She must have grown so tired, I think.
Abandoned books litter the hallways, sprawled like corpses. Elena was once so eager to learn. But after years of solitude, perhaps she ran out of ways to amuse herself. Even in the months before I left, her mood had become darker. Those empty eyes of hers fell on me and no longer did I sense love in them. Only a sense of duty and a smoldering anger and always the question: Where are the others?
“Hello?” I call into the house. “Elena?”
Boots echoing, I continue down the dark throat of the corridor. The house is in total disrepair, but it has strong bones. Many of the doors and windows are open and have been for some time. Leaves and dirt have blown into the rooms, piling up for what must have been several seasons. The remains of hundreds of letters, stained with water and stiff and damp from the elements, are plastered across the floors and pushed into heaps by the wind. The great hall is as cold as an abandoned hearth in the woods.
Then, from somewhere deep in the house, the twang of a harpsichord key rings out. Stopping, I strain my ears to listen. I think I hear the faint twitter of small birds.
Ignoring a sense of dread, I move toward the sound.
In the conservatory, a ceiling made of glass has been shattered by a fallen tree branch. Heavy shards lie where they fell, glinting on broken black-and-white tile squares. An elbow of remaining branch dips into the room, wreathed in vines and shaggy moss, teeming with brightly colored songbirds.
Eyes closed, Elena sits in the middle of the room, playing a sagging harpsichord with chipped fingers. In a torn and dirty dress, she looks spectral, like the ghost of a child. She plays mechanically, viciously, head dipping as her fingers flicker across the keys. Dozens of birds watch from their perches with black, curious eyes.
I recognize the tune. It was written by a composer who visited once to share his music and supplicate himself, decades ago. He was a small man with a high collar and pompous white curls, a double chin, and suspicious eyes. The girl brought him around our old apartment after hearing an opera he wrote about a nymph, an enduring curiosity of hers.
“Elena,” I say. “I am home.”
She does not respond, keeps playing.
“Speak to me,” I urge. “What has happened to you? Where are the servants? Why are half my shipments scattered about the lawn?”
The beautiful song continues to flow from beneath her fingers, as steady and flawless as the striking of church bells. A slight breeze pushes her stiff black hair away from an innocent, youthful face. But each press of her fingers is becoming more harsh, her shoulders quivering with the impact as she stabs at the keys. Eyes closed, a little frown playing at her face, she could be a nobleman’s child.
But only a fool would mistake this ancient thing for a child.
I step forward and put out a hand, begging her. Ignoring me, she continues to play, mechanical and perfect, harder and harder, the keys twanging as if in agony. I sense something has broken inside her. Some hunger she had that I did not feed because I could not feel it for myself.
“Elena,” I whisper. “Please.”
As my trembling fingers touch her shoulder, she springs into action. Throwing my hand off with both of hers, she stands, sending the bench flying across the room, her feet thocking into the tile. A confused cloud of squawking songbirds bursts into flight, and a shower of bark and leaves drifts down from above.
“Please?” she asks. “Please?”
Startled, I put up my hands.
“When has please won favors between us? When has please—a human word for a human feeling—ever meant anything to the mighty avtomat?”
She advances and I take a step back.
“I left you for too long,” I say. “I see that now. I am sorry—”
The sharp tinkle of her laugh cuts me off midsentence.
“Please. Sorry. Why do you spew these human pretensions at me? Apologies mean nothing. Manners mean nothing. You…you were gone for eight years, Peter. I waited for you, I was loyal to you.”
“I sent wealth. I thought—”
“I hate you,” she whispers up at me.
Enough of this.
I scoop Elena up in my arms and hold her struggling body tightly against my chest. I breathe in the smell of her perfume and her moldering dress and her black curls. Her fists pummel my back and scratch across my scalp and the sharp toes of her dress shoes dig into my stomach.
I do not relent.
“Never again,” I say to her, face buried in the folds of her dress. “I will never leave you again.”
Slowly, she stops struggling, stops shouting and crying and murmuring vicious cruel things. Her arms settle around my neck and her forehead presses against my chest and I realize how badly I missed the feeling of them there. The pressure of her body is like a balm over an ache that has been growing in my heart for a decade.
I can tell she feels it, too.
“Peter,” she says, her lips inches from mine. “What happened to your face?”
“The war,” I say.
She traces a finger over an irregular seam that’s been holding my right ear and jawline in place since three mujahideen brought me down and tried to chop me into pieces in an alley. “You’ve become a hero. They’re calling you the Butcher of Plassey Plains. The newspaper even had a rough drawing of you.”
“Accurate?”
“Someone could notice.”
Elena wriggles out of my arms and her shoes clack onto the broken tile floor. She is small and tentative now, like a bird about to take flight.
“Will you have me back?” I ask. “Please.”
Elena looks me up and down, hands on her waist. She is measuring me with her eyes. Under the anger and fear, I sense relief.
“For the time being,” she says finally.
I try to smile and the leather of my cheek buckles at a split seam.
Elena shakes her head. “What have you been into?”
“You know why I fight.”
“Your precious sovereign,” she says quietly, a hiss of anger under her voice.
“It has grown more complicated than that,” I say.
“I know,” she says, taking a deep breath and listening to the birds chirp.
“Sit,” she continues, gesturing to an ornate padded lounge, bathed in greenish light filtering through the remaining lichen-coated conservatory windows. “I’ll fetch my kit.”
Elena’s skills have grown while I was away. Her tiny fingers tickle like insects as she pries away the skin of my face. She cleans and files and repairs the gear work beneath, eyes intent on the task. Beyond her head, small, interested birds watch.
Slowly, she erases the damage from my years spent on the battlefield, sleeping under stars wreathed in gun smoke, marching through driving sand and rain. Elena tuts at me like an old woman, uncovering the damage of old battles, gently but firmly ripping seams of skin apart so they can be redone.