“Something other than walnuts.” The Rat King scratched behind his ear with his little pink claws, then removed the crown from his gray head and placed it gently in his lap. “Do you know I started life as a sugar mouse?”
The nutcracker’s confusion must have shown, for the Rat King continued, “I realize that’s hard to believe, but I was just a confection. Not even for eating, just for looking at, a charming little marvel, a testament to my maker’s skill. It seemed a shame that I should go untasted. My first thought was, I wish someone would eat me. But that was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“To get free of the cabinet. Wanting is why people get up in the morning. It gives them something to dream of at night. The more I wanted, the more I became like them, the more real I became.”
“I am perfectly real,” protested the nutcracker.
The Rat King looked at him sadly. Sitting there, without his crown in the dim light, his whiskers drooping slightly, he looked less like a dreadful monster than a sweet-faced mouse.
A memory came to the nutcracker. “You had seven heads—”
The Rat King nodded. “Clara imagined me fearsome, and so fearsome I became. But a rat can’t live with seven heads always talking and arguing. It took us hours to make the simplest decisions, so when the others were asleep, I cut them from me one by one. There was an awful amount of blood.” He shifted slightly in his seat. “Who are you when she isn’t here, Captain?”
“I am …” He wavered. “I am a soldier.”
“Are you? What is your rank? Lieutenant?”
“Lieutenant, of course,” answered the nutcracker.
“Or is it captain?” the Rat King inquired.
Are you my soldier? Are you my prince?
“I—”
“Surely you must know your rank.”
Are you my darling?
“Who are you when no one picks you up to hold you?” asked the Rat King. “When no one is looking at you, or whispering to you, who are you then? Tell me your name, soldier.”
Are you mine? The nutcracker opened his mouth to answer, but he could not recall. He was Clara’s prince, her protector. He had a name. Of course he had a name. Only the shock of battle had driven it from his mind.
He’d fought bravely.
He’d taken Clara to meet his mother.
He’d ridden a horse through a gleaming field of stars.
He was heir to nothing. He was prince of a marzipan palace.
He slept on spun sugar. He slept on gold.
“You walk and talk and laugh when Clara dreams with you,” said the Rat King. “But those are her desires. They cannot sustain you. My life began with wanting something for myself. I wished to be eaten, then I wished to eat. A piece of cake. A bit of bacon. A sip of wine. I wanted these things from their table. That was when I moved my legs and blinked my eyes. I wanted to see beyond the cabinet door. That was when I found my way into the walls. There I met my rat brothers. They are not charming or pretty, but they live even when no one is looking. I have made a life in the walls with them, unwatched and undesired. I know who I am without anyone there to tell me.”
“But why did you attack us?” said the nutcracker. The blood. The screaming. “I know that was real.”
“As real as anything. When Clara was a child, she dreamed of heroes, and heroes require a foe. But the desire to conquer was the will she gave me, not my own. It is simple hunger that keeps me alive now: crumbs from the cupboard, cheese in the larder, a chance to venture outside to the woodpile, see the wide sky, feel the cold bite of the snow.”
Snow. Another memory emerged—not the place of dreaming that Clara so longed for, but a new place beyond the cabinet. She had taken him outside one night. He had felt cold. He had seen clouds moving over the starlit sky. He had taken the air into his lungs, felt them expand, exhaled, seen the puff of his breath in the chill night. He remembered trees clustered against the horizon, a road, the desperate desire to see what lay beyond it.
“That’s it, Captain,” said the Rat King as he slowly rose and placed the crown back atop his head. “It helps to live in the shelter of the walls where there are no human eyes to look upon me. It helps to be a rat who no one wants to look at. Your desire must be stronger if you wish to get free of the cabinet, if you wish to be real. She loves you, though, and that will make it harder.”
Clara loved him. And he loved her. Didn’t he?
The Rat King nudged open the cabinet door. “One last thing,” he said as he skittered onto the ledge. “Beware of Droessen. You were meant to be a gift to Clara, a means of enchanting her and nothing more.”
“He loves her too, then?”
“Who knows what the clocksmith loves? Best not to ask. I think the answer would please no one.”
The Rat King vanished, his pink tail slithering behind him.
Clara tried to stay away. She managed it for a night, the wine and the guests a happy distraction. But the next day, she snuck from the skating out on the lake and ran to the cabinet, clutching the nutcracker beneath her coat and racing up the stairs to the quiet of the attic.
Are you my soldier? she whispered as the cold winter light made bright squares on the dusty floor.
Are you my prince? She tucked a walnut between his jaws.
Are you my darling?
Are you mine?
It did not take long this time. The nutcracker’s body stretched and his head split to reveal her handsome prince’s face.
“I am,” he said. He smiled as he always did, touched his gentle hand to her face, but then trouble came into his eyes.
He pressed his fingertips to his mouth, licked his lips, and frowned as if the taste of walnuts did not agree with him.
“Where will we go today, my prince?” Clara asked.
But he did not take her hand. He sat up, ran his fingers through the beam of sunlight from the window, and then rose to peer out through the glass.
“Outside,” he said. “I’d like to see where that road goes.”
The request was so ordinary and yet so unexpected, Clara couldn’t quite make sense of it for a moment. “That isn’t possible.”
“It’s what I want.” He said the words as if he’d made some great discovery, a new invention, a magic spell. His smile was radiant. “Dear Clara, it’s what I want.”
“But it cannot be,” she replied, unsure of how to explain.
His cheer vanished and she saw fear in his eyes. “I cannot return to the cabinet.”
Now she understood. At last. At last.
She took his hands. “You need never return to the cabinet. Only take me with you to your home and I will forsake this place. We can stay forever in the land of dreams.”
He hesitated. “That is what you want.”
“Yes,” said Clara, tilting her head up. “It is what I have always wanted.” The fervor of it filled her. Sweat broke out over her neck. Kiss me, she willed him. In all the stories a kiss was required. Take me from this place.
She could not wait. Clara stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. She tasted walnut and something else, maybe lacquer. But he did not take her hand, did not draw her closer. She felt no wind on her face nor horse galloping beneath her. When she opened her eyes, she was still in the same dull, dusty attic.