He removed his hand. His expression changed, and he started to move away. “The coach is almost ready. Come along, Nannerl.”

As I headed after my father, I watched Woferl pull Mama’s arm down toward him. I could not hear him, but his words coaxed a tear from her eyes, and she gathered him into her arms.

Years later, I learned that Woferl had asked, Mama, will you be sad when I grow up?

* * *

We traveled along the upper rim of the Alps, where the terrain changed to gently rolling hills and patches of forest. Papa and Mama chatted together on one side of the carriage, while I sat with Woferl on the other. The ride was so bumpy that I had to press him against the carriage wall to keep him from sliding around.

While our parents dozed, I spent my time looking at the ever-changing landscape. The houses had grown sparse, and the sun shifted in the sky so that it peeked in just below the carriage window, bathing us in light. I smiled at the warmth, leaned closer, and narrowed my eyes. The passing hillsides transformed into a stream of colors, gold and peach and orange, hazy layers of billowing silk. Tree trunks blurred by.

Beside me, Woferl’s eyes were half closed, and his lashes glowed white in the sunlight. His slender little fingers danced, composing in the same way I’d seen him that morning with Papa’s violin.

“What are you thinking, Woferl?” I asked in a soft voice.

He opened his eyes. “I am writing a concerto,” he whispered.

I nudged him affectionately with one elbow. “How are you writing a concerto, silly, with no paper?”

“I can write it down in my head and remember it.” He rolled his eyes upward, thinking, then looked at me again. “I am imagining the kingdom.”

His mention of the fantasy otherworld sent a familiar thrill through me. Woferl had, for months after the incident at the trinket shop, asked me exactly what I’d seen that day. I’d told him about the clavier and the notebook, the grotto and the princeling. All I’d left out was the conversation between Hyacinth and me. It had seemed like a secret meant for no one else.

“Are you, now?” I said. “What does a concerto about the kingdom sound like?”

He turned his large eyes on me. “You want to hear it?” he asked eagerly.

I hesitated for the space of a breath. “Of course,” I replied.

He cleared his throat and hummed a few bars. It sounded light and airy, not like the perfect music from my dream or the grotto, but instead like the scenery we passed. Somehow, I felt relieved that it was so different. Perhaps the music from the otherworld was something only I truly understood. My mind returned for a moment to the moss-paved tunnel, Hyacinth’s bright eyes and polished fingernails. Now and then, I thought I could see an upside-down tree flash by our window, although I could never quite focus on it.

“I like it,” I said to him when he fell silent again.

“We should give the kingdom a name,” Woferl announced. I shoved him, glancing pointedly over to our sleeping father. “A name,” he repeated in a whisper.

“All right. A name. What do you want to call it?”

Woferl closed his eyes. I watched his sun-soaked lashes resting against his cheeks and wondered for a moment if he had fallen asleep. Then he opened his eyes and flashed a grin at me. “Let’s call it the Kingdom of Back,” he declared.

“What a curious name,” I whispered. “Why?”

Woferl looked pleased with himself. “Because it’s all backward, isn’t it?” he replied. “The trees turned on their heads, the moons where there should be sun.”

Now he was turning playful from restlessness. “And does that mean the people are backward there too?” I teased him. Here, in our sunlit carriage, the kingdom seemed just a figment of our dreams, Hyacinth a fleeting memory. “Were we backward?”

He giggled. “Everyone is backward.” At that, he offered me a mock frown, an imitation of a backward smile, and tried to flip the syllables in his name. It sounded so garbled that I covered my mouth, trying to stifle my laughter.

He shifted in the carriage seat toward the window. “Backward,” he repeated to himself. “I’m going to put that into my concerto.”

“Are you going to write it down when we reach Vienna?”

“Yes.”

“The whole concerto?”

“I am almost finished with the first movement.”

I shook my head gently at him, disbelieving, then patted his knee. “Surely you can’t remember all of that. I would not be able to hold such a long piece in my head.”

Woferl simply shrugged. “I can.” Then he uttered a contented sigh and rested his head against my shoulder. As he did, he hummed under his breath, so softly that I could barely hear him. But I did. And this time, the sound struck deep within me. I recognized the kingdom in his melody—at once sweet and beautiful, newly formed, in a minor key that made it sound like a place that could never quite settle.

At first, I heard echoes of Papa’s rigid teaching. But I could also recognize the parts that my brother drew from my own playing, the pauses and crescendos in his measures. I could make out the way he was turning my inspiration, the sound of my yearning, into his own. How, in a way, he was taking what I could do and improving upon it.

How silly I was for thinking, even for a moment, that Woferl could not create something beautiful enough for the kingdom. I closed my eyes, dizzy, envious, wanting more. This was not the composition of a child. Within it was the wisdom of an old soul, not the innocence of a young boy. No child could create a piece like this and keep it all in his mind.

And as I thought this, as I listened in awe to my brother’s raw concerto, the memory of Hyacinth came to me in such a strong wave that I opened my eyes, shivering, certain he would be sitting in the carriage with us.

But he was not there. Papa still sat across from us, dozing with his chin resting against his hand, while Mama leaned against his shoulder, swaying in her sleep. Still, I felt the ripple of something strange in the air, the heady sensation of a new presence. Through the window, something pale flashed by among the trees. A glimpse of glowing eyes.

In an instant, the kingdom and the princeling no longer felt like a faraway dream. They were very real, and they were here.

Suddenly, the carriage lurched to one side. Mama gasped. Papa startled awake with a curse on his tongue. I cried out—my hands flew to the carriage wall to keep myself from falling forward. Our trunks clattered free of their ties and careened out of the boot, landing with a crash in the dirt path outside. We settled to a halt in a cloud of dust.

Papa was first up on his feet. He scrambled against the slanted floor until he could pull himself out of the suspended door, then reached over to hoist my mother out.