Sleeping Helena (19 page)

The party began slowly as more guests were absorbed into the ballroom, where a feast waited to be eaten and a small group of musicians played. The Baroness was doting but distracted. Katza paid her little heed. Her parents’ eccentric friend moved off into the crowd as Katza found a corner from which she could watch for Louis. He was late and she was worried.

She saw Thekla in the crowd, but hardly noticed how pretty her sister looked in her lovely new dress. She followed Thekla’s eyes and found Louis. He was speaking with their father at the far end of the room. Katza made her way through polite handshakes and kisses, greetings and well-wishes, short speeches and plates of food being pressed upon her until she came out in a clearing near the table.

Louis was avoiding her; he slid through the crowd until he reached Thekla’s side, where he leaned his face down to her cheek. He straightened and looked Katza in the eye, smiled wanly and raised his glass.

Mama said something, but Katza barely heard her. Katza kept her eyes on Louis. Some small part of her felt she could still intercept him. It was early, just six o’clock, and anything could yet happen.

Someone brushed against Katza’s shoulder. Without thinking, she turned to move out of their way. As she did, she caught her own reflection in a mirror on the opposite wall. But it wasn’t her—Katza’s blue eyes met grey, her blonde hair was black, and the face was that of a stranger. Katza blinked in surprise. When she opened her eyes, her own face appeared, as it should.

Katza shook the strange vision away, turned back toward the ballroom, and searched the crowd for Louis. He was gone. She bolted. Katza pushed her way through the guests and ran to the kitchen, where Cook was overseeing the delivery of more wine to the ballroom. She darted among the staff and out into the garden and was immediately drenched by the pouring rain.

Katza ran through the garden and its pergola, only stopping to flail at the vines that tangled over her head. She reached the courtyard, heard Louis’ horse at the stable, and darted over the flagstones. She was determined to catch him, but the ground was wet and Katza lost her balance. Her hair blew into her eyes and she slipped, one foot twisting under the other. She fell. Her head cracked on a stone. She lay still on the cold ground, blooding mingling with rain around her as Louis leapt astride his horse and rode away.

Thekla’s bedroom revealed no further secrets and when Helena finally left it, the other doors were closed. She was sure hours had passed; she simply had to eat something. The kitchen beckoned. She could almost smell a fresh loaf of bread being pulled from the oven. Maybe Hope is awake, she thought, and baking something as usual.

On the first floor of the house, the doors to the ballroom hung open on heavy, gilded hinges. Helena expected to find her guests just as she’d left them, but the whole house had changed while she’d been exploring upstairs. A huge chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling; tiny flames were caught mid-flicker on hundreds of wicks. The walls were lined with heavy paintings and mirrors, Rococo monstrosities that could not possibly bear their own weight, yet somehow did. The ladies wore dresses with billowing skirts and immense jewels upon their gloved fingers. The men sported long jackets and trousers, gruff sideburns and gold pocket watches. It was a party, but these guests had not come for her. She saw the table at the far end of the room, just where she’d left it, and on it a large pile of wrapped presents. Everyone was still.

Helena finally began to lose her bearings. She drifted through the crowd like a lonely, windswept leaf among unmoving trees. She began to think it
was
her party—if she looked closely enough she would see Herr Krieger, happily eating the roast. She moved and whirled and stepped through the guests as though they were all watching. She lost herself in a small revelry. In her mind the music played and she was singing. She knocked into a burly man with a curling moustache and halted in place, kept still as the rest of them, and listened for any sound. He did not respond; no surprise showed in his expression.

The far table, covered with glittering paper and ribbons and unopened boxes, drew her attention. Helena, dazed, walked toward it. As she did, her eyes fell on a young girl’s face.

“I know her,” she said out loud, her voice entering the silent room like a thief. “Aunt Thekla?”
What a pretty dress,
Helena thought.
So light.

Helena recognized the lines on Thekla’s face. She knew them hardened by age, but they were there now, soft as snow, already. How sad, to be so young and yet so full of sorrow. It felt odd to have such thoughts about another; compassion was no part of Helena, but as it arrived and unpacked its luggage, she unthinkingly made a place for it. The ballroom cast a strange shadow over Helena, the dancers beckoned and their eyes gleamed while Helena felt like stone.

She seemed very large compared to Thekla. It was discouraging to think that this fragile child would become one of her creators. She turned and saw another face across the expanse of the room.

“There I am again, frozen like everyone else,” she said at her reflection. She
was
frozen, and if she didn’t do something, she would become like the people around her. Still weakened by hunger and burning with need, the fugue vanished at the sight of her face in the mirror. She looked like a ghost in a torn and dirty red dress. She had to get out of the house.

Helena shook herself out of the mirror, left the ballroom undisturbed, and went through the small door at the back of the room. She was famished, her stomach grumbled and her gifts cried out for attention. She wished she’d find Hope in the kitchen, alive and well. Hope would know what to do. That was the thing about Hope that most disturbed her. Hope always knew what to do and was always there to do it. It was an unexpected love she felt for Hope as she crept through the silent house, but again a place within her was created for it. Though made of eight parts and not one thing more, Helena was somehow expanding.

In the hall candles were trapped in their guttering. The carpet was patterned with roses and the wood was dark and warm. Mirrors hung on the wall in a row, each more ornate than its neighbor. Helena could not resist a glance into every one of them.
This is what they think beauty looks like,
she thought of her aunts, or at least whichever one of them had given it to her. Elfrieda, most likely. She was the sweetest of all. Helena was entranced by the sight of her image. She’d gone most of her life without clearly seeing it and her face was a curious surprise.

She remembered the day Aunt Thekla had the mirrors removed. She must have known even then what Kitty’s gift was and had planned to keep Helena from finding it. Helena faced it; her mantra rang in her ears.
They knew.

It really had been going on for years.

“What then,” she paused to ask, “does that make me?”

Did they create her to have something new to fight over?

Some pieces of Helena sloughed off, others rearranged. She was a god who was not a god. Her makers were a bunch of old ladies and yet, they
had
created her. It nagged at her, yet she had no word for what she was feeling. Debt was nothing she understood, yet now it seemed she had one.

They had known all along. They had made her up out of their gifts and then they hid one of those gifts from her. Anger slid down her spine like drops of water, it splashed on the floor at her feet and muddied her hem.

They made her.
It didn’t really matter why they’d done it. Helena owed her life to these women. Is this where gods find themselves at the end?

She reached the kitchen, where she hoped what she knew to be true would be reinforced. This was her house. That was her kitchen, where every day Hope cooked her meals. The air stank of roses. Hope would not like this, she thought, but Hope was not there to see it.

The shape of the room was the same. That was all Helena recognized of Hope’s comfortable domain. There were plates of food and barrels of beer and was that a dog in the corner? There were several young maids and a fat cook, and a butler behind him holding a tray of pastries. Helena’s stomach rumbled to remind her that she had not yet eaten. She had come here for food, but no. She turned her back on the scene. She could not bear it.

She left through the door to the garden, where light from the many windows spilled into an early evening darkened by storm clouds. She stopped in amazement. Across the walls draped a wave of roses, like a red curtain over the stones. Their stems were healthy and green and buds glistened with raindrops that studded their spiraling petals. They were nothing like the surly briars Helena knew, but if she peered at the roses from the corner of her eye, it looked as though the others were there, stretching just beneath them.

The air was still; the roses did not waver and around her Helena began to notice more things out of place. Where Hope had planted mint, onions now grew. What should be a path was the mint patch. And the cabbages! They grew in a row by the wall. Everything was there, but none of it was where it belonged. Helena began to feel sick. She put a hand on her stomach, looked down, and shook her head at the state of her once lovely dress.

The door into the kitchen glowered, it seemed, and dared her to return through it. The basil was where the fountain should be and the fountain was near the bench. The bench was beside the arbor, but the door to the house was the same. She knew what waited inside. She’d hoped things would be different out here, but apparently she was wrong. She began to panic; she sped through the garden as shadows lurched from the vegetable patch and clematis tugged at her hair. The rose bushes scrabbled over the stone and the great house was a menacing moon hanging over her shoulders.

She reached the far wall and the arched doorway that led through it. Helena stopped at the door; it seemed familiar, though she was certain she’d never noticed it before. Beyond it, a pergola dripped with sodden vines. She darted into its sheltering framework and scrambled through it, finally reaching the courtyard where she slowed, out of breath. The scent of wet hay and clover filled the air, fresh and sweet. Helena could take little more. The whole world was frozen. She felt like the only person walking on earth.

She crouched by the wall. Her eyes frantically roamed the courtyard as she looked for a sign of life. There was none, just the trees beyond the flagstones and the buildings at the far end. She shifted her position and spied a shape sprawled out on the ground in front of the stable.

This is my house,
Helena reminded herself.
This must be my courtyard
, she thought, even though she’d never seen it before.

She crossed the stones and knelt down beside the figure. It was Aunt Kitty, sublimely young and immobilized. She did not feel like the others. As far as Helena could tell, Kitty was not frozen. She was dead. How had she signed her letter?

Katza.

This is not my time,
Helena realized as she looked upon the fallen body of her aunt. It explained why the guests’ clothing was so strange, why the maids in the kitchen wore skirts to the floor and why there was a dog by the hearth.

It was impossible.

Helena peered around the courtyard to see whether anything else was amiss. The vertigo engulfed her and the familiar waves of nausea rocked through her body. By the stable she saw another figure. She knew who it was.

The outline of a horse took shape in the shadow of the stable. On it sat a single rider. He and the horse faced away from the stable, as though they were riding out into the forest. It had been storming when Helena had found the mirror. He had obviously been caught in a storm, too. His coat was drenched with water, though not one drop fell from his sleeves. Helena carefully circled the beast. She could hardly stand upright. The horse’s muscles were clenched as though he was preparing to leap toward the wood when he and his rider were stopped. Helena’s eyes moved from the horse to the man, she followed the trail of his thigh up to his face. It was Louis. He was trapped, like all the others, but he was alive.

Helena was cold and tired. She could not, no matter how she craved him, remain so close to Louis. Her hunger was too great.

She crept back to the garden wall, crouched in the weeds, and stared blindly at the stable where horses stood, heads bent to their feed, with grooms poised just beside them. This was her house, but not her time. She was a hundred years early to her own party, or a hundred too late to this one. She cared for neither party now. She just wanted to go home and somehow take Louis with her.

“I must have come through the mirror,” she said to no one, “for as soon as I got Kitty’s gift, everything changed.”

The mirror, she recalled, was broken. Could she still get back? She looked at the house and the windows facing the courtyard. Shadows cast a strange patina on the brick. Inside the light never flickered.

The mirror might be there now, on the wall, just as it was in the future Helena remembered. But Louis was here, in the past, and he was alive. Helena had only to wake him. Her gift howled. Perhaps Kitty had sent Helena back in time to save him
—
Kitty did have the gift.

Helena frowned and scratched at her ankle. She should go back in and see if the mirror she came through was there in that secret room. She shuddered. She could not face the sight of those people, still as statues, not breathing, and yet not dead.

Helena rose, unsteadily, and circled the garden without entering it. The wall met the side of the house halfway to its front. Beyond it, the lawns spread out like a bed, large enough for a giant, soft enough for a frail princess who might feel the smallest pebble beneath her hip. Trees twisted against the grey sky, their shadow-flung arms open wide to catch the light emanating from the windows of the house. The ground declined toward the lake, rimmed with a black shade of reeds. Helena was drawn to the water as though it was Hope, calling her in for supper.