Then the fire engulfed him, and he at last turned to ash.

Before us was an empty castle, cleansed of its poison, drenched in light. The strange music that had always permeated the kingdom, the wind of Hyacinth’s whispers, was gone now. In its place lingered something different. A sound as sweet as the earth, made not of magic but of something real and warm and alive. The music of a heart.

In the sky, the moons had begun to set. For the first time, I saw the beginning of a glow at the horizon, the first hour of dawn before sunrise. I stood transfixed by the pink streaking the sky.

The queen finally turned to me, her eyes steady again. She was no longer a cursed witch, but a human, her faded wings now transformed into her velvet cloak.

I didn’t know what to say to her. What could I? I had let her stay trapped in her prison for so long. But when I couldn’t speak, she did.

“Now I am free,” she said. “And so will you be.”

I didn’t answer. I would return to my world, where Woferl would publish music and I would not. Where my future had already been laid out before me, a path that I could not hope to change.

The queen seemed to see my thoughts in my eyes, for she leaned forward and touched my chin. When she replied, I heard my mother’s voice. “It is a long battle to fight,” she said, “but you must still fight it. Speak for those less fortunate than yourself, who will need your help. Speak for the ones who will come after you, looking to you for guidance. Stay true, daughter. One day, you will see it all go up in flames.”

She smiled at me, then turned back to her empty castle. Already, I knew she would transform it, change this broken place into something worthy again. Already, I knew I would never be able to return.

I turned my back and walked away. The thorns were gone, as was the moat. I followed the path until the streets of Olmütz returned and the cathedral reappeared before me. The fire left behind an abrupt silence. No traces of the kingdom remained. Only a few streaks of ash smeared against the street, already being washed away by a light drizzle.

I wrapped my arms around myself and began the journey back to our house.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

When spring arrived again in Salzburg, and the fear of the smallpox had long since faded, my father decided it was time to begin touring again.

I saw the carriage waiting on the Getreidegasse. For a moment, I stayed in the music room, seated on the bench of the clavier, tidying the white layers of petticoats that peeked through my blue silks. Down below, Mama looked on as the coachman helped Papa drag the last of his and Woferl’s belongings into the carriage boot. They were headed to Italy, where my brother would play for the Hapsburgs and the Roman public.

The clavier, usually occupied in the mornings by Woferl, sat unopened and covered with a white cloth. I had not touched it in several weeks. Over the winter, I’d spent less of my time in this room and more time with Mama, reciting poetry with her and learning how to stitch a lace pattern.

Now I sat at the bench and ran a hand lightly across the instrument’s covered surface. My hair hung loose about my shoulders, waves and waves of it, untouched and unruly. I smoothed it back as well as I could, then pushed it behind my shoulders with a few pins. It was not unlike the style I’d worn so long ago, on the bright autumn day when a court trumpeter had come to listen to me perform. I had been eight years old then.

I had turned eighteen in January. My years of performing before an audience were over.

Finally, when I felt ready, I rose from the bench. On the Getreidegasse, I saw my brother tilt his head up toward my window. He waved a hand at me. I smiled at him, then headed downstairs.

The air was warm today, the breeze ruffling the curls of my hair. I made my way to where my brother stood alone. When he heard my footsteps against the cobblestones, his eyes lit up and he ran at me, wrapping his arms around me in a tight embrace.

“Woferl,” I said, laughing. “You are such a child, to run at me like that.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I will miss you. I’ll write you letters, of course, and tell you everything that I see. You will feel as if you are right beside me.”

I smiled at him. He had been growing steadily all winter, his limbs turning thin and awkward. Pockmarks lingered on his face from the smallpox, forever prominent, but through them I could still see the face of a young boy, at once too naïve and too mature for his age. “I will look forward to them every day,” I said. I touched his cheek. “Tell me everything, Woferl. Even what you eat for breakfast.”

He laughed. Behind him, Papa and Mama conversed in low voices with the Hagenauers. They were financing part of this trip, and I could tell in Papa’s gestures that he was thanking them for their continued generosity. Again, our rent was delayed. It was our endless state of being, teetering on the balance scale of the world, hoping always for better tidings.

“You will be safe here, with Mama?” Woferl asked. He stepped closer to me so that the others would not hear him.

I had told him, after he’d begun his recovery from the smallpox last autumn, what had happened to the kingdom on that night in Olmütz. That the kingdom was consumed by fire, that it was gone and had been rebuilt, and that we shouldn’t talk about it anymore. He had taken it all in stride, as if the end of my imagination of it was the end of his as well. Since then, I had not been visited in my dreams. Neither, I think, had he, although he did not speak of it. There were no more visions of edelweiss growing on sheet music, or silhouettes of faery creatures waiting in our music room. There was no more magic permeating our lives, aside from the magic of the real world. Of music, his and mine, real and true.

“We will be safe, I assure you,” I told him.

Woferl looked down. “Promise me you will write me too, and tell me everything. Send me your compositions. I hope you continue to write them down. I swear to you that I will not let them end up in our father’s hands.”

“I will send what I can.” I opened my arms to Woferl and hugged him tightly.

Woferl’s voice sounded muffled against my dress. “I’ve never been without you,” he murmured.

I held him to me for a long time, savoring his embrace, and said nothing.

When Woferl finally released me and climbed into the carriage, I walked over to stand with Mama and said my goodbyes to my father. He patted my cheek and touched my nose with the tip of his finger.

“Be good, Marianne,” he said to me. “Take care of your mother.”

I nodded. He had stopped calling me Nannerl as soon as I’d turned eighteen. “Have a safe trip, Papa.”

He smiled at me. Something sad lingered in his eyes.

For a moment, I wondered if he regretted leaving me behind, that he had also regretted what he’d done in Vienna, that forces outside of his powers made him act as he did. I thought for an instant he could see something in me, and he wished he could have created more with it.