The Kingdom of Back(13)

A few notes of music caught my attention. I turned instinctively toward the sound, seeking it out. It came from farther down, where the tunnel ended in a circle of light, playing like a secret insulated from the rest of the world. My heart ached for it. Music from my notebook? I picked up my skirts and quickened my steps. Ahead of me, the tunnel began to widen, sloping higher until it opened abruptly into a circular cove.

The ceiling appeared to be formed from a lattice of leaves and fruit. Patches of silver moonlight filtered through to the ground, where edelweiss carpeted the floor in a white blanket. Moss and foliage enveloped every wall. And sitting there, in the center of this strange space, was the most beautiful clavier I’d ever seen, covered with baroque art and wrapped in lengths of ivy.

No one sat at the bench, even though the velvet cushion upon it had an indent as if someone had just left. When my eyes went up to the clavier’s music stand, I saw with a surge of joy that my notebook was sitting there, waiting for me.

“It’s here!” I called out into the tunnel, hoping that Woferl would hear me from the shop. I stared in wonder at the clavier. The keys had rounded tips that glowed under the light like polished gulden, and the entire instrument looked carved not from wood, but from marble. I ran my fingers across its surface, searching for the gaps where the body of the instrument should meet the legs, where the hinges of the lid should be screwed into the belly. But there were no gaps. The entire clavier was carved from a continuous slate of marble, as if it had always been molded in this form.

My hand drifted across the clavier, afraid to touch it and yet unable to bear not doing so. How could something so lovely be real? What would it sound like? I hesitated there for a moment, torn in two directions, before I finally pulled the bench forward so that I could sit. The legs scraped against the moss on the ground.

My notebook was already flipped open to a menuett in C, the latest piece my father had composed and the same one that Woferl and I had been playing when we first saw the edelweiss against the parchment. The very piece that Woferl had committed to memory from a single session. Even glancing at the written notes filled my mind with its music. I could distinctly hear the measures of the menuett as if I were practicing them during my lessons.

I lifted my fingers to the keys and touched their glowing surface. The keys were cold as ice. Instantly I drew my hands back, but the burn of it tingled like snow on my tongue, dangerous and enticing. I placed my fingers in position again, savoring the strange chill of the instrument. This time I tried a few notes. The sound hovered in the air, surrounding me, richer in tone than any clavier I’d ever played. My eyes closed. I realized I was humming now, trying instinctively to match that perfect melody around me. My heart fluttered with the thrill of the music.

A carefree laugh echoed from behind me. “You can have it back, Fr?ulein.”

I stopped playing and whirled around to see the speaker.

There, underneath the shadows and the dripping moss, emerged a figure. Immediately I recognized him as the boy from the music room, the same silhouette who had walked along the shore in my very first dream. Under this new light, his pale skin took on a hint of blue. His grin was quick and lighthearted, his expression as much like a human boy’s as it could be.

In that moment, I realized that perhaps that first dream was not a dream at all. Nor were the edelweiss growing against my notebook, or the sight of this boy in my music room. Perhaps even this moment was real. The world around me felt so sharp and alive that I couldn’t possibly think otherwise.

“You can have it back,” he repeated in his perfect voice. “I’m done with it.”

“Who are you? Where do you come from?” I whispered.

The boy walked over to the clavier and performed a little jump. He settled comfortably on top of the instrument, then peered down at me with his head propped thoughtfully against one hand. His fingernails clicked against the clavier’s marble surface.

“From somewhere far away,” he said, “and very near.”

I tilted my head at him. “That’s not helpful at all.”

“Isn’t it? You know where it is. You’ve seen it before. You’ve been there.”

The twin moons hanging silver in the sky. The blue seashells dotting a white beach. A feeling of wistfulness crept over me then, as if I were thinking back on a place I’d once known. I looked at his feet, expecting to see sand between his toes.

“Where did it come from, then?” I went on. “This place both near and far away?”

“It’s been around since long before you or me. Everyone has seen it in some way, you know, although most will not remember it.”

A deep longing lodged in my throat. “Will I get to go there again?”

“Perhaps. I heard your wish,” he said, repeating what he had told me in the music room. “You want to be worthy of being remembered. By your father, by those your father regards highly. By the world. You’re afraid of being forgotten.” He studied me curiously. “That’s a large wish for a Fr?ulein to make. Why are you so afraid?”

My thoughts snapped to my father, how he would look away from me in disinterest if I did not play well. His talks with Mama, the whisper that followed me down the Getreidegasse. A husband, a husband. I thought of fading into the light so quietly that my father might never notice. If I could fill our family’s coffers . . . If I could create with the voice of God given to me, my father would not forget that I was here.