Free Sleeping Helena by Erzebet YellowBoy

on the roof, nailing down slate or removing it, and once Thekla even had a crew rip out the roses. The thorns, she said, posed a hazard to Helena. The roses, unconcerned, reappeared the very next day. Each year brought a new surprise, another change, another bit of their home remade anew, or modernized , as Thekla liked to say.
    Eva was not fooled. She knew what drove Thekla, but also knew that Kitty hadn’t told the entire tale those few years ago. Kitty had said it herself — Eva was better off not knowing the whole truth. Eva doubted that, but a confrontation with Thekla would not end well and Kitty had said all she would. Eva had always believed that it was Louis’ death that had severed the family, but she found herself wondering if something else might have cut even more deeply into their roots. All roads led to Louis, but he was dead.
    Only the sisters survived, and they now lived in fear. Its cold blanket wrapped around their shoulders and the routines they had established as a family were all but gone. Thekla was distant, the others grouped in twos and threes and the bonds between them all were quietly fraying.
    Everything was connected, somehow. If Eva could piece it all together, she would be able to stop Thekla from bringing the whole house down around their heads. Thekla seemed precariously close to madness, and these crazy schemes of hers could not be good for the child. The house had been stripped of anything useful; it was more like a prison than a home, all for a gift none understood in the first place. That was it — they were guessing at Kitty’s intent, even Thekla. Especially Thekla, though she did have good reason to suspect the worst. Helena would certainly bear watching. None of this would be happening if it were not for her gift. Maybe it was she who held the key.
    None of them had what Eva would call a close relationship with their prodigy. Helena, at eleven years of age, was perfection itself. She could also be perfectly nasty. She was gorgeous and graceful, intelligent and exquisitely talented, but the sisters were not so proud of their creation these days.
    They never spoke out loud of it, but one of them should have thought to give Helena kindness, or love, or at least a little bit of compassion. As far as Eva could tell, she had none. Perhaps eight had been too many gifts; they crowded out everything else. They all agreed that Helena was precisely what they had made her. Not one drop of anything else had grown within her.
    It could be that Helena was the only one who would ever know the truth of Kitty’s gift, but by then it might be too late. The best Eva had done was to trade death for sleep, and even she did not know what that might really mean.
    Sleep rather than death? If and when Helena woke, she might still die the moment her eyes opened. It was a horrible thought and one Eva did not want to follow, though she was sure there was something at its end. It was a muddle and high time, Eva felt, to take matters into her own hands.
    Eva found Hope, as usual, in the kitchen. Hope was preparing a batch of fresh bread and had flour up to her elbows.
    “Do you ever leave this room?” Eva teased her as she wiped crumbs from the cutting board into the sink. She liked to help in the kitchen, though Hope often chased her away.
    Hope was always the same, no matter how anything changed. Eva looked at their old housekeeper, saw hair as grey as her own, the neat apron tied around her thick waist and her stoic expression, intent on the bread.
    “Hope, you spend a lot of time with Helena.” Easy, she thought. Let’s not say too much. “Have you noticed anything unusual about her?”
    “Unusual?” Hope chuckled.
    “You know what I mean,” Eva said, perhaps too sharply.
    Hope pounded the dough. “No, I can’t say that I have.”
    “Are you certain? There is no need to keep the truth from me.” Eva prodded a little harder.
    “She does ask a lot of questions.” Hope shrugged and carried