My Dearest Elena:

I have arrived to Waterport with no exceptional difficulty. The train was as pleasant as trains can be. I miss you already, and I hope you are faring well in your self-inflicted solitude. I plan to attend a play this evening; I haven’t brought a nice outfit, but I think the theatre ought to

appreciate my patronage how-ever I am dressed…

Elena’s house was scattered with Helena-paraphernalia. Drafts of her poems were scattered across the chipped yellow table. Flowers she had picked, which were now wilted, sat sagging in the crystal-cut glass vase on the windowsill. Her dresses were in Elena’s dresser. Her stockings were in Elena’s drawers. Her comb was still balanced on the edge of a metal bucket, long since drained of water. Everywhere Elena looked, Helena was there, as natural as the sun. Even her chemise—ripped and mended and torn again—collected dust under her bed; the pink ribbons were faded to pale, and they were beautiful. Elena’s whole house was beautiful. Her bookshelves were full of leather bound tomes of sermons and history, all inherited from her father, and her room was tidy, and the windows were always open and always let in magnificent light. She moved with the same kind of beauty the house possessed; she was not striking, she was pretty. Her hair was still in braids at twenty-four, and she liked to wear just her shift around the house. If a poet were to observe her private nature, he would write about her nymph-like qualities—she appeared only human by random occurrence. She would have been just as happy as a siren. She did not wear jewelry. She disdained rouge. She subjected herself to the subject of art before all else, and this filled up her house more than anything; on the dining table, under the poems, were stacks of academic texts on the Romantics and the Renaissance. She dreamed of Monets, copied Caravaggio with charcoal on the title pages of sermons, pored over essays on the treatment of oil paints by Delacroix. And thus she created her little life of independence, connected, in truth, only to Helena.

It was a strange combination only from the distance of a stranger-observer. Where Elena was ephemeral, dependent on youth, Helena was the envy of the muses. She wrote sonnets and odes, as was her passion, but her chief merit was her beauty. Her face was one that inspired awe, and invoked the grandeur of ancient Greek marble. Her hair, deep red, as if spun from crushed garnets, garnered the most attention. It was first from desperate little-boy suitors, and then her audience expanded to artists and sculptors and writers and the common admirer. All this attention should’ve pushed her into the public eye; she had every right to an ego—and to pride—but she refused all opportunities of fame to remain a quiet poet, rarely published. She did not want her image immortalized. She wanted tragedies and antiquated vocabularies and fresh fruit. Here, she diverged from Elena. Where Elena was simple, decked in unpatterned cloth and plain hair, Helena derived pleasure from decorating herself with pearls and richly colored silk. She put her hair up in elaborate styles, and kept her shoes shined. When she came to Elena once, to complain that people had stared at her all day, Elena recommended she give up her impressive wardrobe. But Helena refused. It was not out of vanity she made herself up; it was the choice of it all. She had no choice about her face or her hair or her height, but she could choose her underpinnings and her hat, her hand-cream and her rings. If it was frivolous, she would have quit her hobby, but it was not; nothing is ever as simple as that. And as long as Elena understood, she decided she could bear the eyes on her, and the strangers who approached her, promising money and success if only she joined their circus troupes and acting clubs. That is why she de-decorated, as she put it, when she was at home. There was no one to deflect; there was only Elena and herself, and they shared their thoughts and things bar none.

...it is a day later, and I must tell you I am most pleased with my little room here by the sea. The water and the salt have given me inspiration, and I have spent most of today writing by my open window. There is a curious artist who boards in the room next to me; I should like to meet him. He seems very pleasant...

Two weeks before this story, Elena had no qualms about the amount of Helena’s things in her rooms. It was a reminder of her while she was away for a week and a promise of return. But promises are fickle things, and not always fulfilled; when Helena did not return after a week, Elena filed her concern as unnecessary. Helena was spontaneous—perhaps she had decided to stay a little longer. But one week stretched to 16 days, and not only had she not returned, but she had sent no correspondence. In April, Elena stood by the dining table to write a letter to the police commissioner. Her hands trembled when she wrote, and after she sent it she drank three cups of scalding jasmine tea and studied a new art book acquired from the private collection of a collector until night forced her to bed. She did not sleep at all in those long hours; she stared at the tin-tile ceiling until it was morning enough to justify getting up and buying a newspaper in town.

It took a fifteen minute walk to get to town. It was most often a pleasant walk: if Helena was with her, they would meander through the deer trails and turn up at the milliner with mud on their hems. If she was alone, she would stop to soak in the view of perfect cows on perfect green hills—these were the main inspiration for her paintings, which were mostly quaint and garnered little attention. But the walk that morning was nothing short of brutal. She wore no shawl and no hat and accidentally wore boots that were still soggy from a walk the day before. The fog concealed the idyllic landscapes, and it was too dark to take the deer trails. She was left alone with her thoughts, and her thoughts turned, as if ordered, to all the terrible things that might have happened to Helena. She only managed to keep her mind at bay by reminding herself that the whole point of the walk was to get a newspaper or two, and to keep up to date with any information about her girl. She was too isolated, anyway—her father would be pleased to know she had taken up reading current events instead of semi-centennial romances and treatises on the merits of oak charcoal.

The hour for breakfast was past when Elena returned home with three newspapers wrapped in brown paper. She hadn’t dared to read them as they walked, but as soon as she reached her bedroom she dumped the papers out onto the floor. There weren’t many; each newspaper was five pages, and packed with so much tiny print her eyes glazed over, but there was no better time than then to begin her investigation. The act of sending a letter to the police commissioner had left her feeling helpless; she hit a dead-end of proper concern. But Helena deserved much more than proper concern, so Elena skipped the news on battles a continent away and the fiction columns (she reminded herself to return to those when her life returned to peace) to study the missing and obituary sections. They were sizable in every newspaper—a thick bar on the bottom of the third page was dedicated to the kidnapped and deceased of all backgrounds. It was the sole place where a peasant could join the ranks of duchesses. She looked there for a beautiful girl, middle class, half-poet. There was nothing. She did learn about other girls, though. There was one with pretty golden hair that curled at the ends and big pretty blue eyes and a pretty figure and a pretty smile—pretty, pretty, so Elena named her Pretty in her head because why not? Maybe Helena could write a poem about her. There was another one with curly hair and a sharp jaw and olive skin and piano-playing hands—the Musician. Elena wanted to paint her. And a third: a very young girl with chubby cheeks and choppy bangs and a smile that shone like a wine glass. Elena frowned at that description.

When it became clear there was no chance of gleaning any information off the newspapers —and why would there be, she realized later, for she would be the only one who would put in a missing notice—she folded them back up and tucked them under her pillow. Then she left for the village again. Being around people was pleasant in and of itself; the warmth, the sound, the colors all put her at ease, but she also hoped she might ask around about Helena.

Although Elena would be the only one to file a notice, plenty of people were enamored with her and paid attention to where she was and what she was doing. She attended the exhibit in the Galerie d’Impression, where she made observations about the name to the doorman, who laughed and let her in for free. It was too busy, at first, to get up close to the paintings. She admired them from afar; they were made up of thick swipes of dark greens and blues and peaches, so every person seemed to recline in the shade of endless nature. It was a striking

impression, even standing in the center of the wide room. Slowly, the room obliged her, and she managed to squeeze past a particular clump of gaudy boys to stand before the first painting in the room. It was lovely, to be sure, but Elena frowned. The model—she looked familiar. It was strange. She looked like the blond girl in the missing notice. But it must be a coincidence. She walked to the second painting: there was another one, curly-haired and smirking. She sat at a piano. Elena bit her lip. The third painting—for there were three in total—was of the child.

Elena felt like her legs were going to give out. But no. She must be paranoid. It wouldn’t be so uncommon for an artist to draw using a reference from the newspaper, would it? It must not be.

As she left, she convinced herself that she was the wrong one. The artist was eccentric, as all artists were. He took inspiration from unusual sources. Everyone did that. By the time she sat down on the upholstered chair by the fire at home, her thoughts had returned to Helena alone.

...I have come down with an absurd case of paranoia today! The sun was lovely, and the beach was inspiring, but I could not help but think that the strange little painter was following me to the cafe and on my walk this morning. Could I be taking poorly to the sea air? Doctors ought to experiment! I suppose I shall take it as my own misplaced anxiety rather than any fault of the painter, but still. If it goes on, I may make an early return…

Elena slept for two hours in the evening after she returned home from the gallery. She slept where she sat, head lolled back against the brocade chair, until she woke up from nothing at all. That made her disoriented and slow, and she grumbled about figure studies while she stood up and stumbled over to the table. There was a fresh stack of newspapers there—she had asked the pleasant old woman next door to her to get her some, and she had and had insisted Elena didn’t pay for any of them. People like that astounded Elena; she couldn’t imagine rejecting compensation where it was due. In any case, it helped her. She would’ve bought out every newspaper in the town if it meant getting Helena back, even if she had to go without food. She spent the rest of the night in a straight-backed chair painted with little delicate bouquets of flowers. Between papers, she drank copious amounts of tea out of her prettiest toile-patterned cup and ate a ridiculous amount of macarons. Her braids came undone, and her shawl slipped off her shoulder, but, as if by instinct, she managed to preserve a perfect painting composition in her distress. She cried reading every obituary.

Dawn was soon upon her. She had decided, as soon as she got back, that she would return to the Galerie—after she had flipped through the descriptions of the girls again, she was determined to review her assumption. The only reasonable thing to do, she was sure, was to give the artist the benefit of the doubt, but still, it was very strange. An extra trip to an art exhibition never did her any harm, anyway. She found herself, as the sun rose, at her vanity, braiding and unbraiding her hair and waiting until it was late enough to set out for town.

The town didn’t wake up until past noon, but Elena went anyway, before 8, just to see if the Galerie was open. It was, so she went in and sat in front of the painting of the young girl. There wasn’t much to see. It was still the same: the girl had the same expression on her cherub-face, and she was still holding her little pet cat, and they were still reclining in the shade of a cropped tree, but Elena couldn’t help but shiver at her bright eyes. Maybe she had been alive when the painting was completed. If it had been only her, Elena wouldn’t have given the artist a second thought. But three missing women in three portraits by the same artist were far too many to be an innocent accident. She moved, slowly, to the second painting and then the third, and as the Galerie began to fill with bored women in walking skirts and bored men in stiff jackets, she retreated back near the door. She was about to leave when a man with deep set eyes and a white beard who was wearing the robes of a professor approached her. She had never seen anyone look so outright paternal; she couldn’t bring herself to be frightened. She smiled when he smiled, and he stood next to her. They were silent for a few minutes. Then he turned to her, and said, “There is to be an unveiling ceremony of a new painting in an hour.”

Elena cocked her head. “How do you know, sir?”

“I am the artist’s friend! I come every day to support his creative endeavors. And I haven’t seen this new painting, but I can assure you, it will be of the highest quality. If you have nothing better to do, Miss…”

“Anemone.”

It was a strange name, but the old man was gracious and didn’t frown. He continued: “If you have nothing to do, Miss Anemone, I would recommend you stay to see it.”

“I confess I have nothing better to do.”

“Then you shall stay?”

‘I shall stay, sir.”

He looked delighted; when he smiled his eyes crinkled up, and he took her by the arm so they might walk together. “Would you like to know anything about the artist?”

“What do you know, sir?”

“Well, he is said to be most charming and a handsome lad. I am sure he would be amenable to your presence, if you feel so inclined…”

Elena spoke quietly, so he cut himself off when she cleared her throat. “Do you know anything of his technique, sir, or his habits? I am something of an aspiring artist, if I may be so bold, and I am endlessly interested in how other, greater artists become so magnificently talented.”

It was not a lie. She was interested in that, most certainly, but her thoughts were concentrated on investigation, not plain education. She wanted to know if he painted from life.

“Why, of course, my dear! He is eccentric, as all artists are. He makes a mess of his finances sometimes—and don’t tell anyone I’ve said that—because he is so insistent on painting from life. Models cost so much, as I’m sure you are aware!”

Elena did her best not to tremble under the old man’s kind hands.

“Very aware, sir,” she said and could say no more.

How, then? How could it be that the artist insisted on painting from life when all of the women and girls in his paintings were missing or dead? She resisted the urge not to vomit—an abhorrent urge to her, for she was never ill and always healthy and expected her youth to preserve that natural comfort. She managed to keep all dignity, though the old man

frowned at her, and led her to a wooden bench against the far wall. He patted her forearm when they sat down and extracted his hand.

“Are you quite alright, my dear?” he asked.

“Fine, sir. I am fine. Thank you.”

She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, and shifted away so the old man might be spared from her alarm. Either from ignorance or mercy, he did not mention her awkwardness, and instead stood again to find another person to talk to.

When she looked up, he was already deep in conversation with a young student who looked like an alarmed jackrabbit.

The hour passed in mundane uncertainty. When the novelty had settled, and Elena had come to terms with the fact that this artist was surely a murderer of some sort—or a perverse man of any number of other naturesshe sat quietly on the bench and waited for the painting to be set in the middle of the room. As she waited, she flipped through the names and descriptions of as many girls as she could remember from her long night, and tried—futilely, she was sure—to steel her nerves in preparation for whichever face might be on the canvas.

At noon, the painting arrived in a flourish of baby-blue silk and the glimpse of a golden frame. Everyone in the room held their breath; there had already been talk around the nation that this artist was the first master of the new age and that he would be famed for centuries. It was hope, mostly. Hope that something significant would come out of this little town and hope that art wasn’t dead. There wasn’t much substance to it, but hope was infectious and drew crowds, so the Galerie was packed with representatives of every social class. The portrait was revealed by her elderly charge with little fanfare: it was with only the river of falling fabric that Elena lost all sense of life. She stood, eager to face the painting, and amidst the rising murmurs of appreciation and faux-analysis, she saw garnet hair and apple cheeks and a gold diadem atop a regal forehead. It was terrifying. It was Helena. Elena had not been aware how desperately a heart could clench and twist and hurt when faced with horror. She grasped at the collar of her jacket and stumbled back to the bench. Elena feared not for herself but for Helena. Helena, beautiful and damned in her beauty, was immortalized. She would be remembered exactly as she wished to be forgotten. The fear would not recede. Her lungs would not allow her air. Elena was defeated and began to weep.

...I intend to make an early return, most undignified and most uncomfortable, in the middle of the night. I bought tickets just half an hour ago. I feared returning to my lodgings, for the pleasant artist has become a beast, but I had no choice. All my things are here, so now I wait with them in apprehension. I will leave as soon as I can. I am sending this letter now, but I hope badly that I shall get to you before it. My love, I am afraid, but fear is a part of life, and life has granted me you. I shall not complain. I am happy to know you. I look forward to my return.

Love eternally and light unfailingly,

Helena