Nutcracker was silent for a moment, then said:
“You didn’t have him take you home.”
“Of course I couldn’t!” said Clara, face hot. “I couldn’t leave you in the Palace like that!”
Nutcracker’s head slid around face her, his giant eyes mildly taking her in.
“Why, Clara,” he said. “You almost make it sound like you might care for me a little. How odd. I thought you were in love with Johann Kahler.”
“I am,” said Clara hotly. “That doesn’t mean I want you to be a toy! You’re—you’re good and kind and—a good emperor and—” Clara continued in an impeccable impersonation of Drosselmeyer: “You don’t even have an heir!”
Nutcracker blinked at her. The blink turned into a chuckle, and the chuckle turned into laughter, and before Clara knew why, she and Nutcracker were laughing and laughing, until they cried, and although both their worlds seemed crumbled around them, Clara felt better. A little.
“I don’t want you to become a toy,” she said quietly, wiping her face on a cloth napkin.
“I don’t disagree with you,” Nutcracker agreed.
“So...what do we do now?”
“I don’t know, Clara. I suppose we’re at the mercy of the fairies.”
“Fairies? I thought you said they were fickle.”
“They are. Absolutely no help at all. I trust them as much as I trust wet gunpowder.”
Fairies. Clara agreed with Nutcracker on this topic: she didn’t know what to think about them. Thoughtfully, she opened the fairy book that was lying beside her on the table. The train explosion had frayed the sides of the book, and Clara’s topple in the snow had wrinkled the pages. It was still legible, however, and Clara began flipping through.
“If we’re at the mercy of fairies,” she said, “there might be something in here that could help us.”
She turned to the pages after the map, and found them filled with words. Nutcracker glanced over her shoulder, and became more involved as it detailed the boiler exploding on the train, Polichinelle’s Emporium, and preparing for battle. It told about Clara and Nutcracker fighting on the Polichinelle balcony. Clara flushed at this part. And it told about their failed Palace siege.
Clara flipped onward through the pages, half-hoping there would be more words added for guidance.
And there were. A new chapter had formed over the previously blank page. It began oddly, as though starting a new book: Erik Zolokov was born in a small home on the outskirts of Lesnov…
Clara shuddered as a cold gust of air swept over her, and she sensed the dark snow-covered pines towering above, blocking the walls of candies. She felt it as she read. She glanced at Nutcracker.
“Erik Zolokov,” she said.
“This might be something, Clara,” said Nutcracker. “Go on.”
Clara turned to the book again. The world faded around them, and the words painted ice and forests beyond the table.
Erik Zolokov was born in a small home on the outskirts of Lesnov, just beyond the wall and before the Midnight Forest. His father cut wood and his mother mended clothes. They had thin shirts and thin soup and thin blankets but the soup was hot and the shirts were clean and everyone in the family—Erik, his mother and father, and his younger siblings, Sergei and Anna, were happy.
Erik’s first memory was the sound of his mother singing. Before he could walk, he could tap the rhythm of it. By the age of two, he could fill bowls and tin cups with water and ting the different pitches of it, and sing along. Erik’s father saw that the boy had a talent, and he carved a wood flute for him. Erik took to it like a bird to song. In no time, he could charm the chickens from their little hut and the sparrows from their branches. He played for Sergei and Baby Anna, who would clap and laugh with the music. He could make melodies sound like sugar, which he had only tasted once, but could somehow replicate.
By the time he was four, he was slipping from the pews during church to hide behind the organ bench and study the music and the keys. He found a plank of wood and drew the keys across it, black and white, and tapped his fingers against them. His parents watched, unsure of what to do. They would never have the money for a piano.
Erik began stealing away at night, like a mischievous shadow. His parents didn’t know it until, one day, just as the congregation was leaving church, the organ began playing by itself. A brilliant melody, one that made everything around it more stunning. It was simple, but true, and they all thought at first it was the music of angels.
Closer inspection revealed that the organ was not playing by itself. It was Erik tucked behind the console, his feet dangling above the foot pedals, his lips pursed in a tight smile of enjoyments and concentration, his hands dancing across the great and swell. His parents scolded and apologized to the priest and hurriedly brought him home in a cloud of embarrassment.
Erik was six.
That very evening, Erik’s father called him in early from his chores. Seated in the wooden chair by the fire was the Baron Vasilii, the wealthiest man in the city. He had a great beard and a coat with sable collar and cuffs, and he was so large. He looked as though he’d never missed a meal. His mother was handing the Baron some thin tea, and Sergei and Anna were hiding behind the table, watching with wide eyes.
“Boy,” said his father, who was a kind man but had a face of frowns and lines. “The Baron heard you play the organ in church today.”
Erik looked at the man tenuously. The Baron leaned forward and looked back at Erik, seeming to take in the boy’s thin face and threadbare coat, but said nothing. He did not have unhappy eyes.
“He says he wants to be your benefactor,” said Erik’s father.
Confusion crossed Erik’s face.
“It means,” Erik’s mother gently translated, “he will pay for you to study music in St. Ana. He says if you’re good enough—and he thinks you are—that you could one day play in Krystallgrad.”
Erik stared at the Baron, dumbfounded. Krystallgrad. It was like naming a city in a fairy tale. And music...a person could study music? All those pages with dots and lines that he saw on the organ at church, he’d finally learn how to understand it? He could stitch melodies together all day and never have to cut his hands raw from chopping wood.
The realization must have shone in Erik’s face. The old Baron’s beard twitched with the hint of a smile, but he said nothing.
And then Erik saw his family, Sergei and Anna looking at him with wide eyes, and his mother, smiling with difficulty, and his father, who only looked back at Erik. Erik hesitated, and said:
“I would have leave home?”
His mother, still smiling, nodded.
“You can always write,” the Baron spoke at last, in a voice that filled their tiny home. “And they can visit, of course. St. Ana is but a ten-hour train ride away, not far at all. I’m there but every Michaelmas.”
Erik was only six, but even he knew his family could hardly afford ink and paper, let alone train tickets. If he left, it would only be him, and music, and nothing else. He looked down at his hands, then back up and the Baron.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I will be a woodcutter, like my father.”
A range of emotions crossed the faces in the room. Confusion, surprise, relief, and a deeper frown. The thickness of it could be sliced and scraped on bread.
Erik’s father was wordless. He fumbled with his cap, then straightened and said in a firm and hard voice:
“You are not. You are leaving with the Baron. Tonight.”
“No,” said Erik.
“Pack your things.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You are, boy.”
“Then,” said Erik, backing away, “catch me first!”
He fled. Out the rickety door, into the Midnight Forest. He’d played here often and knew every brook and rock and easily escaped over the fallen logs and twisted roots. He ran, and ran, and ran. He ran until the crickets chirruped and the sun was a cheese wheel cut against t
he mountain. He ran until his chest burned and his eyes streamed and his feet were numb and he was lost. The world was a canvas of blue-green.
He climbed a tree to see where he was, and didn’t come down, instead taking in the landscape of velvet green and all colors of red and purple. He was maybe crying, he didn’t know, and didn’t care. He wondered if his father had run after him, but doubted it. His father had a limp. The Baron looked like he hadn’t run in years.
If he returned home now, would he be sent away with the Baron? Probably. Erik decided to stay in the forest for the night. It was almost summer and warmer, and he knew how to burrow in dried pine boughs. He’d come back the next morning when the Baron was gone, and his parents hopefully wanted him again. He closed his eyes, and tapped on the branch in front of him, music.
When he opened his eyes again, the sun was just setting, and he heard voices.
They came from below, accompanied by hoofbeats. Erik’s heart jumped, frightened that his father had come after him—and calmed, hearing how unfamiliar the voices were. Possibly soldiers—the regiments were stationed not far from here—except one voice was young, and the other old. Older than Erik’s father. Erik watched curiously as the man—dressed in a regimental uniform—and the boy, who looked Erik’s age, dismounted. They were altogether unremarkable. Their horses, however, had a fine-brushed sheen. Erik held his breath, curious.
“Do you see that, my boy?” said the man, crouching down to examine a birch tree trunk, a length away from the tree Erik was in.
“It’s been scratched,” said the boy, crouching down to mimic the man’s position, and looking intently at the tree base.
“Just so. Deeply, see? It’s marking it for the other rats.”
“There’s one over there, too, on that tree!”
“Mount, Nikolai. Quickly.”
* * *
“Nikolai!” said Clara, jolting them both from the story. She blinked away the images of musty forests and moss still in her head, and looked at Nutcracker. “That’s you?”
Nutcracker’s odd-shaped mouth arced in a sort of stiff frown.
“Go on, Clara,” was all he said.
Clara obediently read on, as the chilly pine air engulfed them:
* * *
“Mount, Nikolai. Quickly.”
“Why?” said the boy, obediently pulling his horse forward to mount it.
“When rats scratch the trees like this, it means more rats are coming. It has been a quiet winter in the Midnight Forest—I fear they’ve been overbreeding and now, they’re hungry. They’re coming.”
“A volnakrii?”
“Yes.”
The air was tight, as though the world held its breath. Erik, who lived by noticing sounds, realized the evening birds had ceased singing, and the crickets no longer chirruped. The man and the boy mounted their horses quickly.
“Nikolai, do you remember how to get back to the regiments?”
“Due northeast.”
“Good boy. I need you to ride there as fast as you can. Tell the General a volnakrii is coming. He will get the regiments together to fight it. I will ride as fast as I can to Lesnov and warn everyone on my way. With luck we can get the word on the wires and get everyone within the wall before the rats come.”
The boy saluted, and managed to mount his horse. With the snap of reins, he urged his horse into a gallop through the trees. The man did the same thing but the other way, in the direction of Erik’s home. Their horses left clumps of unturned earth.
Erik remained staring downward, the dim outlines of their faces burned into his vision.
A volnakrii. Erik knew what that was. A rat surge. They came with little warning and overran everything in their path. Erik forgot about the Baron and St. Ana and even music, he only knew he had to get home and warn his family that rats were coming.
In a moment he was running through the wood, branches tearing at his coat, his feet snagging on mossy roots. He’d run out too far, and before he knew it, the sky was pitch black and he was lost.
He recognized the smell first. His father had warned him about this smell. Rotting flesh and mud-matted fur and rancid hot breath. Panic seizing him, Erik climbed the nearest tree, almost to the top of the forest canopy, and gripped it tightly as the rats came.
They flowed like spring runoff, a muddy river in the moonlight beneath him, hardly more than streaks of moving shadows. Flashes of teeth. Hoarse gasping. Worms of tails. Erik cried aloud and rats scratched at the base of his tree, trying to climb up the twiggy branches, which broke under their weight. They snarled and rejoined the flow of rats headed for the valley. The staccato of rifles and cannon shattered the air. The Imperian Army.
It wasn’t until morning, long after the cannon had faded and the rats had gone, that Erik slipped from his tree and dared to run home, recognizing in the morning light where he was.
And when he arrived home, there was none.
The grey-planked walls had been scratched and torn, trampled to ground. Beams of wood stuck up from the mud like spears. The stove was overturned. Erik searched and picked his way through the rubble, trying to find something, anything. And he did: Anna’s little rag doll, torn at the seams. And Sergei’s wooden toy horse with wheels, which he was fond of dragging around on a string. Erik found his mother’s wooden spoon she kept in her apron pocket. The Baron’s gold-carved pipe. His father’s ax. Erik placed these in a pile in the middle of the debris, shivering.
His father would never leave without his ax. Erik, staring at the toys and things, knew: the man in the forest had not warned his family, and now all that was left of them was this. The image of his siblings, toys on the ground, burned itself into his soul.
Two soldiers arrived some hours later—scouts on horses—and they saw the boy shivering and sitting in the rubbish.
“Boy,” they called, but Erik did not seem to hear them.
One soldiers, a dark-skinned Belamore with a face of angles offset by a head of curls and striking grey eyes, dismounted.
“Is this your home, boy?” he said, surveying the trampled mud, the shreds of wood, the torn doll. “How did you survive?”
Erik said nothing.
The soldier said nothing as well, only scooped Erik up, and rode back with him to the city. Tents for refugees had been set up to help those who, like Erik, had lost their homes and families. Nuns in black dresses and starched wimples bandaged and fed and gave blankets. They asked Erik’s name, and Erik, who felt he had left everything—even his name—in the rubbish of his family’s home, told them he was Boris Petrov. A common and forgettable name.
They gave Erik a scratchy cot to sleep on, which he did not, but instead numbly fingered organ notes on his sheets. The next morning, he was tagged with a paper slip around his coat button and sent on the train, northward to the other side of the country, to the Abbey orphanage of the Indomitable Sisters.
The solder with angled face and curls went with him, sitting beside him on the train. He didn’t try to coax Erik to climb the stairs to the ceiling, where he could look out at the passing countryside. The soldier only sat there with him. When the food cart came by, he left for a moment and came back, dumping a small bag of goodies in front of Erik.
“Look, Boris,” said the soldier. It took a moment for Erik to realize that was him. Boris Petrov had been written on the tag that hung from his button.
“See here,” the soldier was saying. “Polichinelle’s candy. Brilliant stuff, that. They package sunlight. Raspberry, I think, or at least, it’s red, so I’m supposing. Could be strawberry or cranberry or even tomato, come to that, they make every flavor. Try one, hey? You’ll like the Abbey. They have Polichinelle’s candy every Christmas, or so I’m told.”
Erik stared at the candy, then looked away.
“Fine, I’ll eat them,” said the soldier, pulling open the little drawstring bag. “Couldn’t hurt to at least say thank you for the thought. Take mind, Boris, you aren’t the only Imperian who’s lost family
to the rats.”
The anger and resentment that had been growing inside Erik like an infection split. It split in an odd way, though. It came through in a bitter smile.
“There was a boy,” Erik said. “And a man. I saw them in the forest before the volnakrii. They knew the rats were coming. They knew. And the man went for the city and was going to warn everyone on his way and he didn’t. It’s his fault my family is dead.”
The soldier sighed and ran a hand through his dark curls.
“We tried our best, boy,” he said. “We truly did. We didn’t expect the rats to come so soon or so hard. It’s not the man’s fault; it’s not anyone’s fault. Life can deal blows.”
The soldier looked out the window. He spoke to the passing fields and fences:
“My brother was killed by rats when I was your age. He was on a train like this one, actually. Had blue eyes, just like yours. It was another surge of rats. Killed eighteen passengers before the Railway Guard could fight them off. Could they have fought harder and saved him? Maybe. Tried a different strategy, heading them off on the other side of the train? I don’t know. All I know is how much it hurt when we got the news.”
The soldier shrugged.
“You can’t dwell on it,” he said. “It will eat you inside, like a rat. Always hungry, always angry, and it will devour every good bit of you. Rats got your family, Boris. Don’t let them get you, too.”
Erik stared out the window, listening to the orchestra of train clacks, the chug of the engine, the trees whipping past, and hating the man and the boy Nikolai.
The soldier escorted Erik to the Abbey from the station, gave him the rest of the Polichinelle’s candies (“Cinnamon! They’re cinnamon,” he said) and even his hat, said goodbye, and promised to write.
Life at the Abbey eased into a largo. Every morning they would wake up, chop wood, eat mush, go to morning Mass then to lessons, then supper, more chores, then to bed. Erik played his part like a well-oiled mechanism. He smiled, did extremely well in his lessons, got along with everyone, managed to keep the Everything is Stupid thought from showing on his face. Which was difficult. Easily he could see he was much, much smarter than all the orphans...and even the nuns.
The Enchanted Sonata Page 17
