Drosselmeyer: Dance of the Nutcracker

Prologue

A figure rose from behind the smooth rock and turned to face Fritz. He was tall and broad. His hair fell in golden ringlets to his shoulders. The curves of his muscled chest and arms were only half hidden by his white tunic. The gold trim of his outfit matched the golden circlet on his head. 

“Who are you?” He asked. His voice was mellow yet commanding.  

“My name is… Drosselmeyer,” Fritz hesitated, turning his eyepatch toward the statuesque man. 

“I see you do not bow in my presence,” the man observed, more to himself than to Fritz. “And the clothes you wear are not of this world.”

He circled Fritz, his steps slow and plodding and his expression showing nothing more extreme than bemusement. “Where are you from?”

“The Central Kingdom,” Fritz replied. The man squinted ever so slightly. 

“So you don’t know who I am?” He sounded bored, on the verge of a yawn. 

“No, sir,” Fritz said, dipping his head in a polite gesture. “Forgive my ignorance.”

The man stopped pacing, and Fritz turned to face him. The air around him shimmered, and his white robe shed golden sparks of light.

Fritz shrank back from the imposing figure, enamored of and terrified by his demeanor. “Are you the Watcher?”

Chapter 1

Men prefer slavery because it is more convenient. They only complain about it when it stands in the way of a pleasure. For the price of a trinket or opiate, you can own a man’s soul.

– Coriarkin, Fifth Wizard of The Order

The man with golden locks strode up to Fritz, his quizzical smile never faltering. He towered several inches above Fritz, and the muscles in his shoulders stretched and flexed in tandem with his gait.

“Am I in the Watcher’s Realm?” Fritz asked. His voice sounded hollow and flat in this room, the confident tenor replaced by an unsure quiver.

In a single move, smooth as snake, the man flung a stream of magic at Fritz. The magic was shapeless waves of light and color, sparkling like dried pine needles on a fire.  

Fritz launched back through the door into the hallway and skidded to a stop on the marble floor. His body registered the pain a moment later. It felt like every bone teetered on the brink of snapping in two.  If he breathed too deeply, the pressure would create a ripple of broken limbs.

He dared not move a muscle or even moan. He laid on the floor, eyes glazed over, taking in minuscule puffs of air. The man stepped over Fritz’s crumpled body and shouted something down the hall. He tapped his sandaled foot impatiently, and the small, staccato slaps of leather on marble thundered in Fritz’s skull.

Another figure glided into Fritz’s frosted periphery. He recognized the gnarled legs with pieces of bark curling up from the skin, and his heart seized with fear.  

A Lignumort.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The low, silky voice of the Lignumort stood in stark contrast to its coarse exterior.

Fritz’s vision blinked, and his hearing began to muffle. 

“I found another one. Or, rather, it found me,” the man hissed. His voice was raw with annoyance, and his foot tapped faster on the floor. 

“My apologies, Your Majesty,” the wooden creature said, and its skin creaked as it bowed. “Shall I kill it?”

“No!” the man responded with an annoyed edge. “I’ve taken care of that already. Go feed his body to the lions or something. Just get it out of my sight.”

The man spun and left the Lignumort with the body. His robe flapped with the force of his exit, and he slammed the door behind him.

“As you command, sir,” the Lignumort spoke to the empty space. It wrapped its spindly arms around Fritz and lifted him.

The pain from the spell tore through Fritz’s limbs, and he cried out.

The tree monster paused, holding Fritz at eye level. “Not dead?”

Fritz couldn’t respond. His lungs were paralyzed with pain.

The Lignumort began to squeeze his hands, crushing Fritz with little effort, then stopped. It turned, partially, toward the door where its master had disappeared. The creature raised a hand, preparing to hail the leader but stopped and, thinking better than interrupting the volatile wizard, returned its gaze to Fritz.

The coal black eyes moved ever so slightly over Fritz, weighing the options, before settling on a course of action.

“Yes,” it mumbled to itself. “Yes, I think I will send you there.” And then it squeezed.

When Fritz woke up, he was lying on a table in a small, sunlit room. His clothes were gone, and he was draped by a threadbare, linen sheet. Gauzy curtains, made from the same material as his covering, fluttered slowly in a balmy wind, and the faint whiff of burnt wood and freshly turned soil permeated the air. 

He slowly flexed his toes, calves, quads, chest, and arms, silently rejoicing that the pain was gone and only stiffness remained. Fritz exhaled and sat up, wrapping the sheet around him. 

In another room beyond the opened door, a chair creaked and scooted across the stone floor before a man with frizzy, gray hair and overgrown beard hair hobbled into the room, supporting the weight of his right leg on a wooden crutch. 

“You’re awake,” he noted and eyed Fritz up and down. He reached into a wide, side pocket and pulled out a black object. 

“Your clothes are gone but I was able to save this.” He tossed Fritz’s eyepatch on the foot of the bed. “I’ll get you a robe and take you to your cell.”

“Please,” Fritz clutched the familiar eyepatch to his chest and turned his good eye to the hunched man. “Can you tell me where I am?”

“Infirmary,” the old man quipped without turning around.

“Yes, but where?” Fritz slid off the bed, savoring the feel of warm stone beneath his feet, and followed the stooped figure into the room he’d just come from.

“Where is this infirmary located?” Fritz asked again and was rewarded with a deep sigh from the gray haired man.

“You are in the Golden City,” he rasped and shuffled over to a rickety wardrobe and opened one door. He picked a white, half robe from a stack of identical outfits and threw it at Fritz. “Put this on.”

Fritz obeyed, noting that the material was the same as the sheet he’d been lying under. 

“What I mean is: What country or land… or world am I in?” Fritz prodded. The robe was more or less the right size and hung loosely just above his knees. There was a linen cord hanging from the back by a few pieces of thread. Fritz wrapped this around his waist and secured it with a simple knot. 

The man paused then leaned all his weight on the knobby staff. “You're not from the Woodlands?”

“No,” Fritz responded. “I’m from the Central Kingdom.”

“Ah.” The older gentleman let out a long, slow wheeze. “You’re an outsider. We don’t get many of those.”

He plopped into a nearby chair and motioned to a stool. 

Fritz sat down on the stool and waited, hands clasped, for the old cripple to explain further. “Who is ‘we’? Your people? What are you called?”

“You’re in Guildorn.” He gestured and Fritz followed the hand’s path.

“Guildorn?” Fritz whispered. He wasn’t sure if that was the room, city, or kingdom. It could be something else entirely.

“I suppose that’s another world altogether,” Fritz mused.

The old man didn’t respond. 

“That’s a comfort,” Fritz continued. “I thought I’d died and gone to the Watcher’s Realm.” 

The old man suddenly seized up and began coughing violently. He rocked back and forth, clutching his throat and beating his chest. 

Fritz raced to his side and clapped him several times on the back. Seeing a bucket of water on a corner table, Fritz retrieved a ladle full of water and slowly drained the liquid into the older man’s trembling lips. 

When the fit subsided, the man reached out and shakily pulled Fritz close. He wrenched Fritz’s face sideways with a bony grip and whispered in his ear. “Don’t ever say that name again unless you desire a slow, painful death.”

Fritz loosed himself from the man’s hold and backed against the wall. “What name? Watcher?”

The old man blanched and clapped his hands to his head.

“Why? Why can I not say that name?” Fritz hissed from across the room.

The old man only shook his head, lips shut in a tight, wrinkled frown. 

A far door opened and a Lignumort slid into the room. It was larger than the one that had dispatched Fritz but the tiny, obsidian eyes seemed more vacuous, less aware. “Ezriel, report.”

Fritz shrank from the creature.

The Lignumort’s first two fingers extended slightly when it spotted Fritz.

“The prisoner is in good health,” Ezriel said, rising from his chair. “I was about to show him his bed.”

“Ezriel will take you to your cell.” The Lignumort rumbled with a casual disdain. “Any trouble and you will be slain by order of and with Malregent’s good pleasure.”

Fritz nodded his understanding and watched the spired digits shrink back into fingers. 

The Lignumort left them. 

Ezriel grabbed his crutch from against the wall and shuffled out the door. 

Fritz followed after him, staring at the structure around him. There were no decorations or tapestries on the bare walls covered in yellow-gold plaster. The only objects adorning the empty space were charred lamps hanging in sconces at intervals. The ceiling was made of large, rough hewn timber, blackened with age and soot. Giant, gaping holes in the roof allowed sunlight to stream into the narrow hallway, warming the walls and floors. 

Ezriel led Fritz out of the infirmary and across a small lawn into another building built in the same fashion as the one they’d left. This one, however, had cages instead of walls. Each cage had four beds fastened to the stone dividers separating the cells.  

Ezriel stopped outside a door and motioned for Fritz to enter. 

Fritz obeyed, and Ezriel limped back the way he’d come, leaving him without a word or explanation.

Fritz studied each of the beds and guessed his was the top right bunk. It had a gauzy sheet (same material as his robes and the curtains) wrapped around a thin mattress.  

He tested the cell door, and it swung easily enough. No guards were posted at either side of the long hallway and none of the other cages were occupied. Fritz exited the jail and wandered around the small grounds outside. 

There were two buildings set in a courtyard surrounded by tall, windowless walls: the infirmary he had just come from and the jail house he was to occupy for the foreseeable future. The roofline of the buildings was about 12 feet below the top of the walls and there was no way in or out of the walled space except through the infirmary. 

Fritz guessed Lignumorts guarded that building, and he didn’t wander in there to find out. 

The rest of the space was taken by a grassy yard with a smoldering fire-pit in the center. A large pot crusted with bits of food swung in lazy arcs from a metal tripod. Near it, on a small stone embankment, were a few wooden utensils most likely used to stir and serve food. Pewter plates and cups leaned against the wall, baking in the sunlight after being scrubbed clean.

One section of the wall had a cement ditch with a stream of water that entered through a small opening and exited out the other. The stench and encrusted pieces of fecal matter told Fritz all he needed to know about what happened in this area. 

The walls were smooth, save some etchings of prisoners, with no discernible cracks or hand-holds. The courtyard formed a hexagonal shape with the two buildings running the span of one flat surface. One section of the wall rose higher than the others but Fritz found no clue as to why.  

The sun began to dip in the sky and the shadows of the wall lengthened and quickly plunged the prison into a cold, clammy twilight. Fritz sat cross-legged on the stone ledge near the fire pit, watching the change in temperature. 

A loud blast from some instrument caused Fritz to leap into the air, heart pumping, fists clenched. He fought the instinct to ready a defensive spell in his hand. 

If the Lignumorts had the same ability to sense magic here as they did back in his world, he didn’t want to face them while trapped in an unknown environment. He briefly considered traveling away but the only places he could travel to were the infirmary and the infinity room with the golden wizard and neither was helpful or preferable. 

Fritz decided to wait, watch, and keep the element of surprise on his side. 

The door at the side of the infirmary opened and a line of men walked from the building and into the jail cell. Clouds of dust rolled off them as they dragged themselves in a weary, weighted stroll. The last man straggled through the door and Ezriel followed, locking the door behind him. The old man pushed a cart loaded with bits of food and as he got closer, Fritz saw that some of it was spoiled, half eaten, or large chunks of bone with scant pieces of flesh still attached. 

“Better get in your cell,” Ezriel rasped without making eye contact. He threw a mixture of wood and straw on the smoldering ash pile and coaxed a flame with puffs of air.

Fritz ambled back to his cell. He paused outside the door, bracing against yet another unknown situation, then entered the jail. 

It now stank of body odor and general filth as the sweat streaked men lay in their beds, many of them groaning in pain. The room quieted when Fritz walked past them. No one spoke but all looked at him with searching eyes. He kept his head up, alert to any attack, but none came. 

Fritz stepped into his cell. Three of the beds were occupied and the one he’d guessed was his lay empty. He climbed up on it and sat still. 

The man on the lower left bunk, a middle aged man with peppered hair sat up and tapped the leg of the man above him. The younger, dirty blonde with lean arms rolled over to a seated position. 

Fritz heard the man below him stir as well. His skin was ebony black and his bald head poked out from beneath the bunk before turning upward to reveal a smooth face with a jagged scar cutting across one cheek. 

The first man stood. “What news have you from the Woodland?”

“I’m not from the Woodland,” Fritz answered, keeping his good eye turned toward him. “I’m an Outsider.” 

The men in the room sighed and leaned back.

“We don’t see many Outsiders,” the bearded man mentioned with moderate interest.

“So I hear,” Fritz replied. 

“I’m Nicco.” He introduced himself and pointed to the man above him. “This is Luden and that’s D. We’re all Woodlanders.”

Luden waved with his thumb and forefingers and leaned back in his bed. 

“My name is…” Fritz hesitated. “Drosselmeyer.”

From below him, D let out a whistle. “That’s a mouthful.” 

His accent had a song-like quality to it. Not entirely different from the others in the room but definitely a unique cadence. 

“My friends called me Drossie.” Fritz felt a pang of loneliness.

“Tell him your full name, D.” Luden taunted his dark roommate.

“No, man,” D responded. “If I tell him my name, he might escape back to the Woodlands and tell everyone that he is me. He would take my wife and kids.”

Fritz adjusted his eyepatch and poked his head over the bunk. 

The bald, muscled, dark skinned man winked at him.

They all chuckled, and Fritz felt a small sense of relief. 

“What are the Woodlands?” Fritz asked. 

Nicco laid his head on his hands. “It’s the place outside the wall. Our home.”

“Why are you in prison?” Fritz crossed his legs underneath himself and leaned against the cool, stone wall. “Did you break the law?”

This question earned a short burst of laughing from the others. 

“Our existence breaks the law, man.” D’s lilted cadence echoed up. “We’re Woodlanders.”

“He’s not from here,” Nicco reminded them. “When did you arrive?”

“Today… I think,” Fritz told him. “I met a man with golden hair who didn’t like me being in his room. He… hit me, and one of his… servants must have dragged me here. I just woke up in the infirmary.”

Luden sat up. “Golden hair, you say? What else did he look like?”

Fritz described him, and the men exchanged glances. 

“Did you catch his name?” Nicco asked. He scooted to the edge of his bed so he could see Fritz from under the bunk.

Fritz replayed the scene in his head. “No. But the servant called him ‘Your Majesty’ so I’m guessing he’s a noble of some sort.”

The men looked at each other again, locked in an intense conversation but saying nothing. 

Nicco finally spoke. “Sounds like you met Malregent, the god-emperor himself.”

The statement sobered the cell mates but Fritz just shrugged. 

“Do you remember anything about the palace?” Luden asked, staring up at the ceiling.

“There were a lot of doors and everything was painted gold,” Fritz told him. “I saw nothing significant.”

He left out the part about the infinity room. No sense spilling all his secrets.

Nicco, Luden, and D lay on their beds, deep in thought. Only D’s loud breathing broke the silence. 

Fritz pondered his next move. He needed information, and no one was being forthcoming. He cleared his throat.“I still don’t know where I am. I think I died in my world and woke up here. Am I in the Watcher’s Realm?”

All three men tensed and sat upright. Nicco ran to the cell door and looked both ways before storming to the edge of Fritz’s bed. 

His face was flush with anger. “Do NOT say that name ever again.”

Fritz shook his head, opening his eye in mock terror. “Ok. I won’t! So tell me where I am.”

Nicco backed up a step. His fists were clenched and his jaw muscles flexed, causing his beard to undulate.

Luden jumped off his bunk and put his hand on Nicco’s shoulder. “Nicco, not even a spy would say that name. I think he’s telling the truth.”

D joined them. “I agree with Luden. He doesn’t have the right accent to be a palace spy.”

The three of them huddled and spoke in hard whispers. After making up his mind, Nicco walked into the hallway and announced in a loud voice, “It’s safe. We have an Outsider!”

The hallway erupted into cheers and the silent moaning turned into loud talking and joking. 

A high pitched voice yelled above the din, “Where? Where is he from?”

Nicco ignored the question and walked back over to the bunk. 

A skinny man with matted hair and blue eyes rounded the corner and breathlessly demanded, “Where is he from?” 

“Later, Anthony,” Nicco told the man.

Anthony shifted, his eyes darting from Nicco to Fritz. He started to speak but Nicco snapped his fingers and Anthony retreated without another word.

“He’s an Outsider, too,” D explained. “Our only one until you came.”

Fritz stared off in the direction Anthony had disappeared. “I wonder if he’s from my kingdom.”

“He may not even be from your world.” Nicco’s comment snapped Fritz back to the present.

“There’s more than one world?” Fritz blanched.

“Yeah, man,” D told him. “Or so the stories say.”

“It’s hard to tell because we don’t meet many Outsiders here,” Luden added.

“I see,” Fritz replied and slid off his bunk so he could stand in the small huddle. “So, where is ‘here’?”

Nicco leaned in. 

“You are in the world of Delysia,” he said, barely above a whisper. “We are in the Golden City.”

“Then what is Guildorn?” Fritz asked. “Ezriel said I was in Guildorn.”

“Guildorn is the name of our prison,” Nicco said with a bow. “And you are now a slave in service to Malregent, the master of all that is.”