She promised that she would.
Clara’s mother and father assumed that as she grew older, Clara would leave such childish things behind and begin to care more for dresses and the prospect of a husband and a family, as her friends did. But as the years passed, Clara stayed the same strange, dreamy girl who might let a sentence trail off because some secret, unspoken thought had caught her, who would endure language lessons and cotillions with distracted grace, then smile and drift off to some dim corner where whatever invisible world her mind had conjured might unfurl without distraction.
When Clara turned sixteen, her parents threw her a grand party. She ate sweets, teased her brother, and danced beautifully with every eligible merchant’s son in attendance. Althea Zelverhaus heaved a happy sigh of relief and went to bed without a worry for the first time in months. But that night, when she woke from her sleep, she had the sudden need to check on her children. Frederik, seventeen and happy to be home from school, snored loudly in his room. Clara’s bed was empty.
Althea found Clara curled on her side by the hearth in the dining room, one of her favorite dolls in her arms. She saw that her daughter had put on her slippers and coat and that both were wet with snow.
“Clara,” her mother whispered, rocking her shoulder gently to rouse her from sleep. “Why did you go outside?”
Clara blinked drowsily at her mother and smiled a sweet, vague smile. “He loves the snow,” she said, then clutched her doll closer and fell back into slumber.
Althea looked down at her daughter in her nightgown and damp coat, the ugly little face of the wooden doll in her arms. It was Althea’s least favorite of Droessen’s creations, a nutcracker with a grotesque smile and garish blue coat. Standing there, she had the sudden thought that inviting the clocksmith into her home years ago had been a terrible mistake. Her fingers itched to snatch the doll from Clara and toss the wretched thing into the fire.
She reached for the nutcracker, then yanked her hand back. For a moment—it could not be and yet she was sure of it—it seemed the toy soldier had turned his square head to look at her. And there had been sorrow in his eyes. Nonsense, she told herself, cradling her hand to her chest. You are becoming as fanciful as Clara.
Even so, she stepped away, certain that if she dared touch the nutcracker, dared throw it into the flames, the thing would cry out. Or worse, it might not burn at all.
She put a blanket over her daughter and returned to her own bed, and when she woke the next morning, she’d all but forgotten her foolish notions of the night before. Nachtspel was beginning and her guests would soon arrive. She rose and rang for tea, seeking fortification for the arduous day ahead. But when she went downstairs to see to the menus, she checked to make sure that Clara was sorting chestnuts with the cook, and paused once by the cabinet in the dining room where they displayed Droessen’s gifts. Not for any reason really. Certainly not to make sure that the nutcracker was safely locked away behind the glass.
Clara knew her mother worried. She worried too. When she was seated at dinner or at some party with a friend or even occasionally at her lessons, she would think, This is pleasant. This is enough. But then she’d arrive back home and she’d find herself in the dining room in front of the cabinet. She’d reach once more for the nutcracker and take him to her bedroom or up to the attic, where she would lie on her side amid the dust motes and whisper to him until he whispered back.
It always took some time and felt a bit awkward at the start. It had been easier when she was a child, but she was self-conscious now in a way she hadn’t been then. Clara felt foolish moving the nutcracker’s arms, making his jaws open and close to answer her questions. She couldn’t help but see herself as others would: a young woman, nearly grown, lying on a dusty attic floor, talking to a doll. But she persisted, reminding him of the adventures they’d had, though they had changed a bit over the years.
You are a soldier. You fought bravely on the front and returned to me, your darling.
You killed a monster for me once, a rat with seven heads, on the last evening of Nachtspel.
You are a prince I woke from a curse with a kiss. I loved you when no other would, and you chose me for your queen.
She would place a walnut between his hard teeth—then crack, the noise so loud in the still attic.
Are you my soldier? she would ask, again and again. Are you my prince?
Are you my darling?
Are you mine?
And at last, sometimes after mere moments, sometimes after what seemed like forever, his jaws would move and he would speak.
Are you my soldier?
“I am.”
Are you my prince?
“I am.”
As he spoke, his limbs would grow, his chest would broaden, his skin would turn supple.
Are you my darling?
“I am.”
Are you mine?
“Sweet Clara,” the nutcracker would say, tall and handsome and perfect now, the grotesque rictus of his face softened into tender human lines. “Of course I am.”
He would offer her his hand and with a whoosh, they would fly through the attic window, out into the cold. She would find herself atop a great white horse, clutching her beloved’s waist, whooping with joy as they sailed through the night, past the clouds, and into the lands beyond.
She did not know what to call the place he brought her to. Fairyland? The Land of Dreaming? When she was a child, it had looked different. They’d ridden a spun-sugar boat on a sweet water stream. She’d walked on marzipan cobblestones past gingerbread villages and castles made of marmalade. Children had danced for them and greeted the nutcracker as their prince. They’d sat on gumdrop cushions and his mother had called Clara a hero.