Fragments
Breakfast was an unusually sober affair, with four empty seats and a very quiet Pollux. Dorea surveyed her eldest brother critically, her bright, silvery eyes twinkling with curiosity and suspicion. Dorea was just six years old, but sometimes Pollux wondered if there had been a mistake in her records; she was such a precocious little girl, and like Peia, somehow mature for her age.
Thinking of Peia made him remember last nights' events. He pitied Peia, especially because she had not even seen the last of her twin, as she fainted. He pitied Marius, too, because had no chance to say goodbye, having been threatened to be cursed by Violetta with her wand if he approached.
He poked a piece of sausage without any real appetite.
"Where's Marius, Pollux?" Dorea demanded. "Where's Peia?" She was quite fond of the twins, as her eldest brother was always busy and away for long stretches of time.
Peia was still in bed, unconscious. Marius was… Pollux shrugged, answering Rea's questions.
Dorea dropped her teaspoon on the saucer, letting it clatter loudly. "That's very rude, you know," she declared indignantly, throwing her pretty little head in the air.
Pollux' mouth twitched, but he kept quiet. He did not know how to break the news to Dorea, when he himself understood so little.
There was a loud crack all of a sudden, and Pollux started as Keshter appeared right beside him.
"Master Pollux," said Keshter, bowing low. "I is sent to you, sir, to tell you that the Mistress wishes to see you," he said. At the mention of "the Mistress," the house-elf trembled, and Pollux didn't take it as a good sign.
"Now?" he asked, apprehensive.
Keshter nodded grimly. Pollux left the table with the air of a man about to face the gallows, and Dorea could not help but follow his retreating figure with her bright, inquisitive silvery eyes.
The interview with his mother had been brief. She just warned him not to mention Marius anymore, and tell Dorea, when she asks, that Marius has gone and will never return. She then asked him if Peia was still unconscious, and he told her so, carefully keeping a straight face. All the while Violetta was talking, Cygnus stood by the window, pale and silent, staring absently at some strangely-shaped cloud, or maybe some unseen spectacle in the summer sky. When Pollux had been dismissed, he spoke.
"Cassiopeia," he said, worried.
Violetta ignored him coolly. "Keshter," she said softly, her voice a mere whisper. The house-elf appeared with a crack, a bow, and a fearful look in his eyes.
"Tell me," she said slowly, as she always did when giving orders, "tell me when Cassiopeia wakes up."
Peia did wake up in the afternoon, but she was no longer the vibrant, bubbly Cassiopeia they all knew. Like Cygnus, she grew pale and silent, often with a distant look on her face that was pathetic to behold. She never volunteered to say anything, and when someone asked her a question, she answered in monosyllables. She moved slowly, rather like an old woman instead of an eleven-year-old girl, and she grew listless. The most worrisome, however, was the fact that since she woke up, she never cried again.
She could not shed even a single tear, though she was burning to cry. She did not understand why, suddenly, nothing interested her anymore. Or perhaps, she understood only too well. Perhaps, when her other half had left her, he had taken with him her vivacity and fun, her zest for life and all things new, her love of beauty and appreciation of any company. Young as she was, she craved for solitude, because no one could offer her any consolation.
The only one who could have made her feel whole again was gone, and she felt broken.
A week has passed, and Peia was... no longer Peia. She was hardly recognizable, though she looked the same, only paler and a little thinner. But she was not Cassiopeia, in Pollux' opinon – not that brilliant, vibrant girl who used to sparkle amidst all the Blacks; she was not that adorable, precocious child who was the special adoration of his uncles and aunts and cousins. She was not Cassiopeia. She was not his Peia, certainly. She was not Marius' Peia.
He shuffled his notes, trying and failing to concentrate. He was in the vast library with Peia; the day was supposed to be dedicated to studying. Peia was not reading, as was her custom, though. She was standing before one of the arched windows, clutching the emerald-green velvet curtains, her pale face turned towards the skies. Looking at her, Pollux was irresistibly reminded of his father doing the same.
Their tutor knocked, and Pollux admitted him with a stiff, rather haughty greeting that proved his ancestry's nobility of blood. He saw the tutor look anxiously at Peia, standing silently by the window, as still as a stone statue. Pollux nodded at him, bidding him to proceed with his business.
"Miss Cassiopeia, shall we begin now?" he asked hesitantly.
"No," was Peia's curt reply.
The tutor was used to how the Blacks treated people of his income bracket; he was used to their cool civility and their almost subconscious haughtiness. But such treatment, coming from the remarkably polite, sweet-tempered Peia, had taken him aback. "May I know why?"
For the simple reason, she thought, that she no longer saw the purpose of anything, without Marius.
"Marius isn't here," she pointed out, still not looking at him.
The tutor fell silent. "He – he isn't coming...."
She knew that, and hearing him say so somehow made it painfully truer than it already was. She gripped the curtains more tightly, and squared her shoulders, allowing her tension to show.
Pollux decided to rescue the tutor. Despite his pity, he was growing tired of Peia's theatrics. He had forgotten, as he did every so often, that his sister was just eleven, and she was hurt. He was not used to her acting so childishly. "Peia, please be sensible."
That was a heavy demand, for Cassiopeia. Nothing made sense without Marius. Nothing made sense ever since she woke up without her other half, or even since that night when her father's lies had shattered her as she had broken her ceramic jug.
She turned her head sharply to glare at Pollux.
He bravely met her cold eyes. "Peia, we both know that he's not coming back."
The tiniest sense of reason she had been clinging too seemed to dissolve at the thought, and her mind flared, consuming greedily every bit of her rationality. Pollux was a handsome devil, a deceitful monster, and he was lying, lying, lying! She no longer knew who it was who stared at her from a handsome mask of pale skin and murky brown eyes and dark hair – so like Marius. He was a stranger to her.
But then, she was a stranger to herself. She lost control.
Pollux and the tutor ducked just as the window glass shattered to a thousand tiny pieces. The less sturdy bookshelves were collapsing, and so were the books. The glass covers of the shelves were all cracked, and the curtains were on fire.
He wanted to scream his sister's name, but his mouth was dry. He could only watch in horror as Peia surrounded herself with chaos, slashing her wand all around her, blasting of lamps and busts, trophies and urns, shelves and desks, slashing off tapestries and draperies and carpets and all manner of upholstery. Her face was almost inhuman with fury, but her eyes were glassy. She did not know who Marius was, who Pollux was, who she was.
She did not know what she was doing. He stood from his makeshift refuge.
"Master Pollux!" the tutor cried in protest, but he ignored him.
"Peia!" he bellowed. Peia heard him, and she turned to point her wand at him. Pollux gulped. For the first time in his fourteen years of life, he felt irrationally scared – irrational because he was scared of the little pale figure of Cassiopeia, and more irrationally so because she was his little sister. "Peia?" he said, almost pleading.
Peia's eyes widened in recognition of her brother's voice. Her face flushed, and her wand fell from her grip with a clatter that echoed on and on in the immense silence that had followed.