The Kingdom of Back(26)

“Yes,” I whispered, listening half-heartedly. His childlike voice had started to lure me into sleep. “Naturally.”

“And the ocean has a guardian too, just like the rest of the kingdom has the princeling.” Woferl paused to think. “A faery queen of the night, trapped in an underwater cave.”

As he went on, I drifted away. The room around me blurred, I sank without protest into the early fog of sleep, and in my dreams Woferl continued with his faery tale. I thought I could see light at the bottom slit of our door, and hear something that sounded like music from a clavier. My music. “Woferl,” I whispered, shaking my brother.

He halted in his story. “What is it?” he asked.

Before I could reply, I saw him sit up and turn his attention toward our door. He heard it too. “It’s coming from the music room,” he whispered. His hand automatically found mine.

“It’s my music,” I said, suddenly afraid. “From my notebook. You recognize it, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” Woferl swung his legs over the bed and tilted his head so as to hear it more clearly.

We stayed like that for a long moment, silent, as the music continued. I shivered.

“It’s coming closer,” Woferl whispered.

My hands went to the candlestick on our dresser. I lit it, then held the light out before us.

The door squeaked, then opened into a tiny sliver. Both of us froze in our places and my face grew hot with fear. I knew it was not our parents, and not Sebastian.

It was Hyacinth.

The princeling came accompanied, as always, by the dim blue glow of faeries flitting about him in tiny pins of light. He peered into our bedroom and looked idly around before settling his gaze on us. On me.

“Nannerl,” he said. His voice wrapped itself around me in an embrace. “I am so pleased to see you again.” And before I could wonder if he’d made himself visible to Woferl too, he turned to my brother and offered him a smile. “The little one is still awake, waiting for an adventure.”

Woferl grinned back, delighted. “It’s you!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, it seems so,” Hyacinth said.

“Have you come to steal something again?” Woferl asked.

I swallowed at his words, afraid of angering the princeling, and elbowed him in the ribs.

Hyacinth only laughed. The sound pierced my ears. I thought that it would certainly wake Sebastian or our parents. When he stopped, he fixed his eyes on Woferl. “I’ve come to ask a favor from both of you,” he said. “But first, you must follow me. Quickly now.” He frowned at the candle in my hands. I noticed the way he shrank from its warmth, as if, even from a distance, it could scald him. “Leave that. You will not need its light in the kingdom.” And without another word, he vanished from the doorframe.

Woferl leapt up first. “Let’s go,” he whispered eagerly. Before I could refuse, he had risen and hurried to the door.

“Woferl, wait—” I started to say, but it was too late. He had already rushed out. I slid my feet into my pair of slippers and followed his path, into our living room and out our front entrance, down the flights of stairs that would lead us to the main street.

My feet crunched on snow. It surprised me so much that I cried out and stopped in my tracks.

I stood in the middle of the Getreidegasse with a sky full of stars above my head, illuminated by the brilliant light of two moons hovering over opposite ends of the street. The city was deserted, the dim streetlights fading into the darkness around us. The snow did not look like how I remembered it from earlier that evening, dirty with mud and ice, shoved onto the sidewalks in heaps. This snow was clean and white, untouched. I looked up. All the windowsills were covered in this pure snow, so soft that I thought it would feel like a warm blanket to the touch. I reached down and put my hand against its surface. It fell apart against my fingers.

The snow layers the forest in white, like frosting on the cakes at the bakery.

Woferl’s voice echoed somewhere ahead of me. When I looked in its direction, I realized that the little crooked path I’d once seen from our window had now reappeared at the end of the Getreidegasse. It led away from the buildings and toward the dark forest of upside-down trees, and at the forest’s entrance stood the same sign that had been there when I’d last seen it. Now, though, I could read the words.

“To the Kingdom of Back,” I whispered.

Next to the sign was Woferl. He waved at me. Somewhere in the forest behind him, I glimpsed Hyacinth’s lean figure heading deeper in. I gathered up the bottom of my nightgown, shook snow from my slippers, and hurried to my brother.

We walked in silence. The path started with cobblestones, but as we continued, the cobblestones began to fade away, growing sparser, until we walked on dirt lined with blankets of snow. Woferl pressed against me as we passed the trees. Their roots reached up toward the stars and cut the sky into slivers. Their leaves curled at the bottom of each tree, and in them were pools of still, black water, with no bottom that I could see.

I remembered my own warning about the pools and pulled us away from their edges, lest we fell in. Our surroundings had grown so dark that I could barely make out the path ahead. I tried not to look behind us. Shadows crept into every crevice when there was no light to push back their edges, breathing life into things that shouldn’t exist.