Sleeping Helena (6 page)

All Kitty needed was time, and she had plenty of it.

Time has a strange way of passing—blink and a day becomes years. Before the sisters knew it, Helena was walking and talking and had grown taller than their knees. Ink marked the moments to be recalled and diaries were filled with elaborate descriptions of Helena’s many achievements. The aunts adored her, for in her they saw all that was good in themselves and if they spoiled her just a little, it was only done out of love.

Helena’s gifts quickly revealed themselves. She was a supple girl, sleek of skin and hair, whose eyelids hung low and dark lashes turned up and when she smiled a dimple appeared in the corner of her cheek. Intelligent and charming, it was difficult for her aunts to resist the gifts they themselves had given her. Her doctor, who called monthly, gave up on his charts as Helena surpassed all the statistics he knew. Her tutors, some of the best the continent could offer, were astonished to find she could often outsmart them. The aunts shared triumphant smiles, knowing themselves entirely responsible for Helena’s apparent perfection.

She grew like an impossible, beautiful weed. Yet as her aunts’ generous gifts flourished, they seemed to drain Helena of other, perhaps more necessary, nutrients—essential elements such as empathy or concern. Helena was a product of her gifts; as much a homunculus as any lump of animated dirt and like such, she seemed to lack a soul or any part that could be considered of it.

Her aunts would see no wrong in her. If she shouted or threw the butter-knife, why, that was just a tantrum or a mood. The doctor called them growing pains. He knew better than to argue and since the child’s physical health was excellent, he kept his concerns for those late nights when only the stars heard him utter complaints.

Tutors fled from bites to the hand or kicks to the shin; one had a book flung at his head because he wouldn’t read a story quickly enough for her. Helena wooed them all with her grace and charm, but there was only so much they could take. The sisters simply shook their heads and increased their pay, or sent them out with an extra bribe in exchange for their silence. Helena sat in the center as always, while around her the household slowly fell into disarray.

Her episodes were not the result of moods or growing pains, nor were they simple tantrums. As a result of her gifts, Helena was aware of herself. This little girl knew precisely what she was made of
—
eight parts in equal measure and not one thing more.

All eight were painful masters, for all had a ravenous need. Music demanded music; she would play until her fingers bled if the other parts would let her, but song demanded song. By the end of each day her voice was hoarse, yet dance demanded dance and so it went. At least Helena could feed these, for she knew what they required. Not so her eighth part. That she could not name. She knew she was made of song and dance, of beauty and wit, of grace and finally, of death.
How
she’d been made she did not understand, but that did not concern her. The need to know and sate her eighth part ruled Helena’s world.

It was a day like any other in late summer. The air was crisp, the birds were singing and the flowers were in bloom, but for the roses. Helena was in the kitchen garden under the watchful eyes of Hope, who was never to let the child out of her sight when they were outdoors. Hope’s apron waved in a breeze as she bent over a bed of mint while Helena, left to her own devices, skipped down a path and stopped at the hedge at its end. Once, she imagined, the path went on to wind through the roses. Now the hedge blocked the way. She parted its branches and ducked underneath where the bloomless roses grew in a dank mass of blackened stems.

The briars held a secret tight by their thorns and Helena wanted to know it. She closed her hand upon a stem, opened it and gazed at the blood on her palm where one of the thorns had pricked her. She was studying the smear when she heard something fall onto the path behind her. She crawled back below the hedge and saw, amidst the leaves and twigs on the stone, the body of a tiny bird. It fluttered a wing and opened its beak; it was still alive.

“Hope! Come look!” she shouted.

“What’s this? Where have you been?” Hope reached Helena’s side, saw the bird and frowned. “The poor thing. I’m sorry, Helena, but there is nothing we can do.”

Helena looked up at Hope, who shuddered at what she saw in the child’s eyes.

A gift roared. Helena stood and before Hope could stop her, she brought her foot down on the little bird.

“It’s dead,” Helena sang in her childish voice. “I did it.”

Hope stood as still as stone until Helena touched her, and then she shuddered again. “Come, Helena,” she said, as if to a wild beast. “We must go in now.”

Helena shrugged. She did not expect Hope to understand.

She allowed Hope to wash her hands in the sink and then went in search of Thekla, who was found napping beside a small, bright fire in the library. Even in the heat of summer, Thekla’s legs were always cold. Her feet were shod in thick, black shoes and crossed each other neatly, but the stockings gathered around her ankles dispersed the illusion of dignity she tried to maintain. Helena’s vision was always full of shoes. She knew every pair her grandaunts owned and could count the numbers of eyelets in each by memory.

She put a hand on Thekla’s knee. “Aunt,” she said, and watched Thekla spring up, grasping for composure.

“You gave me quite a fright, young lady.” Thekla leaned forward and brushed a twig from Helena’s shoulder. “Have you been outdoors with Hope?”

“How else would there be sticks in my hair?” Helena shook her head. Adults loved to question the obvious. Her question was better than that.

No one liked to talk about death or to be reminded of its existence. Even the doctor had nothing to say; he knew only how to keep his customers from it. She was hushed and shushed and patted on the head until she felt she would burst with the well-meaning ignorance of everyone around her. They did not understand that death held a clue as to what her eighth part might be.

“I was wondering, Aunt. How do things die?”

Thekla froze. Not this again. The air coalesced around them; neither moved. Thekla thought she saw roses blooming in Helena’s eyes.

“It is a natural process, Helena,” she finally said. “Everything living must die when its time comes. What’s gotten into you? You’re too young to ask such questions.”

“No. I’m not.”

Helena watched Thekla inspect her face. Helena was inscrutable, immovable, and impossible to challenge and she knew it, but she didn’t expect Thekla to be taken in by her charm, not this time.

“Yes, you most certainly are.”

Helena ignored her aunt’s show of defiance. “Who decides when it’s time?”

“Time for what?”

Helena rolled her eyes. “Time to die.”

Thekla’s face hardened into a stern mask. “Only the gods can make that decision, and we do not question them. That is enough now,” she said. “Don’t trouble yourself with thoughts of death. It will be many years yet before your own time comes, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried about anything,” Helena said, and left.

It was true. Thekla’s answer had changed everything.

Helena was made of death and could therefore choose its moment, as she had with the bird when she squashed it. This she already knew. But according to Thekla, this made her a god, and that she had never suspected.

Helena was uncertain about the matter of gods. The sky was allegedly populated with them, so many that she wondered they had any room to themselves. People prayed to them, made offerings to them, and danced for them under the moon. If the gods answered their pleas, she did not know. They did not seem to have much of a purpose, their existence had yet to be proven and she had always thought she would wait and see for herself if they were more than myth. Now Helena suddenly numbered among them and in her aunts had her very own followers.

She might have reveled in this notion, were she a different girl, but to Helena it meant only one thing. She had already noted that life and death are inseparable. She’d watched seeds become food that perished under Hope’s quick knife. She had already reasoned that since death was one part of her, then life might just be one, too. Until now, she’d been unable to confirm this. But gods could personify both life and death, and they dealt equally well in both. And since she was a god, she could do the same. Helena clapped her hands together and laughed. She’d been right all along!

Her eighth part
must
be life.

Joy soon succumbed to logic, however. In order to feed life she would have to create life, but Helena was not so omnipotent. Planting seeds, she knew, was not the same as creating the seeds to be planted. Her hands fell to her sides. Despite knowing its name, she still could not feed her eighth part through the use of it. Either something was still missing or she was wrong, and the latter was simply not possible. She held the Grail of her short existence in her hand. It was empty.

As with any god, her followers would eventually enshrine her, cover her with incense and flowers, and ossify her beneath their perfume. Attention would be lavished upon her, she would sing and dance as she pleased, and wear only the finest clothes money could buy. She was a god who knew nothing beyond her own mountain, did not even know of the fire surrounding it. Around her old women plotted and schemed, but gods never notice their followers’ troubles when they have their own problems to solve.

So they went, some on the path of devotion and some on the path of fear, guarding Helena, who stayed safe in her temple, trying to feed a hunger that grew larger by the day.

The cold finger of suspicion drew its bony tip across Thekla’s brow, spelled out a name in the wrinkles of her skin.
Kitty.
It had to be some working of her gift. Why else would Helena be having such morbid thoughts? Thekla prayed they were not too late. The sisters had allowed themselves to be lulled by the joy of homecoming and then of watching a child grow. They had forgotten about Kitty’s gift, it seemed, but now they had to do something.

She
had to do something. It was up to her, as usual, to clean up Kitty’s mess.

Thekla made her announcement in the kitchen, where the sisters had gathered for brunch.

“The child is getting older. We must clear the house.”

The kitchens were to be locked when not in use and every mirror removed from the property.

The sisters were shocked. Their faces aligned like moons around an angry planet. This idea seemed to come out of nowhere and they could not seem to fathom that Thekla would go to such drastic lengths.

Ingeburg shook her head. “This is absurd, Thekla. You know perfectly well there is no way to prevent Kitty’s gift from manifesting. Nothing we do will make a difference. Nothing. I do not understand why we must engage in such futility.”

“She is right, you know. Thekla, you must realize how senseless this is. Will we shave the jagged bark from every tree? Lock her in her room? We cannot keep her prisoner here forever.” Eva’s eyes were wide with concern.

Thekla could not help herself. She was driven by fear, but pride had an even louder voice. She would not let Kitty win this battle. She resented her sister and the way she so smugly played with their lives, doing whatever she so desired and at whatever whim.

No, Kitty would not have her way in this, no matter the cost.

“I hear you, sisters, but I have decided. Tomorrow the mirrors come down. We must take no chances.”

It was only the beginning; Thekla had not revealed the full shape of her plan. Her sisters did not know how devious Kitty could be, but Thekla remembered. Helena’s questions had brought it all back in awful detail.

It had happened just after their brother died. Katza had hid in her room, coming out only to eat, but even then she’d been a pale shade at the table, hardly tasting her food.

Thekla had felt sorry for her sister and had attempted to fold Katza under her small, protective wing. Katza had been as unresponsive as their father, though she had no illness to blame. They had all watched Papa decay into depression. All of his aspirations were dead with Louis, his firstborn and only son, and there was no Dream King to lead him out of the dark.

After a time, Thekla had given up on Katza. There had still been the smaller sisters to tend and Thekla had felt it her duty to help her mother see to their needs. It had been a great burden for such a young girl, but she had taken it on willingly because she knew no one else was able. And she still had the joy of her music to balance the weight.

She had allowed herself no time to grieve for her brother. There were moments, most often in the kitchen, when she’d thought she’d seen him stride in—rifle over his shoulder and a smile on his face—and she felt her own smile begin to form in return. And then the vision would fade, and she’d remember: Louis was gone
—
not gone like Katza, who was still there but not present, but well and truly gone to a place none could follow. Thekla had been lonely, and in her loneliness, had begun to talk to Louis’ ghost.