The Kingdom of Back(7)

“When your fingers grow a little.” I gripped the bottom of our bench, then stood and pulled it toward the clavier. Woferl’s hands scooted closer to the keys. “Would you like to try?” I asked him.

Woferl did. He mimicked my notes. And again, I found myself pausing to notice that he could remember everything I’d played, that even with his small hands, he could follow along almost as if he’d been practicing with me for days.

I watched him in wonder, and within that wonder, a small twinge of something—envy, fear—took root. The feeling sat cold against my chest. The wish I’d made so long ago came back to me in a sudden wave. Make them remember me.

That was when it first happened.

Woferl saw it before I did. He sucked in his breath and cooed in delight, and then stretched his little arms toward the open pages of my notebook. I looked at what had captured his attention.

There, right on the first page, was a tiny cluster of grass blades and three beautiful white blooms of flowers, all growing from the parchment at a straight angle. I blinked, hardly believing what I was seeing. They were edelweiss flowers, treasures of the Alps.

“Don’t touch them, Woferl,” I whispered, pulling his arm back.

“Are they real?” he asked.

I leaned closer to inspect the strange sight. Edelweiss did not grow at such low altitudes, and certainly not out of music paper. They were flowers of the mountains, plants that men sometimes died seeking out for their beloveds. Mama once told us that the Virgin Mary herself had blessed our land with edelweiss by dusting the mountains with stars.

And yet, there they were—snow white, their petals thick and velvet, their edges hazy in the glow of the afternoon. A clean, fragile scent hung in the air. The light in the room seemed very strange now, as if perhaps we were part of a waking dream.

“They must have come from the forest,” I said. I reached one finger out.

My brother made an irritated sound. “You said not to touch them.”

“Well, I’m older than you.” I let my finger skim the surface of one flower. The petal felt like the collar of my winter coat, fuzz against my fingertips. I drew my hand back. Part of the color came away when I did, leaving a streak of white across my skin like paint.

“I’m going to tell Papa,” he said.

I grabbed his hand. “No, don’t. Please, Woferl? Papa will think I’ve been filling your head with silly stories.”

He looked at me for a moment, his expression wavering between emotions. I patted his cheeks gently in the way that our mother did. It was this that finally won him over. I saw the resistance go out of him, the sway of his body toward me as he savored the affection. He scooted back beside me. I rubbed the streak on my skin between two fingers, watching as it smeared and faded away into the air. Perhaps it had never been there at all. When we glanced back to the notebook’s open pages, the edelweiss had disappeared. Beside me, Woferl held his breath, waiting for the dream to return. My hands trembled.

But that was not all. When my finger had touched the flower petal, I’d heard a distinct musical note. No, something more than that. A sound too perfect to be from this world. A secret. I could tell by my brother’s expression that he had not heard it. I played it over in my mind until I realized the note was not a note at all, but a sweet and beautiful voice that bubbled with bright laughter. I knew, immediately, that it belonged to the boy by the ocean. It spoke only one sentence.

I can help you, Nannerl, if you help me.





THE BOY FROM ANOTHER WORLD



I think it all strange now, of course—a boy from another world, born from somewhere in my dreams. But the voice was very real then. I thought about it late into the night, turning it this way and that in my mind in an attempt to make sense of it, aching to hear its perfection one more time.

Woferl lay next to me in our shared bed and watched me with bright, sleepless eyes. Finally, he propped himself up on one elbow. “Do you think we’ll see the edelweiss flowers again?” He leaned toward me. He was still so small that his arms sank almost entirely into the folds of the bed. “Did they come from the forest in your story?”

I sighed and rolled over to look at him in a knowing manner. “Perhaps,” I said, to appease his curiosity. “I don’t know. But I do know I’m quite tired. Aren’t you?”

Woferl stared back innocently at me. “Yes. But you know everything, Nannerl. Don’t you also know what the forest is like?”

His chatter distracted me. All I wanted was to close my eyes and drift off to sleep with that musical note again in my mind. I sighed. “If I tell you a little more of the story, will you go to bed?”

“Yes,” he promised in a rush.

I couldn’t help smiling at his eagerness. “All right.” I snuggled closer and wrapped my arms around him. “The forest is very large,” I went on. My imagination loosened again. The world from my dream reappeared in my mind, parts of it blank and waiting for me to fill them in. “Larger than anything we’ve ever seen.”

“Larger than Salzburg?” Woferl asked.

“Yes, much larger than Salzburg. Or Vienna. Or all of Austria. It is an endless place.”

Woferl shifted in bed so that he could look at me. “Nothing is bigger than all of Austria,” he declared.

I laughed. “Well, this place is. And while edelweiss is only in the Alps here, in the forest they grow everywhere, because it is their birthplace, where all such flowers come from.”