The nutcracker brushed his knuckles against her cheek. “I want to go outside,” he said.
Now Clara scowled and stamped her foot as if she were the child she’d been when Droessen had first placed the nutcracker in her arms instead of a girl of seventeen. I want. She was not sure why those words enraged her so. Perhaps it was because the nutcracker had never spoken them to her before.
“I told you,” she said more sharply than she intended. “It cannot be. You don’t belong here.”
“I will take you outside,” said Frederik.
Clara flinched at the sound of her brother’s voice. He stood at the top of the attic stairs, gazing at the nutcracker with fascinated eyes.
“Get out!” she cried. He was not supposed to be here. He was not supposed to share this. She rushed at him, frantic with fear and shame, and tried to strike him, to push him back toward the stairs.
But Frederik simply held her wrists, keeping her at bay. He was a year older and far stronger. He shook his head, his eyes never leaving the nutcracker. “Stop it, Clara.”
“I remember you,” said the nutcracker, watching him. He came to attention and saluted. “My commander.”
Frederik gave Clara a warning look and let her hands drop. With a bemused grin, he returned the nutcracker’s salute.
“Yes,” said Frederik, walking toward him. “Your commander. I sent you to die a hundred times.”
The nutcracker frowned. “I remember.”
“How changed you are,” Frederik murmured.
Confusion crossed the nutcracker’s face. “Am I?”
Frederik nodded. “I’ll take you downstairs,” he said softly, as if coaxing a kitten with a bit of food. “I’ll take you outside.”
“Where does the road go?” asked the nutcracker.
“To Ketterdam. A magical place. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Frederik,” said Clara angrily. “You cannot do this.”
“We’ll say he’s my friend from school. We’ll say he’s just enlisted.”
She shook her head. “We can’t.”
“Mama will be so pleased to have a dashing young man in uniform join us for dinner.” Frederik’s smile was sly. “You can waltz with him at the party tonight.”
Clara didn’t want to waltz with him at a stupid party. She wanted to dance with him in a bluebell cathedral. She wanted to be greeted as a princess by a chorus of swans. She wanted wings. But she could say none of that to Frederik, who stood so close to the nutcracker now, his hand on his shoulder as if in fact they were good friends from school, as if her prince was a young captain, ready to join the Kerch forces in his blue coat with its shining buttons.
“Frederik,” she pleaded.
But her brother was already leading the nutcracker across the attic, already nudging him toward the stairs.
“Come, Clara,” Frederik said, that sly smile spreading wider. “It’s what he wants.”
The kiss had confused him. When Clara had begged to be taken to the dreaming land, the nutcracker had almost forgotten himself in the strength of her want. Then, in the watery sunlight of the attic, she’d turned her face to him in invitation, pressed her lips to his, and he’d felt desire—hers or his? It had been impossible to untangle, but he must have wanted her, because suddenly he could feel the cold from the window again, drawing him outward to the gravel drive, the woods, the snow. Then Frederik was there with his blazing eyes and claiming gaze, the power of his longing bright as a flame, dangerous. The nutcracker felt his resolve soften, turn waxen and easily molded. He thought if he looked at the place where Frederik had touched his shoulder, he might see the deep depressions of Frederik’s fingers still there, the emphatic divot of his thumb. The nutcracker’s thoughts of the road and what might lie beyond faded.
Down the stairs they went. The house was already filling with guests for the last evening of Nachtspel. How luminous they all were, how sharp in their lines, how needful their eyes as they looked at him in his false uniform and saw a lost son, a lover, a friend, a threat. He managed to greet Clara and Frederik’s parents, execute the appropriate bow.
Frederik called him Josef, and so he was Josef. Clara said she’d met him one afternoon at a sledding party and it was so. Where was he from? Zierfoort. Who was his commanding officer?
“Father,” complained Frederik with a wink at the nutcracker, “do not vex Josef with so many questions. I promised him good food and entertainment, not an interrogation.”
They fed him roast goose and fried dough stuffed with currants. He licked sugar from candied plums, drank coffee spiced with caraway seeds, followed by little cups of wine. The flavors made him feel wild, almost demented, but he knew he mustn’t lose himself. There, in the corner of his vision, the dark blot of the cabinet, propped against the wall like an open casket full of glassy eyes and splayed limbs. And there, Droessen, the clocksmith, the man in velvet who had studied Clara as if he wished to take her apart, who now watched the nutcracker with cold blue eyes.
Another memory came: Droessen reaching into the cabinet. Tell me, the clocksmith whispered. Tell me her secrets.
The nutcracker felt a horrible shame. How easily he’d betrayed Clara, spoken every one of her wishes and desires, described the places they’d visited together, every creature, every magical vista. No torture had been necessary. He’d simply talked. He had not been made to be a soldier but a spy.
He could make no amends for that now. He knew he must hold to the shape of himself, to the desire for the outside just a few steps, just a door or an open window away. Ketterdam—he must remember. But the world began to blur—the scent of perfume, perspiration, Frederik’s arm around his shoulder, Clara’s feverish eyes as they danced. How he knew the steps he could not say, but they spun and spun and she whispered to him, “Take me from this place.”
He kissed her beneath the stairs. He kissed Frederik in the darkened hall.
“Do you love her?” Frederik asked. “Could you love me too?”
He loved them both. He loved no one. In the dark shadows beyond the circle of light cast by the flames of the fire, the nutcracker caught the shine of black eyes, the glint of a tiny crown, and knew it must be the Rat King. My life began with wanting something for myself.
The nutcracker thought of the bend in the road and what might lie beyond it.
One by one the guests departed in their carriages or headed upstairs to fall into their beds.
“He can sleep in my room,” said Frederik.
“Yes,” said the nutcracker.
“I will come to meet you,” murmured Clara.
“Yes,” said the nutcracker.