But he did not go to Frederik’s room. He lingered on the stairs as the candles were extinguished and the lower floors went silent. Then he descended again to the dining room. It was time; the doors that would lead to the rest of the world were a dark shape against the wall, but he needed to see the cabinet once more.
Moonlight poured in through the windows, making the dining room look like the galley of a sunken ship, hidden deep underwater. The cabinet sat silent in the corner. It looked bigger now that the room was empty of people.
He crossed to it slowly, listening to his boots echo in the empty room, smelling the remnants of the fire, the green wood scent of the pine boughs clustered on the mantel and above the windows. As he approached the cabinet, he could see his shape repeated in the glass panels of its doors, a little shadow growing, growing. He peered inside and saw the winter tableau of sugar mice and tiny trees, the soldiers in their rows, the marionettes with their gruesomely tilted heads and limp strings, the dolls sitting listless, cheeks rosy, eyes half-lidded.
“I know you,” he whispered, and touched his fingers to the glass. The perfect little fairies dangling from wires with their filigree wings and their gossamer skirts, wide-hipped Mother Ginger, and the Queen of the Grove with her green skin and silvery antlers.
“I made them all.” The nutcracker whirled to find Droessen watching him from the center of the room. His voice was smooth as buttercream. “Every hinge, every daub of paint. I fashioned the world of her dreaming from the details you told me. And yet it is the toys she loves and not me.” He walked so silently, as if he might be made of feathers or smoke. “Do you admire my handiwork?”
The nutcracker knew he should nod and say that he did, yes, he did, for this was the clocksmith the Rat King had warned him about, the one who had wanted Clara, or her wealth, or her family, or something else entirely for himself. But the nutcracker found it hard to speak.
“I confess,” said the clocksmith, “I am proud. I love to have my creations looked upon, see children smile. I eat the wonder in their eyes. But it seems not even I knew the marvels I might achieve.”
He was close now, and he smelled of tobacco and linseed oil. He smelled familiar.
“I should go,” the nutcracker said, relieved to find he could still speak at all.
Droessen laughed softly. “Where could you possibly have to go?”
“To Zierfoort. To my regiment.”
“You are no soldier.”
I am, thought the nutcracker. No, he scolded himself. You are pretending to be a soldier. It is not the same thing.
The clocksmith laughed again. “You have no idea what you are.”
Josef. That was his name, wasn’t it? Or had it been another guest at the party?
“Who are you?” asked the nutcracker, wishing he could back away, but there was nothing behind him except the glass cabinet. “What are you?”
“A humble tradesman.”
“Why did you make me betray Clara?”
Now a smile split Droessen’s face, and none of the kind ladies and handsome gentlemen who had welcomed the clocksmith into their parlors would have recognized this wolf, his many teeth. “You owe no loyalty to Clara. I made you in my workshop,” he said. “Between your jaws, I placed a child’s finger bone, and then crack.”
The nutcracker shook his head. “You are mad.”
“And you are made of wood.”
The nutcracker splayed his hand over his own chest. “My heart beats. I breathe.”
The clocksmith’s grin widened. “A bellows breathes to grow a fire. A clock ticks. Are those things alive?”
Maybe, thought the nutcracker. Maybe they’re all alive.
“You do not dream,” said the clocksmith. “You do not want. You have no soul. You are a toy.”
I am a toy. The nutcracker felt his heartbeat slow. No. Hadn’t he believed Clara when she’d said he was a prince who loved her? Hadn’t he believed it when Frederik claimed the nutcracker was his soldier to command? Both of those things had been true. Neither of them had been true. Then perhaps he was a toy but also alive.
The Rat King had warned him: your desire must be stronger.
“I want …, ” began the nutcracker. But what did he want? He could not quite remember. How had all of this begun? “I was—”
The clocksmith leaned closer. “You were a baby I took from a foundling home. I fed you on sawdust until you were more wood than boy.”
“No,” said the nutcracker, but he felt his belly fill with wood chips, his throat choke with dust.
“You were a child I stole from a sick ward. Where you had tendons, I wound string. Where you had bones, I fixed wood and metal. You screamed and screamed until I took your vocal cords and made your throat a hollow I might fill with silence or any words I liked.”
The nutcracker crumpled to the ground. He could not cry out for help. His head was empty. His chest was empty. His mouth was bitter with the taste of walnuts.
Now Droessen leaned over the poor broken toy. He seemed too large, too tall, too far away, and the nutcracker knew that his own body was shrinking.
“You were an idea in my head,” said the clocksmith. “You were nothing, and to nothing you will return when I think of you no more.”
The nutcracker looked into Droessen’s pale blue eyes and he recognized the color. He painted my eyes to look like his. The nutcracker felt the idea of himself fading as he understood that he was only Droessen. That he had only ever been Droessen.
Over the clocksmith’s shoulder, he glimpsed the moonlit drive and the snow-covered fields beyond. The road winding … where? To a city? To Ketterdam? He longed to see it—the twisting canals, all the crooked houses packed together. He imagined the city rooftops crowded up against one another, the boats on the water, fishmongers calling to their customers. It didn’t matter. It was not enough. I am a toy. I need nothing but a shelf to wait upon.
He felt himself lifted, but the clocksmith did not place him back in the cabinet. Instead he strode toward the fire. The nutcracker wondered if Clara and Frederik would weep for him.
Then the clocksmith grunted, cursed. The world spun as the nutcracker found himself falling. He hit the floor with a terrible crack.
Click, click, click. The nutcracker heard the skitter of claws over wood, followed by a chorus of squeaks. Rats poured from the walls, crawling in a wriggling flood up the clocksmith’s trousers. He kicked and batted at them, stumbling backward.
“Remember yourself,” said a high reedy voice at the nutcracker’s ear. The Rat King tipped his crown.
I am a toy, thought the nutcracker. I remember my maker leaning over me, a paintbrush in his hand, the concentration on his face as he completed this gift for the girl he hoped to beguile. The nutcracker had been cursed from the start. If only he’d been made by a generous hand. If only he’d had a true father.
“That’s the way, Captain,” cried the Rat King.
“Get away, you vile things!” Droessen snapped, kicking out at the squirming creatures.