Sleeping Helena (16 page)

Her gifts were clanging like church bells, each hungrier than the last. She wished she could take a knife to their need and shave off the worst of it, for they made so much noise she could now hear none of them clearly. She wished to hear Eva’s voice, or even Thekla’s—anything to disrupt the clamor inside her. The house was a tomb, bricked up around her, and everyone in it seemed dead. Helena put a hand on her belly as it rumbled again.

“Wait,” she said to her hunger, “until I figure this out.”

She did not turn on any lights that were off, nor did she let her hands stray to the banister as she climbed the stairs. Oddly, the doors on the second floor were all open, too, revealing the private spaces of the family for easy inspection. She wasn’t interested in them, not yet. She wanted the comfort of her own, familiar room and the face that so seduced her. She’d left Louis unfurled on her pillow and needed to be sure he was still there. She had the power now to bring him to life and she wanted to use it.

That he was her uncle meant nothing to Helena. He was as distant as the house in which she’d been born, over there, across the ocean. No one would tell her his story. Eva claimed not to recall him, and while Kitty must remember her brother, she hadn’t seemed eager to share. Helena had to know more about him. This, she felt, was the purpose to which she’d been born. Her eighth gift, now named and found, demanded his restoration.

Helena saw only two options. She must either wake Kitty and pry more information from her or search the house now, while she had the chance, to see what she could learn on her own. With hidden rooms and an undisturbed attic, the house was ripe for exploration. The doors were already all open and inviting.

Helena paused at the end of the hall where she caught a strange scent in the air. Her bedroom door was open, too, but beyond it the room was dark. It smelled like a fire was burning in the hearth, though it had not been used since the end of winter, some few months ago. Helena took a hesitant step into the room. Her bed, the wardrobe, and the dressing table were all gone. Her vision blurred and for just a moment, a fire did seem to be lit. She forced her eyes to blink. There were ashes, blackened and charred bits of wood, but no flame. They didn’t belong there, either. Her mouth hung open. Her sanctuary had been transformed.

She swiped at cobwebs and shuddered when they touched her skin. She saw a small table and a cot, both rotted and damp from the moist air that clung to her skin. A sparse chair tilted against the far wall and a wooden mantelpiece hung crookedly above the blackened hearth. Her mantel was made of marble.

Helena did not know what to do or how to react. Her mind worked in a fury of confusion, trying mightily to comprehend her circumstance. Perhaps I am dreaming, she chanced to think, but this was no dream and she knew it. She decided to go along with it, for the gift of her great intellect was completely in awe of the challenge.

Without warning, a sudden fire roared up in the hearth and then subsided into a calm blaze. The light bounced from the glass fronts of hundreds of photographs, each held inside a unique frame. Creations of stone, wood, pewter, and brass, beveled and shaped like nothing she’d ever seen, peeked out from every corner. Helena, enchanted, moved to the table and chose one of them at random.

She recognized the face immediately. It was one of her aunts, but this was no aging crone with a bun of snow. The cheekbones gave her away, as well as the eyes slanting towards the high brow. It was Aunt Elfrieda—a very young Elfrieda. Her pale hair rolled over her shoulders and a tight corset bound her bosom, pushing the tops of her breasts over the fabric like two small crescent moons. She reclined on a divan with a vicious smile on her face. Helena wondered at who had been on the other side of the lens. She could not imagine that smile on the Elfrieda she knew.

Disturbed, she put the picture down and turned to another. Made of wood and carved in the shape of a dragon, this one held a different aunt asleep within the ribbon of its tail. Here was stern Thekla—it could only be she. Even as an elderly crone she had hair unlike any other, thick with curls and grown down to her knees. In her old age she kept it in a long braid that she sometimes wrapped around her head like a turban, only then to complain of its weight. Helena remembered asking her once why, if it bothered her so much, Thekla didn’t just cut it all off. Thekla had been mortified by the idea.

In the photograph Thekla slept, stretched out upon a bed of frothy linens, her limbs relaxed as they never were in life and her hair unbound. Again, this was not the woman Helena knew. She put the picture down and picked up yet another.

Inside the tall, stone frame she recognized Ingeburg’s white hair. She never wore it any other way than loose, and laughed when her sisters accused her of hedonism with a sad shake of their heads. Helena was almost in awe of Aunt Ingeburg’s hair; it was white as the purest linen and felt like cotton. In the photograph Ingeburg sat in a large chair smiling with pleasure at a white cat that curled beside her. One hand gently rested upon the feline’s large head, while the other held her weight behind her back. It seemed the picture was more about the animal than it was the woman. The lighting illuminated the wonderfully shaped head of the creature while leaving Ingeburg in relative darkness.

None of them had ever mentioned this cat, not even Ingeburg, who must have loved it very much.

In a gem-encrusted frame stood Zilli, posed beside a flowering tree. Its limbs dropped over her shoulders in a careless embrace. She was smiling and waving and wearing a dress that hung to her ankles in graceful folds of fabric. There was something wrong with Zilli, too. None of her aunts were quite themselves in these pictures. It was as though they’d been taken through the warped lens of memory; the photographer knew what the women might have looked like, but not who they were.

She felt like that now. Behind each face were thoughts unknown to her, and dreams she could not touch. Her aunts had never spoken of their past, and any reminders of their previous life—except for those forgotten in the attic—had been taken out of the house.

Helena felt dislocated. Her aunts’ lives streamed away down the river of history while she was a fish, flopping on shore. She touched the other frames. Some seemed to be moldering already, falling into moss and mulch. She reached for another and the gilding fell off in her hand.

The image was of a young man, but it was no photograph. She recognized his face immediately and was anchored to the present. It was their brother, though in this painting he seemed very sad. His mouth was drawn and his arms hung lifelessly at his sides. He stood in solitude, patiently waiting for the artist to lay down the final stroke.

Helena’s heart pounded in her ears as she was drawn into his eyes. They locked onto her own and beckoned for her to come closer, as though he wanted to speak to her through time itself but could not make his voice heard. Her head spun and she had that same, sick feeling in her stomach as she’d had when she found the old painting in the attic. Her appetite roared in frustration.

She wanted to take the little painting with her, but wasn’t sure she could. As she watched, the room started to fade, the flames died down and the wreckage of a place left to lonely decay returned. Life sang and seared her and the other gifts echoed its call. Louis’ eyes were accusing.

“A little more time,” she croaked. “I just need a little more time.”

Hope watched Helena come together as she glued fragments of glass into place. It was a dangerous puzzle and each tiny piece mattered. Hope clucked when she saw the bare curve of Helena’s shoulder in one of the shards. She disapproved of the dress the girl had chosen. It was obvious by her frozen reflection that Helena had been a mere breath away from the mirror when it had fallen from the wall. Her arms were stretched out as she held on to the frame. When her face was restored, Hope paused.

It had been years ago, when Helena had still been a small child, that Thekla warned Hope about their ancestral power, the inheritance that allowed them to give their unusual gifts. “It comes over us during adolescence, much like certain other aggravations, and is just as easily noticed. Watch for it in Helena’s face. If you see anything before I do, let me know right away. I must be the one to tell her what has happened,” Thekla had said.

“My goodness,” Hope said into the quiet room, “what pretty eyes she has.”

The timing could not have been worse. There was no way to tell Thekla now that Helena’s power had arrived. Hope tapped her finger on the mirror, lost in thought. Helena’s eyes, once dark, were now as clear as the spring where Hope’s mother had drawn water each day. She was the one who had taught Hope to see possible futures in each ripple she made on the surface. Hope’s mother never used mirrors. “We should never trust them for magic,” she had said. “They are too modern and far too easily broken.” As usual, Mother had been right.

Mirrors are dangerous objects; they can easily open doors, though few ever choose to enter. The best thing to do when people slip through is to guide them back through the door. Hope didn’t think that was possible in this instance. This mirror was broken. Even when pieced back together again, this door might never open again. Damn you, Kitty. Hope coughed in her sleeve.
What have you done with Helena?

Death shall lead you back
—
Kitty had meant for this all along. That the monster had turned out to be Thekla was certainly a shock, but Kitty must have foreseen her own demise and the method of its achievement. Did she think to catapult her soul back in time by way of it?

Hope had once heard of magic like this and believed it a pile of rubbish. She thought now, perhaps I was wrong. Eva had prevented whatever death Kitty had hoped for, yet still, the door had been opened. Did Helena step into the past in Kitty’s place?

Hope had too many questions. The past cannot be changed. This was, as any child could tell, an indisputable fact. Hope adjusted her stockings and laces. Kitty had bet her own life against this fact. Perhaps Kitty knew something they didn’t. She did have the gift of time.

Kitty might know how to use her gift, but some things did not rely on time for they were perfectly timeless. Hours may have passed her by, or days. Hope had no way to tell. The sky remained dark but her lamp beamed ever outward. Her joints stiffened with pain and the house groaned in sympathy as she shifted the stool across the floor.

There was no time and space closed in around her as all else fell away. The secret room turned on its axis. Hope reached for another sliver of glass and watched the mirror spread under her hand.

Helena emerged from her room. She wondered briefly what time it was, but the tall clock in the hallway was stopped at six on the dot. She suspected every clock in the house had done the same. The second floor hall was empty and the doors to all of the bedrooms still stood wide open. She could easily have entered any one of her aunts’ rooms, but she already knew what they held. None of them were as compelling, as unknown to her, as the attic. It was there she had found him; perhaps there she would learn more.

She climbed the stair softly, afraid to make sounds of her own. Louis beckoned, lured her upward. She imagined she saw him walking ahead of her, just out of reach.

She stopped at the top of the steps, bewildered. The rooms on the third floor had always been empty, but for a random bed, or a bureau, abandoned and dull. Now, from out of the very room she had peeked into while Eva had rested her legs, a great wall of roses spread out into the hall. Vines the size of her forearm created a barrier that covered the doorway. At the sight of them Helena retched and doubled over. She felt Louis’ heartbeat as it pulsed through the briars; she was shivering with need. She straightened and unsteadily approached.

There was nothing wrong with these roses, she thought, except they should not be here. Helena pulled at a spiking tendril and it snapped back into place with a hiss. She stepped away and surveyed the thorns, calculating the risks.

Helena had the gift of death and would not hesitate to use it, but the vines were too tough to kill with her bare hands. Her gift of grace would serve just as well and be glad to be used. It gave her a supple skeleton with which she could slide in among the branches and out through the other side. Helena slipped off her shoes and entered as carefully as she could; grace sang and led her onward.

It was a slow, determined dance with the monstrous growth and she pierced her hands on the thorns several times as she pushed them away from her face. Helena eased her way forward until with a last turn of her torso she spilled out onto hard stone. She raised her head and found herself staring at a small wooden door. Its brass handle was shaped like a sword and it was closed.

Helena pulled on the handle and the door swung slowly open, revealing a passage carved out of stone. Torches lined the wall in sconces of iron. Their flames jumped as she passed by. She could feel him ahead; her hunger reached out, a serpent’s tongue tasting the air.