Now much of that was gone, replaced by deep green forests and shining rivers. The air was warm and silken like the places she’d read about—summer lands where the sun shone all year and balmy breezes were thick with the scent of orange blossoms. The white horse carried them to new places every time: a valley where wild ponies with manes of mist ranged; a quicksilver lake as big as a sea, where they met with dashing pirates who had gems for teeth; a palace of dogwood walls and larkspur towers that rose from a grove where clouds of butterflies hovered, wings chiming like bells. The queen there had pale green skin perpetually dotted with dew and her crown rose like antlers, directly from her forehead, in twists of bone that gleamed like mother-of-pearl. When she touched her lips to Clara’s mouth, Clara felt two delicate wings sprout from her back. She spent the day flying, swooping and dropping like a hummingbird, pausing only to drink honey wine and let the queen twine hellebore into her hair.
And yet it was not enough. Did her prince love her? Could he? Why did he return her to her home at the end of every magical journey? It wasn’t fair to show her that such a world could exist and then take it from her so cruelly. If he loved her as she loved him, surely she would be allowed to stay. At every visit, she hoped his mother would greet her as a daughter rather than a guest, that she would open a new door on a wedding bower.
Instead the dinner gong would sound or she’d hear Frederik stomping up the stairs or her mother’s voice calling, and she would find herself sailing back through the starry sky to the cold, empty attic, her joints stiff from lying on the slats of the floor, the hard body of the nutcracker beside her, shrunken and ugly, the leavings of walnuts between his wooden jaws.
She would place him back in the cabinet and return to her parents. She would try to smile at the drab world around her, though her cheeks were still warm with sunshine, though her tongue was still sweet with the taste of honey wine.
As for the nutcracker, he was sure of nothing, and sometimes it frightened him. His memories were a blur. He knew there had been a battle, many battles, and that he’d fought bravely. Hadn’t he been made for it? He had been born with a bayonet in hand.
He’d fought for her. But where was she now? Where was Clara? She of the star eyes and soft hands. They’d faced the Rat King together. She’d wrapped him in her kerchief. He’d bled into its white lace folds.
Clara. Why could he remember her name and not his own?
He’d fought bravely. At least he thought he had.
The details were hard to recall—the screams, the blood, the squealing of the rats with their thick pink tails and teeth like yellow knives, gums red with blood from the bites they’d taken. How those teeth had glistened in the golden light! Had it been sunrise or sunset? He remembered the smell of pines.
He squinted now, from his place in the barracks, through the wide plate-glass window. But the view confused him too. He could see a long table set for a feast, candied fruit, pine boughs laid upon the mantel. But everything was far too large, as if seen through a distorting lens.
He counted the brass buttons on his fine blue coat. Whose uniform did he wear? Which country was his home? Who had polished the dust of the battlefield from his boots?
Had there been a battle? Had he fought or only dreamed of fighting? Other memories seemed clearer. He was a prince, her prince. She’d told him so. He’d wanted nothing more than to show her all the wonders of his home, to explore its endless horizons. And yet, why did he feel no gladness when he returned to the palace where he supposed he had been raised? Why was everything as new to him as it seemed to be to her?
Nothing felt certain. He was sure the streets they’d walked had been narrow before, bordered by houses with frosted roofs instead of wide boulevards that swept past mansions tiled in gold. Gifts of nougat and sweet cream had pleased Clara before, but now he gave her jewels and gowns because he knew she would prefer them. How he came by this knowledge, he could not fathom.
He watched the people at the table—giants it seemed, and yet there was Clara, who he’d held in his arms. Sometimes her eyes strayed to him and he tried to cry out to her, but he had no voice, no way to move his limbs. He must have been injured.
He watched her eat her supper and speak to … it took him a moment to remember—Frederik, her brother, a commander in the war, bold and sometimes reckless, but the nutcracker had executed every order given. There was another familiar face at the table, a man with long hair and pale blue eyes who studied Clara as if she were a piece of machinery to be taken apart and put back together. I know him, thought the nutcracker. Droessen. I know his name. But he could not think how. This man did not look like a soldier, though he had the bearing of one.
A memory clawed up through the nutcracker’s thoughts. He was lying on his back, staring at shelves packed with clocks and slumped marionettes. He smelled paint and oil, the fresh shavings of wood. Droessen loomed over him, huge and cold-eyed with terrible focus. I was wounded, thought the nutcracker. Droessen must be a surgeon then. But that wasn’t quite right.
The meal ended. The guests drank little glasses of garnet-colored liquid. Clara sipped at hers, cheeks flushed. They played games before the fire, and someone shouted, “It’s snowing!”
They raced to gather around the great window, but the nutcracker could not see well enough to tell what interested them so. There was talk and laughter and then they were all racing out of the dining room to … he did not know. He did not know what lay beyond this room. It might be a palace or a prison or a pine grove. He knew only that they were gone.
Servants came and banked the fire, doused the candles. He’d fought bravely, and yet somehow, he always ended up here, alone in the dark.
Clara did not come that night.
The nutcracker awoke to shrill squeaking and found the Rat King at his bedside. He sat up hurriedly and reached for his saber, realizing as he grasped at his sword belt that his weapon was gone, and at the same time, that he could move again.
“Peace, Captain,” the Rat King said. “I have not come to fight, only to talk.” His voice was high and reedy, and his whiskers twitched—yet the monster still managed to look grave when he spoke.
This creature had the nutcracker’s blood on his filthy paws, and would have murdered Clara too. But if he came to speak under conditions of a truce, the nutcracker supposed he must honor that. He dipped his chin the barest amount.
The Rat King adjusted his felt cloak and looked around. “Do you have anything to drink? If only they’d stuck you in a liquor cabinet, eh?”
Cabinet. The nutcracker frowned at the word. He’d been resting in the barracks, had he not? And yet as he looked around, he saw that what had simply seemed the vague shapes of beds and other soldiers were strange items indeed. Girls with glass eyes and stiffly curled hair were propped against the wall. Rows of soldiers with bayonets at their shoulders marched in frozen lockstep.
“I don’t know,” he replied at last.
The Rat King perched on the gilded lip of an enormous music box. But was it enormous? Or were they small?
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked.
The nutcracker hesitated. Had it been with Clara? In the Land of Snow? The Court of Flowers? “I can’t recall.”
The Rat King sighed. “You should eat something.”
“I do eat.” Surely he did?