“Come!” she said one day—night?—clapping her hands. “I have a gift for you!” She gestured to her goblin attendants, who brought in gown after gown after gown.
“What’s all this?” I asked as Käthe shooed her attendants away again.
“For your debut, you ninny,” she said.
“What debut?”
She gave me an exasperated eyeroll. “Honestly, Liesl, it’s a wonder you’re even able to function sometimes. The debut of your latest symphony, of course. Manók has arranged for a concert to be held in the receiving hall.”
The strength of my sister’s fantasy world overwhelmed me sometimes, so much I could no longer tell where the edges of her dream ended and mine began.
I let Käthe dress me in whatever gown she thought best suited me and let her fuss with my hair. For a moment, it was like we were children again, the touch of her gentle fingers on my scalp as familiar as the lullabies Josef and I used to play for each other.
“There,” she said once she had finished. “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” I laughed. “No need to flatter me with lies, Käthe.”
“Stop it.” She slapped my shoulder. “Just because you grew up in a backwater town doesn’t mean you have to dress like a peasant all the time, you know.”
“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.