Erik Zolokov disappeared.
The street lay silent in the blue morning shadows. The church bell tanged again. Clara stood, her knees shaking, staring at where Erik had stood. Her fingers stung with cold.
“You are not,” she said, “the only person who can memorize a song, Erik Zolokov!”
In a shaky lope, throat tight and face flaring, Clara ran down the icy walk. The Imperial Palace Prelude, her mind feverishly thought. Begins on a B flat minor inverted chord, progressed to a closed-chord F tonic in both hands--then--back to F--eighth notes then a sixteenth--or was it a dotted eighth and sixteenths? Aaargh! Clara tapped her fingers against her palms in the song as she ran. Piano, piano. She needed a piano before she forgot how it went!
Drawing room windows began lighting up as the sun rose. Clara dared to peer into them from the sidewalk, searching past the curtains to see if a room, any room, had a piano sitting inside. Plenty had Christmas trees. They all had sofas and doilies. But no piano.
“Oh, come on!” said Clara, finding yet another window full of Christmas decor and boughs and no piano. This was a nice part of town, someone had to have a piano!
The sun had risen over the chimney tops as Clara drew up sharply before a townhouse. There, in the window, beyond the lace curtains, stood an old piano. In one stride, Clara was up the steps and pounding on the door.
Her fist was throbbing by the time a mousy-looking man in spectacles opened it. He wore a dressing gown and clutched a cup of tea, and looked like the sort of person who would be a professor or bank clerk. A woman stood behind him, equally mousy, also holding a cup of tea and looking confused.
“I need to borrow your piano, sorry,” said Clara, quickly brushing past them and into the home. She threw herself into the parlor of fussy overstuffed furniture and strong floral scent, and seized upon the piano.
“Ah,” said the wife. “I’m afraid it’s out of tune.”
“That’s all right,” said Clara, brushing onto the bench and opening the cover. She glanced over at the couple, feeling a little bad. Judging from the assorted fragile knick-knacks on every available surface, they didn’t have children, or anyone else crashing around their home. They seemed like a nice couple, the sort too nice to even act shocked.
Something like panic, however, crossed their faces the moment Clara played the first chord of The Imperial Palace Prelude, and the parlor around them smeared. The fussy chairs blurred. Clara flushed, her fingers automatically moving to the next chord, and the next, hitting the chords from memory. A sour note; two—Clara shivered as snow and pine whorled around her—her fingers caught their footing and Clara remembered the patterns from the song. Arpeggios dripped like chandeliers. The range leapt from low bass clef to treble, expansive. Accidentals marked the keys like highlights on gold. B♭. F. B. D. D7.
The music became cloudy in Clara’s mind. Clara’s hands faltered on the keys, and she hit a completely wrong chord, and the spell shattered.
Clara fell onto trampled snow, landing hard on her hands and knees. A sharp inhale; the smell of gingerbread, ice, and eye-stinging peppermint. Not the Imperial Palace, but still Krystallgrad! A shiver washed up Clara’s spine. She had done it! She must have played the song well enough to get, at least, to the city.
Quickly standing, Clara saw where she was: in the shadow of the Krystallgrad Symphony Hall, on the prospekt bridge over the Starii. It wasn’t far, in fact, from where Nutcracker Regiment Number One had landed several hours before. Clara shakily picked herself up.
“Clara!”
Clara turned and saw Zizi running toward her. Behind her flanked Alexei and several members of the Nutcracker Regiment Number One. Clara could have fainted with relief.
“Master Alexei has been tracking the Nutcracker’s footprints,” she said, breathlessly reaching Clara’s side. “We searched for you everywhere but couldn’t find you. The nutcracker is going back to the Palace?”
Alexei was crouched down at the bridge, examining the rectangular footprints across the mussed, moonlight-touched snow of the street. Clara nodded.
“Why?” said Zizi. “And who are they?”
Clara turned around sharply. Behind her, climbing up the muddy, ice-studded bank of the Starii was the mousy-looking couple from her world. Their faces were whiter than the snow, staring up at the towers and spires, and then at Clara.
“Oh...cabbage,” said Clara. “I didn’t mean to play them back, too.”
The woman collapsed, nearly taking her husband down with her. Clara turned back to Zizi.
“I know how to break the spell!” said Clara.
“What!”
“I do! But I need the music, and it’s at the Palace. The magician took it back again, don’t ask. Look, Nutcracker’s there, or nearly, and he’s in trouble. We’ve got to get there now and...is there a piano nearby?”
Snow had begun to fall as Nutcracker slipped into the Palace. It felt oddly muffled and silent with darkness throughout. There were rats, oh yes, there were rats, widdling on the carpets, gnawing on the furniture legs, it would cost a fortune of rublii to replace...but they kept away from Nutcracker. When he reached the Gallery, the snow had made the glass above clouded and cast an odd blue-purple light over everything.
Nutcracker picked his way through the nutcrackers strewn over the floor, anger flaring through him. He raised his sword, drawing closer to the piano.
“Erik Zolokov,” he called.
No one stood at the piano, but a voice just behind him whispered:
“Hello, toy.”
Nutcracker whipped around, his sword a blur, and he lashed at the smiling figure of Erik Zolokov with flaming anger.
Erik already had the flute to his lips. Two notes, and he disappeared. Nutcracker’s sword sliced the air.
A slight sound behind him and Nutcracker pivoted about. There stood Erik Zolokov, smiling that insufferable, bitter smile.
“If this were an opera,” he said, “which surely shall, one day, be composed—a beautiful opera of coloraturas, arias, and ensembles, a story of children turned into toys and a fallen emperor. If this were an opera, this would be the part where you confront the hero of the story, and you sing a finale of defeat.”
“No,” said Nutcracker, “this would be the part where the opera ends, because I kill you.”
“Well, you can try,” said Erik, and with three brittle flute notes, he disappeared.
He reappeared by the War Table.
Everything Nikolai had planned to say to his father’s assassin fled as the hatred that had grown inside him for years took over. In three lopes, he was at the table, and over the table, and knocking Erik Zolokov onto the floor. The magician managed one note while on his back, and he disappeared, appearing on the other side of the table.
Nutcracker attacked before Erik Zolokov could play anything more.
An oddly silent battle followed, only punctuated with the scuff of wood, the clang of sword against furniture, the clatter of small wood nutcrackers scattering, the occasional piercing of stray notes when Erik Zolokov managed to get the flute to his lips. He appeared just a length away each time, and Nutcracker pounced on him immediately before Erik could play anything more.
Nutcracker fought like he never had before. It wasn’t like fighting rats. He didn’t joke. He didn’t keep score. He didn’t fight with coordination or dexterity. He fought with raw, unfiltered anger. His movements were hard and as blunt as he was, and he didn’t care.
It was by accident that Nutcracker drew the first blood. Erik Zolokov had appeared just behind him, and Nutcracker spun around, his sword catching Erik across the chest, cutting through his vest.
“Ah,” said Erik, eyes flashing.
In two flute notes, he breathlessly disappeared and re-appeared on the other side of Nutcracker, just by the piano. The pommel of Nutcracker’s sword hit his face, drawing blood from his nose. Erik Zolokov sputtered, surprised. Nutcracker yanked the flute from his hands and threw it. It hit the piano and cla
ttered to the floor.
But Nutcracker did not stop. He threw himself at Erik Zolokov, who fell back as Nutcracker struck his arm with his sword. Blood bloomed across his white linen sleeve.
“That is for the children,” he said.
His sword flashed again as Erik Zolokov scrambled to escape, this time slicing his shoulder. Erik Zolokov fell back.
“For the soldiers,” said Nutcracker. He shoved his elbow, hard, into the magician.
Erik Zolokov fell against the keys, banging a rancorous chord with a streak of blood across the ivory.
“And this,” said Nutcracker, raising his sword, “is for my father.”
The wild energy that had sparked throughout the room echoed and joined together in cacophonous fashion, combining with the squeaking and snarling rats outside the doors, creating echoes of ringing laughter all around Nutcracker.
Erik Zolokov was laughing at him. It was the bag-of-broken-glass laugh, one that rang with bitterness and delight that somehow said now you know how it feels…
Nutcracker paused, his eyes drawn to his sword. The spattered surface cast Nutcracker’s reflection back at him. A warped image of wood and bright green eyes and tufted, mussed white hair. Somehow the ringing chords of the piano formed together in his memory, sharply recalling the song Clara had played for him:
And he’s brave, B—
Courage, C—
And he’s an Emperor.
Nikolai looked past the sword to the wall, where his father’s dark eyes gazed solemnly back from the portrait.
You are a prince, Nikolai Volkonsky. Never forget that.
Nikolai lowered his sword. He closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, then opened them.
“The children,” he said. “And the soldiers. If I let you turn me into a toy, will you turn them back?”
Erik Zolokov, bleeding against the piano, surveyed Nutcracker. Slowly, he gave a nod.
Nutcracker set his sword down.
“Then,” he said, straightening. “I will do it. Because I am an Emperor. And that is something you can never take away from me.”
Erik in a stumbling yet sleek movement, pushed himself from the piano and swept his flute up from the ground. He coughed in a kind of laugh.
“Ironic,” he said. “The only way to prove you could be an Emperor...was to not become one.”
He brought the flute to his lips and played the first note—a note that struck through every grain of wood and spread through Nutcracker as though with smoldering fire and—
A symphony orchestra interrupted, tumbling onto Erik Zolokov and cutting him short.
Everything happened at once.
The orchestra tumbled to the floor of the Gallery, the piccoloist screeching in octaves her instrument couldn’t reach. Instruments clattered and clashed. A cymbal hit the floor with a wa-wa-wa-wawawawa-kish, and nutcracker toys scattered beneath their feet.
It wasn’t just the Krystallgrad Symphony Orchestra and their instruments that had appeared; Alexei Polichinelle and Zizi picked themselves up from the ground, as did Nutcracker Regiment Number One, the eye-stinging nevermint smell filling the Gallery.
A good thing, too; the doors thundered open at the end of the Gallery and rats, no longer under the spell of the magician, poured through, squealing and snarling. Gunshots sounded. Rats recoiled at the stinging mint and rain of bullets. The symphony Maestro stabbed at rats with his baton. The percussionists banged mallets on rat heads. The concert violinist bashed an oncoming rat with his violin, which splintered it into two pieces hanging by strings, and he began to cry.
Erik Zolokov’s flute, lying beside the piano, was snatched up by the piccoloist, who waved it triumphantly above her head. Clara, Zizi, and Alexei found Erik Zolokov not far from it, still alive, but knocked out cold by a timpani. For the first time, he looked at peace. He was covered in blood, but his face calm in deep sleep. He looked like a different person.
His wounds were immediately bound by Madam Polichinelle, and he was taken under arrest, Alexei tying his hands and guarding his limp form. He would be taken to prison, Alexei quickly explained to Clara, and then, when things were all sorted out, put to trial, and executed.
In the center of a cacophonous battle around them, Clara hurriedly sorted through the music, pale and lips pursed. She looked up, and there he was, Nutcracker, his eyes bright and twinkling and looking straight and regal. It was almost intimidating. He had been fighting the rats from the door, but had somehow found the moment to see Clara.
“Clara!” he said. “You’re here! And you brought the regiment—well done!”
Clara blushed. A combination of shyness and excitement ran her next words together: “Nutcracker! I know how tobreak thespell! Remember how I told you about the dark song that Erik Zolokov played? I realized it was the music backwards! And it reverses is the spell! It’s bizarre but it will work, I know it will!”
Nutcracker’s painted brows rose so high they touched the brim of his hat.
“By the stars,” he said.
Clara quickly set March of the Toys upside-down on the piano, so it was sʎoʇ ǝɥʇ ɟo ɥɔɹɐɯ. Nutcracker placed his hand over hers, stopping her.
“I’m sorry I—I called—Johann—your—a rat,” he stammered.
Clara shook her head, smiling a little. “You were right,” she said. “Johann was—a wrong-headed thought. You’re a thousand times the person he is.”
“Really?” said Nutcracker, practically bobbing on his feet. “Really! Well! Well, well, well...a thousand times, is it? A thousand? Really?”
Clara was flaring pink. She liked the feel of his large, hard hand pressed on hers, it was a nice feeling. She swallowed. Don’t enjoy this too much, her mind reminded her. He’s going to be the Emperor. His marriage is arranged, remember?
“Well, anyway—” she began.
“No, no, don’t change the subject,” said Nutcracker.
“I—I think I should probably play this—”
“A thousand times, was it?” he said.
“We just turn the music upside-down—”
“You were dead convinced you would marry this pianist. That was quite a change of heart, Clara. What happened?”
Clara hesitated, because she didn’t want him to take his hand away.
“I remembered you,” she said, her face burning.
Nutcracker was silent a moment. The snarling rats in the background seemed muffled. Clara didn’t look at Nutcracker’s face, but kept her eyes down, on his hand.
“Such a thing, Miss Stahlbaum. For when the world was darkest, I remembered you.”
Clara felt like a matchstick on fire. Her cheeks flared, but she smiled.
“Sir,” Alexei Polichinelle broke in.
And they both became conscious of the gunshots, the fighting, the nutcrackers at their feet. Nutcracker drew his sword.
“Clara,” he said quickly. “I think the spell only works for those who can hear the music. So, I’m leaving. Don’t play until I’m gone. I don’t want to be turned human again.”
Clara looked at him, confused.
“Not until everyone else is taken care of,” Nutcracker amended. “I don’t think it would be right until then. You understand, of course?”
“I do,” said Clara. And she did.
Nutcracker saluted and bounded into the front of battle, leading the charge through the Gallery. In the haze of gunpowder the regiments followed, rat tails whipped—a symphony of snarls and hisses, shots and cries. Clara allowed herself one moment to see Nutcracker’s red figure bounding away, and had to admit: He really did look like an Emperor.
What makes music...magic?
When she was young, Clara had drifted asleep to her father’s piano melodies. Music could lull and caress her into slumber. When Clara was good enough, she played those same songs for her father, arpeggios washing through the drawing room as he lay on the sofa under a thick blanket, coughing.
“Your cough sounds better today,” Clara would say, glan
cing at him between page turns.
Her father, pale and thin, clutched a blood-stained handkerchief in his hand and kept his eyes closed. But he smiled.
“It is because your music is a balm,” he said quietly. “You feel it in your heart. Practice every day, maus, and it will be a such a great light to so many.”
Clara nodded, wiped her face with her palm, and continued playing.
sʎoʇ ǝɥʇ ɟo ɥɔɹɐɯ.
Right-side up, it was a jaunty tune of bright, high-pitched chords. Upside-down, it marched to the lower octaves and tugged them upward to the treble clef. Seated at the Gallery piano, Clara closed her eyes, inhaled, and played the first notes.
It snagged inside her and grew, filling her with depth and melodic wholeness. She felt it as she played, and her soul yearned: Please let this work. Please, please let this work.
Around her, the aura of the room changed with every progressing chord, and when she played the last note, she couldn’t hear it, because the Gallery had erupted into a sudden din. Tenors, bass, and baritone. Clara could smell the soldiers before she even turned around to see them. No—not exactly smelled, more like choked on the tinge of their sweat, a sort of masculine musk and the energy of tightly-packed muscles. Around her, the room was alive with uniformed men shoving each other away as they got to their feet. Most of the men were blinking, hard, as though there was sawdust in their eyes.
“Get your foot out of my eye, Narovsky!” one soldier snapped.
“Where’s my dagger? It was at my waist, it’s gone now—”
“What the devil happened?”
“Where is the boy with the flute?”
“Where is the prince?”
“It tastes like I’ve been chewing on a stick of wood!”
“Know what that tastes like, do you, Orlov? Eat twigs often?”
“Shut up, Polzin.”
The Enchanted Sonata Page 21
