The Kingdom of Back(14)

The voice of God. I thought of this boy’s beautiful words, the music of his voice that trembled on the air of my dream, in that strange and vibrant place. That was it, the perfect sound.

At last, I met the boy’s eyes. “Papa once told me that if nobody remembers you after you’re gone, it’s as if you never lived at all.”

His smile widened at that. He looked like he had heard every thought unspoken in my mind. “It’s immortality you seek, then,” he said. “You burn with the ambition to leave your voice in the world. You fear your father will forget about you if you cannot do this. All your life, you have ached to be seen.” He leapt off the clavier, then came to sit beside me on the bench. There, he leaned over, reached out his arm, and touched my chin with his cool, slender fingers. A sigh emerged from his lips. “Oh, Nannerl! You are an interesting one.”

“Interesting? How?”

“Your need to leave a memory of yourself long after you have gone. Desire is your lifeblood, and talent is the flower it feeds.” He gave me a sideways look as his hands sought out the clavier’s keys. He began to play a soft melody I did not recognize. It was so lovely that I found myself touching my hand to my chest, steadying myself against the sound. “I can help you . . . but first, we must play a little game.” His grin widened, childlike in its delight.

My heart lurched in excitement and fear at his words. “What kind of game?”

“You have your desires, and I have mine.” He leaned his head closer to me. “You want immortality. I want my throne.”

At last, he was finally answering my question. “Is that who you are, then? A king?”

The faeries floated around him, their light glowing against us as they kissed his skin. A princeling, a princeling, they whispered, filling the air with the word. Princeling of the forest.

“My name is Hyacinth,” he said.

Now I remembered the faeries calling his name the night before. The blue of his eyes certainly matched the flower. Hyacinths, my mother had once pointed them out to me at the market, and I’d brushed my hands against their clustered blooms. Hyacinths are the harbinger of spring and life.

“What happened to your throne?” I asked him.

The boy named Hyacinth ignored my question. His expression had suddenly shifted from mischief and mystery to something tragic, a flash of sadness that cut through his trickery. It disappeared as quickly as it had come, but the ghost of it lingered at the corners of his face, pulling me closer to him.

I looked at my notebook. “And why did you take this?” I asked.

He started to play again. I breathed deeply at the music. “You made a wish, Nannerl, and so I have come to you. You’ll discover that your notebook will now serve you in more ways than simple lessons at the clavier. Use it as your path to me. You can always find your way to me, Nannerl, if you speak to me through your music.”

If you speak to me through your music. I imagined this boy listening to the secrets in my heart, his eyes peering through the web in the woods. His hand taking mine and leading me down an enchanted forest path.

“What way is that?” I asked him.

“Why, to my kingdom, of course,” he answered.

Hyacinth’s words reminded me of my brother’s question from last night. “You say you seek your throne. Are you the guardian of the kingdom, then?” I whispered.

He turned to me with his secret smile. His eyes glowed against his skin. “I am your guardian, Nannerl. Tell me what you want. I will find a way to give it to you.”

Tell me what you want.

No one had ever said those words to me before. A slow, creeping cold began snaking its way down my fingers, until my arms grew heavy with numbness. The boy’s eyes hypnotized me.

“But be wary of what you wish for,” he went on. “Wishes have a habit of surprising their makers.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. The cold crept farther up my arms and to my shoulders.

When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

I looked around in bewilderment at his sudden absence. I was alone in this strange grotto, my notebook still sitting on the clavier’s stand. With a burst of panic, I grabbed the notebook before it could disappear again, and then I sprang from the bench and turned back toward the tunnel. I called out for Woferl, but only silence greeted me. My stomach turned. He must still be in the main shop—I had to go back to him. Sebastian must have come for us by now.

“Woferl!” I shouted, running faster as I went. “Woferl, answer me! Where are you?”

And then, just as abruptly as I’d entered the grotto, I stepped through the door and stumbled right back into the shop.

Everything looked unchanged from when I’d left it, the hazy air golden under the sun, the shop’s shelves stacked heavy with trinkets. But the tremor of whispers and music no longer lingered in the air. It was replaced instead with the smell of aged wood, the bustle of everyday life outside the shop’s walls. I stood still for a moment, trying to regain my sense of place.

Woferl looked over from where he was loitering near the windows. “There you are,” he said.

I rubbed my eyes and glanced behind me. The tunnel had vanished, leaving behind nothing more than a tiny closet overflowing with empty crates.

Perhaps the dust in the shop had made me sleepy, and my mind had woven for me a web of illusion. The ice-cold burn of the clavier’s keys, Hyacinth’s glowing blue eyes . . .