“WAKE UP, BEAUTIFUL BOY. Wake up!”

A cool hand slapped his cheek. Stefan blinked his eyes open.

“Mother?”

“I should hope not,” a wry voice replied.

“What?” Stefan rubbed his eyes with stiff wooden hands. His lids rasped over the hardened orbs. His body creaked when he moved, like an old ship bobbing at sea. But his arms and legs seemed to obey his commands. He looked at his wrist. A well-carved ball-and-socket joint allowed his hand to swivel, almost like a real wrist. It loosened up as he worked it round, becoming more natural with each revolution. Next, he cracked his fingers. They clacked open and closed, each joint as well made as the most poseable of his father’s toys. He sighed and blinked.

A girl was standing over him.

“Clara!”

She smiled. “Not exactly.”

He sat up, his waist bending oddly at what he realized was now a hinge. His heart beat furiously in its frozen cage. “Beautiful?”

“Thank you,” she said with a little curtsy.

“No, not you—”

“Oh. I see.”

“No! I mean, of course you. You’re beautiful. But you called me beautiful. It’s not dark enough in here to make that mistake.”

Clara’s smile returned. She dropped down to sit beside him.

He was in a bedroom, he realized. A rather nice one, with a soft mattress and walls full of books and well-made dolls. Carefully, he pulled himself up farther and rested his back against the pillows.

His knuckles had seams and little carved joints. They didn’t feel quite like his own, nor did the rest of his body. He felt like a marionette, but one that he could control with his mind. Like he’d told Princess Pirlipat, he appeared to be well made. He touched his face with a clack of wooden fingertip on wooden skin. Well made, but ugly.

“Of course you’re beautiful, Stefan,” Clara said. “Any boy who has gone through what you’ve obviously suffered and still kept this next to his heart”—she held up the folded square of linen—“is beautiful indeed.”

Stefan felt himself blush, his wooden cheeks flushing with sap. At least that part of himself still worked normally. “I told you I’d keep it with me,” he replied.

“Of course you did. It’s what all young men say, but not what most of them do.” Her smile faded into a gentle look of tenderness. She dropped the handkerchief to his chest and patted it. “And I owe you an apology. I did what young women do. I lied about my name.”

“It isn’t Clara?”

“Clara’s our maid.”

“But why?”

“Because proper young ladies don’t hide in the arboretum with their toes in the dirt when they’re meant to be home learning to be dull. If Arno had known I was more than a simple maid, he’d have thrown me out long ago. Imagine the scandal, a groundskeeper alone with the unescorted daughter of a respectable family. It would be in all the papers, and give my mother a heart attack! As would a talking nutcracker, I suppose. But you won’t turn me in, will you?”

“I . . . no, never.” He struggled to keep up with the quickness of her tongue.

“Good. Then, my real name is Marie. Marie Stahlbaum.”

Her eyes dropped significantly to the handkerchief with its neatly embroidered “S.”

“Of course.” Had he still been made of flesh, his already red face would have also gone hot. Humiliation on top of humiliation.

Why had Christian brought him here, of all places?

“But that changes nothing else,” she said. “A rose by any other name, and all that. Though I prefer tulips, and seem to be more of a dandelion, personality-wise.”

Clara, now Marie, was just as he remembered her. The warm brown eyes, the shining braids. She had been in his thoughts since the day they met.

Stefan groaned and she gripped his hand. “What is it?”

“I’ve just realized, I’ve written an awful lot of letters to your maid.”

“Then let’s hope the mail is slow.” Marie smiled and her eyes danced.

Stefan struggled to form a grin, but could not. “Worse. I forgot to mail them.”

“Never mind the letters, my poor nutcracker,” Marie said, smoothing his cheeks with her hand. “It seems you’ve had quite an adventure. Sit up now, and tell me all.”

Like poison leeched from a wound, the story came out.

The death of his mother, his flight from Nuremberg. Losing Christian. The Pagoda Tree. The teeth, the princess, the nut. The Queen of Mice.

“That old wolf has gotten you into more trouble than either of you can handle,” Marie surmised at the end. “My godfather is many things, but uncomplicated isn’t one of them.”

“Christian’s your godfather?”

“I’m afraid so. More like an uncle, really. You know he was orphaned and raised by my father’s family?”

Stefan laughed a short, harsh bark. “I know nothing about him. He showed up on the worst day of my life, shook the world upside down, and—”

Something flickered in the corner of the room. The same sort of flicker he had seen in the throne room of Boldavia. The vermin couldn’t possibly have reached Nuremberg so quickly.

But they had.

The mouse came into full view and headed straight for Marie.

“No! Leave her alone!” Stefan cried, and leapt up from the bed to throw himself at the creature.

The mouse squealed as Stefan came down, pounding his wooden fist.

Marie leapt up onto the bed. “Kinyata!” she cried.

A great orange cat with yellow eyes emerged from the hallway, pressing the door open with her huge weight. Glancing curiously at the wooden boy on the floor, and the mottled brown mouse in his grasp, the cat decided on the familiar, and went after the mouse.

Stefan pulled away as the cat batted its prey. The mouse let out a high-pitched squeal that made even Stefan’s sap turn cold. A moment later, there was a crunch. A pink tail twitched in the corner of the cat’s mouth, and was gone.

Kinyata smiled, prowled the perimeter of the room, and then, seemingly satisfied, left again.

Stefan and Marie stared at each other. The silence was broken when Christian burst through the door in his robe.

“Marie!” He shut the door behind him. This was not something for the rest of the household to hear. “Gods, Stefan, you’re awake! Have you frightened this girl?”

Stefan’s jaw worked, but no sound came out.

Before he found his voice, Marie stepped in. “No, Uncle, in fact he saved me. From a mouse,” she said, climbing down to sit on the settee.

Christian’s face turned gray. He helped Stefan up from the floor. “They’ve found us, then.”

“No,” Stefan replied, with a glance toward Marie. “I caught the mouse. But her cat—”

“Kinyata,” Marie said, nodding.

“Kinyata . . . finished him off. They might not have word yet.”

“I see.” Christian sighed and joined his niece on the settee. “Marie, this is Stefan Drosselmeyer. My cousin’s son.”

“We’ve met,” Marie said.

Not as recently as he probably believes, Stefan thought.

Christian nodded. “He lives on the other side of town. I feared he wouldn’t be safe there, so I brought him here.”

“Is anyone hungry?” Marie asked.

“Actually, I’m starving,” Stefan said.

“Me too. I’ll get you some soup so you don’t try your jaw.” She fixed her uncle with a stern look.

Stefan was surprised to see Christian blanch under that glare.

“And when I return, Uncle, you’ll tell us how you plan on fixing this mess.”