In the velvet, eerie stillness of the Palace—the Palace had never been this quiet before—a puff of light appeared. It cast shadows over the piles of toy soldiers and toy servants, the grand furniture in the halls, the War Table in the Gallery, and at last, over Prince Nikolai, who was still shakily, and dizzily, pulling his thoughts together. He couldn’t feel it when she—for it was a fairy—lit on the top of his tall wood hat, and preened her wings.
More puffs of light appeared, and the Gallery became brighter and brighter. They fluttered and whorled and began circling the prince, who blinked and frowned, confused at the swirling light around him and the moving shadows on the walls. In a fairy snowstorm they swept faster and faster in blurred light, lifting his eight-foot wooden body from the floor, bearing up his broken arm and sword, and with searing streaks of light—
They disappeared the prince in a puff of sparks.
The Gallery fell dark again. The stars prickled above the glass ceiling. The fairies were gone.
...All but one.
In the dim light, she struggled, flailing her arms and legs helplessly, her wings caught mid-flight.
“I saw that,” said the magician, who had just returned to the Palace, and neatly plucked her from the air before she had disappeared, too.
It might have been his first time seeing a fairy. It might have been his tenth. Unlike any other Imperian, he seemed unimpressed by the little figure in a tiny dress, struggling in a fracas of glitter.
“There are stories,” he said with a broken smile, “of fairies spiriting people away to other worlds. Is that what you fairies just did here? You took him far, far away to keep him safe from me?”
The little fairy flailed.
“No one meddles like a fairy,” Erik muttered, rolling his eyes. He reached one-handed into his vest and managed to shuffle through his handwritten music until he found Far Away Fantastique, a simple melody that wove a tune of far-off cities, mountains, and endless skies.
“So,” he said. “Let us, you and I, take a trip together. I will play us to that world, and you will show me exactly where they have taken him because you are good and decent and fair, and also I really, really don’t want to pluck your wings off. I mean, I would do it, if you made me, but I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
The fairy started to cry, which sounded like minuscule bells. Erik Zolokov rubbed his flute on his sleeve, and with the fairy stuffed in his pocket, he began to play Far Away Fantastique.
* * *
He is coming, Miss Clara Stahlbaum, to your far away country, and now you will play a part in the fairy book you hold in your hands.
Clara slammed the book shut and threw it on the floor. It slid and knocked against the nutcracker.
She couldn’t breathe; her beating heart stole all the air. The drawing room around her focused, and after a moment, Clara slowly knelt down on the rug and dared open the book again.
There it was! Her name! Miss Clara Stahlbaum.
Flushing, Clara turned to the next page, and discovered that the rest of the book was made up of blank pages.
Clara wanted to run upstairs to her mother, like a three-year-old. But because she wasn’t three years old, Clara inhaled deeply, set the nutcracker and the book both on the spinet, and stepped back, breathing deeply.
“You’re just a toy,” she told the nutcracker. “If you really were the prince, you’d be eight feet tall, like in the book.”
The nutcracker kept smiling straight ahead. Clara shook her head. Someone had sent her the book as a joke, that was all. Maybe it had even been sent to distract her from the concert tomorrow. Why anyone would do that didn’t make sense, but it made more sense than fairies.
The concert tomorrow.
Johann.
Clara fumbled with the collar of her nightgown and pulled out a silver locket, which immediately focused her thoughts.
She always wore this locket. It wasn’t expensive or grand, but it fell just right against her heart, a hard, solid piece of silver that always felt warm. Clara clicked it open, revealing a tiny black-and-white newspaper clipping featuring Johann Kahler’s face, looking downward as he played the piano.
Clara’s heart squeezed. It always did when she thought about him. And today they had met. It had gone well—really well. His eyes had lit up when he’d seen her. That surely meant something.
Clara closed the locket and pressed it between her hands, inhaling. There. That was better. The hard, warm metal in her hand was real and firm and reminded her that the world was made of concerts and Johann, not palaces and rats and nutcracker princes.
Clara’s family was used to her practicing late at night, and Clara took to the little spinet, attacking it with Johann Kahler’s Sonata. He would hear his song, all the glistening arpeggios and bright chords across the piano keys, and he would fall in love with her tomorrow.
And it would have to be tomorrow. Clara would never have another chance to see him. In two weeks, Johann Kahler would be going on concert tour to New York and beyond. He be gone most of the year. Clara knew he would be graced with so many fine ladies. None of them, she was sure, could play the piano like she did, but Johann wouldn’t know that until he heard her tomorrow night.
Clara played and played, and was just reaching the climax of the song, when she stopped. Out of the corner of her vision, the nutcracker’s eyes twinkled at her.
Hesitating, Clara took her hands from the keyboard and peered at the nutcracker, who only stared ahead, smiling. He really was a fine little thing, Clara thought, with gleaming gold buttons, polished wood, and tiny painted insignia. Something about him felt more than wood, and goosebumps ran up Clara’s arms.
“I wonder what I could sell you for,” she said.
The light in the nutcracker’s eyes seemed to twinkle a little less.
“Sorry,” said Clara, surprised at how bad she felt for saying that. “Money’s been a bit tight since my father died. Oh—there. You’ve had a hard time of it, too, haven’t you? Rats, fairies, a magician flutist, and now here I am, trying to sell you.”
Clara straightened him nicely on the spinet and gracefully smoothed her nightgown.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she said. “It really is quite an honor to have you as my guest. When guests come to call, I usually play them a song. May I play one for you?”
The nutcracker toy, of course, could not protest, and Clara played the first chord in her Johann Kahler’s Sonata, and then instantly changed her mind. This was a princely guest, after all, and he deserved his own song, not Johann Kahler’s.
“Key of E,” said Clara, fingering the chord. “Because you’re an emperor. E, for Emperor, you see? No—E flat. Because you’re not quite an emperor yet and—” Clara grinned. “E flat is an easier key. I’m a cheat. There. And now, B flat, because you’re brave. B.”
Clara began the song as a strong, jaunty march, the proud march of a king at the front of a parade. The melody leapt into a spriggish jig.
“And you have courage,” Clara continued. “It takes mountains of courage to face giant rats. C—”
And the song segued into a faster melody, one of dashing through the forest on horseback, staccatoed chords of jabs and cuts and slashes of fighting a rat.
“Key change! G,” said Clara, moving to G position and into a genial, good-humored run of arpeggios. “And you’re kind. That’s important, too. Back to C again, sorry. No K at the piano, I’m afraid.”
Clara played, lost in the song. It thrilled to her fingers, vibrated in the air and made it alive with shimmering notes. She felt actual courage when she played it, hitting the keys louder and stronger, and when she played kindness, it softened her soul, playing the notes as gently as Prince Nikolai had remembered his father in the meadow. The song, in fact, was so depthful and real—
—that Clara stopped playing. Her fingers rested on the keys.
“Two years,” she said. “I have been working on Johann’s Sonata for two years. And on the eve of the
concert...I pound this song out in five minutes on a spinet. I can’t understand it. Why does your song have so much more life to it?”
The nutcracker, of course, said nothing. But his eyes almost seemed to have a glimmer of smugness in them.
“Don’t let that go to your head,” said Clara. She sighed and fished the locket once more from her nightgown and pressed it between her hands. Leaning her head against the spinet fallboard, she allowed her thoughts to whirl with future plans. This time tomorrow, after a flawless performance, she would be in Johann Kahler’s arms, and the whispered promise of a life full of music.
The clock on the mantle chimed midnight.
Clara awoke with a start. Her cheekbone throbbed. She’d dozed off at the spinet, the locket still clenched in her palm. Wiping drool from her cheek, she blearily took in the nutcracker, still atop the Clara and the Nutcracker Prince book on the spinet.
She felt unsettled. Something had woken her up, but Clara saw nothing unusual and only heard silence.
No...not silence. There was an odd ringing in her ears. It almost stung. And it was growing louder. The louder it grew, the more it spread within her. It was a flute, Clara realized, as it swelled. She could hear it outside herself as well. It echoed across the walls of their tiny drawing room, and even though it vibrated through every part of her and was almost a little painful, it was beautiful and wistful and shimmering like a bell, and it wove a wistful melody through her veins and swept around her. Clara’s heart thudded, remembering the last words from her book:
He is coming.
Clara stood quickly, and just as she did, the room around her bloomed.
The furniture whorled around her. The small, spindly tree in the corner grew. Branches thickly filled it in and spread through it as the pine and ornaments towered over Clara. Clara stumbled back, hitting the spinet keys with a cacophonous ppfaaaang. The tree shot up in the ceiling overhead, which expanded into blackness and prickled with stars.
Clara choked on cold air. She’d experienced something like this before, when she’d read the book that came with the nutcracker. But instead of experiencing a scratched half-dream, Clara was now dunked entirely into a new world. The floor beneath her softened, and Clara tumbled forward.
She fell elbow deep into snow. Clara cried aloud, twisting around, snow dusting her. The piano was gone. The drawing room was gone. The spinet was gone, but the book that had been on it had fallen next to her, and so had the nutcracker. And like the tree, he had become huge! And heavy. His unmoving eight-foot form had had fallen feet-first into the snow, and only the tip of his black hat stuck out.
Clara swallowed, grasping her bearings. Great black pine trees towered over her, and the shadows that had once been on the mantle, the sofa, the spinet, grew prickly against the wall of the pines, and fleshed and layered thickly into—
“Rats,” Clara whispered, her heart jolting.
The simple flute melody exploded into sound. Snarls deeper than a wolf and the rustle of trees everywhere and the hefty panting and hairless paws hitting snow and scattering it as the flute wove circles of melody up and down the scale; the rats danced to it, running around and around in circles. Clara found herself in the center of a maelstrom of wolf-sized rats, racing around her in textures of gray and black fur. The flash of claws and teeth and yellow eyes. The stench of mud and the snake of tails.
I’m having a nightmare, she feverishly thought. I read that stupid book and now I’m having this awful dream and any moment I will wake up!
Clara stumbled to her feet and then fell again, scattering snow over and the book and nutcracker hat behind her. Lifting her eyes, just in front of the leaping rats, she saw a still figure.
He stood just a length from her, finishing the song. Clara knew who he was. This was the magician from the book. Erik Zolokov. The person who had turned all the children and soldiers into toys, and was now controlling the rats.
Clara remembered the book had described him as handsome, and he did have brilliant gold hair and strong, flawless features. But his eyes were so cold that Clara immediately disliked him. She almost felt repulsed. More, even, than by the rats. She scrambled back.
For a moment, without the flute, there was silence. The huff and paws of rats still running around her felt distant; Clara heard the rustle of pine, and felt the frigid air. She swallowed, and it filled her ears. Clara hadn’t realized how much that melody had been running through her veins and muscles until it wasn’t there. A new sound that was rather disconnected and irregular, like a melodious cough, sounded. Erik Zolokov was laughing.
He seemed unconcerned by the giant rats—there had to be at least twenty that still ran around them—simply wiping the mouthpiece of his flute on his sleeve.
“There, see, that wasn’t so bad,” he said, but not to Clara. He plucked a little orb of light from his vest pocket, and it shone in the dark. A fairy, Clara realized.
The magician shook it a little by the wings, and little glitters fell.
“I appreciate your help,” he said. “You are now free to go...tickle badgers. Or whatever fairies do for fun.”
He released her, and she sprang from his fingertips and streaked a safe distance above his head. Then she dove at his head, stopped just behind it, and gave it a little kick. Then she streamed off angrily in a trail of light. Erik Zolokov, rubbing where his head had been kicked, smiled, and turned.
His eyes caught Clara, huddled in the snow. His smile faded a little.
“Hello,” he said.
He stepped toward her. Clara fumbled back, tripped over the nutcracker hat, and fell again in a poof of snow. Rats surrounded them, and Clara was stuck staring at a trouser leg in front of her, pulling her eyes up to his chest and face, which looked down at her curiously. He didn’t wear a coat, only a vest and a white linen shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He crouched down, and he smiled at her. Clara did not like his smile. It was the smile of someone who wasn’t actually smiling.
“I came to your world to fetch a nutcracker,” he said. “I certainly did not expect to bring along a pretty girl as well. By the saints, life is full of surprises.”
His brows furrowed, examining her intently, his eyes raking over her. He took in her tangled hair, her snow-flecked nightgown, her boots. Clara felt as though his eyes were unfolding her.
“Why would the fairies send him to you?” he said.
It wasn’t a question; it was an insult.
Erik Zolokov straightened to his feet, and with flute in one hand, he offered the other to Clara.
“See here,” he said. “You can’t stay in the North Forest. It’s too cold and once I leave, the rats won’t be under my spell anymore. They’ll eat you. I would feel quite bad about that, you know, you’ve done nothing wrong.” With a voice that had overtones of someone who was very put-upon, the magician said: “I can take you as far as the Palace. After that, you’re on your own.”
Clara stared at his hand. Her heart and thoughts raced.
He’s just turned all the children into toys, she thought. Why is he talking about feeling bad and helping me? It doesn’t make sense.
But then, she added in her head, none of this was making sense.
The magician waited a moment longer with his hand outstretched, then shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.”
He turned on his heel, and as he left her, he brought the rosewood flute to his lips. Clara heard and felt him play the music, a beautiful, trilling piece that reminded her of glistening chandeliers and massive fireplaces, and Erik Zolokov vanished before her eyes.
The spell on the rats broke. Their formation shattered. The world became full of endless rat feet and flashing claws. Clara was knocked back and all she saw was rat fur, black snow, the blur of the moon, and streaks of yellow eyes. In a panic, she crouched behind the Nutcracker hat that stuck out of the snow as a makeshift barrier, and clenched her eyes shut.
When she opened them, a rat stared back at her. Their noses we
re almost touching. Clara was frozen. It opened its cavernous mouth, revealing rows of pointed teeth and two large front ones, soft gray tongue, the black of a throat, the overwhelming thickness of rat breath...
I’m going to die, Clara thought feverishly. She braced herself—
A bright silver sword slid upward from the snow beneath the rat, and impaled it with a sshnk.
The rat’s eyes became glassy. Its mouth shut and it exhaled with a dying weeeeeeeeeee.
“My land,” Clara squeaked.
The sword flung the rat from it, sending it several feet away with a thumphf and a splatter of blood.
Several things happened all at once. Rats dove toward Clara. The sword from the snow flashed. The ground beneath Clara moved and caved in, and emerging from the white, the giant nutcracker rose, moving and alive, fighting his way out of the snow and swinging his sword at the rats and throwing them back from Clara.
Clara’s veins were ice, frozen at the spectacle. The nutcracker was actually alive! She stared, taking him in. And there was a lot to take in. His giant wooden figure was all joints and angles and straights, no bend or softness to it him all. Even in the darkness of the forest, his painted red and gold shone, and his tufted white hair and beard almost glowed. He fought with irregular speed and dexterity, as though wooden toy blocks had been tied together with rubber and slingshotted with each movement. Two, three more rats fell in the wake of his sword, and as he sliced and jabbed, more ran away squealing. Clara continued staring. It was frightening and horrifying and fascinating all at once.
The giant nutcracker, his sword still flashing in the moonlight, turned his head all the way around. His big green eyes fixed on Clara.
“Are you all right, Miss Clara?” he said.
Clara fled.
She couldn’t help it. The shock of it, the rats and the forest and the magician and the fairy and then a giant toy with wild hair and big ears and massive eyes and a mouth that opened and shut like a window shade all staring at her backwards and talking unfroze her feet and she ran. She ran and ran, sinking into the snow and tripping over tree roots and rocks, trying to flee the symphony of snarls and squeals and a giant living toy. She had to wake up.
The Enchanted Sonata Page 6
