Nannerl was seven years old the first time she realized that everything was going to change.
It was a sunny afternoon. They were still in the old house and the meadow beyond the parlor window was green and radiant: the invisible breeze ruffled the uneven grass in powerful, rhythmic strokes. Nannerl watched it for a while from her seat at the clavichord, and then she trailed her fingers over the keys in the same motion. She struck a sweet chord, then another, and she found that she could make a tune that followed the movement of the grass. The music coursed in from the empty field and out through her fingertips, and Nannerl fancied that she could hear the voice of the wind whispering in her ear.
Mama came into the room with Wolfgang on her hip. She leaned against the clavichord and watched Nannerl play for a while, her face shining as brightly as the summer sky outside. Nannerl found another chord, this one even sweeter, and she saw Mama close her eyes. She saw a dreamy smile float across her face, and she realized that it was her music that had done that. Nannerl had given the wind's song a voice, and it was beautiful enough to make Mama cry. As beautiful as the breeze in the clearing beyond the window.
She added in another scale, her left hand mirroring the right, and Wolfgang leaned forward in Mama's arms, reaching for Nannerl with both of his pudgy little arms.
Papa appeared at Mama's side then. He scooped Wolfgang up and dropped him onto the bench next to Nannerl, asking, "Do you want to play, son?"
Nannerl scooted closer to the window. Her fingers tangled for a moment when Wolfgang struck the keys with his palm, bringing a sour note into the melody, but the grass outside was still dancing with the wind.
"Give your brother a chance to try, Maria Anna," Papa interrupted. The voice of the wind broke off in Nannerl's ear and she faltered over the keys.
"Oh, Léopold, let her finish," said Mama quietly. "Your daughter is playing an original composition! Have you ever heard of a seven-year-old who could write such music?"
"And Wolfgang is only two. Move, Maria Anna."
"Yes, Papa," Nannerl whispered. She slipped off the bench and brushed past Mama's outstretched arms as she left the room.
The meadow was quiet when first she stepped outside, but then Nannerl plopped to the ground on the other side of the parlor wall and leaned her head back against the house. From here, Papa's voice was a gentle baritone, nothing more than a murmur from beyond the wall. The keys sounded methodically under his measured touch, distant and muddy beneath the birdsong. She couldn't help but smile when she recognized the tone of Wolfgang's delicate giggle.
On the other side of the meadow, the grass began to rustle again; the breeze swept toward her, and Nannerl closed her eyes. Could Papa hear it too? Could he teach Wolfgang to harmonize with the melodies that were always swirling around them? Was Wolfgang old enough to understand?
When she opened her eyes again, a cloud had rolled in front of the sun, and the wind turned cold.
That was the first time Papa told her she was in Wolfgang's way, but it was far from the last. As Wolfgang learned, as he was given more and more time to practice, Nannerl found herself watching in silence. Her brother played in churches, then concert halls, then cathedrals, and Nannerl... Nannerl learned to mend his clothes. Nannerl learned to sit with her hands folded in her lap and her lips pressed together, watching the back of Wolfgang's little head as he brought music to life. As perfumed and powdered lords and ladies applauded. As Papa beamed with pride. Sometimes, if she stared at Wolfgang hard enough, she could imagine that she was the one seated before those delicate keys. That she was the one caressing a melody out of them. That she was the one bowing while Papa smiled.
Whenever Papa wasn't home, if Mama was busy with washing or cooking, Nannerl would sneak to the clavichord and play. The songs were still inside her, but they would have to be hers alone. Performing was for men. For Wolfgang. Nannerl's place was with the servants.
Nannerl loved her little brother. He was her best friend - her only friend. But sometimes he hit a sour note, and Nannerl would look around the room, would look at the warmth on Papa's face, and would realize that she was the only one who could hear it.
When Nannerl was a young woman, skilled now in cleaning and mending, her fingers chapped from soapy water and too stiff at the end of the day to bend over the keys of a clavichord, Wolfgang and Mama went to Mannheim by themselves.
They had moved out of the house by the meadow long ago, trading that sweet little cottage surrounded by birdsong for a set of rooms in Colloredo's bustling palace. For a set of rooms that quickly became somber and uncomfortable without Mama's warm presence, without Wolfgang's silly laugh. Papa wrote to Mama every day, his head bowed over his desk and his forehead lined with deep wrinkles that didn't disappear when he smiled anymore. If he smiled. Nannerl wrote to Wolfgang. Her little brother's letters were as bubbly and energetic as he was, filled with details about the people he was meeting and the opportunities that were arising for his music. Nannerl replied with her careful advice. She pushed him in the direction she would have gone, just as she always did. Toward the opportunities she would have seized. And though tears stung at her eyes while she held the quill, she was happy for him. Each time she changed his mind and steered him away from folly, she was that little girl staring at the back of his head again, imagining that the fingers on the keys were hers.
One day, the subject of Wolfgang's letters changed.
One day, he fell in love.
Aloysia. Nannerl's eyes followed the curve of the letters time and time again as Wolfgang continued to write. Aloysia was grace, was elegance, was music personified. She was a solemn march, a whimsical dance, a nostalgic lullaby. She had a biting laugh and a wicked smile and the most innocent gaze Wolfgang had ever beheld. Her parents had asked him to be her teacher, and he had accepted immediately. Aloysia, he wrote. She was making progress, but how could he augment perfection? He wanted to write for her forever. He never wanted her to sing anything but his music for as long as they both lived. Nannerl, he wrote, what should I do?
Nannerl twirled her quill between her fingers and closed her eyes, trying to imagine a woman who was everything Wolfgang had described. If she were Wolfgang, what would she do?
For the first time, Nannerl lied. Don't frighten her away, she wrote. Don't tell her how you feel. She needs you to tutor her, not to distract her. Your music depends on it.
A month later, Papa announced that Wolfgang's pupil had been engaged to sing for the Princesse d'Orange, and Nannerl felt a flutter of hope in her breast that she thought had died years ago.
When she asked, Papa told her that he did not want to be seen in attendance when "that girl from that accursed family" sang at the palace d'Orange, even if his own son was the one conducting. So Nannerl found a group of ladies in Colloredo's court who were planning to attend, and they agreed to let her travel with them. She packed her finest dress; beneath it, she hid an old suit that Wolfgang had grown out of years ago. Papa kissed her hands as he helped her into the carriage. He passed her a letter to deliver to her mother, the driver cracked the whip over the team of horses, and Nannerl turned in her seat to watch as her father and the old palace shrank and shrank and finally disappeared from view.
Her traveling companions cooed over her on the first day, over the prodigy's half-forgotten sister. They watched her curiously from behind their gilded fans with laughter in their eyes. On the second day, Nannerl was the one making them laugh. On the third day, no one mentioned Wolfgang's name at all.
The palace d'Orange wasn't exactly like Colloredo's in Salzburg, but it wasn't exactly different, either. Here, the nobility wore French pastels and tucked fresh flowers into their hair. They shielded their fair skin from the hot southern sun with delicate parasols that matched their dresses, and when they smiled at Nannerl as she passed the warmth actually reached their eyes.
Wolfgang threw himself upon her the moment she stepped into their quarters, and though Nannerl's heart shuddered for a moment, she clung to him as tightly as he held her. Mama embraced her and kissed her hands just as Papa had done before she left, then took her letter to her room and left her children in the parlor. As soon as Mama was gone, Wolfgang pulled Nannerl aside and whispered, "Well? Do you want to meet her?"
Aloysia. From the moment she saw her, Nannerl knew everything was going to change.
She was everything Wolfgang had described, from her graceful bearing to her cunning smile, but his words had hardly scratched the surface. Aloysia, she murmured as their fingers touched, and she had to remind herself that she was not Wolfgang, and that it was not proper to bring these exquisite knuckles to her lips in reverence.
But Aloysia did not release her hand right away either. Their eyes met, and Nannerl felt the earth shift beneath them.
That night, she waited until Mama was asleep and crept over to her valise. She pulled on Wolfgang's old jacket and the breeches she had brought, and she slipped out into the long, marble hallway. Her footsteps brushed over the gleaming floor, the only sound in the palace apart from the soothing whisper of the wind outside.
Her fingers trembled in time with her heartbeat as she lifted the latch and pushed open the door that neighbored theirs. She stepped into the room and closed it behind her; when she turned again, she saw that Aloysia was sitting up in her bed and watching her. "Wolfgang," she hissed, "if you don't turn around and march right back to your own room, I'll scream. I'll have you arrested!"
Nannerl took another step forward. "I'm not Wolfgang," she said quietly, and for some reason the words sounded wrong.
But Aloysia's grip on her sheet tightened. "Oh!" she said, the corner of her mouth turning up in a coy smile, "No, you certainly aren't."
Nannerl winced. She never could be.
"So? Nannerl Mozart, isn't it? Why are you here?" Aloysia asked. Her voice was careful, layered with that poise that had won Wolfgang's heart.
Nannerl could not think of a lie. "To see you," she said.
"Oh," said Aloysia again.
After that, neither of them knew what else to say. What came next? Nannerl was suddenly aware of how small the room was, how bare, how dark. Aloysia was sat on a simple guest bed, her shift and her sheets and her face white in the unlit room, her long hair hanging loose around her shoulders in dark waves. The window was open; a beam of soft moonlight fell perfectly over half of her doll-like features. What must Nannerl look like to her in these borrowed clothes?
But then Aloysia released the sheet she had been gripping, flexed her fingers, and asked, "Well, if you were Wolfgang... what would you do next?"
What would she do if she were Wolfgang? What would she have already done? Where would she be able to go?
Nannerl knew the answer to that question, just as she had always known. She climbed onto the bed, slipping beneath the sheet and kneeling at Aloysia's side. She saw Aloysia's dark gaze run down the length of her bare neck, over the shift that was visible beneath her borrowed jacket. Aloysia did not recoil or push her away. "If I were Wolfgang," Nannerl whispered, "I would write you an aria."
"Would you?"
"Oh yes," said Nannerl. She let her fingers ghost over the skin of Aloysia's bare arm. "The most beautiful aria ever written."
Aloysia's lips parted; Nannerl let her hand drift from her arm to her leg. Her fingertips trailed down the length of her shift and over the bare flesh above her knee, and Aloysia let out a gasp that made Nannerl's heartbeat stutter. When she slid her hand up the inside of Aloysia's thigh, Aloysia caught her lower lip between her teeth and threw back her head even before Nannerl's fingers brushed over the patch of hair between her legs.
Aloysia fell back against the pillows as Nannerl traced the shape of her, her touch becoming lighter each time Aloysia began to squirm, tracing the crease between her thigh and her hip, pulling away when Aloysia ground her feet into the mattress and tried to thrust against her hand.
A breeze filtered in through the open window, tickling at the back of Nannerl's neck and ruffling her hair. She pressed her hand between Aloysia's thighs and let her grind against her palm, slick and desperate, her elegant hands tangling in the sheets again.
And when Aloysia seized her by the lapel of her borrowed jacket and hissed, "Please!" Nannerl slid two fingers inside her, and Aloysia let out a low moan more beautiful than any note Wolfgang had ever written for her. Nannerl watched her panting and thrusting as she moved her hand inside her, and then she leaned down and pressed a kiss to her neck. Aloysia groaned, and suddenly her movements were a melody. Nannerl could see the need coursing over her like the wind in the long grass of that forgotten meadow. She trembled beneath each touch, and Nannerl fancied she could hear her muse whispering in her ear once again.
Aloysia released her lapel and slid her hand around the back of Nannerl's neck, pulling her in for a kiss; Nannerl curled her fingers and found another chord, this one even sweeter, and Aloysia clenched her eyes closed and cried out against her lips.
When Aloysia fell still again, she caught Nannerl's mouth in a final breathless kiss and dropped back against the pillows, a dreamy smile floating across her face. Nannerl slid her fingers out of her and Aloysia let out a little mewl of disappointment. She wrapped her long arms around Nannerl and pulled her down next to her, pressing her lips to her hair as she whispered, "Now that was an aria that even Wolfgang wouldn't know how to compose."
Nannerl closed her eyes as Aloysia began brushing kisses along her hairline, down the side of her neck, over her collarbones. She slid her damp hand up the back of Aloysia's thigh and cupped her backside, pulling her closer. The weight of Aloysia pressing her into this mattress, the touch of her soft lips, of her breath ghosting hot over Nannerl's bare skin - Nannerl had done this. Nannerl was here, was experiencing this, was making this happen, while her little brother slept in the next room.
She released Aloysia just long enough to shuck off her borrowed jacket while Aloysia's long fingers began unbuckling her breeches; a moment later, there was nothing of Wolfgang's between them at all.
When Aloysia kissed her again, Nannerl felt something inside her begin to change.