“If it were only feathers that could transform a sparrow into a peacock.”
“A sparrow is beautiful in its own way,” Käthe said severely. “Don’t force yourself to be a peacock, Liesl. Embrace your sparrow self. Look.” She gestured to the bronze mirror before me.
It was not my reflection that caught my eye, but hers. The full scope of my sister’s transformation hadn’t been clear until I saw her face in the bronze mirror. How many times had I watched Käthe primp and prepare before the mirror in our bedroom, her apple-plump cheeks and sparkling eyes glowing with health? The bones of her cheeks and jaw jutted painfully now, angular and almost masculine. Her chin was as sharp as a dagger, her nose long, her lips thin. Her eyes were overlarge in that wasted face, and with a start, I realized I was looking at me. No, my sister. Faded away to a wisp of her former self, Käthe and I looked the same, save for our different coloring.
“See?” She smiled, a rictus grin. “Ready to face the whole, wide world.”
Käthe hadn’t done much in the way of face paint or powders; she’d merely touched my lips with rouge and brushed out my brows. In the flickering fairy lights of the Underground, my sallow complexion evened into a creamy pallor, the angles of my face imposing rather than thin. This was the face I had seen every day of my life growing up—plain, angular, horsey—yet in this new environment, I glowed with an otherworldly light. A sparrow in its nest.
“I wish …” Käthe began, then frowned.
“What is it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just …” She bit her lip. “I wish, just once, we might venture beyond these palace walls. To hear your music played before a wide audience. To see works of art by the great masters. To feel … real sunshine, taste strawberries sun-sweet from the meadow, to—oh!”
Drops of blood fell to stain the rug beneath our feet. Another nosebleed. I jumped up, rushing to grab a cloth or a bandage, but there was nothing in the room save for yards and yards of expensive fabric. I grabbed a discarded stocking—clean, I hoped—and helped clean her up.
“I need to lie down,” she murmured weakly.
“All right.” I helped her to her bed. She felt even thinner and frailer in my arms than before.
“Liesl.” Käthe’s voice was a thready whisper. “Liesl, I don’t … feel so well. I—”
“Shush,” I said. “I’ll call for your attendants.”
Käthe shook her head. “I want Mother,” she whimpered. “I want—”
I did not know what to do. Mother was far away; life was far away, and slipping ever further from my sister’s grasp. Despair and rage choked me, but I swallowed them down. Käthe looked at me with large, frightened eyes, and I smiled for her. Mother’s smile. Calm in the face of adversity.
Smoothing her hair as she rested against her pillows, I hummed a bit of a lullaby Mother used to sing for us. My voice held none of our mother’s sweetness, but Käthe seemed soothed nonetheless. To my surprise, she joined in, her unmusical, tone-deaf ear struggling to find the right pitch along with me. As a little girl, she had refused to sing or play other musical games with the family, painfully conscious of her inadequacies.
“Liesl.”
Behind the strained voice, I heard her. My real sister, behind the enchantment. I faltered.
My sister seized my hand. “No, don’t,” she said. “Keep singing. Keep going.”
I stopped playing with Käthe’s hair. I took up the lullaby once more, substituting the lyrics with a wordless ooh as I tried to figure out what to do next.
Are you here, Käthe, my love, my dear?
The question fit awkwardly into the lullaby’s rhythm and beat, but it seemed to be the best way to speak with her without breaking the music.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said, struggling. “Your music … it helps keep the fog away.”
We must flee, we must fly, your bridegroom awaits to take his prize.
“My bridegroom?” Her blue eyes clouded and I silently cursed myself for slipping in my own spell that I tried to weave about her.
No matter, no worries, come with me; let’s hurry!
“Hurry,” she repeated. Her eyes roamed the barrow chamber, as though seeing it for what it was for the first time. “Yes, we must hurry.”
Are you well, are you hale? You are so weak, you are so pale.
“Yes.” She nodded stiffly. Then, almost as if by strength of will, color returned to her face, and her blue eyes were hard with determination. “I am.”
Then follow me, my sweet, follow me.
Käthe nodded again.
“I’m coming, Liesl,” she said faintly. “I will follow.”
STRANGE, SWEET
I wasted no time. Once I got Käthe out of bed, I dressed us both in the most practical gowns I could find. I had nothing with me, not even my rudimentary and contradictory map of the Underground. But the time for planning was past. Whether or not we got lost mattered little now; time had run out. So, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I strove to lead my sister away.
My voice was already growing hoarse. I could not sing forever; I needed some other way to keep my sister under my spell.
When the idea came to me, I almost dropped my song within a laugh. My flute. The gift of the tall, elegant stranger. I had played it into his lair; I would play it out.
I wish, I wish, for anyone near