He looked me squarely in the face. “What could I possibly have to say to you?”
A sob caught in my throat. “How could you possibly be so cruel?”
“Me, cruel?” He laughed, and the sound was a little feral, a little wild. “Oh, Liesl. It is you who are cruel. It is you who lie. Not me. Not I.”
I blinked the tears from my eyes. “How have I been cruel, Sepperl?”
The light in his icy blue gaze shone with something like contempt, even malice. I was taken aback. The youth who stood before me was no longer the child I knew. Since being reunited, I had marked how my brother had grown: lean and lanky with his height, the last of his baby fat withered from his smile to reveal sharp cheekbones and an even sharper chin. But it was more than the visible changes time had wrought upon him that made him unfamiliar to me; it was the invisible ones that turned him into a stranger. I wondered then what my real brother—the one stolen by changelings—would have looked like now. I immediately quashed the treacherous thought, furious with myself for even thinking it.
“Is this where you want to have our reckoning?” Josef’s voice was quiet. It was an unquiet quiet, the hush before a winter storm. “Because we can have it now. Right this moment. With both Fran?ois and our sister to overhear.”
I glanced to the sleeping boy in the bed beside the table. Fran?ois’s eyes were closed, but there was a waiting stillness to every line of his body. He was listening. The door to the room I shared with K?the was cracked open a sliver, and I caught the reflected gleam of her summer-blue eyes before they winked out into darkness. I looked away.
“I thought so.” Josef’s face was hard.
“Fine,” I said. “Be off to bed then. I shall see you in the morning.” I shoved my sewing to the side and made to blow out the candle when I felt my brother’s hand about my wrist.
“Liesl.” His voice cracked, leaping several octaves as it hadn’t in several months now, unexpectedly young and vulnerable. “I . . . I—”
I held my breath. A gossamer-fragile truce, a filament of peace, and I dared not exhale lest I disturb it altogether.
The moments stretched on, and beneath and between us, a growing chasm.
“I wish you good night,” my brother said at last.
I shut my eyes. “Good night, Josef.”
He blew out the candle. I made my way to my own bed, stumbling through the dark.
And then a voice from the shadows, so soft I could have imagined it:
“Sweet dreams, Liesl.”
*
I did not dream.
The following morning I awoke late. K?the was already gone, the gowns I had finished vanished along with her. The boys too were missing, but Fran?ois had left me a note stating that he and Josef had left with my sister to run errands and prepare for Carnival. The Procházkas’ black-and-white ball would be held in two weeks, and there was no time to lose.
It had been a long time since I had had any space to myself. The solitude felt strange, like an old dress I had not worn in a year. It sat oddly on my shoulders, as though I had forgotten how to fill it out, how to wear it. Back at the inn, any bit of time alone had been rare and therefore precious. I had been cautious not to spend my minutes and seconds carelessly, instead choosing to place all my waking moments by myself to that which I held so dear.
My music.
The table in the front room was a mess of papers, blunt quills, and spilled ink. I could see where my sister had spent the morning refining her ideas for our costumes for the black-and-white ball—half-finished sketches of lace and ribbons and silhouettes scribbled onto any bit of blank space—on bills of fare, torn pages from our accounting ledger, on the backs of abandoned compositions. One could trace the progression of K?the’s thoughts from page to page, as her vision became sharper and clearer. These endless attempts at perfecting and refining were both foreign and familiar to me. I understood this process of creation and genesis. This genius.
Or I had once.
One of the first things we acquired once we were settled in our apartments was a klavier. Fran?ois and I had spent days hunting through shops selling all sorts of keyboards: harpsichords, virginals, and even the newer pianofortes that seemed to be all the rage in town. We had marveled at the nuance and tonality of these modern instruments, the control in sound just the subtlest of touches could wring. I could see the longing in Fran?ois’s eyes, the hunger in his strokes, but unfortunately there was no room in our apartments for a pianoforte.
In the end we decided upon a clavichord, small enough to fit in our cramped home and discreet enough not to bother the neighbors. It was not an instrument to practice performance on, but one to compose and write upon. A tool for me rather than for Fran?ois, who was the better musician.
It had lain untouched ever since we purchased it.
You’ve been playing, I see.
And you haven’t been composing, I see.
I ran my hands over the keys. A fine layer of dust had already settled over the instrument, and my fingertips left questioning trails in their wake. I waited for some mood or inspiration to strike me, for the desire to play to overtake me, but there was nothing. Solitude around me and silence within me. I had not dreamed once since we came to the city. The voice inside me—my voice—was gone. No ideas. No drive. No passion. My nights were quiet. Blank. The dullness was seeping into my days.
I had thought that by leaving home—leaving him—I could escape my own inability to write.
I wonder if it’s not Vienna you are running toward, but a kingdom you are trying to outrun.
Excuses were easy to find for my lack of composing and creativity. Here in Vienna, it was easy to hide my cracks behind the everyday tumult and turmoil of city living. Eruptions of mania or melancholy could be attributed to ordinary, quotidian frustrations: the price of bread, the backsplash of an emptied chamber pot, the shouts and screams of joy, sorrow, rage, and surprise of complete strangers, the calculated indifference of casual acquaintances. I was overwhelmed by the variety of sights and sounds we encountered on the streets—musicians, artists, noblemen, beggars, cobblers, dressmakers, grocers, merchants, landlords—people of every shape, every size, every creed, every color.
But in a city of thousands, I had never been more lonely.
It wasn’t just my relationship with Josef that had grown tenuous and fragile. K?the was by turns tender and frustrated with me, for I was a beast to be around. I trailed regrets and reproach in my wake, my moods as mercurial as quicksilver. I strained even Fran?ois’s infinite patience—pleasant and productive one moment, sullen and snarling the next. I knew I was insufferable, yet my irritability was a force both beyond and beside me. Even I found my own whining exhausting at times. I vacillated between rage and despondency, furious I couldn’t force happiness on myself. I had everything I had ever wanted. I was here. In Vienna. At the start of my career.