“You will not do it,” he said. His voice had turned into a whimper now as he looked between the queen and me. “You know I am your only chance to fulfill your wish. We have always helped each other, Fräulein. If you turn away from me now, there is no coming back.”
“I’ve had enough of your temptations,” I replied. “You are not the guardian of my destiny. I have already found my own way. You will not take my brother, and you will not steal me away to die.”
“Everyone dies,” Hyacinth said. He laughed, a high, nervous sound. “But not everyone, my darling, will be remembered.”
I thought of what I’d written, the sonatas published under my brother’s name. I thought of our oratorio, the measures of my own that I had kept. I thought of my brother’s wide, admiring eyes, the way he would imitate my style, my composition, my music. I thought of his last words to me, his small voice, his hand in mine. It was my wish, in a form I could only now recognize.
All I’ve ever wanted was to be like you.
Perhaps I would never be remembered in the same way as my brother. Perhaps, in the world’s eyes, I would never be what I wanted to be. Perhaps the only one who would ever hold me in his heart would be Woferl. But when I was gone, my work would survive, immortalized on paper, embedded in my brother’s mind.Locked away inside me, carried on through him. No one could take that piece of my soul away.
“What you offer me,” I replied, “I have already achieved.”
Hyacinth lunged toward me. The queen stepped forward, her arms outstretched, to protect me. The glow of her hands flashed a brilliant golden light, as bright as the Sun itself—and all at once, the entire castle seemed drenched in heat. Fire engulfed the dark grass near my feet, eating it away in great gulps. The queen lifted her arms to the sky, and the flames before us surged at her beckoning.
Hyacinth shrieked in anger and fear. Fire raced in a ring around me and swallowed the crooked black trees, the winding path, the vines and ivy and leaves, the clusters of mushrooms. It devoured the faeries in its path, the ivy staining the walls, the soot-charred stones. It devoured the ghosts of the past and the weight of the air. It fed on the dead silence of the castle, filling it instead with the roar of flames.
Hyacinth tried to run. He leapt over one column of fire, then another. For a moment, I thought that perhaps we would not be able to trap him at all, that he would end up escaping still into the woods, until the next time a poor fool crossed his path and he decided to use their lives for his pleasure.
Then the flames caught his arm. Hyacinth yelped, dancing in agonized fury amidst the flames and burning trees. His skin melted in the heat. His screams grew higher and higher. I watched as the flames ate away at his figure until he was no longer a tall, foreboding figure, not even the shy and mischievous boy I’d first seen so long ago, his eyes large with fear and his wide mouth twisted into a smile. He danced as he died, his body a column of fire raging in unison with everything around him.
Fräulein!he called to me as he went.Help me!
And even now, in spite of everything, I could feel the pull of his presence against my heart. But the queen and I watched in silence, until that pull weakened and weakened into nothing.
Then the fire engulfed him, and he at last turned to ash.
Before us was an empty castle, cleansed of its poison, drenched in light. The strange music that had always permeated the kingdom, the wind of Hyacinth’s whispers, was gone now. In its place lingered something different. A sound as sweet as the earth, made not of magic but of something real and warm and alive. The music of a heart.
In the sky, the moons had begun to set. For the first time, I saw the beginning of a glow at the horizon, the first hour of dawn before sunrise. I stood transfixed by the pink streaking the sky.
The queen finally turned to me, her eyes steady again. She was no longer a cursed witch, but a human, her faded wings now transformed into her velvet cloak.
I didn’t know what to say to her. What could I? I had let her stay trapped in her prison for so long. But when I couldn’t speak, she did.
“Now I am free,” she said. “And so will you be.”
I didn’t answer. I would return to my world, where Woferl would publish music and I would not. Where my future had already been laid out before me, a path that I could not hope to change.
The queen seemed to see my thoughts in my eyes, for she leaned forward and touched my chin. When she replied, I heard my mother’s voice. “It is a long battle to fight,” she said, “but you must still fight it. Speak for those less fortunate than yourself, who will need your help. Speak for the ones who will come afteryou, looking to you for guidance. Stay true, daughter. One day, you will see it all go up in flames.”
She smiled at me, then turned back to her empty castle. Already, I knew she would transform it, change this broken place into something worthy again. Already, I knew I would never be able to return.
I turned my back and walked away. The thorns were gone, as was the moat. I followed the path until the streets of Olmütz returned and the cathedral reappeared before me. The fire left behind an abrupt silence. No traces of the kingdom remained. Only a few streaks of ash smeared against the street, already being washed away by a light drizzle.
I wrapped my arms around myself and began the journey back to our house.
THEENDOFTHEBEGINNING
When spring arrived again in Salzburg, and the fear of the smallpox had long since faded, my father decided it was time to begin touring again.
I saw the carriage waiting on the Getreidegasse. For a moment, I stayed in the music room, seated on the bench of the clavier, tidying the white layers of petticoats that peeked through my blue silks. Down below, Mama looked on as the coachman helped Papa drag the last of his and Woferl’s belongings into the carriage boot. They were headed to Italy, where my brother would play for the Hapsburgs and the Roman public.
The clavier, usually occupied in the mornings by Woferl, sat unopened and covered with a white cloth. I had not touched it in several weeks. Over the winter, I’d spent less of my time in this room and more time with Mama, reciting poetry with her and learning how to stitch a lace pattern.
Now I sat at the bench and ran a hand lightly across the instrument’s covered surface. My hair hung loose about my shoulders, waves and waves of it, untouched and unruly. I smoothed it back as well as I could, then pushed it behind my shoulders with a few pins. It was not unlike the style I’d worn so long ago, on the bright autumn day when a court trumpeter had come to listen to me perform. I had been eight years old then.
I had turned eighteen in January. My years of performing before an audience were over.
