My father was too busy with our guest to pay me any mind, but Mama noticed the stiffness in my posture and the paleness of my cheeks. We were the look of a family forever on the edge of respectable. My eyes wandered to the hem of my mother’s dress-it was fraying, the color dull.

Beside them, my father’s coat appeared worn, the threads thin at the elbows. They were finely made, velvet encrusted with gold lining, his hat made of beaver pelt and trimmed with lace. Sebastian hung up the court trumpeter’s belongings. Sebastian,” she added, nodding at our manservant. “Such talk of the archbishop and the orchestra, it’s no wonder you and my husband are always tired. She said this as if we were not expecting him at all, the esteemed court trumpeter of Salzburg, as if we had not planned everything in advance for his visit. “Herr Schachtner!” My mother’s voice sweetened with surprise at the sound of men in the room. I was still too young to fuss over my appearance, so my mother had left me in a simple state. My hair stayed neatly curled behind my neck in loose dark waves, held back with pins. The scent of the street-wind and smoke and baked bread-lingered like a perfume on his coat. His voice had been steeped in something rich and baritone. Even now, I can remember the uneven stitching of my blue petticoat, my white hands against black clavier keys, the skeleton leaves clinging to Herr Schachtner’s shoulders. I paused in the middle of my arpeggios and folded my hands in my lap. I was still playing through my exercises when Papa came through the door with Herr Schachtner at his side, the two of them discussing some matter or other about the archbishop, their hair blown wispy from the bustle of the Getreidegasse, the city’s main thoroughfare, on which our home stood. My day of magic arrived on a bright autumn morning, when the poplar trees swayed against a golden city.

The sounds outside your window seem very far away, songs of another world, and you imagine that this is the moment just before something unusual happens. Your voice is a note suspended in the breeze. The dust in the air glows white, charmed. There is a peculiar pattern to the silhouettes of leaves quivering against the sunbeam on the floor. Sometimes, a day comes along that seems possessed by a certain shade of magic.

The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu