Fritz awoke with a start, the clash of steel and the frantic scrabbling of tiny claws echoing through the quiet house like a half-remembered nightmare. For a moment he lay still, blinking into the darkness, wondering whether the sounds had come from his dreams. But then he heard a sharp cry - Clara’s cry - and he shot out of bed, clutching his robe around him as he dashed toward the stairs. The parlor glowed with an eerie, shifting light, and as he reached the bottom step, he saw the impossible: Clara, wide-eyed and breathless, vanishing into a whirl of glittering snowflakes at the side of the elegant Nutcracker. Both disappeared as though swallowed by a doorway made of swirling winter gusts and snowflakes.

Only then did Fritz notice the Mouse King slumped near the fallen Christmas tree, his crown cracked, his whiskers singed, yet very much alive.