He did have one weakness, however: music.
Music, for a moment, would take away the anger and the pain. In Mass, Erik would sit on the front row, lift his head and close his eyes and savor the tremoring organ music played by Sister Lizaveta. Before long, he was slipping from his bed at night and could be found in the chapel, playing the organ, sorting out the notes by ear, stretching to reach the pedals.
The nuns, of course, heard, and realizing he had a talent, put Sister Lizaveta in charge of teaching him. Every night she was at the organ with him, teaching him the stops and pedals, and what Erik considered the most important piece of knowledge he’d ever learned in his life: How to read notes. Every marking and placement of the note created a new note and melody. It was like learning another language, a purer language. Languages could tell you what to say; music made you feel. Long after Sister Lizaveta fell asleep in the pews, Erik would play on.
It wasn’t long until Erik had outdistanced Sister Lizaveta’s skill, and he began searching for more ways to develop his music. He began slipping out at various times of the day to the regiments stationed nearby. Indomitable Abbey Regiments Numbers One through Seven—named so because they watched out for the nuns and guarded them from the rats—had no fifer.
Erik was more than happy to oblige, and they gave him a regimental rosewood flute to try out. Erik had never seen anything so fine. It had actual keys. Erik played his first note on the flute, and their teasing smiles were wiped away. They looked as though they’d been clubbed on the head.
It wasn’t long before he became a familiar face in the camp, playing jolly songs for them. They clapped and laughed and danced with the music, told him it reminded them of home, of kisses from pretty girls, and told him that, very probably, he was the best fifer in the army and after he turned eighteen and was discharged, could easily get a position as a flutist at the Krystallgradian Symphony Hall. He really was that good.
He was good enough, in fact, that when he was alone in the forest, he could play sweetly enough to draw animals from their burrows and even sunshine from behind the clouds. Eventually, he wondered if he could use the same charm on the rats.
It was here, in the Abbey, that Erik began composing Illumination Sonatina, pulling together the distilled emotion he felt when the sun glistened through the stained glass windows, or the sheen of hand-painted scriptural paintings. He played the melody of sun rays dancing over the mountains in a sunrise. It wasn’t perfect, but when he played it with his whole heart, the room almost felt brighter. He was aware that Sister Lizaveta’s music could not do this, and somehow knowing his skill was peculiar, he told no one about it. Music had power to it, and Erik ached to comprehend it.
In the camp, the soldiers taught him how to track and shoot. Erik was quite good at shooting. One day the captain saw them teaching an eight-year-old boy to shoot, and put his foot down. “He can learn when he is sixteen,” he said. “But he is too young for the pistol now. Teach him how to use a slingshot if you must. But no firearms.”
The soldiers who had come from the sparse parts of the Empire like Krasno-Les and Derevo protested loudly. They had learned how to shoot at an even younger age, for rats had to be kept from slinking onto their land and eating the family’s grain and anyway the captain was a stuffed-up Krystallgradian pigeon. But they acquiesced, giving Erik a slingshot and teaching him the fine art of hitting mud off stumps.
* * *
A rat battle came not long after that, in the hot summer that brought late-night mosquitoes and crickets. Erik only heard it, as orphans and nuns were kept inside the Abbey while the soldiers battled. Erik curled in a corner, his stomach hurting as cannon and rifle shots echoed, reminding him of three years before. The battle sounds subsided around dawn, and Erik managed to slip away to the camp.
Erik wandered among the soldiers as they grimly picked up the pieces of battle aftermath. Pulling cannons through the mud, shooting rat-bitten horses that could no longer walk, and crying as they did so. Bodies of rats were dragged away, tents full of cots and wounded soldiers and medics crowded the base of the camp. The soldiers paid little attention to Erik, and he paid little attention to them, his memories overwhelming him.
He was about to retreat to the forest, when he saw a man on horseback arriving with his own guard. He had unremarkable features, but Erik immediately recognized him. The boy was not with him, but it was that same man he’d seen three years before. He even wore the same uniform. Erik made his way to the nearest soldier, who was quickly cleaning up the morning dishes.
“Who is that man?” said Erik. He motioned to the man dismounting on his horse.
“You little pancake-head, you don’t know who the Emperor is?” said the soldier, scrubbing the tin cup raw. “Have you never seen a stamp?”
Erik froze, staring at the man. Emperor Friedrich the Second. That man was the Emperor! The Emperor! Erik’s mind whirred like a steam engine. The man hadn’t looked like an emperor, not three years ago or even now. That was a lieutenant's uniform, not regal at all. And Nikolai was a common name; Erik hadn’t considered that the boy from the forest would have been Prince Nikolai. Suddenly choked with the anger that had gnawed him inside the past three years, Erik bowed a thank you to the dish-washing soldier and retreated away to the meadow.
In moments, Erik had scurried up a tree to get a clear look at the pother below. Here he saw numerous rat prints in the mud, the wind waves across the meadow grass, the weary soldiers picking themselves up to meet the Emperor.
Deep, hot emotion consumed Erik. The same anger and helplessness that had overtaken him when he’d seen the rubble of his home, the toys left on the ground. It filled not just his chest, but his whole self, from his feet to his head, a hot pounding anger that blocked out the flush of the leaves around him and the sunlight above. Erik hardly felt it was himself that was feverishly opening his satchel, which held his rosewood flute and a slingshot.
None of the soldiers saw the rock hitting the Emperor’s head, but they did see the emperor lose his balance and fall on his hands and knees into the mud. Immediately the other soldiers, including General Drosselmeyer, were at his side, helping him up. The Emperor touched a hand to his head, and brought it away with blood. He looked at his fingers, then turned and looked up, straight at the tree where Erik had been.
Erik had already tumbled down the tree and was running. A chorus of shouting, footfalls, clatter of rifles, and Erik’s arm had been gripped by several soldiers. A moment later, he was taken to the center of the encampment, to the Emperor’s feet.
“Petrov!” the captain snapped, hurrying to the Emperor’s side. He added to General Drosselmeyer: “That’s the Petrov boy from the Abbey. Boris, his name is. Comes here sometimes, plays the fife like a demon. Haven’t an idea why he’d do this.”
The Emperor frowned at the boy, and crouched down to face him at eye level.
“Boy,” he said.
Erik did what he had done so well these past three years: he smiled.
The Emperor smiled back, but it was a confused smile.
Still smiling, Erik bent down to the shrapnel-flecked mud, scooped a handful, and threw it with the bits of metal into the emperor’s face.
“Ah,” said the Emperor, cringing with a face full of mud. Soldiers yelled, several ran to his side, the captain said “Petrov!” like it was a curse word.
Erik had already writhed his way out of the tangle of soldiers and tents and had run and run and run, somehow outrunning the soldiers by tumbling under bushes and between trees, running beyond the sound of their angry voices, and running still. A strange, bright euphoria filled him with wonderful sharpness.
At the camp, General Drosselmeyer barked orders. “Find him! Bring the boy back!”
He was cut short by the emperor, who paused wiping the mud from his face, and placed a hand on Drosselmeyer’s arm.
“Let him go,” he said. “It’s been a hard battle.”
“Ten minutes,” General Drosselmeyer r
evised. “If he has not come back to apologize in ten minutes, go after him. He will be soundly whipped, mark my words.”
The emperor frowned but said nothing, only wiping the mud from his face.
* * *
In the small bunker that afternoon, a one-room structure of planks and a stove and several bunks, Emperor Friedrich had a moment to wash the mud entirely from his face, dab at the cut on the back of his head, and rest a moment before leaving for the regiments in Derevo.
Drosselmeyer lectured him, which the Emperor was used to.
“You cannot allow insubordination like that,” he was saying. “You are the figurehead of the army and country. If you do not mete this misbehavior with an iron fist, it will haunt you later as a much larger beast.”
“The boy is so young,” said the emperor to the washbasin. “Seven, maybe eight. Nikolai’s age. You can’t iron fist a boy that young.”
“The boy is nothing like Nikolai,” General Drosselmeyer snapped. “Did you not see his eyes? The boy has a rat inside him.”
Emperor Friedrich set the cloth down slowly.
“A rat?” he echoed.
“Undoubtedly. Yes, a rat. And a large one, too. You have heard the old expression, of course?”
At the Emperor’s blank expression, Drosselmeyer inhaled deeply.
“When someone is overtaken with a dark emotion,” he said. “Pain. Or grief. Or anger. If they continue to dwell on it, it grows. The rat feeds on every thought it’s given. If not tempered, the rat will consume the soul, and destroy it host and everyone around it. There is not a prisoner in Skoviivat that does not have a rat inside them.”
“And you think the boy has a rat?”
“Just. If he does not drive it out, he will destroy himself and others.”
“And how does one do that?” said the Emperor.
“By starving it. Never feeding it angry or obsessive thoughts. Never listening to it. Even not wanting a rat inside you has the power to starve it.”
“Hm,” was all Emperor Friedrich said.
“I have seen it in soldiers, weary from battles,” Drosselmeyer was saying, “but I have never seen it in someone this young. It is Trouble, Highness.”
Emperor Friedrich nodded but said nothing, only thinking of how bright the boy’s eyes were, and how, surely, something so dark as a rat could not dwell in someone who had such a spark within them.
The euphoria that rang in Erik’s ears had faded, and fear took its place as he ran through the dusky forest. What did he do now? He’d hit someone with a rock. Not just anyone. The Emperor.
He deserved it.
He deserved more, Erik bitterly thought. It was the Emperor’s fault his family was dead and he was stuck in the Abbey of the Insufferable Sisters. A rock wasn’t nearly enough.
The army would be after him. He couldn’t go back to the Abbey. He was heartbroken over this, of course. He would cry tears into his pillow at night. Where would he sleep, though? And if he was caught, what would they do to him? Would he be shot? If hitting was wrong, hitting an emperor was even worse.
Sun set, and Erik crawled through a copse of trees and emerged to see the great city of Krystallgrad spread out beneath him. The glittering lights extended as far as the eye could see. Krystallgrad, the star of Empire. The city of telegraph wires and jeweled towers. The Baron Vasilii had said that Erik could make a living with music in this great city. One word of that clung to Erik: Music. Krystallgrad had music. And if he had to sleep in alleyways and fade into shadows and hide the rest of his life, it would be worth it.
Music was in his blood. He intuitively found his way to Shokolad Prospekt, where the grand music box of the Krystallgrad Symphony Hall emanated orchestral tones. When he heard the music, he forgot how cold he was, how hungry he was, how much he hated the Emperor, and how much he missed his family. He only felt music.
And so, the Symphony Hall became Erik’s home. It was like a city inside itself. Numerous floors with numerous halls and stairways and so many rooms. Rooms full of forgotten props, tiny living quarters for the musicians and actors, rehearsal rooms, dining rooms, three theaters, backdrop-painting and set-hammering rooms, stables, kitchens, washrooms, a school for the ballerinas. And deep down, great old tunnels that led to other parts of the city; they even spanned over an underground river. This part had been forgotten; the Symphony Hall had been built, added upon, and rebuilt several times over the years, and there were many passages and secrets that no one knew anymore, except for Erik, who explored them all like a shadow.
At night he slept in an old room of costumes, silks and brocades for his pillow. By day he wandered the great old halls; snuck into the actors’ rooms, who snored heavily after a long day of rehearsal, and ate from their left-out plates of food while examining their belongings. One actor collected eggs decorated with gems. Another, pistols, as though yearning for his regiment days. Erik pinched clothes from the laundry and dressed carefully and unassumingly; he cultivated sprezzatura, and was careful to never let himself be seen.
Every day, Erik was a silent eclipse on the theater catwalks and mezzanine boxes, listening to the music. After rehearsal, he would return to the depths of the theater, where he would compose and play his flute, the piano, and the organ, for hours. The musicians would sometimes awake at night and groggily consider the distant music a beautiful dream.
Erik’s music talent blossomed in this environment. At age twelve, he finished composing the Illumination Sonatina. He would play it on piano and then flute, and light would flood through the windows of the Symphony Hall, causing everyone to pause. It filled Erik with light inside, and it was almost enough to drown out the anger that consumed him.
But not quite.
* * *
Miles away from the Krystallgradian Symphony Hall, from Erik and his music, the Emperor’s suite at the Imperial Palace was a flurry of servants. One attendant ironed a bow-tie, another pinned jeweled links to the Emperor’s shirt cuffs, another laid a suit coat smoothly across the bed.
Emperor Friedrich himself nervously pulled on a white vest. An attendant swept invisible hairs from the Emperor’s sleeves with a soft brush. The only person, in fact, who was not a blur of movement was the lanky twelve-year-old boy, sitting on the end of Emperor Friedrich’s vast bed, crouched over with his elbows on his knees, just watching.
Silence and stillness were unusual for the boy, who often loped through the Palace halls, banging around the old furniture and kitchens and trying to sneak out of his lessons to his horse in the stables. He always wore a bright smile across his face. Always, except tonight. Tonight it was gone.
A tangle of emotions twisted around inside him, which made him purse his mouth shut. His father seemed happy. Happier, really, than Prince Nikolai could remember. That was good, wasn’t it? But he also knew his father was going to the ballet with one of the court’s aristocratic ladies, Countess Olga, and though Nikolai had never known his own mother, he knew Countess Olga was not her. And Nikolai didn’t know what to think of that.
Emperor Friedrich must have noted Nikolai’s pensive face in his mirror, and he turned around, smiling. He made to ask something—perhaps, How do I look? But seemed to think the better of it.
“You’ll—work on your studies while I’m out?” he said.
Nikolai gave a half-hearted nod.
“Do you like Countess Olga?” the boy said.
His father became busy fumbling with his bow tie. His ears had turned pink.
“Do...do you like her?” Nikolai’s father finally stammered. “That’s rather more important than if I do.”
Nikolai said nothing, but tugged at a loose thread in the Emperor’s bedspread, which a horrified attendant saw and immediately clipped.
“Why did she die?” said Nikolai. They both knew who she was.
The emperor’s hands slipped from the bow-tie at his neck, and he fumbled to get some kind of knot together. Like the tie, it took him several moments to knot a sentence together.
>
“I—I don’t know,” he said. “I truly don’t, Nikolai. I miss her every moment of the day.”
“The fairies could have stopped it,” said Nikolai. “She didn’t have to die.”
Friedrich sent the attendants out. For a few minutes, he and Nikolai were left alone in the room of chests and bookshelves and sofas. The Emperor took a seat next to Nikolai on the large bed. Nikolai twisted another thread out of the bedspread embroidery and did not look at his father.
“I don’t know,” the Emperor said, “why anyone must suffer misfortunes, Nikolai. But I do know that in the face of bitterness and disappointment, when our souls cry out in despair and anger, that we might fight it. As we fight everything in this life—with nobility, courage, and grace. That is what makes a true prince. Yes?”
Nikolai shrugged.
“You are a prince, Nikolai. Never forget that. Always mete your trials in life with that great broad smile of yours. Always a prince.”
Nikolai hesitated, then nodded.
Emperor Friedrich clapped him on the shoulder as attendants arrived with his hat and walking stick, and he stood. He gave Nikolai a soldier’s salute, scraping his boot across the floor.
Nikolai smiled, and saluted back.
* * *
Just two hours later, in the dim golden-red light of the theater, Erik slipped up the backstage catwalk, invisible to the stagehands. Tonight was opening night of the opera Ochen Golodnaya Gusenitza, and the papers had given glowing reviews. Tickets had been difficult to procure.
The orchestra tuned, the concert violinist gave them an A, but the Maestro cut them short.
“Well!” he said proudly, barely loud enough for Erik to hear. “It appears we have a special guest tonight. Look up at box three. No—don’t look! Do you want him to think we are fools? It is very important we do not miss that downbeat entrance to measure twenty-seven, movement three of the second act! Cornets, that comment is addressed to you!”
The Enchanted Sonata Page 18
