The Kingdom of Back(6)

Everything about him illuminated. His eyes, his smile, his posture. He let out a soft squeak under his breath as I drew him close to the clavier, then helped him position his fingers against the keys. His hands looked so tiny against mine that I held them in my palms a beat longer, as if to protect them. Only when he made a sound, pushing me to move aside, did I release him.

“This is a chord,” I said, stretching my own hand out beside his. I played a harmonious trio of notes for him, each key spaced one out from the next, at first all together, then one after the other.

He watched me in fascination. He was still small enough that he had to use two hands to play it properly, the thumb of his left hand holding down the lowest of the three notes while two fingers of his right hand tapped out the middle and highest notes. E, G#, B. He listened curiously to it, tilting his head this way and that at the sound.

I smiled and played another chord. He followed my example.

This was when the first sign appeared. I don’t think that anyone else could have noticed it, not even Papa, who never had the patience to see these things.

When Woferl pressed down on the keys, one of the notes that he struck sounded very slightly out of tune.

He frowned, then played it again. Again, the note came out at the wrong pitch.

I leaned toward him, about to tell him that the string must need tightening. But the frustration that clouded his gaze made me pause. He pressed the key a third time, thinking that it might fix itself, and when it didn’t, he hummed the right pitch in the back of his throat, as if he couldn’t understand how the same note could be correct in his mind and incorrect outside of it.

I knew, in that moment, that he had a remarkable ear. Sharper than our father’s, sharper than Herr Schachtner’s. Perhaps even sharper than mine, at least at that age. Already he understood the sound of perfection.

I now think this was how he first learned that the world was an imperfect place.

“Very good, Woferl,” I said to him.

He paused to give me a relieved smile. “You hear it too,” he said, and in that moment, I felt the warmth of his presence in my world, a second soul who understood.

We played a few more sets of chords before Woferl finally leaned away, looked from the clavier to the window’s golden light, then back to me. “Can you tell me a story?” he asked absently.

So, he was in a whimsical mood. I glanced toward our parents’ bedroom, as if Papa could still hear us even though he had left hours ago. Mama had gone with Sebastian to the clothier. No one else was home.

“All right,” I said, and closed my eyes to think of something.

I still don’t know why it returned to me then. Perhaps it was the chords we’d played together, which still seemed to hang in the air. But there, in the darkness, I found myself hearing the achingly pristine music from my dream years ago. The memory resurfaced of a beautiful young face that I couldn’t quite recall. Of waking with my hand outstretched before me, yearning to stay longer.

I opened my eyes. The sun was slanting against the floors just so, and a new haze hung about the light in the room. We were bathed in its glow. “There is a forest,” I said, looking down at my brother. “That surrounds a kingdom.”

Woferl grinned at that. He clapped his hands. “What kingdom?” he asked. “What forest?” This was the game between us. He would ask me questions. I would invent answers for him, and slowly, our story would grow.

“It is a place where moss and flowers coat the floor,” I said in a hushed voice. “Trees grow in thick bundles. But, Woferl, they are not trees like what we know.”

“What are they like?”

Now my dream returned in glittering pieces: the moon, the sea, the black line of woods, and the strange shapes of the trees. The boy walking through the sea foam. I lowered my voice and gestured him closer. My imagination wandered free, constructing the rest of what this fantasy of a land might be. “They stand upside down, with their roots pointing up to the sky and their leaves curling against the ground, forming deep pools of rainwater along the lone path. You must be careful, for they feed on those who slip and fall in.”

Woferl’s eyes turned round as coins. “Do you think ghosts live there?”

“All manner of creatures do.” I pondered on what to tell him next. “They are not what they seem. Some are good and kind. Others will tell you they are one thing when they are another. You must follow the good ones, Woferl, and if you do, they will lead you to a shore with sand white as snow.”

Woferl had forgotten everything else around him now. He stared up at me with such an intent face that I laughed at his attention. My fingers danced across the clavier’s keys as I played a few light notes for him. To my pleasure, every note drew his admiration, as if he could not get enough of this world I’d chosen to share with him.

“Come here,” I suddenly said, putting my arm around him. “I know a piece that sounds just like this forest, if you want to hear it.”

Woferl giggled as I turned to a blank page in my notebook, careful not to crinkle the edges of the paper. I took a deep breath, then attempted yet again to reconstruct the music I’d heard in my sleep. I thought of the snippets of sounds from the streets that would awaken my memories, and added them to the melody.

Note by note, a strange song emerged from another world.

Woferl’s fingers danced in the air. He hummed the tune under his breath, his pitch perfect, and a part of me knew that he must be the only other person in the world who could hear the same beauty I could. “Can I play it like you, do you think?”