Sleeping Helena (21 page)

Helena must give up her life for Katza’s and the chance to save Louis. It was there all along, inside her. The gift of life comes at the cost of life, and debts must always be paid. She might be reborn, she might not
—
if Katza succeeded, the future would change. Louis would live, but Helena might not again. She suddenly saw how the past has altered the future.

“I’ve made my choice.”

Helena rose to her feet shakily, pulled herself upright with the help of the king.

“It will be Katza who wakes.”

Of course he knew. She’d done this countless times already.

“I must say goodbye to the house.” She could not bring herself to say,
to my family
, but she had to give her regards to the women who had created her. The power she’d inherited from each of them demanded nothing less.

Helena roamed the halls aimlessly, peeked into every door, and then entered the cold ballroom, where she began to dismiss her followers. She found five of her aunts and returned their gifts to each one. She first went to Thekla’s side and straightened her dress. She ran her hand over Thekla’s young cheeks, trying to smooth out her pain.

“You should never stop playing the piano,” Helena said, “since you love it so very much.”

Hilda and Helga were cute as could be as they played quietly in a corner. They sat on the floor, legs crossed, beside a grand old lady who clenched a parasol in her fist. Ringlets of hair fell into their faces as between them they wove a cat’s cradle. Helena tucked a string around Helga’s finger and kissed small Hilda’s cheek. Zilli and Ingeburg shyly clung to their father’s legs. Zilli had a star-struck look in her eyes, while Ingeburg’s hinted at boredom.

It was a strange thing Helena did. Peace was not one of her eight parts and yet it comfortably entered. There wasn’t space for much else, she thought, until she saw Eva asleep in her father’s arms.

Helena was humbled. Was I ever held like that? She cast her memory as far back as she could. Yes, I was, by Hope. I will remember next time, Helena said to herself, to thank her. “Sweet dreams,” she said to Eva as she put a finger to the child’s tiny brow.

Helena’s step was surprisingly light as she danced through the wide, quiet room. She said her farewells to the guests and their presents, and to the mirrors that caught her reflection as she twirled by. She left the guests to what dreams they swam in and departed through the back of the room.

The door to the library behind it was open; she had to peek in at the books. There on the shelf for anyone to see was the blue volume that listed the gifts, the book Kitty had held in her hands on the far side of the mirror. Helena pulled it down and opened it; the pages were crisp and clean. So many gifts, she wondered, as she flipped through to the end. If it was the same book she’d seen in the mirror, her aunts’ names would be there.

In order of age they were written: Katza, Thekla, Helga and Hilda, Zilli, Ingeburg, Eva, and Elfrieda—the names of the eight sisters who had made her. And there, one hundred years too early, as though written in invisible ink freshly revealed, was Helena’s name and gifts noted in order of their reception.

Helena blinked and waited for the letters to rearrange themselves. All of her gifts were accurate except for Eva’s. Eva, the book said, had lastly given her sleep.

Not life, as Helena had for so long believed, but sleep. Helena thought of all the mornings her aunts had struggled to wake her, of how easily and deeply she’d always slept, of how tired she was in the evenings and how glad she was, each night, when it was time for bed. She never, not once that she could remember, had a bad night’s sleep.

Sleep
. So obvious that she’d missed it.

The book slid back into place without concern for her confusion. She understood it now; she believed it. Kitty had given her death and scared them all. That gift, she knew, had been in her all along, as had Eva’s. So what had Helena been searching for all of those years? There had been something missing, she
knew
it.

Helena thought back to that silent room, where Thekla stood pointing a rifle at Kitty, with Eva right behind her. Is that what had happened? Had Eva put the whole world to sleep to stop Thekla’s finger from pulling the trigger? Everyone but me, Helena thought. I must have slipped through the mirror before sleep had a chance to catch me. Helena frowned. Life was never in her. It was never hers to create.

She would have broken then, but another thought restored her.
I have learned of this a hundred times over.
It did not matter; nothing would matter unless Kitty could change the future. Somehow Kitty must wake.

It must happen,
Helena thought.
It has happened before.

Helena, exhausted and realizing it, looked forward now to the end. She would finish her journey in the place where it had begun.

She went to the room in which she’d left Kitty, what seemed now a long time ago. It was empty and dark, but for what light shone in from the hall.

She was doing the right thing
—
she must be. She was doing the only thing she could to give Louis a chance at life and herself an opportunity to have him. All was lost if she returned to the future, and all its attraction was gone. The path ahead was clear and she was ready to follow it, as soon as this last thing was done. The stair was as she remembered it; the little door at the top was unlocked. There was a ledge and on it a candle and matches. She lit the wick and reached for the door. There was no lock, she realized as she grasped the handle and recalled the now useless key.

The room itself was also not quite as she’d left it—the mirror hung intact on the wall. Helena put the candle on the floor and placed her hands on the solid glass. She looked steadily into her own eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I cannot go back.”

“Sometimes you just have to let people go.”

Hope held the last fragment of mirror in her shaking hand. It seemed such an easy truism. Hope knew otherwise. She turned the small piece of glass in her fingers and was not the first person to marvel at how, sometimes, the fate of all we hold dear rests on such simple things.

She took the pouch from around her neck. Inside was a large, bright spider. Hope untied the cord and laid the pouch on the mirror. The spider crept out and moved quickly across the glass. She watched it chase the light into the window, where it started to weave a web. Hope smiled and looked back at the floor.

The mirror revealed Helena’s image on its cracked surface. The lines split her in tiny parts, Hope’s glue held her together. Downstairs, Thekla aimed her rifle while Kitty waited for the bullet. The words Kitty had spoken so long ago came back to haunt Hope now. Kitty had been right
—
the life Helena knew was over, broken beyond real repair. Hope felt it, clenched her fist around it, and watched as a drop of blood ran over her palm. Hope had made a promise sixteen years ago.
Whatever happens, I will do my best to mend it.
Hope swallowed the lesson that Kitty had never learned and prepared to face her future. If Helena did change the past, Hope would have none.

Though Hope had never had children, she knew what it meant to mother one. Now she thought she might also know how it feels when that child grows and is finally gone. They would all break because of her gifts, if Helena could not save them. Hope wanted badly to reach in and grab Helena’s hand, to pull her back through the mirror and hold her as though she was her own.

How far had Kitty’s spell gone? It was very strange magic. How many people get a chance to go back? Not many, as far as Hope knew. Even stranger
—
how many do and don’t even know it?

Hope painted glue on the last piece of glass and fitted it into place with the others. Helena’s face gazed back at her, complete. Their eyes locked. There was no way for Hope to know how much time she would have or if she could even force her voice through the doorway. She must use the moment wisely.

Hope sat in a circle of light on a hard chair in a secret room. She was dirty and tired and sore, but she was content. She’d kept her promise; the rest was now up to fate. Hope glanced at the spider, still in the window. There was no guarantee it would do any more than spin out a spider’s web, but such is the nature of chance and Hope knew it. She bent her knees to the cold wood of the floor and breathed onto the glass. After so much effort, this was a simple thing, too.

“Break the spell,” she called out to Helena.

“Break the mirror!”

Hope’s syllables fell into the cracks in the glass, where they mingled with the mercury on its back and crossed through to the other side. Hope put everything she was into those words: nursemaid, housekeeper, cook, and mother. She smiled. Though Helena’s reflection did not answer, Hope knew she had been heard.

In the mirror, Helena watched as her face transformed and became that of an old, frightful hag. Her mouth moved of its own volition. Helena leaned forward to hear the words. The old crone smiled and suddenly Helena knew her. The force of Hope’s love drew Helena’s face to the mirror, where their breath mingled on the surface of the glass. She heard Hope clearly and drank down every word.

Hope had been there since the beginning, as constant as the sun crossing over the lake each morning. Though kinship was not in her making, Helena felt it arrange itself inside of her. As Helena watched, Hope’s face began to fade.

“Don’t go,” she sobbed at the mirror, but only her own features responded to her plea.

On the other side of the glass, where Helena could not see her, Hope rose wearily from the floor and brushed off the front of her dress. Though her old bones protested, she brought her foot down in the center of the mirror. Helena’s eight parts shattered with the glass.

Helena stood in front of the mirror, eyes wide and face flushed. She was a tree whose bark was stripped by the wind, a rose whose petals had suddenly fallen. Helena clung to the mirror as she was turned inside out. Katza will wake, Helena thought, and the past will remain unchanged, because the past never changes. It is me
—
I keep us all in this circle with my decision. I will never have Louis, no matter what choice I make. The last piece of her shattered and hit the ground.

Break the spell,
Hope had said. Hope
knew
, she thought, amazed that Hope had been able to find her. Then,
Hope is alive and still awake in the future
. If Aunt Kitty wakes now, Hope, too, will cease to exist.

The entire future must begin anew.

Hope was right, it was a spell, but both Helena and Kitty had cast it. Kitty’s spell had brought them to this, but it was Helena’s decision that led them back to it time after time. The children in the ballroom stood no chance; the future would only repeat and swing back in upon them without them ever knowing it had happened before. They must be very tired, Helena thought. Like me. She owed all of them, and Hope, so very much.

Break the mirror,
Hope had said. The house was still and silent around her. Helena, weightless, took a deep breath and touched the raw core at her center, where her inheritance sat, exposed. She knew now the name of her power, should have guessed it all along. She was no different from the rest of the family
—
she had the power to give gifts, too. This is how she wakes Kitty, again and again.

The power to give and the power to take away
—
the two are inseparable. Time, Helena decided, is too dangerous a gift; it lets you see too much. It is fine, Helena thought, to be stuck in the past, as long as you eventually get out of it. She ran her finger over the edge of the mirror, drew it around the circumference and back to where she began. Helena could do nothing about Kitty’s gift of time, but this possible future could finally be sealed off forever.

She stepped away from the mirror and unclasped the chains around her neck. The locket gleamed, but the key was dull and hung listlessly from her fingers. Such a small thing, she thought, to unlock such complicated doors. She clenched her hand around them both and drew back her arm. There is one door this key will not open, ever again. Helena closed her eyes and released her power.

The past met the future as the glass exploded. Helena instinctively covered her face as the mirror shattered. Shards shot into the walls and around her head like arrows. The sound was deafening. Helena wrapped her arms around her head as the last pieces fell to the floor in a hailstorm of tiny daggers. Mirrored fragments of glass littered the room. Candlelight streamed out through the sliver of window, a remnant of a future in which it had been pried open. A spider vanished into the frame as Helena watched. She pulled a stray piece of mirror out of her hair and looked into it. All she saw was her own eye gazing back. She dropped the glass and slid to the floor, unconscious.

In the house, candles began to flicker. The guests started to breathe and to slowly regain their motion as time, that heaving behemoth, began to turn.