The skin on my neck prickled. Last night was, of course, nonsense. But this time I did not laugh at the thought.
“You are very talented, Woferl,” I said to him after a long pause.
It was what he had been waiting all morning for me to say, and he brightened right away, forgetting all his frustration with our talk. His hand tightened in mine. My other hand rubbed at the glass pendant in the pocket of my petticoat. Acknowledging my brother’s playing frightened me less than the thought of last night being anything more than a dream.
The Getreidegasse was still wet today from a cleaning, and the air hung heavy with the smell of soups, carriages, horses, and smoke. Hohensalzburg Fortress towered over the city’s baroque roofs, a faded vision today behind a veil of fog. Farther down, where the streets met the banks of the Salzach, we could hear the splash of water from the butchers hunched behind their shops, cleaning freshly culled livestock in the river. Everything bustled with the familiar and the ordinary. Woferl and I blew our warm breaths up toward the sky and watched them turn into puffs of steam. The clouds looked gray, warnings of snow. Several ladies passed us with their faces partially obscured behind bonnets and sashes. One of them carried at her hip a fine, pink-cheeked boy swaddled in cloth.
I watched her and tried to picture myself doing the same, hoisting a child in my arms and following a faceless husband down these uneven sidewalks. Perhaps the weight of carrying a child would damage my delicate fingers, turning my music coarse and unrefined.
We reached the bakery. Sebastian ducked his head under the wrought-iron sign, greeted the baker affectionately, and disappeared inside. While he did, I turned my attention to the end of the street, squinting through the morning haze to where the trinket shop stood. I half expected to see a shadowy figure standing there already, a tall, willowy creature with his glowing blue eyes, my notebook tucked under his arm.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Woferl, tugging his hand. He needed no encouragement, and slipped out of my grasp to go skipping toward the shop, his shoes squeaking against the street.
The trinket shop was a familiar sight. Woferl and I liked to stop here often and admire the strange collections of figurines behind its windowpanes. Sometimes we would make up stories about each one, how happy or sad they might feel, how old they were. Herr Colas, the elderly glassmaker who owned the shop, would humor us by playing along. Some of the trinkets were thousands of years old, he’d say, and once belonged to the faeries.
Woferl blew air at the window and left a circle of fog on it. The circle began shrinking right away.
“Woferl,” I scolded, frowning at him. He stared back with big eyes.
“Do you see the boy in there?” he whispered, as if afraid to be overheard.
I bent down to study the trinkets. Some had colors painted on, deep-red dishes and gold-trimmed butterflies, blue glass pendants like my own, crosses, the Virgin Mary. Others had no color at all. They were simply glass, reflecting the colors around them, reminiscent of the faery lights we had seen in our flat. My gaze shifted from them to the shop beyond.
“I don’t see anyone,” I replied, looking back to the trinkets.
Then something scarlet caught my eye. I turned to look toward it and noticed a tiny sculpture I’d never seen before.
“Woferl,” I breathed, pulling him closer to me. I pointed through the windowpane. “Look.”
The trinket was of three perfect, white edelweiss, frozen in porcelain, their centers golden, their velvet petals gleaming in the light. One of the flowers had a missing streak of white paint.
My memory flooded with the image of the flower from my music notebook.
“Do you like this one, Fräulein?”
We both jumped, startled. Herr Colas stood near the shop’s door, squinting down at Woferl and me. Thin white bandages wrapped around his hand that clutched the doorframe. As he peered at us, I could see the deep pockmarks on his face crinkled up into slants. I sometimes wondered how he looked before the smallpox ravaged his skin, if he had ever been young and smooth-faced.
I pinched Woferl’s arm before he could say anything, and then I curtsied to Herr Colas. “Good morning, Herr,” I said. “The trinket is very pretty.”
He smiled and waved us forward with his bandaged hand. “Come, come, children,” he said. “Come out of the cold and have a look around.” He glanced at me. “You’ve grown taller since I last saw you, Fräulein. Your father has nothing but praise for your musical talents. I hear all the gossip, you know. The young girl with an ear like a court musician!” He gestured to my fingers, now covered in my gloves.
The Herr might know the gossip in the streets, but he’d never heard the barbed words my father said in our home, or seen the disappointment in his eyes. Papa would never belittle my skills in public. After all, that would embarrass him. Still, the Herr’s words warmed me, and I found myself blushing, murmuring my thanks.
“Where is this trinket from, Herr Colas?” Woferl piped up as we stepped inside, his eyes locked on where the porcelain edelweiss sculpture sat in the window display.
The old shopkeeper scratched the loose skin under his chin. “Vienna, I believe.” He leaned down to give us both a conspiratorial grin. In the light, one of his eyes flashed and I thought I caught a glint of blue. He wagged a finger not at the trinket, but at the windowpane, and I thought again of the strange boy shattering our window into a thousand pieces. “Who knows, though, really? Perhaps it’s not from our world at all.”
My skin prickled at his words. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but he had already left us alone to our wandering and returned muttering to his little desk in the shop’s corner.
The shop looked hazy, the light filtering in from the windows illuminating the dust in the air. Shelves of trinkets were everywhere, music boxes in painted porcelain and strange creatures frozen in yellowing ivory, their lips twisted into humanlike grins. The stale scent of age permeated the room. While Woferl wandered off to a corner decorated with wind chimes, my eyes shifted to a dark corner of the shop hidden behind shelves and boxes. A thin ribbon of light cut through the shadows there. A door.
“Herr Colas,” I called out politely. “Are there more trinkets in your back room?”
He didn’t answer. All I could hear was the faint sound of humming.
My attention returned to the door. The humming seemed familiar now, a voice so perfectly tuned that it pulled at my chest, inviting me closer. My feet started moving of their own accord. I knew I shouldn’t have been back there without Herr Colas’s permission, and a small part of me wanted to step away—but as I drew closer, my fear faded away into nothing until I found myself standing right in front of the door.
The humming voice came from within, beautiful and coaxing.
I pushed the door with slow, steady hands and stepped inside.