“A Faun?” Mercedes straightened up.
“Yes. He was so old . . . and very tall and thin.” Ofelia traced a huge figure in the air with her hands. “He looked old and smelled old . . . musty. Like earth when it’s wet with rain. And a little bit like this cow.”
And I want you to know, she seemed to say with her eyes. Please believe me, Mercedes! It is hard to have secrets one cannot share, or to believe in a truth that others don’t want to see. Mercedes knew all about it.
“A Faun,” she repeated. “My mother warned me to be wary of Fauns. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they’re not. . . .”
The memory brought a smile to her lips—the memory and the girl. But it faded when she saw the capitán walking toward her with one of his officers by his side. The world immediately filled with shadows.
“Mercedes!”
He ignored the girl so completely that for a moment he made Mercedes almost believe Ofelia wasn’t there.
“Follow me. I need you at the barn.”
She went with him. Of course. Although she would have loved to stay with the girl and the warm milk and the breath of the cow on her skin.
A few soldiers were unloading a truck in front of the barn.
Lieutenant Medem, the officer in command, saluted Vidal.
“We brought everything, Capitán. As promised.” The lieutenant’s uniform was as stiff and clean as a toy soldier’s. “Flour, salt, oil, medicine,” he listed, while leading the way into the barn. “Olives, bacon . . .” He pointed proudly at the baskets and cartons. The dusty shelves were filled with packages and cans.
Vidal sniffed at a small package wrapped in brown paper. He liked his tobacco. And his liquor.
“And here are the ration cards.” The few dozen vouchers Lieutenant Medem handed Vidal were precious property at a time when the war had burned harvests and even the farmers couldn’t feed their children, because the army controlled what was left. The boxes Medem’s men had brought to the mill could have fed more than one village. But Mercedes didn’t look at the boxes that contained food. She had stopped at a stack whose labels depicted a red cross. Medicine. More than enough to heal almost every wound. Including a leg wound.
“Mercedes.” Vidal was inspecting the lock on the barn door. “The key.”
She took a key from the key ring in her pocket and handed it to him.
“Is this the only one?”
She nodded.
“From now on I’ll carry it.”
There was that glance again. What did he know?
“Capitán!” Garces, the officer who called from outside, was as lean as a weasel and always had a smile for the maids.
Vidal ignored him. He continued to look at Mercedes, the key in his hand, his gaze both threatening and teasing, playing his favorite game: the game of fear.
He knows, she thought once again. No, he doesn’t, Mercedes. It’s the way he looks at everyone. She exhaled deeply when he finally turned and stepped outside. Breathe, Mercedes.
Vidal joined Garces, who was scrutinizing the forest through his binoculars.
“Maybe it’s nothing, Capitán,” Mercedes heard him say as he handed the binoculars to Vidal, but she could see it with her bare eyes: a fine, almost invisible trace of smoke was rising from the canopy of the trees, drawing a treacherous line into the blue sky.
Vidal lowered the binoculars. “No. It’s them. I am sure.”
They were astride their horses within moments. Mercedes watched them ride off into the forest. Only men lit fires, men the soldiers had come to hunt.
Breathe, Mercedes.
The Labyrinth
Once upon a time, there was a nobleman named Francisco Ayuso who liked to hunt in the forest near his palace. It was an old forest, very old, and he felt so young among its trees.
One day Ayuso and his men were following a rare stag with fur as silvery as the light of the moon. His men lost the stag’s track near an old mill, and when Ayuso dismounted his horse to refresh himself at the mill’s pond, he found a young woman asleep on the ground between the watercress and dragon lilies. Her hair was as black as a raven’s feathers, her skin as pale as the petals of the whitest rose in Ayuso’s palace gardens.
She woke with a start when he touched her shoulder and backed away from him, hiding behind a tree, like a deer chased by his hounds. It took Ayuso a while to convince her of his good intentions. She looked like she hadn’t eaten for days so he told his men to bring her food. When asked for her name, she told them she couldn’t remember it, so one of his soldiers suspected she might be a surviving victim of the Pale Man, a creature who roamed the area stealing children from the surrounding villages and dragging them to his underground lair.
Only two victims were known to have escaped the Pale Man, bringing back terrible tales of children being eaten alive and a monster so horrible that they didn’t dare fall asleep for fear they’d meet him again in their dreams. However, when Ayuso asked the young woman about the Pale Man, she just shook her head and the expression on her face was so lost, he spared her any further questions, worried they would stir memories she’d been wise enough to forget.
She clearly had no home, so Ayuso invited her to his palace. He gave her a room and new clothes and called her Alba, as her memory was as blank as a white sheet. She soon walked in his gardens and enjoyed his roses, and after just a few days they both wished for nothing but each other’s company.
After three months Francisco Ayuso asked Alba to be his wife, and she accepted, as she loved him as much as Francisco loved her. A year later she gave birth to a son. Alba loved the boy as tenderly as she loved her husband, but each time she looked at the child she felt a great sadness because she couldn’t tell him who she was or where she came from. She became restless and started to spend hours wandering through the forest or sitting by the pond of the old mill.
Not far from the mill lived a woman called Rocio, who had a reputation for being a witch. She lived with her daughter and son in a hut near the Split Tree, which was said to house a poisonous toad between its roots. People whispered that Rocio’s potions could grant true love, a long life, or, if desired, the death of an enemy, but most women who came to see her asked for help with an unwanted pregnancy, as they could barely feed their living children.
One afternoon, the soldier Ayuso had secretly ordered to follow Alba to make sure she was safe in the forest came back with the news that Alba had been visiting Rocio. Ayuso was very upset and confronted Alba, who begged him to understand she’d only asked Rocio to help her find out who she was. Rocio had told her the answer to her question would only be revealed on a full moon night in a labyrinth that must be built behind the millpond from the stones of a nearby village, which had been deserted ever since three children had been taken by the Pale Man.
Ayuso loved Alba more than anything else in the world, so he had Rocio the witch brought to him to learn exactly how to build the labyrinth. Rocio took him to the place where she’d envisioned it. She marked the four corners with stones and drew the patterns of the walls with a willow branch onto the forest soil. At the center, she told Ayuso, he’d have to build a well and, inside, a staircase leading down to its bottom. Ayuso didn’t like the way she looked at him. It felt as if she could see his darkest desires—as clearly as if his heart were made from glass. She frightened him, and he despised her for that.