by Marie Lu
She stayed still for a long time, seemingly lost in thought. I wondered if she didn’t have the strength to go any farther.
Then she took one step, and another. She came to my side and we walked together, our strides even. The glow around her strengthened the closer we drew to the castle.
As we reached the thorned bridge, the stems seemed to shrink away in fear from the heat that radiated from her. I gritted my teeth and continued to move forward. In my mind, I pictured my brother’s blinded face, his weak gasps on his deathbed. The bridge trembled as the queen’s bare feet walked across it. But she did not slow in her steps, and the thorns did not give way. They held together until we had reached the other side. Then the thorns, seemingly weakened from her magic, finally crumbled, falling into the churning waters below.
Hyacinth was already standing at the front gates of the castle, waiting for us.
His once-lithe body was now stripped of color, tall and sinewy like a creature of the forest, and his once-boyish cheekbones and delicate features had now grown so angular that he looked nothing like a human and every inch a faery. Perhaps this was what his appearance had always been, and I had simply never seen the real him.
His glowing eyes stayed fixed on me as we approached. He smiled as I stopped a few steps away from him. His gaze darted to the figure beside me, veiled behind the cloak. She stayed very still and did not move.
“My darling Fräulein,” Hyacinth said to me. He drew closer. All around him tittered his ever-present faeries, their blue glow dancing from spot to spot. They whispered harsh, eager things at me. “You’ve done so well. You’ve brought him, as well as yourself.”
As well as yourself. I stared into his lying eyes and saw the hunger there. The queen’s warning echoed in my mind. He did not care if my wish was fulfilled. He would take me tonight, along with my brother, and neither of us would return to the world beyond.
I looked behind us. The path we’d come from had now closed entirely, the thorns cutting off the bridge and the moat.
“I’m here, as you asked,” I said slowly.
Hyacinth’s eyes darted again to the cloaked figure beside me. She stood so calmly. For the first time, I sensed in him a hint of doubt. His faeries flitted about, irritated and skeptical. Hyacinth lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, and took a delicate sniff. Then he looked at me again, and when he did, his pupils were narrowed into slits.
“Your brother?” he whispered to me.
I looked back at him as steadily as I had once looked at my father. I realized that I was not afraid now. When I didn’t answer, Hyacinth swiveled his attention back to the cloaked figure and peered into the darkness that shrouded her face. His eyes then went to her hands, to the faint golden glow that came from her palms. When he peered more closely under her hood, he noticed the warm light against her features.
That was when the first hint of fear showed on his face.
“Who is this that you’ve brought with you?” he whispered to me.
I didn’t move from my spot. I only looked to the figure at my side as she removed her hood.
“The queen,” I replied, “the one who truly belongs here.”
He took a step back. A stricken look came onto his face, replaced quickly by anger. In it, I saw a thousand realizations—who I’d brought before him, who had freed her, what she wanted.
The queen stared back at him with an unflinching expression. A small smile tilted up the edges of her lips. She was taller now, her bearing more regal. I wondered how I’d ever mistaken her for anything other than a queen.
“I thought we had a bargain,” Hyacinth said to me. There was real terror in his eyes now. “Bring your brother to me, when the time has come, so that he may take his place in the kingdom. You betrayed me.”
“My brother is on his deathbed,” I replied, finding my strength, “because of you. If I’d brought him here today, you would keep him here eternally, so that he will disappear from my world. You would do the same with me.”
“I am your guardian, Nannerl, not your demise.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Everyone always thinks they are protecting me.”
His mouth twisted into a grimace. His faeries flitted wildly, unsettled and angry. He did not like the look of understanding on my face. “Don’t you want your brother gone? Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”
Once, perhaps, when I didn’t understand myself, I’d wanted it.
The queen stirred then, and Hyacinth backed uneasily away from her. She fixed her intense gaze on him and refused to let him look away. “The last time I saw you, you came to me with your glowing eyes and a charming smile on your face,” she said. “You led me away from my children, and into a cavern where you imprisoned me.”
Hyacinth growled, a low rumble that began in his chest and rose through his throat. “Stupid queen,” he said, then glanced at me. “Stupid girl. All your life, you wanted nothing more than to stand tall next to your brother. Now you will be reduced to nothing but a brief mention in history. Perhaps not even that. And for what, my darling? Because you’re afraid to harm your brother?”
I kept my face resolute. “Because I will not make a bargain with a liar. There are too many lies in my life.”
His eyes slid anxiously to the queen again. Suddenly, with his persuasion taken away from him, he seemed weaker, his figure less menacing. The queen stood so tall that I couldn’t even remember how she’d looked in the cave. Her skin began to glow with gold. Every line of her looked regal, unflinching and unafraid, finally ready to face the one who had brought her so much misery. The warmth from her wrapped around me in an embrace.
“You are in a castle where you don’t belong,” the queen said to Hyacinth. As she spoke, the castle stirred and sighed beneath its ivy-choked walls and soot-stained paths, as if remembering its mistress’s voice. “Go back to the woods and torment us no more.”
Hyacinth sneered at her, but already the castle was changing, revitalized by the magic of her warm presence, and as Hyacinth stood there, the thorns and ivy that had started to choke the courtyard walls began to crumple away. I heard the echo of laughter from long ago, the merry voices of villagers who had once strolled this place.
Hyacinth’s smile reappeared. To my horror, his eyes were shifting . . . molding into something that looked surprisingly like my own eyes. “Little noble lady,” he taunted. “So abruptly changed. But it is too late for you. You have made your choice, and you have decided to be forgotten.”
This was a final lie. It was not too late yet.
Beside me, the queen lifted her glowing hands. Hyacinth shrank back in terror. His faeries darted away in a uniform wave.
“You’re afraid of the light,” I said to him. “Of warmth. Fire. Life.”
“You will not do it,” he said. His voice had turned into a whimper now as he looked between the queen and me. “You know I am your only chance to fulfill your wish. We have always helped each other, Fräulein. If you turn away from me now, there is no coming back.”
“I’ve had enough of your temptations,” I replied. “You are not the guardian of my destiny. I have already found my own way. You will not take my brother, and you will not steal me away to die.”
“Everyone dies,” Hyacinth said. He laughed, a high, nervous sound. “But not everyone, my darling, will be remembered.”
I thought of what I’d written, the sonatas published under my brother’s name. I thought of our oratorio, the measures of my own that I had kept. I thought of my brother’s wide, admiring eyes, the way he would imitate my style, my composition, my music. I thought of his last words to me, his small voice, his hand in mine. It was my wish, in a form I could only now recognize.
All I’ve ever wanted was to be like you.
Perhaps I would never be remembered in the same way as my brother. Perhaps, in the world’s eyes, I would neve
r be what I wanted to be. Perhaps the only one who would ever hold me in his heart would be Woferl. But when I was gone, my work would survive, immortalized on paper, embedded in my brother’s mind. Locked away inside me, carried on through him. No one could take that piece of my soul away.
“What you offer me,” I replied, “I have already achieved.”
Hyacinth lunged toward me. The queen stepped forward, her arms outstretched, to protect me. The glow of her hands flashed a brilliant golden light, as bright as the Sun itself—and all at once, the entire castle seemed drenched in heat. Fire engulfed the dark grass near my feet, eating it away in great gulps. The queen lifted her arms to the sky, and the flames before us surged at her beckoning.
Hyacinth shrieked in anger and fear. Fire raced in a ring around me and swallowed the crooked black trees, the winding path, the vines and ivy and leaves, the clusters of mushrooms. It devoured the faeries in its path, the ivy staining the walls, the soot-charred stones. It devoured the ghosts of the past and the weight of the air. It fed on the dead silence of the castle, filling it instead with the roar of flames.
Hyacinth tried to run. He leapt over one column of fire, then another. For a moment, I thought that perhaps we would not be able to trap him at all, that he would end up escaping still into the woods, until the next time a poor fool crossed his path and he decided to use their lives for his pleasure.
Then the flames caught his arm. Hyacinth yelped, dancing in agonized fury amidst the flames and burning trees. His skin melted in the heat. His screams grew higher and higher. I watched as the flames ate away at his figure until he was no longer a tall, foreboding figure, not even the shy and mischievous boy I’d first seen so long ago, his eyes large with fear and his wide mouth twisted into a smile. He danced as he died, his body a column of fire raging in unison with everything around him.
Fräulein! he called to me as he went. Help me!
And even now, in spite of everything, I could feel the pull of his presence against my heart. But the queen and I watched in silence, until that pull weakened and weakened into nothing.
Then the fire engulfed him, and he at last turned to ash.
Before us was an empty castle, cleansed of its poison, drenched in light. The strange music that had always permeated the kingdom, the wind of Hyacinth’s whispers, was gone now. In its place lingered something different. A sound as sweet as the earth, made not of magic but of something real and warm and alive. The music of a heart.
In the sky, the moons had begun to set. For the first time, I saw the beginning of a glow at the horizon, the first hour of dawn before sunrise. I stood transfixed by the pink streaking the sky.
The queen finally turned to me, her eyes steady again. She was no longer a cursed witch, but a human, her faded wings now transformed into her velvet cloak.
I didn’t know what to say to her. What could I? I had let her stay trapped in her prison for so long. But when I couldn’t speak, she did.
“Now I am free,” she said. “And so will you be.”
I didn’t answer. I would return to my world, where Woferl would publish music and I would not. Where my future had already been laid out before me, a path that I could not hope to change.
The queen seemed to see my thoughts in my eyes, for she leaned forward and touched my chin. When she replied, I heard my mother’s voice. “It is a long battle to fight,” she said, “but you must still fight it. Speak for those less fortunate than yourself, who will need your help. Speak for the ones who will come after you, looking to you for guidance. Stay true, daughter. One day, you will see it all go up in flames.”
She smiled at me, then turned back to her empty castle. Already, I knew she would transform it, change this broken place into something worthy again. Already, I knew I would never be able to return.
I turned my back and walked away. The thorns were gone, as was the moat. I followed the path until the streets of Olmütz returned and the cathedral reappeared before me. The fire left behind an abrupt silence. No traces of the kingdom remained. Only a few streaks of ash smeared against the street, already being washed away by a light drizzle.
I wrapped my arms around myself and began the journey back to our house.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
When spring arrived again in Salzburg, and the fear of the smallpox had long since faded, my father decided it was time to begin touring again.
I saw the carriage waiting on the Getreidegasse. For a moment, I stayed in the music room, seated on the bench of the clavier, tidying the white layers of petticoats that peeked through my blue silks. Down below, Mama looked on as the coachman helped Papa drag the last of his and Woferl’s belongings into the carriage boot. They were headed to Italy, where my brother would play for the Hapsburgs and the Roman public.
The clavier, usually occupied in the mornings by Woferl, sat unopened and covered with a white cloth. I had not touched it in several weeks. Over the winter, I’d spent less of my time in this room and more time with Mama, reciting poetry with her and learning how to stitch a lace pattern.
Now I sat at the bench and ran a hand lightly across the instrument’s covered surface. My hair hung loose about my shoulders, waves and waves of it, untouched and unruly. I smoothed it back as well as I could, then pushed it behind my shoulders with a few pins. It was not unlike the style I’d worn so long ago, on the bright autumn day when a court trumpeter had come to listen to me perform. I had been eight years old then.
I had turned eighteen in January. My years of performing before an audience were over.
Finally, when I felt ready, I rose from the bench. On the Getreidegasse, I saw my brother tilt his head up toward my window. He waved a hand at me. I smiled at him, then headed downstairs.
The air was warm today, the breeze ruffling the curls of my hair. I made my way to where my brother stood alone. When he heard my footsteps against the cobblestones, his eyes lit up and he ran at me, wrapping his arms around me in a tight embrace.
“Woferl,” I said, laughing. “You are such a child, to run at me like that.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I will miss you. I’ll write you letters, of course, and tell you everything that I see. You will feel as if you are right beside me.”
I smiled at him. He had been growing steadily all winter, his limbs turning thin and awkward. Pockmarks lingered on his face from the smallpox, forever prominent, but through them I could still see the face of a young boy, at once too naïve and too mature for his age. “I will look forward to them every day,” I said. I touched his cheek. “Tell me everything, Woferl. Even what you eat for breakfast.”
He laughed. Behind him, Papa and Mama conversed in low voices with the Hagenauers. They were financing part of this trip, and I could tell in Papa’s gestures that he was thanking them for their continued generosity. Again, our rent was delayed. It was our endless state of being, teetering on the balance scale of the world, hoping always for better tidings.
“You will be safe here, with Mama?” Woferl asked. He stepped closer to me so that the others would not hear him.
I had told him, after he’d begun his recovery from the smallpox last autumn, what had happened to the kingdom on that night in Olmütz. That the kingdom was consumed by fire, that it was gone and had been rebuilt, and that we shouldn’t talk about it anymore. He had taken it all in stride, as if the end of my imagination of it was the end of his as well. Since then, I had not been visited in my dreams. Neither, I think, had he, although he did not speak of it. There were no more visions of edelweiss growing on sheet music, or silhouettes of faery creatures waiting in our music room. There was no more magic permeating our lives, aside from the magic of the real world. Of music, his and mine, real and true.
“We will be safe, I assure you,” I told him.
Woferl looked down. “Promise me you will write me too, and tell me everything. Send me your compositions. I
hope you continue to write them down. I swear to you that I will not let them end up in our father’s hands.”
“I will send what I can.” I opened my arms to Woferl and hugged him tightly.
Woferl’s voice sounded muffled against my dress. “I’ve never been without you,” he murmured.
I held him to me for a long time, savoring his embrace, and said nothing.
When Woferl finally released me and climbed into the carriage, I walked over to stand with Mama and said my goodbyes to my father. He patted my cheek and touched my nose with the tip of his finger.
“Be good, Marianne,” he said to me. “Take care of your mother.”
I nodded. He had stopped calling me Nannerl as soon as I’d turned eighteen. “Have a safe trip, Papa.”
He smiled at me. Something sad lingered in his eyes.
For a moment, I wondered if he regretted leaving me behind, that he had also regretted what he’d done in Vienna, that forces outside of his powers made him act as he did. I thought for an instant he could see something in me, and he wished he could have created more with it.
Then it was gone, as always, and he leaned in to kiss my forehead. “I will write to you and your mother,” he said.
I stayed at the music room’s window long after their carriage had vanished down the Getreidegasse. I sat until the sun had shifted the shadows in the room and my mother called for me to join her. Only then did I rise, smooth my skirts, and leave.
Before I did, I stared out the window one more time and remembered the Kingdom of Back as I had first known it, with its upside-down trees and white sand beach, the little path and the wayward signpost. I remembered that first blustery day in autumn, ten years ago, when it had appeared in my dreams. I thought I could see it again now, a ghostly image imprinted over the Getreidegasse’s wrought-iron signs and balconies, the faded castle rising up behind the buildings like a forgotten cloud.
