The Kingdom of Back(45)

Hyacinth broke into a run. I struggled to keep up with him as he darted along the path, barely visible in the darkness ahead of me.

Finally, we arrived in a meadow blanketed with bright silver flowers, their petals dancing in the breeze. Among them lingered the faeries, and when Hyacinth arrived, it was as if all of them came alive at once, their light surrounding us in excitement and their tiny teeth nipping at my ankles. The blue grass beneath our feet waved and sighed.

“There,” Hyacinth told me, pointing at a yawning arc of stone that connected two cliffs. Rock pillars formed a large circle underneath the bridge, a valley heavily overgrown with trees and brush. “Long ago, this was all a cavern. When the oceans lowered, it collapsed, until all that remains is this arc of stone.” I followed the line of his finger to the underbrush. “Down there, when the moon is shining directly above the land bridge, you will find a golden crossbow fitted with a single arrow.”

I peered at the stone arc, then the thick growth underneath it. Nothing seemed dangerous here. “Why do you not go in yourself?” I asked.

The faeries around me quivered, and a hush spread across the meadow. Hyacinth’s playful face looked grave now, even afraid. His eyes lingered on the billowing blue plants that grew within the circle. “It is poisonous ground for me,” he replied. “I cannot enter.”

I looked at the valley. Then I stepped past the rock pillars and into the circle they formed.

The faeries did not follow me into the circle. It was as if they were fearful of the vegetation here too, as if it were toxic to them as well. I was entirely on my own. The grasses sighed at my approach and whispered at me to turn back. A strange sense of foreboding clung to the ground inside the pillars, and as I went, it dragged against my legs, so that I felt like I was slogging through deep water.

When I looked over my shoulder, Hyacinth was nowhere to be seen.

The grass at the bottom of the valley grew tall enough to come up to my waist, and the blades were rough, chafing against my nightgown. I waded through it, searching for a glint of gold in the shadows. Overhead, the moons shifted slowly closer, half exposed and half hidden behind the arching rock.

I searched in a circle until the waving grasses and rock pillars made me dizzy, then turned my face up to the sky. The twin moons gradually moved into position. As they did, the light in the valley dimmed, and a glowing outline formed as the moons beamed from either side of the land bridge. It formed two arcs of light against the grass, as bright as if the blades were glowing silver, shifting wider and wider until the rock pillars surrounding me were entirely illuminated.

The ground beneath me suddenly shifted. I stumbled, looked down, and there, glowing from within a new crack in the earth, was a golden crossbow with a single arrow notched on it, its tip frighteningly sharp.

I let out a cry of triumph and bent down to pick it up. My hand closed tightly around the crossbow’s cool handle. A numbing tingle rushed through my arm. I sucked in my breath at the sensation, but still pulled the crossbow close to me and wrapped both my arms around it.

“I have it, Hyacinth!” I called out, turning to head out of the circle of rock.

As I walked, my arms felt more and more locked around the crossbow, and the weight of the weapon seemed to pull me backward with each forward step I took. A great wind blew through the valley, sending the grass billowing like an open sea. The world swam around me. I shook my head to toss hair out of my eyes. Beyond the pillars, I could see the silhouette of Hyacinth waiting for me, calling my name . . . but the faster I tried to run, the farther away the pillars seemed to get, lost in the waving landscape.

The numbness in my arms began to spread. With it came the whisper of a thousand voices brushing past my ear.

Faeries come, but they cannot leave. They fear the poison of these grasses.

Somewhere through the dullness crowding my mind came the sharp stab of panic. “I am not a faery,” I replied, but my tongue felt slow, dragging against the floor of my mouth.

You are the one who poisons the land.

“I am . . .” The words scraped against my lips.

You are not meant to be in the kingdom.

With all my strength, I dragged my thoughts out of me and shouted them into the wind’s tide. Words that I suddenly wished I could shout before an audience instead of hiding in my quiet curtsy. “I am a composer named Nannerl!”

All of a sudden, the wind gave way—disappearing as abruptly as it had come. I stumbled forward and fell into the grass. As I pulled myself up, I noticed the grass had gone still again, and before me loomed the circle of rock pillars. The whispers were gone, the air lighter.

I clutched the golden crossbow tightly to my chest, lest it vanish, and ran the final few steps past the pillars. A great gasp burst from my lips as I passed the rocks. I could breathe properly again; my limbs no longer felt crushed under an invisible weight. I turned in the direction of Hyacinth and hurried to him.

He’d grown tall enough that I had to tilt my face up to him. “You have done it, Fr?ulein!” he said, wonder in his voice. Then he placed his cool hands against my face and kissed me.

I froze, caught like a butterfly in his hands. His lips seemed dusted with sugar, sweet and ice-cold, cleansing away the last of the sacred valley’s pull. This is what it’s like to kiss a boy, I thought through the shiver that washed over me.

Johann flashed unbidden through my mind. His raised brows, his quick smile, the way he’d made my heart dance in my chest. But where heat bloomed on my cheeks for him, Hyacinth’s touch brought winter with it, the glitter of fresh snow, the feathers of frost that lined a frozen river’s surface.