I opened my eyes. The sun was slanting against the floors just so, and a new haze hung about the light in the room. We were bathed in its glow. “There is a forest,” I said, looking down at my brother. “That surrounds a kingdom.”
Woferl grinned at that. He clapped his hands. “What kingdom?” he asked. “What forest?” This was the game between us. He would ask me questions. I would invent answers for him, and slowly, our story would grow.
“It is a place where moss and flowers coat the floor,” I said in a hushed voice. “Trees grow in thick bundles. But, Woferl, they are not trees like what we know.”
“What are they like?”
Now my dream returned in glittering pieces: the moon, the sea, the black line of woods, and the strange shapes of the trees. The boy walking through the sea foam. I lowered my voice and gestured him closer. My imagination wandered free, constructing the rest of what this fantasy of a land might be. “They stand upside down, with their roots pointing up to the sky and their leaves curling against the ground, forming deep pools of rainwater along the lone path. You must be careful, for they feed on those who slip and fall in.”
Woferl’s eyes turned round as coins. “Do you think ghosts live there?”
“All manner of creatures do.” I pondered on what to tell him next. “They are not what they seem. Some are good and kind. Others will tell you they are one thing when they are another. You must follow the good ones, Woferl, and if you do, they will lead you to a shore with sand white as snow.”
Woferl had forgotten everything else around him now. He stared up at me with such an intent face that I laughed at his attention. My fingers danced across the clavier’s keys as I played a few light notes for him. To my pleasure, every note drew his admiration, as if he could not get enough of this world I’d chosen to share with him.
“Come here,” I suddenly said, putting my arm around him. “I know a piece that sounds just like this forest, if you want to hear it.”
Woferl giggled as I turned to a blank page in my notebook, careful not to crinkle the edges of the paper. I took a deep breath, then attempted yet again to reconstruct the music I’d heard in my sleep. I thought of the snippets of sounds from the streets that would awaken my memories, and added them to the melody.
Note by note, a strange song emerged from another world.
Woferl’s fingers danced in the air. He hummed the tune under his breath, his pitch perfect, and a part of me knew that he must be the only other person in the world who could hear the same beauty I could. “Can I play it like you, do you think?”
“When your fingers grow a little.” I gripped the bottom of our bench, then stood and pulled it toward the clavier. Woferl’s hands scooted closer to the keys. “Would you like to try?” I asked him.
Woferl did. He mimicked my notes. And again, I found myself pausing to notice that he could remember everything I’d played, that even with his small hands, he could follow along almost as if he’d been practicing with me for days.
I watched him in wonder, and within that wonder, a small twinge of something—envy, fear—took root. The feeling sat cold against my chest. The wish I’d made so long ago came back to me in a sudden wave. Make them remember me.
That was when it first happened.
Woferl saw it before I did. He sucked in his breath and cooed in delight, and then stretched his little arms toward the open pages of my notebook. I looked at what had captured his attention.
There, right on the first page, was a tiny cluster of grass blades and three beautiful white blooms of flowers, all growing from the parchment at a straight angle. I blinked, hardly believing what I was seeing. They were edelweiss flowers, treasures of the Alps.
“Don’t touch them, Woferl,” I whispered, pulling his arm back.
“Are they real?” he asked.
I leaned closer to inspect the strange sight. Edelweiss did not grow at such low altitudes, and certainly not out of music paper. They were flowers of the mountains, plants that men sometimes died seeking out for their beloveds. Mama once told us that the Virgin Mary herself had blessed our land with edelweiss by dusting the mountains with stars.
And yet, there they were—snow white, their petals thick and velvet, their edges hazy in the glow of the afternoon. A clean, fragile scent hung in the air. The light in the room seemed very strange now, as if perhaps we were part of a waking dream.
“They must have come from the forest,” I said. I reached one finger out.
My brother made an irritated sound. “You said not to touch them.”
“Well, I’m older than you.” I let my finger skim the surface of one flower. The petal felt like the collar of my winter coat, fuzz against my fingertips. I drew my hand back. Part of the color came away when I did, leaving a streak of white across my skin like paint.
“I’m going to tell Papa,” he said.
I grabbed his hand. “No, don’t. Please, Woferl? Papa will think I’ve been filling your head with silly stories.”
He looked at me for a moment, his expression wavering between emotions. I patted his cheeks gently in the way that our mother did. It was this that finally won him over. I saw the resistance go out of him, the sway of his body toward me as he savored the affection. He scooted back beside me. I rubbed the streak on my skin between two fingers, watching as it smeared and faded away into the air. Perhaps it had never been there at all. When we glanced back to the notebook’s open pages, the edelweiss had disappeared. Beside me, Woferl held his breath, waiting for the dream to return. My hands trembled.
But that was not all. When my finger had touched the flower petal, I’d heard a distinct musical note. No, something more than that. A sound too perfect to be from this world. A secret. I could tell by my brother’s expression that he had not heard it. I played it over in my mind until I realized the note was not a note at all, but a sweet and beautiful voice that bubbled with bright laughter. I knew, immediately, that it belonged to the boy by the ocean. It spoke only one sentence.
I can help you, Nannerl, if you help me.
THE BOY FROM ANOTHER WORLD
I think it all strange now, of course—a boy from another world, born from somewhere in my dreams. But the voice was very real then. I thought about it late into the night, turning it this way and that in my mind in an attempt to make sense of it, aching to hear its perfection one more time.
Woferl lay next to me in our shared bed and watched me with bright, sleepless eyes. Finally, he propped himself up on one elbow. “Do you think we’ll see the edelweiss flowers again?” He leaned toward me. He was still so small that his arms sank almost entirely into the folds of the bed. “Did they come from the forest in your story?”