Sleeping Helena by Erzebet YellowBoy Read Free Book Online Page A

twig from Helena’s shoulder. “Have you been outdoors with Hope?”
    “How else would there be sticks in my hair?” Helena shook her head. Adults loved to question the obvious. Her question was better than that.
    No one liked to talk about death or to be reminded of its existence. Even the doctor had nothing to say; he knew only how to keep his customers from it. She was hushed and shushed and patted on the head until she felt she would burst with the well-meaning ignorance of everyone around her. They did not understand that death held a clue as to what her eighth part might be.
    “I was wondering, Aunt. How do things die?”
    Thekla froze. Not this again. The air coalesced around them; neither moved. Thekla thought she saw roses blooming in Helena’s eyes.
    “It is a natural process, Helena,” she finally said. “Everything living must die when its time comes. What’s gotten into you? You’re too young to ask such questions.”
    “No. I’m not.”
    Helena watched Thekla inspect her face. Helena was inscrutable, immovable, and impossible to challenge and she knew it, but she didn’t expect Thekla to be taken in by her charm, not this time.
    “Yes, you most certainly are.”
    Helena ignored her aunt’s show of defiance. “Who decides when it’s time?”
    “Time for what?”
    Helena rolled her eyes. “Time to die.”
    Thekla’s face hardened into a stern mask. “Only the gods can make that decision, and we do not question them. That is enough now,” she said. “Don’t trouble yourself with thoughts of death. It will be many years yet before your own time comes, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
    “I’m not worried about anything,” Helena said, and left.
    It was true. Thekla’s answer had changed everything.
    Helena was made of death and could therefore choose its moment, as she had with the bird when she squashed it. This she already knew. But according to Thekla, this made her a god, and that she had never suspected.
    Helena was uncertain about the matter of gods. The sky was allegedly populated with them, so many that she wondered they had any room to themselves. People prayed to them, made offerings to them, and danced for them under the moon. If the gods answered their pleas, she did not know. They did not seem to have much of a purpose, their existence had yet to be proven and she had always thought she would wait and see for herself if they were more than myth. Now Helena suddenly numbered among them and in her aunts had her very own followers.
    She might have reveled in this notion, were she a different girl, but to Helena it meant only one thing. She had already noted that life and death are inseparable. She’d watched seeds become food that perished under Hope’s quick knife. She had already reasoned that since death was one part of her, then life might just be one, too. Until now, she’d been unable to confirm this. But gods could personify both life and death, and they dealt equally well in both. And since she was a god, she could do the same. Helena clapped her hands together and laughed. She’d been right all along!
    Her eighth part must be life.
    Joy soon succumbed to logic, however. In order to feed life she would have to create life, but Helena was not so omnipotent. Planting seeds, she knew, was not the same as creating the seeds to be planted. Her hands fell to her sides. Despite knowing its name, she still could not feed her eighth part through the use of it. Either something was still missing or she was wrong, and the latter was simply not possible. She held the Grail of her short existence in her hand. It was empty.
    As with any god, her followers would eventually enshrine her, cover her with incense and flowers, and ossify her beneath their perfume. Attention would be lavished upon her, she would sing and dance as she pleased, and wear only the finest clothes money could buy. She was a god who knew nothing beyond her own mountain, did not even know of the fire