Sleeping Helena (22 page)

Outside, the storm raged. Rain slashed across Louis’ face and his horse almost spun out of control. Suddenly, from high in the house, a flash of light shone in a window Louis was certain had never been there. It drew his attention back to the courtyard. He saw a body crumpled on the flagstones behind him. Louis reined in the horse and leapt from its back, ducking through the leaves and limbs pelting him as he ran to the sodden girl’s side.

My god,
Louis thought,
my sister.
The king’s message forgotten, he carefully lifted her from the ground and carried her through the storm. Cook heard him kick open the door to the kitchen and sent a girl out to find Magdalena.

“What has happened?” Magdalena shouted as she hurried through the kitchen, her fine dress spotting with ash and oil. She saw Louis holding Katza and stopped with a hand to her mouth. Cook chased the maids out as Magdalena fought for composure.

“Take her to her room. I’ll have Papa summon the doctor.” Magdalena could not say it, but Louis saw it in her eyes.

“She is breathing,” he said.

“Take her. I’ll be right there.”

Magdalena lifted her skirts and ran from the room with no thought for dignity. Louis shifted his sister’s weight in his arms. He felt young again, though he never had a chance to grow old. He wondered, briefly, what the king was doing, but Katza’s weight in his arms meant far more.

Louis carried her to her room and laid her on the cold bed. The shutters were pulled tight against the windows. He lit the lamp by her bedside and tucked a blanket around her still form. Together they waited as below, the guests bid the family goodnight.

The doctor arrived two hours later. His diagnosis: a coma. Keep her comfortable, he said, there was nothing more they could do. The Baroness looked in once the guests were gone, but only shook her head in sorrow. She had her own worries to tend.

Katza looked peaceful, as though she were sleeping, as they all should have been at that hour. Louis insisted that their parents go to their rest and let him watch over his sister. They fussed, but agreed and left him. Though the night was long, Louis did not falter. He did not once think of the king. He sat on the edge of the bed beside Katza and moved only when the first tendrils of light began to crawl over the lake. Dawn brought with it the heavy scent of roses. Louis stretched and went to the window. The rain had stopped in the night, the earth was washed clean and around the house, every rose on its stem was in bloom.

Katza seemed to be resting comfortably. It wouldn’t hurt to leave for a moment, he thought. She would like a bouquet of flowers. He slipped out the door and went into the gardens, where lush roses of the deepest red waved in the cool morning breeze. He cut a handful and put the bunch to his face, drew in the perfume and let it cover his hair. They reminded him of Katza.

In Katza’s room he arranged all but one in a porcelain vase on the table near the bed. The last rose he kept for his sister. Her head was turned into the pillow and her breath disturbed a strand of hair that lay on her cheek. She is beautiful, Louis said to himself as he sat gently on the mattress. Her hair was the color of golden wheat and her neck was as slender as willow. He let his fingers run along Katza’s jaw and brushed the rose across her brow. Louis was drawn to his sister’s smooth, red lips. He leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on her mouth.

Katza stirred beside him; he sat up and watched in disbelief as her eyes slowly opened. They did not focus on him.

“Is it you, Louis? You have been so long in coming. I feel as though I’ve been sleeping for at least a hundred years.” Her voice was faint, as though it came from a place far away.

Louis wrapped his arms around and held her as close as he dared. “I am here, Katza. All is well.”

“Louis? I can’t see you. Why can’t I see you?” Katza clung to him, and trembled.

Louis took her hand in one of his and waved the other in front of her eyes. “Do you see my hand, Katza? Do you see anything at all?”

Katza felt for his lapels and drew him close to her face, ran her fingers over his nose and tangled them in his hair.

“No,” she said, “I see nothing. Louis, I think I am blind.”

“This is very strange. Very strange.”

The doctor shook his head, for he’d never seen anything like it and he’d certainly seen some inexplicable things in this family. He removed his spectacles, wiped the lenses with a handkerchief and put them in his pocket, deliberately, as though attempting to buy time.

“What is it?” Magdalena was impatient to know why her daughter was blind again.

The doctor cleared his throat, an awful guffawing sound that caused Katza, who could not see it coming, to jump in her bed. “It appears to me that a sliver of glass is embedded in each of her pupils.”

“What?” said Magdalena.

“How is that possible?” asked Louis.

“You say you found her on the flagstones. There must have been broken glass on the ground where she fell.” He didn’t seem to believe his own words, but he stood by them. “Unusual, but perfectly reasonable.”

Magdalena looked as though she wanted to throttle him. Papa just shook his head, sadly, as though he could not believe his ears.

“Reasonable?” Papa said. “Is that what they call it?”

The doctor coughed into his hand.

“Is she in pain?” Louis had to know.

The doctor turned to Louis and scratched his chin in thought. “She doesn’t seem to be. If she mentions any discomfort, please let me know.”

Katza, who ignored the doctor once he was done poking his fingers into her eyes, finally spoke. “I am fine. Please leave. I want to be alone with my brother.”

The doctor seemed eager to do as Katza requested and he and Papa went to settle the fee. Mama swept a hand across Katza’s brow and then left them.

Katza held out her hand and Louis took it.

“Louis? What happened to me?” The night was a blur; the last thing she remembered was chasing him into the rain. “I had such terrible dreams.”

Louis swallowed his guilt. “You followed me into the courtyard. You must have slipped and hit your head. The doctor came in the night and said you were in a coma. We did not expect you to wake.”

“I didn’t either. I didn’t think it would ever end.”

He drew her in. “It is over now. I am here.”

“I’m so hungry. Will you help me down the stairs?” Katza’s stomach growled and Louis laughed.

“Of course.”

Katza wrapped her arm in Louis’ and let him lead the way. He was cautious, but Katza’s feet recalled each step and her hand lingered lightly on the banister, as though her body remembered what it was to be blind. When they reached the first floor, Katza stopped. Some part of her dream still lingered. She pressed her hand into Louis’ arm.

“Do you remember the secret room we found when we were young? It had a mirror on the wall. Is it still there?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t been there in years.”

“Take me.”

Why blind Katza would care now about the mirror Louis did not know, but he humored her despite his misgivings. The stairway was narrow and dark, but that wouldn’t matter to Katza. He took a candle for himself and guided her to the room, where he opened the door onto a disaster.

The mirror was in pieces on the floor.

“It is broken,” he said as he kicked a shard with his toe. “And the window has been uncovered. Very strange.”

Katza’s face creased in confusion. She was sure she needed that mirror for something, but now it was gone.

“Wait,” Louis said as he bent to the floor. “I’ve found a key.”

He pressed the cold metal into Katza’s hand; she brought it to her face and touched her cheek with the metal. “I wonder what it opens,” she said, and then dropped it as Louis folded her hand into his.

They closed the door behind them. The sound of Papa rattling his newspaper drew them to the table. They were late; the others were already gathered together for breakfast. The house glowed as morning light filled the windows. Mama pulled out a chair for Katza to sit in and Louis guided her to it. As they reached her seat, an attendant rushed in and handed Papa a letter.

“My god,” Papa suddenly shouted.

Mama, Louis, and Thekla turned towards him as the other children giggled on in their corner, unconcerned by the look on his face. Katza’s hand tightened on Louis’ arm.

“What is it?” Mama asked.

“The king,” Papa cried. “Ludwig was found in the lake last night. They say it might have been murder!”

Helena woke. She was tired, her sinews pinched and burned and her neck cracked as she turned it. She was wearing the same dress, but it was faded and brittle, as though it had been abandoned in some musty closet more than a century ago. It was daybreak and the soft grass of the grounds glistened with dew. She was on the wide, stone steps at the front of the house. She did not recall leaving the hidden room, but was still well aware of what she had done there.

Given two choices, it seemed she had made a third. Had it happened this way before? Life erupted around her as the sun rose above the horizon. Birds began to call out to each other, both in the trees and over the lake, and at her feet insects roamed the cold stone of the steps. Around her, life was restored to its usual pattern and flow of minutes and hours. The nightmare was over. Helena frowned. She was not supposed to wake.

She raised her hand to rub at her eyes and stood, motionless with incomprehension, as her fingers came into sight. Gone was the silken skin of youth with which she was so familiar. In its place was a gnarled talon, somehow attached to an equally wrinkled and limpid arm that she knew, without a doubt, grew from her own shoulder. She willed the hand to movement, pulled a tendril of hair from behind her and blinked when she saw, instead of dark tresses, a skein of cobweb pinched in her fingers.

She was old and felt age with a suddenness that brought her to her knees. She knew a brief moment of insane humor when she realized that she might not be able to rise. She reached out toward the briars beside her. Surely they would lend an old woman their assistance. They did, and as she wrapped her hand around the thick vines and pulled herself to her feet, Helena felt she knew what it was to be ancient.

The lives of her aunts and their mother and her mother before her coursed through her veins as she clung painfully to the roses. Their memories seeped out of the foundation stones like water, up through the briars and into Helena, as thorns pricked her hands and petals fell into her hair. All of their lives took root in her and blossomed.

She reeled from the flood. Her old pores opened and drank it in but her mind, still caught in the spaces of youth and inexperience, could not grasp it all at once. She steadied herself and tried to organize the swirling images of so many lives into some kind of coherent story.

Every detail was there, a parade of knowledge that settled and shifted until Helena thought she would burst. Her gifts would have loved it, but they were gone. Her heart thudded, her breath rasped in her chest, and her back ached as though it was on fire, but she could not stop the flow of time. She opened herself and let all of them in, held them and cherished each one. When all of the past settled in her, a wave of the future arrived. The memories Katza had stored flew like birds into Helena’s hair and scattered the happy succession of time. They shouldn’t be there, that future was gone, but they were and they needed a home. Helena took them in as well until she was full, and then she let all but one of them go.

Louis. She knew now why the sight of him had caused her so much turmoil. It had been Katza’s longing and Katza’s spell and had nothing to do with Helena. Yet Louis was now part of her, too. His memory she would take with her, wherever her path led now.

Helena placed one foot before the other and slowly made her way down the steps, left the roses to bow at the sun and the household to go on as it would without her. None of them could remember her now. The lake at the edge of the grounds, the swing by the shore and Ludwig, lost king of a magical land: these things beckoned. It would be good to rest her bones by the water, if only the seat was not too hard.

Ludwig waited by the shore. The swan watched Helena approach as the small boat rocked on the waves. The king’s eyes narrowed as she approached. She was not as he remembered.

“What have you done?”

“The same thing I always do. I chose Katza.”

“Something has changed.”

Her gifts were gone and with them her hunger. Helena was glad to find she did not need an answer. She brushed what felt like a spider from the back of her neck and smirked. “Has it?”

The king laughed up at the clear sky. “You must know, Helena, how you have finally freed us.”

Helena shrugged.

“Hope told me what to do.”