“Forgive me my unbelief,” said Nutcracker, his eyes wide.
“This passage hwill deliver you to safety,” she said.
“My word,” said Clara.
“Can you hold the rats off without us?” said Nutcracker. “Long enough for us to break the spell and dispatch soldi—?”
“Of course we can!” said Mother Svetlana briskly, practically shoving Nutcracker and Clara into the tunnel. Nutcracker had to almost fold up to fit through the altar entrance. “God hwill protect us hwith the use of hweapons He has sent us.”
“Um—” Nutcracker began. “How in the world did you all get so. Many. Rifles??”
“Go!”
“Did God teach you how to shoot as well?” said Nutcracker. “Possibly?”
Mother Svetlana shoved him into the passage, and he clattered. With Clara, she paused and put a hand on her shoulder, and smiled. As indomitable as Mother Svetlana was—or hwas—she certainly could smile as brightly as the sonatina.
“Godspeed, fairy-blessed child,” she said.
A nun came up from behind Mother Svetlana and handed her a rifle from a large, prickly bouquet of rifles in her arms. Mother Svetlana took it, looking very much at home with it. With a swipe of her arm, she slid the panel shut, drenching Clara and Nutcracker in full darkness. Her voice, however, boomed straight through the marble...and probably through the entire Abbey: HWHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS ASSAULT UPON OUR DEFENSELESS HARBOR OF PEACE??!?? KEEP YOUR MOUTH BRIDLED OR HWE HWILL TEAR YOUR LIMBS FROM YOUR VERY BODIES—
Clara somehow knew that the nuns would be all right.
Clara and Nutcracker descended the cold, damp stairwell, Clara’s hand tucked awkwardly in Nutcracker’s paddle-hand, her other tucked into the giant coat pocket. She absently touched the chords of Johann Kahler’s Sonata against the fairy book inside the pocket, thinking of her concert dress.
It had been an expensive dress, one she had saved up for with many hours of piano teaching. It was worth it. A confection of satin and lace, feminine blue with ribbons at the sleeves. The neckline sloped around the shoulders, revealing her collarbone and dipping in the back. It brought out the blue in Clara’s eyes and cinched just right at the waist.
Clara had spent many hours in her world thinking about that dress. The billowing skirts, the shimmer of satin, and mostly, Johann’s face when he saw her in it. Now, she had to think about it, because if she didn’t, she would realize how cold, tired, hungry, and worried she was, and how her boots went squawsh squawsh squawsh whenever she stepped, and how she probably looked like a drowned rat and needed to be back soon so she could wash and fix her hair. Dress, Clara thought, and her imagination filled with Johann.
The tunnel leveled to an underground river, and they edged the stone walkway beside it, cavernous arches above them (not unlike the arches in the Abbey). Nutcracker peered up at them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said to Clara.
“You do?” said Clara quickly. She had been thinking, And then his brows will raise, just a little, and his eyes will brighten…
“Yes. You’re thinking, Why is there a tunnel here?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Clara. “Why is there a tunnel here?”
“I actually don’t know. I suppose we’ll find out! Who knew? I mean, besides the nuns? There are rumors of course that there are old tunnels beneath Krystallgrad. But I thought they were just that—rumors. What a discovery! Do you see the spider vaults, there? This was built at the same time as the Abbey, nearly five hundred years ago. Those lamps up there, though—do you see—they have gas canisters! Ha. Those Indomitable Sisters. One step ahead of us all. How are you, Clara?”
His wooden hand gripped hers tightly. Clara realized he was just as nervous and as worried as she was. Probably more so.
“Cold,” said Clara, smiling. “But not getting eaten by rats.”
“The best of temporary states,” Nutcracker sagely agreed. “We shall endeavor to keep it that way. Don’t you worry. We’ll find Erik Zolokov and his music. And we’ll have you play the song that breaks the spell. The Make Everything Right Again Song.”
Clara laughed aloud.
“I don’t think he’d name any of his songs that,” she said, still laughing, and now Nutcracker was laughing along with her. “Maybe something more like Reparation Rondo...or Mend-up Minuet.”
“Mend-up Minuet,” Nutcracker echoed between laughs. “Mend this Mess Minuet.”
“Humanesque Humoresque,” said Clara.
“Humanesque Humoreque,” snorted Nutcracker, laughing so hard it filled the cavernous darkness, and little painted tears dotted the corners of his eyes. Clara was laughing, too. It was nice to laugh, instead of worry.
“Whatever the name of the song,” said Nutcracker, “We’ll find it, and you’ll break the spell in no time.”
Clara squeezed his hand in excitement.
“And then I’ll be home,” she said.
Nutcracker was silent. At last he said:
“I expect you’re excited to go.”
“Yes,” said Clara, and she hastily added: “I’ll help as much as I can before eight o’clock tonight, of course. I don’t expect if I play the song everyone will turn back. The magician had to go to each city to turn the children into toys, so they probably have to be closer to the music. There are other pianists here in Imperia, though, aren’t there?”
“Hm? What? Oh, yes. There are. Very good ones.”
“I can help them learn the music,” said Clara, “and they can play after I’m gone.”
Nutcracker looked skeptical. “Do you think they can play the magic?”
“Of course they could,” said Clara reassuringly. “I’m certain anyone could do it. They just need to play the song well enough. You could even break the spell, if you practiced long enough.”
“I don’t think we want to wait around for ten years,” Nutcracker said. “And it really would take that long. I had piano lessons, when I was little.”
“You did?” said Clara, surprised.
“Oh yes, I had every lessons,” said Nutcracker, grinning back. “You know, I could never quite understand those little dots on those lines, it was all nonsense to me. So I just played what sounded right. And when I did, my tutor would strike my hands with a little wooden ruler. Every day I would leave with long welts across my knuckles.”
Impulsively, Clara touched the back of his large paddle-hand. None of her teachers had ever done that to her.
“One day, Drosselmeyer saw my hands and immediately dismissed the tutor. And that was that. Haven’t touched a piano since. Careful,” he added, helping Clara over a clump of misshapen stones. The air smelled of ice, and high above, the tiny flickering gas lamps cast highlights over the lapping water. “You know, Clara, the General isn’t all that bad. The fairy book was a little hard on him, I thought. Except for the part where he locked me in the Gallery. The Gallery! I was this close to proving myself as a real leader, and—he locks me away like a child! If he would’ve just given me an ounce of trust—”
“You really think that’s why he locked you in?” Clara interrupted. “Because he doesn’t trust you?”
“Of course that’s why, Clara. He wouldn’t trust me with a marshmallow cannon.”
But Clara remembered how pale Drosselmeyer had been, running into the Gallery and seeing Nikolai being turned into a nutcracker. He’d been as white as his hair.
“Maybe it was because he was afraid to lose you,” said Clara.
Nutcracker laughed aloud—then hastily turned it into a cough.
“Yes, I’m certain that’s it,” he said, in an infuriatingly polite voice.
“That’s the same voice you use,” said Clara, “when you disagree with your servants but don’t want them to feel bad. It won’t work on me. Does Drosselmeyer have any family?”
“Not really, no.”
“Just you.”
“Well, yes,” said Nutcracker. “But I wouldn’t
exactly say we’re family. He’s more like—the distant great-uncle once-removed that no one really wants to talk to. He got on well with my father, of course. But to be fair, everyone got on well with my father.”
Nutcracker’s tall figure somehow seemed to sag a little. His large feet clock clack clock clacked against the damp stone a little slower. Clara had grown used to Nutcracker’s sounds by now; the clack of his hard feet against the stone, the wooden scrape of his arm against his torso, the pinging of his sword as it knocked against his lanky stride; the clatter of his mouth and teeth as he spoke. The hard-yet-comforting chorus of wooden blocks, a Symphony of Nutcracker for Percussion. Clara had grown fond of it, and hated to see him unhappy. She remembered what the fairy book had said: Nikolai’s father had been assassinated.
“He sounds like he was a good man,” she said quietly. “Your father.”
Nutcracker said, “The best.”
Clara didn’t press for more, but she gripped his hand a little tighter. She knew exactly how he felt.
“They never found who killed him. A great mystery, his assassin. It was someone who hated him, obviously. Hated him as much as Erik Zolokov hates me, I’d guess. Hated him enough to shoot him. Three shots to the chest. Crack, crack, crack. Then they ran off. Oh, there was a search, a great search, they found the pistol, but the assassin was never found.”
The brilliance in Nutcracker’s eyes had dimmed.
“I didn’t know about it all until the next morning, when the attendants were draping the windows in black and scattering rose petals all over the floor. Drosselmeyer told me. I ran off, like a child. Took a horse and galloped on through the gardens and out the back gate and into the mountains and kept riding, almost to Rat Territory. I was twelve, mind you, the rats could’ve eaten me in one bite if they found me. Eventually I dismounted and fell to the ground and...I cried, Clara. Like a baby. Bit embarrassing to say so now.”
The pink circles on Nutcracker’s cheeks had painted in a little darker. Was this the first time he had told anyone he’d done this? Clara’s cheeks blushed as well, and she felt a fond sympathy for the prince.
“I saw a fairy, Clara,” Nutcracker said at last. “When I was carrying on like an idiot, all crying into my knees. She stood on my boot. Bright and pretty as new snow. Dark hair, little crown. I think she might have been the Fairy Queen. The Fairy Queen! Visiting me! Ha. She didn’t say anything of course. Fairies don’t, you know. All she did was cry.”
“Cry?”
“Yes. She wept with me. She leaned up against my trouser leg and sobbed and sobbed. When she’d finally finished, she wiped her face on my stocking and flew away. It left a little silver smudge on my sock,” Nutcracker added, amused.
“Oh, Highness,” said Clara. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it came out in the wash.”
“No—I mean, about losing your father,” said Clara. “I’m so sorry, Nikolai.”
Nutcracker said nothing for a while, but his large wooden hand held hers tightly. The gas lamps above them flickered as they walked on.
“It was over five years ago,” Nutcracker said at last. “Long enough to stop being angry about it. But I’m not. It eats me inside, like a...a rat. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like there’s a rat inside me, devouring me. I get so angry I...I want to kill whoever did it. Not often,” Nutcracker quickly amended, “but—too often, I think. I’ve imagined it, over and over—I’d face him with my rifle, and I’d say: You stole the life of one of the world’s best men, you miserable gryaz. You don’t deserve to live.”
There was a moment where the only sound was the rushing water against the cavernous walls.
“And then what?” said Clara.
Nutcracker paused.
“Five thousand points,” he said, and he then said nothing more.
The odd answer made Clara shiver. He thinks that killing someone, she thought, will make that rat inside him go away. That it will turn things right.
And maybe it would, though Clara doubted it. There were trials and prison and even emperors couldn’t just kill people. And besides, killing someone...it broke you inside, didn’t it? It was difficult to think of someone as good as Nutcracker being that angry.
Both Clara and Nutcracker were silent for a long while. Clara thought of her father, who had died of consumption. He simply took ill, faded like a low candle, and passed like a sigh. Clara still burned a candle for him at church. It didn’t make her angry, but she missed him and his music so much that it ached.
Clara felt like she was about to cry, so she quickly changed the subject to the one pressing upon them.
“Why is Erik Zolokov doing this?” she said. “This whole thing?”
“No idea,” said Nutcracker. “I don’t even know who he is. I haven’t even become Emperor yet. But he hates me, Clara. I saw it in his eyes. They’re like glass that’s been shattered and warped by too much heat. And it’s his anger that worries me. Much more than his magic. That anger reminds me of me.”
The tunnel ended sooner than they had expected, easing up into stairs, far above the river below, to a door the same size and shape as the altar panel. It was locked. Nutcracker was in full favor of punching a hole through it (which he probably could do) but Clara suggested they try knocking first.
In a click of a moment, the door swung outward to reveal a small, brightly-lit telegraph room, and three nuns pointing rifles at them. When they saw it was a mess of a girl and a giant nutcracker, the rifles went down and the nuns were all smiles.
“Oh, it’s you,” said one, who had multiple dimples.
“Yes, us, I suppose God told you we were coming, did He?” said Nutcracker, eyeing the telegraph machine in the corner. Clara elbowed him.
“I mean, thank you,” Nutcracker revised.
The nuns did not lollygag. In the time it had taken Clara and Nutcracker to reach the telegraph office at the Indomitable Abbey Station, as Mother Svetlana had promised, the nuns had transcribed the telegraph from the Abbey, sent word out about the giant nutcracker and the girl who could break the spell, wired the alert to search for Erik Zolokov, and—most strikingly—had broken into the train sitting outside the station, and had fired up the engine. Clara stared out the window at it, agape. The train blazed with yellow windows and steam, East Starii Line painted across the side. It looked like one of Fritz’s toy trains, painted red edged with gold. Even the hubs of the wheels had big glass gems in their centers.
Beside them, stacked in neat little rows from shortest—six-inch—to tallest (probably fourteen-inch)—stood lines of nutcracker toys. They must have been the regiment who had stopped there the night before, Clara remembered. Just like the fairy book had said. The nuns, all order, had lined them up since then.
“This will get you to Krystallgrad within two hours,” said the dimply nun with crooked teeth, hustling Clara to the telegraph station door. “If you can drive it. And if the rats don’t go after it, that is.”
Nutcracker was still frowning at the telegraph machine.
“You know,” he said. “I feel I ought to make you aware that there is a fine and possibly even a prison sentence for unauthorized use of—”
The nuns shoved Nutcracker and Clara out the telegraph station door, across the platform, and onto the steaming train. They slid the door shut with a clang, and that was that. Somehow, Clara and Nutcracker were supposed to take this empty train themselves to Krystallgrad.
Nutcracker actually did know how to drive a train—sort of. The year before, as a soldier, he’d been stationed in the Derevo line and had spent time in the engine, shoveling coal and learning about the pipes and dials and all the extraordinary workings of a steam engine. The engineers drove, of course, but he had learnt all the bits, shovel, coal, brake, whistle, chain, firebox, boiler gauge, excellent! We’ll be in Krystallgrad and get Erik Zolokov and his music in no time at all, don’t you worry, Miss Clara.
Clara wasn’t worried, but she was overwhelmed...and
hungry. She left Nutcracker to it as he released the brake and brought the train to life, slowly swaying and shuddering from the station. In moments, Clara had crossed over the coupler from the engine, edged along the coal car, freezing wind whipping at the hem of her overlarge greatcoat, and heaved into the next traincar door, hoping to find something to eat.
Clara had never seen anything like a Trans-Imperian passenger train. She’d been to Berlin and once to Salzburg on a train, but the seats were not brocaded velvet and the lights were not chandeliers, and it had always smelled of smoke and Too Many People. This train smelled of perfume, tea leaves, and wood polish.
Clara walked down all fifteen of the railcars, fingers brushing the high-backed mahogany and velvet seats, the textures playing melodies under her touch. Glistening light fixtures dipped crystals from the ceilings, three to each car, sending rainbows dancing across the oil paintings hanging between the curtained windows. In the center of each car was a spiral staircase, leading up to a small mezzanine with a glass dome, where one could get a better view of the passing countryside. Clara dared climb one, seeing the pine trees whip past faster and faster.
There were cars of dining tables and silk tablecloths, cabinets with china strapped down, but Clara didn’t find food until she reached the final car: the kitchen. It had stoves, pantries, and even a sink with a silver water pump.
And a mirror. Clara’s reflection squelched her appetite. Her hair looked like a rat had made a nest in it, and her face was streaked with mud. Immediately she set to work washing up, brushing her hair with her fingers, braiding, scrubbing, until she looked human again. The dishes in the cabinets clattered gently with the movement of the train.
Clara arrived back at the engine bearing a tray of steaming tea, a package of gingerbread cakes, and two chocolates. The warm air pleasantly burned her skin. She paused, seeing Nutcracker shovel heap after heap of coal into the firebox at the front of the engine, and for a moment, just took him in. Stiff, awkward motions of bending joints, arcing straights, up downs, scattering soot as he ladled coal into the flaming hearth. She’d only been with him a short while, but she’d already become accustomed to his cloggy gait, painted-wood smell, big eyes and tufted hair. She hardly even noticed he was a giant nutcracker anymore.
The Enchanted Sonata Page 11
