“We should go to the top,” he said again when we stepped inside the keep’s heavy doors. Ahead of us, Papa and Sebastian were listening intently to the monsieur, while Mama talked to the madame in a low voice. I felt Woferl pull at my hand.

“Do not wander off,” I whispered to him. My fingers tightened around his.

But Woferl would not listen. “I want to go to the top of the tower.”

I took a deep breath to steady myself, and tried to turn my attention to what our parents were saying. Woferl kept his eyes on the stairs. They spiraled up and disappeared around the edge of the wall, partially illuminated by the child-size windows that opened to the river scene below. I could not guess what made Woferl so restless. He was still a young boy, and perhaps today was simply a day of mischief for him.

Without warning, Woferl slipped his hand out from mine and darted toward the stairs. I sucked in my breath sharply. “Woferl!”

Papa turned to see my brother scampering up the stairs, and before he could utter a sound, Woferl had vanished. He shot me a reproachful look. I curtsied in apology to the monsieur and madame, murmured something I knew they could not hear, and then hurried to the stairs myself. I heard Papa stop Sebastian from following me.

“Let her bring him back,” he said. “It is her responsibility. At any rate, she will need to learn how to be a mother soon enough.”

The words pricked me like thorns as I gathered my petticoats into my arms and ran. Again, I felt my anger shift in the direction of my brother. If he would only listen and do what he was told, Papa wouldn’t feel the need to say such things.

The stairs were high and slanted and old, crumbling in some places, the middle of each step worn down into curves from centuries of travelers. My shoes tapped a rhythm against the stones that began to sound like the beginning of a melody. I called out for Woferl again. Somewhere ahead I could hear his footsteps, but they were very far away now.

“Nannerl!” his small voice called back down to me. He sounded like a muted violin. “Hurry, won’t you?”

“Come back down immediately!” I shouted up to him.

“But Hyacinth told me I should come up here! Don’t you want to join me?”

I froze. Hyacinth had told him? Immediately, I thought back to the mornings when my brother would wake with a dazed look on his face, as if he’d had dreams he couldn’t explain. I remembered the way his eyes would dart about under their lids in his feverish sleep.

I looked up at the winding stairs. A faint presence of music hung in the air, reaching out from another world. A tremor shook through me, and suddenly I felt afraid. What had Hyacinth been telling him, that he had not told me?

“Woferl!” I called again, finding new strength in my fear.

The stairs continued on. Now and then, as I passed a window, I would catch a glimpse of the bottom of the hill and the moat and the river, and see patches of sky and sunlight. The scene was very familiar to me, and I began to slow down so that I could better see the view at the next window. My shoes rubbed against something slippery. When I looked down, I noticed that some of the steps were wet now, as if fresh from a rainstorm.

I climbed higher and higher. My breaths began to come in gasps, and yet still I could not hear Woferl answer my calls. My irritation grew. I told myself that I would not sit with him at practice tomorrow, to punish him, and that when he would ask me for help in his compositions, I would refuse. Woferl would not remember what he did to me, though. He would simply pout at me later, and ask why I did not care for him anymore.

I paused by a window to rest, careful not to sit on the wet parts of the stairs. Outside I could hear the wind in the trees and the sounds of the river, but they seemed distant too, as if everything in the world was far away from the stairs that I sat on. I gazed out the window, lost for a moment in my thoughts. A melody floated in the breeze and disappeared before I could fully grasp it.

That was when I first noticed it. The sky had grown a little darker, a scarlet tint to the clouds, and the rush of the river suddenly seemed very loud. The moat looked wider than I remembered. The window grew smaller, and I leaned back, suddenly afraid that it would close around my head.

Through the shrinking opening, I thought I saw a dark figure float around the base of the keep, shrouded in black tatters, and shapeless. My hands started to tremble.

The château no longer looked like a château at all. It had become the castle on the hill.

When I looked out the window again, I could see someone waiting on the other side of the river.

The water appeared dark now, its bottom indistinguishable from the murky depths, and strange shadows glided under its surface, fragments of a massive creature with a long tail.

The figure on the other side of the river was Hyacinth.

Even from here I could tell that he looked different. He had grown even taller, white bleeding into his skin like winter stripping the color from a tree, and his glowing blue eyes fixed on me with such intensity that I drew back from the window to catch my breath. When I shifted, my foot brushed past a cluster of edelweiss growing at the base of one step.

I looked back up the stairs. The flowers had appeared everywhere, surrounded by sprouts of grass. I swallowed hard. “Woferl,” I whispered, knowing that he could not hear me.

Something called my name from outside the window. “Fräulein. Fräulein.”

It was Hyacinth and his sweet, wild, savage voice. The kiss on my lips turned cold again. I trembled and did not reply, although a part of me yearned hungrily for his presence.

“My darling Fräulein,” he said. “It is time. We have done what we needed. Now, you must use the treasures you have fetched for me.”

My breaths had turned very rapid, and when I looked back out through the window, I could see his arm extended out in my direction. He was too far away for me to see his features, but I knew he was smiling.

“You never told me you were talking to Woferl,” I finally said.

He shook his head. “I do not speak alone to your brother,” he replied.

A lie, I thought. I could hear it in the air. “What are you telling him? What do you want with him?”

Hyacinth tilted his head at me. “What’s this? Are you questioning me?” He laughed a little and opened his arms. “I am your guardian, as I always have been. Come now. Our next task approaches. I must take the next step in helping you achieve your immortality.”

I watched him, wary, unsure of everything. Perhaps Woferl is the one teasing me, lying to me about Hyacinth. “What is the next task?” I decided to ask.

Hyacinth nodded toward the giant creature swimming through the river, its fins black and gleaming. “The river that surrounds my castle has been poisoned by a monster that now patrols its depths. The golden arrow you retrieved for me is the only weapon capable of penetrating its scales.”