Sleeping Helena (2 page)

Hope, the sisters’ housekeeper turned nursemaid, bent over Helena’s cradle and scooped her up. As she carried the fussing baby off to bed, Hope whispered a promise of her own into Helena’s ear.

“Don’t worry, little one. Whatever happens,” she said to Helena, “I will do my best mend it.”

The sisters never heard her. Their canes tapped the floor and china clattered as they rearranged abandoned plates on the crumb-scattered table. The sound of it ground Thekla’s nerves into dust. She would have to stay up all night writing letters of apology for the sad ending to what should have been a day of joy.

Thekla gathered her sisters in the drawing room when they were finished. Under ordinary circumstances, it was a cozy room. In winter a fire blazed brightly in a hearth that was now clean and cold. A waning sun shed pallid light through lead-paned windows. On a softly illumined wall hung a painting of their brother, wrought by an artist who attained a brief pinnacle of fame well after his own demise. This evening the room seemed too small and Thekla imagined a goblin at every window peering in to laugh at the grand failure of the day.

She glanced at the painting, dulled slightly with time. Their brother Louis stood in front of a different fireplace, much grander than any the sisters now knew, with his hand balled smartly on his hip. He was young, no more than sixteen years old, but Thekla could see the man he would have become. His hair formed a halo of black curls around his head and he was smiling. His eyes in the painting shone, though their light was a product of the artist’s fancy. Louis’ eyes had always been dark as night. He peered out at them from a world much different than their own. Thekla wondered, not for the first time, how things might have been had he lived to an old age with the rest of them.

Zilli spoke first. “What in all of creation brought Katza here and in such a fury, and what do you suppose she meant by all of that?”

Despite the frowns, coughs, and pointed glances of her sisters’ objections, Zilli used Kitty’s proper, given name. The others had begun to refer to Katza as
Kitty
after their move to America. They did not want to associate their homeland with the sister who had stayed there. Zilli, though, simply preferred the sound of their mother tongue.

Thekla sniffed. “She intends for the child to die. You all heard her. She’s as cruel as ever—as I’ve always warned you she would be.”

“Surely we’ve given her no reason to despise the child so. Why would she wish her ill?” Eva saw Thekla turn away. “She was invited to the christening, wasn’t she?”

The sisters looked to each other, nodded slowly, uncertainly, until the last of their eyes fell on Thekla, who drew in her breath.

“Kitty did not receive an invitation. I was unaware that she even knew of Helena’s existence. It is nothing but spite that drove her to darken our door today.” Thekla was seething and her face was flushed was anger. A stranger would have wondered that her withered frame could support such feeling, but her sisters knew that in truth, the feeling supported the frame.

“Thekla,” Ingeburg could not believe her sister had been so foolish, “you know perfectly well our sister knew about the christening.”

Eyes lowered. Kitty
Saw
everything. Of course she had known. No one else would say it, however. Thekla knew best where Kitty was concerned. After all, she was the only one who truly remembered their eldest sister.

“What is done, is done,” Eva said into the silence. “You are right, Zilli, to question what Kitty meant as opposed to her reasons for doing it. We may never know what moves our sister, but even she would not take such offense over such a slight as to give death to an innocent child.”

“You don’t know her. Not as I do,” Thekla said.

The sisters shifted in their seats, relaxed. None wanted to challenge Thekla, especially on this night.

“
Death shall lead you back
, she said,” offered Ingeburg. “I don’t suppose any of you comprehend that phrase any better than I?” Ingeburg felt that she, of all the sisters, should have a ready answer to the riddle. That she did not was cause for amazement; for the first time in Ingeburg’s life she judged her mind lacking.

“
Back
to what, is what I would like to know,” said Eva. “I do wish I could have also countered that, but as you all know, such is not in my power.”

“We don’t blame you, dear. Saving your gift till last was a thrice-worthy act. More than we might have hoped for.” Thekla, ashamed she did not think of it herself, shook her head.

Elfrieda, strangely silent during the discourse, looked Thekla in the eye. “You know what she wants,” she said with a firm voice that shocked her sisters into silence. “You know what fancies burn her. You recall the letters, do you not?”

A murmuring came to life in the room as the sisters spoke softly to themselves and to each other. Ingeburg was astounded by her most vapid sister’s declaration. Suddenly it all made terrible sense. The twins said nothing, but slouched a little further down into their seats. Zilli’s mouth hung open and Thekla bit her lip. They were old. Most of them had
not
, in fact, remembered the letters. Perhaps because they did not particularly care to.

It had happened so long ago.

Bayern, the land of their birth, had first claimed the life of their brother, and shortly thereafter it taken that of their father. The night of their father’s funeral Kitty had vanished without a word. It was the last the family had ever seen of her, until now. The seven remaining sisters, along with their mother, had soon fled that dark land of sorrowful magic for America, where they tried very hard to be brave. Death comes in threes, they say, and so it must be. Four years after their arrival, Mama was claimed as well. The sisters had found the letters in a drawer in her bedside table. They had been neatly tied together and all of them were unopened.

It had been a bleak and chaotic period of their lives. Thekla had done the right thing in burning the letters, but they all wished she had not opened them before she did so. Kitty had written at length about their brother’s death and her great remorse for it. None faulted her for that. But Kitty had sworn to undo it, and that was perilous ground. She seemed obsessed with the past and had penned several long and confusing polemics about space and physics and time. Kitty would somehow restore Louis to them, she had written, and the sisters could not help but be afraid. No one had argued when Thekla declared Kitty insane. They, too, wished Louis had lived, but this was madness. Several of them now glanced at the portrait. Their brother, caught in time, did not say a word.

“Do you think,” Elfrieda said at last, “she’s found a way?”

“She does possess the gift,” Zilli said.

“I will not hear it.” Thekla spoke with a conviction she was certain her sisters shared. “The past cannot be changed. It is her Sight that concerns us. The gift you speak of does not make any sense.”

Ingeburg sighed. “And what about this family does?”

Thekla snorted her derision. There was nothing wrong with
her
family
—
it was Kitty who caused all the fuss. She uncrossed her legs and flinched with the pain. Damned arthritis. If anything made no sense, it was that she was finally feeling her years. Blast the drunken ancestor who had given the family the gift of longevity! It was a curse, Thekla thought to herself. She was ninety-four years old and might live another fifty at the rate she was going.
This
was why they gave their gifts so carefully these days. There could not be a repeat of things so thoughtlessly given. Age without health should not be wished on anyone.

Thekla smoothed her skirt over her knees and cleared her throat loudly.

“We can chatter here all night and never find an answer. The gift has been given. There is nothing we can do about that now. My sisters, what we must be considering is how we can stop Kitty’s gift from ever manifesting.”

Helga and Hilda nodded. They sat next to each other on a brightly colored settee, thighs touching, identical hands resting in identical laps. “She said something about windows breaking,” said Helga.

“And fingers pricking,” said Hilda.

The twins then spoke thoughtfully in unison, “So we suppose she believes Helena will be killed by something sharp.”

“A knife,” said Helga.

“Or a sliver of glass,” said Hilda.

Thekla almost rolled her eyes at the suggestion. “How have you figured that?”

“How do we figure anything Kitty does?”

“We don’t. And we’ll never do so from here.”

Thekla had an idea, but it would take some doing to bring her sisters into agreement.

Kitty spoiled everything, time after time, Thekla thought. All these years without a word, only the silent terror of knowing she was out there. And then, without warning, she casts her wicked eye our way, as though destroying us once wasn’t enough. Thekla remembered the letters, for she had kept the very last one. Addressed solely to her, it was Kitty’s attempt to make up for the wrongs of the past, as if a few words could erase all she’d done. Thekla clenched her fists. What right did she think she had?

“Imagine the twins are correct,” said Elfrieda. “What then shall we do? Hide every ornament? Keep Helena from the kitchens? Cover all the windows? There is no way to protect her from such a fate, if that is what Kitty has Seen.” She crossed and uncrossed her legs, unable to ease the discomfort that was spreading through her knees.

A shadow crossed Thekla’s face. “There is a way. We are going to find it.”

Eva woke with a start, her body aware that morning had passed, her mind remaining in that state where all is muted and pale. She sat up and let the sheets wrinkle at her hips, rubbed her blood-shot eyes and fussed with her silver locks before sliding her feet into brocade slippers and heading for the stairs.

She wondered if her sisters had managed to get any rest. Her dreams had been of things rising from the old lake and her sleep had been fitful and uneasy.

It was a foolish—yet daring—plan that Thekla demanded. A return to their ancestral home was begging for another clash with Kitty, and Eva had voiced the loudest arguments against the idea. It was too big. Bayern was too far away. They were too old for the journey. But no, Thekla had insisted. It was the only way.

There was so much to consider, not least that Kitty lived there. Thekla’s logic was sound enough. Kitty had the Sight; compared to her, the rest of them were blind. They had to get close to Kitty, or they would never know what she was plotting.

No one denied that Kitty would plot, but Eva hardly thought they needed to live next door to her as she did it. Thekla had closed her argument nicely:
It is, after all, our home, too
. None of them wanted to admit that those few words moved them as nothing else Thekla said did. They loved their home in America, but Bayern was in their blood.

Eva conceded, but not because she longed for a place she did not remember. The trouble with some gifts is that you cannot tell when or how they will be opened. With a gift such as beauty, all anyone has to do is grow into it, but some gifts linger for years before revealing themselves. They had no way to know when Kitty’s gift to Helena would manifest. In Bayern, close to Kitty, they could at least make a more educated guess.

When Eva reached the kitchen she found Elfrieda and Zilli staring into their tea as Ingeburg diced the vine-ripened tomatoes that spilled from a basket nearby. The kitchen was a comfortable place of copper and dark wood, of warmth and quiet contentment. The sisters would be sorry to leave it.

“She gives us a month!” Elfrieda moaned as soon as Eva sat down.

“Hush now,” said Zilli kindly, “you’ve been crying all morning. You’d be better off packing than pining for time you don’t have.”

Eva poured herself a cup of tea and kept her silence for a moment. Her sisters knew her mind. “Maybe it is for the best,” she finally said, but without conviction.

“No one has been there in years! It will be filthy. Not even Thekla can muster the power to have it ready by the time we arrive.” More birdlike in her distress than usual, Elfrieda’s fingers flitted from teacup to spoon to tomato as she spoke. She would not be calmed.

Eva could only shake her head at her sister; the state of the house was the last thing on Thekla’s mind.
All beauty and no brains
, she thought, though not unkindly.

Ingeburg turned and waved her knife in the air. “A change of scenery will do us all good, and don’t you forget,” here she aimed at Elfrieda, “our priority is the child.” She returned to the board and diced an onion with a flash of her hand.

Helga and Hilda walked into the room, fresh from a stroll through the garden where they’d plucked a fragrant array of roses. Helga reached for a vase while Hilda spoke softly to Hope, requesting a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese and a bowl of soup for Helga. Each made herself a place at the table and immediately began to voice their opinions about the month ahead.

“It is not enough time,” Helga said.

“What will we do with this house?” Hilda asked anyone who might know the answer.

“Sell it, I imagine.” Ingeburg said. None of them would ever return to America once they’d left it. The upheaval was too much for them. At their ages, they should be settled down. Ingeburg laughed loudly, much to Elfrieda’s dismay.

“What do you find so amusing?”

Ingeburg couldn’t hold in a final chuckle. “Imagine us, world travelers. They won’t know what to think when we board the plane. We shall look, dare I say it, most surreal.”

“Plane?” Elfrieda had visions of an ocean liner, steaming over the sea.

It was Zilli’s turn to laugh. “A new age has dawned out there. Of course we are going to fly.”

“With the baby?” All eyes turned to Hope, who shrugged and said nothing.

Eva listened as her sisters continued to bicker about their impending journey. None of them mentioned why they were going, as though that part of it could be overlooked.

She hated to bring up the matter of their sister, but felt it had to be done.