for her desire with death.

  Papa leaned over and used Psyche’s mistake as a chance to warn me. “Do you see, Nannerl?” he said. “This is the danger of desire.”

  He meant the danger of desire for Psyche, not for the god Eros, who had been the one who wanted her all to himself.

  I stayed quiet while the young actress on the stage pressed a hand against her forehead and sank to the stage floor, her dress spilling all around her. My jaw tightened at my father’s words. It was not fair, I thought, for a god to tempt a maiden and then condemn her for her temptation.

  I do not know if it was my thoughts, my silent disapproval, that conjured him. Perhaps it was the tightness that coiled in my chest at Papa’s reaction. As the opera entered its third act, a man in a dark suit stepped into our box. I looked instinctively at him, but my mother and father didn’t seem to notice his presence at all, as if he were merely a shadow that stretched from the curtains. Beside me, Woferl shifted, but he did not turn his head.

  The man leaned down toward me until his breath, cold as fog, tickled my skin. I did not need to look up at his face to know that I would see Hyacinth’s familiar eyes.

  “Fräulein,” came his whisper. “Come with me.” Then he disappeared, his form melting back into the silhouette of the curtains.

  I trembled at his presence, at how no one else seemed capable of seeing what I’d seen. Down below, the goddess Venus handed Psyche a lamp, encouraging her to uncover the identity of her lover.

  I rose from my seat without a sound. My parents did not stir. As I stepped out of our box and let the curtains fall behind me, I caught a glimpse of Woferl, turned halfway toward me in his seat. If he noticed my absence, he did not say anything.

  Beyond the curtain, my slippers sank into the thickness of the rugs carpeting the marble hall. When I looked down, I realized that it was not carpet but moss, deep blue in the dim light, grown so thick that my feet nearly disappeared in it. The hall had become a path, and as I went, I began to recognize the gnarled trees in place of pillars, the deep pools of water their leaves formed.

  The trees grew denser as I went, and the sounds of the opera faded behind me, until they sounded less like music and more like the call of crows that glided against the night. Up in the sky, the twin moons had started to overlap each other. Ahead of me, where the trees finally parted, the river that encircled the castle on the hill appeared, its dark waters churning steadily along.

  The enormous fins of the river guardian no longer cut through the water. Instead, the wall of thorns that grew beyond the river had now twisted low, arching a gnarled bridge of sharp spikes across the water.

  I hesitated at the sight of it, like standing before the gaping jaws of a great beast.

  Fräulein.

  Hyacinth’s whisper beckoned to me on the other side of the thorns. I looked up, seeing where the castle’s highest tower still loomed above the brambled wall. Then I moved one foot in front of the other, until my slippers scraped against the thorny floor of the bridge. Through the gaps in the bridge’s floor, I could see the dark waters foaming, eager to take me back. Angry with me for stealing their guardian. I walked faster.

  I crossed to the other side and in through the thorns, until I finally had stepped out of it and into the clearing before the castle.

  Great tables had been laid out along the sides of the castle’s courtyard, great golden apples and red pomegranates on porcelain plates. Vines curled around the table legs. There were no candles, reminding me again of Hyacinth’s fear of fire. Instead, thousands of lights flickered across the courtyard, the wayward paths of the faeries that always followed Hyacinth, giving the entire space an eerie blue glow. They giggled at my presence. Several flocked near me, cooing and tugging on my hair, their voices tiny and jealous, their nips vicious. I swatted them away, but they would only return, incensed and determined.

  “Leave her.”

  At Hyacinth’s voice, the lights immediately scattered, twinkling their protest as they swarmed across the rest of the courtyard. I looked up to see him approaching me.

  He smiled at me. Tonight, he glittered with a sheen of silver, wearing thousands of skeleton leaves carefully sewn together into a splendid coat. His hair was pulled away from his face, flattering his high cheekbones. His eyes glowed in the night. He would be beautiful, except I remembered the way he had looked the last time I’d seen him, pupils slitted with hunger, right before he lunged at the princess.

  Courage, I told myself, and reminded myself instead of what my father had done with my music.

  “How lovely you are tonight,” he said, lifting a hand to touch my chin. He took my hand in his and gestured to the courtyard. “Dance with me. I have something to ask you.”

  I could feel the scrape of his claws against my palm. A vision flashed before my eye
s of them covered with the princess’s blood. But instead of cringing away, I followed him to the center of the courtyard and rested my hand gently against his shoulder. A sharp tug against my locks made me wince, and I recoiled from the faeries that now darted around my face, all of them eager to bite me.

  “Away with you,” Hyacinth snapped at them. They scattered again, protesting, flitting about his face and planting affectionate kisses on his cheeks. Then they lingered around us, forming a sullen blue ring as Hyacinth pulled me into a dance.

  I followed his lead. The memory of his sugar-sweet kiss came back to me now. I could feel the cold press of his hand against the small of my back. If Johann were here, would he dance with me too? Would his hand be warm against my skin?

  “You’re quiet tonight,” Hyacinth said to me in a low voice.

  “Why did you bring me here?” I said to him.

  He smiled, amused. “Is the Fräulein angry with me, I wonder?”

  “You don’t belong here, in this castle.”

  “I should. The queen had banned me from her court, distasteful woman that she was.”

  “You killed the princess in the tower.”

  “In some ways, she was already dead, wasn’t she? Are you truly alive if you spend your entire life locked in a tower, hidden away for so long that you wouldn’t even know to flee if the door opened for you?”

  His words rang deep in my chest, as true and clear as the music of him that had first called to me all those years ago. His irises were gold, hypnotizing me. Are you alive, Nannerl? they seemed to say to me. Don’t you want to be?

  My lips tightened. Here we were, playing his games again. But today I was tired of them. “Tell me what you want with me,” I said.

  Hyacinth smiled and spun me again. The world turned in a dizzy circle, his face at its center. “Don’t you remember what we’d agreed to in the very beginning?”

  Make them remember me. How long ago that wish of mine seemed. How much had happened since then.

  Hyacinth pulled me close, his hand cool against the small of my waist. “A bargain is a bargain. You have helped me, and so I shall help you. There is only one thing left for us to do.”

  “What is it?”

  He drew close to whisper in my ear. His coat of skeleton leaves brushed roughly against me. “Bring your brother here, to the castle.”

  Woferl. Fingers of ice trailed their way down my spine. “What do you want with him?”

  “Leave him here.”

  Leave him here.

  “When you bring him and then return to your world, he will not come with you. Let me keep him here with me. He will bring his music to the kingdom, and you will bring yours to the world beyond. It will be a perfect trade.”

  Something in Hyacinth’s voice had turned very dark, a growl trembling beneath his soft words. “You want to keep him in the kingdom forever?”

  Hyacinth’s eyes glowed. “Woferl was never meant to stay long in your world, after all,” he said. “He is the princeling of this kingdom. You know that. From the moment he was born, you knew the fragility on his face and the paper of his limbs. One illness after another will continue to ravage him, until he is nothing more. That is his curse. He has always been suspended between one world and another. It’s time. Give him to me, Nannerl, and you shall finally have what you’ve always wanted.”

  The beat of my heart crashed against my ears. This, at last, was the merging of our wishes. Hyacinth wanted my brother, the princeling of the Kingdom of Back—and if I helped hand him over, I would receive what I’d asked for.

  Without my brother, I would be the only one my father had. What other name could appear on a volume of music? They would have no choice but to remember me.

  I shrank away from him in horror. He waited, humored, as I stood a few feet apart from him, trembling from the suggestion, unable to look away from his golden eyes. The world around me blurred. A lightness pervaded my mind.

  “I can sense the pull in your heart, Fräulein,” he said, taking a step toward me again.

  I pictured my brother sitting in the highest tower, looking down at the dark river. I pictured Hyacinth’s eyes trained on him. “What will you do with him, once he’s here?” I whispered. My voice sounded like it came from somewhere outside of me. Hyacinth’s eyes pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat.

  “Oh, Nannerl.” Hyacinth sighed. He kissed me gently on the cheek. “The question is always about him, isn’t it? What will you do, once he’s here?”

  My lips parted and nothing came out.

  “Write a composition for me, Fräulein,” Hyacinth whispered. “The song of your heart. When you play it, I will call for you. Bring your brother with you then. I’ll be waiting for you both in this castle courtyard, underneath the aligned twin moons. Head nowhere else. Bring no light with you. And we shall finish what we started.”

  I closed my eyes as he spun me again, my head dizzy. His words surrounded me until I could barely think. He would be waiting for us. Head nowhere else. Bring no light with you.

  And then, suddenly, a flash of clarity cut through the fog clouding my mind. I looked up at the sky to see the moons, half of each overlapped with the other.

  On the night that the twin moons aligned in the sky, the trapped queen’s magic would be at its strongest. She had told me that, the night we went to her grotto. It would be the time when her magic—her fire, her gift from the Sun, what Hyacinth feared most—was returned to her. It would be my chance to set things right, to release her from her underwater prison and restore her to the castle. Only she could stop Hyacinth, and only then would he leave us in peace.

  Even now, the poison of Hyacinth’s promise tugged at me, protesting. Don’t you want to be remembered? You have fought so hard to earn this. I winced in the darkness, willing myself to steady. The someone else in me bared her teeth and yearned to push me fully into Hyacinth’s arms.

  The part of me that kissed my brother’s forehead, that pulled him protectively to my side when he was afraid at night, urged me back.

  When I returned to the kingdom, would I do what I needed and free the queen? Or would I bring my brother with me and present him to Hyacinth? The two sides of me stirred, clashing, and in this moment, I could not tell which would win.

  “I will do it,” I found myself whispering. “I will meet you here.”

  Hyacinth did not respond. When I opened my eyes again, the courtyard was gone, along with the castle and the thorns and the moat. I was standing in the box again with my parents, Woferl beside me, and I was clapping, along with everyone, as the librettist down on the stage curtsied for her adoring audience.

  Already, Hyacinth’s hands on me felt like little more than the touch of a ghost. Woferl looked at me, his eyes curious and expectant. My heart hammered against my ribs. Perhaps Hyacinth had come to him too, coaxed him in the same way he coaxed me. I could feel the threads of his web tightening around us.

  “Remember this lesson well, Nannerl,” my father said, leaning over to me. “Think of all that Psyche suffers, for the sake of her love, and how noble her loyalty makes her.”

  I nodded but did not answer. Perhaps the fulfillment of her wishes was never worth what she had to sacrifice. Perhaps Psyche could have suffered for something other than love of a man. Perhaps, in another life, things could have been different for her.

  The opera was a harbinger of things to come. That night, I dreamed over and over of Hyacinth in the tower, his teeth sinking into the young princess while I stood by. I felt his bloodstained hands touch my cheek. I called after Woferl as he walked ahead of me down the path through the woods, growing more and more distant until I could no longer see him.

  And when I woke in a sweat the next morning, I heard the news. The princess-bride Maria Josepha had become stricken with what we all feared the most.

  The smallpox.

  THE HARB
INGER OF DEATH

  Rumor is that she caught it from the Emperor Joseph’s late wife, at her funeral,” Herr Schmalecker told us through a mouthful of eggs and ham slices as we sat for breakfast.

  I looked at Mama. Her face was pale. At my side, Woferl picked at his food, his expression tired. I’d heard him toss and turn all last night, murmuring in his sleep.

  “It is the will of God,” Papa said. His mouth was pulled tight, and his head stayed bowed. “We will pray for her recovery.”

  “Recovery!” Herr Schmalecker chuckled. “Listen to this man. Still thinking about how you will make your ducats here, aren’t you? Well, do not lose hope yet, Leopold. The emperor has not retracted his request to hear your children perform.”

  So we waited. I spent the night awake, shaking. Hyacinth was slowly setting the final act of his game. I knew it, could feel his hands at work, letting the claws of this epidemic creep ever steadily closer to us. In the middle of the night, when I could bear it no longer, I went to Woferl’s room to make sure he was still there. He lay asleep, unaware of me as I crawled into his bed and cradled him in my arms until morning came.

  Celebrations across the city were disrupted, canceled, shuffled around. We stayed at the house for longer stretches. My father spent much of his time listening to Herr Schmalecker’s gossip and pacing the floors. Woferl buried himself in his writing. In the quiet hours after everyone had retired, and in the early morning before the birds had roused the city, I would work on my own composition for Hyacinth. Papa sat with us for endless hours as we played at the clavier. There was little else we could do now.

  Days later, an announcement from the royal court confirmed all the rumors we’d heard. Papa wrote a hasty letter to our landlord Herr Hagenauer, to tell him that the smallpox rash had appeared on Maria Josepha and that our concerts would be delayed.