Marika Helg died on a Firstday, as she was taking afternoon tea in the conservatory. It was her favorite room in the mansion, and she spent much of her free time there. A marvel of heavy glass framed in lead, it stood out from mansion Helg like a crystal grown over long years from the stone of the south wing.
Key found her in her wicker lounging chair, a light blanket over her legs despite the clinging humidity. Oridos was not a cold place even in the winter, and it was Marika Helg's particular curiosity to foster exotic plants that required a climate far warmer than even than their southern city could offer. She had died with the same grace with which she had lived. When Key first saw her he thought her asleep: her lips parted gently, eyes peacefully closed, her head nestled in a small pillow. Likely she'd taken tea, as usual, and drifted off, weary from a long morning and early afternoon of managing the house's affairs and tending her garden. One of the servants had no doubt found her napping and tucked a bolster under her head to spare her neck when she woke.
He wondered how long she'd lain there, undiscovered, while the servants thought she slept. It wasn't uncommon for his mother to fall asleep in such a situation. In retrospect, Key realized that perhaps there had been symptoms of a larger problem at play. Valkin Helg had always attributed his wife's fragile health to her gender: one had to make allowances for the delicate sex, as he so often repeated to his colleagues and his son. The fact that she fell asleep unintentionally and often grew faint if she stood up too fast were, in her husband's mind, unavoidable idiosyncrasies of being female.
Key had just arrived home after school, and followed his usual routine of greeting his mother before disappearing into the sewers to meet Seffa. He had seen the sheen of her hair over the back of her chair and started in on the story of his day, only to round the foot of it and find her pale and still.
"Oh," he said, standing before her breathless form.
* * *
Time moves differently for some. For Key, when a certain anxiety took him, it came in clips and flashes, with periods of forgotten time in between.
He looked down at her, dead in her chair; flash. He looked down at her, laid out in the velvet bolsters of her coffin; flash. His father looked down at him, with candid confusion in his grey eyes. Flash.
* * *
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The Doktor's Spyglass
FantasyUpdated periodically. The Doktor's Spyglass is fantasy noir. It has elements of steampunk, epic fantasy, and classic detective fiction--think of it as Sherlock Holmes meets Locke Lamora. *************************************************************...
