The Kingdom of Back(12)
“I don’t see anyone,” I replied, looking back to the trinkets.
Then something scarlet caught my eye. I turned to look toward it and noticed a tiny sculpture I’d never seen before.
“Woferl,” I breathed, pulling him closer to me. I pointed through the windowpane. “Look.”
The trinket was of three perfect, white edelweiss, frozen in porcelain, their centers golden, their velvet petals gleaming in the light. One of the flowers had a missing streak of white paint.
My memory flooded with the image of the flower from my music notebook.
“Do you like this one, Fr?ulein?”
We both jumped, startled. Herr Colas stood near the shop’s door, squinting down at Woferl and me. Thin white bandages wrapped around his hand that clutched the doorframe. As he peered at us, I could see the deep pockmarks on his face crinkled up into slants. I sometimes wondered how he looked before the smallpox ravaged his skin, if he had ever been young and smooth-faced.
I pinched Woferl’s arm before he could say anything, and then I curtsied to Herr Colas. “Good morning, Herr,” I said. “The trinket is very pretty.”
He smiled and waved us forward with his bandaged hand. “Come, come, children,” he said. “Come out of the cold and have a look around.” He glanced at me. “You’ve grown taller since I last saw you, Fr?ulein. Your father has nothing but praise for your musical talents. I hear all the gossip, you know. The young girl with an ear like a court musician!” He gestured to my fingers, now covered in my gloves.
The Herr might know the gossip in the streets, but he’d never heard the barbed words my father said in our home, or seen the disappointment in his eyes. Papa would never belittle my skills in public. After all, that would embarrass him. Still, the Herr’s words warmed me, and I found myself blushing, murmuring my thanks.
“Where is this trinket from, Herr Colas?” Woferl piped up as we stepped inside, his eyes locked on where the porcelain edelweiss sculpture sat in the window display.
The old shopkeeper scratched the loose skin under his chin. “Vienna, I believe.” He leaned down to give us both a conspiratorial grin. In the light, one of his eyes flashed and I thought I caught a glint of blue. He wagged a finger not at the trinket, but at the windowpane, and I thought again of the strange boy shattering our window into a thousand pieces. “Who knows, though, really? Perhaps it’s not from our world at all.”
My skin prickled at his words. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but he had already left us alone to our wandering and returned muttering to his little desk in the shop’s corner.
The shop looked hazy, the light filtering in from the windows illuminating the dust in the air. Shelves of trinkets were everywhere, music boxes in painted porcelain and strange creatures frozen in yellowing ivory, their lips twisted into humanlike grins. The stale scent of age permeated the room. While Woferl wandered off to a corner decorated with wind chimes, my eyes shifted to a dark corner of the shop hidden behind shelves and boxes. A thin ribbon of light cut through the shadows there. A door.
“Herr Colas,” I called out politely. “Are there more trinkets in your back room?”
He didn’t answer. All I could hear was the faint sound of humming.
My attention returned to the door. The humming seemed familiar now, a voice so perfectly tuned that it pulled at my chest, inviting me closer. My feet started moving of their own accord. I knew I shouldn’t have been back there without Herr Colas’s permission, and a small part of me wanted to step away—but as I drew closer, my fear faded away into nothing until I found myself standing right in front of the door.
The humming voice came from within, beautiful and coaxing.
I pushed the door with slow, steady hands and stepped inside.
At first, I saw nothing. Darkness. The door edged open without a sound, and I felt a touch of cool air. It smelled different from the air outside, not of winter and spices or of stale antiques, but of something green and alive.
I stepped onto moss, the dampness of it soaking the bottom hem of my petticoat. A faint glow gathered at my feet, a quivering mist of faery lights, skittish in their movements. The darkness crept away as I continued forward, until I could see the ground clearly without bending over, and I realized for the first time that I was walking inside a tunnel—the walls dripped with moss and green ivy, baby ferns and tiny rivulets of water. Strange fruits hung from the ivy trails, wet and bright blue and as plump as bird eggs, their shapes like musical notes. Eating one was surely a quick invitation to be poisoned, but in that moment, I felt such a surge of want tingling on my tongue that I reached out, unable to stop myself, and plucked a single fruit free of its stem. My movement jerked the ivy forward and then quickly back. Drops of water rained down from the vines in a shower.
I popped the fruit into my mouth and bit down until its skin burst. Sugar and citrus and some otherworldly spice flooded my mouth. I closed my eyes, savoring the flavor of it.
I reached to take another and my fingers sank into the soft vegetation. One of them brushed past something familiar—a soft, velvet surface. I looked at where my hand had been.
A patch of edelweiss was growing against the wall, their velvet petals glistening with dew, and when I blinked, several more popped out from the wall’s moss to hang sideways, their buds drooping toward the floor.
It was impossible, truly, to see a flower of the mountains in a place like this. But nothing about this place seemed real at all.