The Watchmaker
The king stared at the watch in his hand. He felt as if the dials were stabbing his heart with every second they measured. He couldn’t move. He could no longer eat or drink or go to sleep. His hair and beard turned gray in a matter of days, and all he could do was continue to stare at the watch.
The prince sent his father’s soldiers out to find the messenger who had delivered the deadly gift. They found him in a nearby village but the man didn’t know the watchmaker’s name. He swore he’d received the box at a deserted mill in the old forest but when he led them there, the king’s soldiers found only an abandoned workshop. The shelves and workbenches were empty except for a small silver figurine of a dancing fool. It was standing in a bowl of blood. The soldiers rushed back to the castle to report their findings. But they were too late. The king was dead, still sitting on his throne, the pocket watch clenched in his cold hand. The watch had stopped at exactly the same hour, minute, and second that the fool had died.
Only then did the prince remember that the fool had also had a son.
18
The Second Task
This time Ofelia did not wake from Fairy wings buzzing in the dark. For a moment the sound piercing her dreams made her wonder whether the forest had come into her room. But when she sat up, the Faun was standing at the foot of her bed, his limbs creaking like the branches of an old tree in the wind.
“You didn’t carry out the next task yet,” he growled.
He once again looked different. Stronger. Younger . . . reminding Ofelia of a very annoyed lion this time, with his catlike eyes, his perfectly rounded ears, and his long pale-yellow hair, which looked more and more like a mane. Lion, goat, man, he was all of it and none. He was . . . the Faun.
“I couldn’t!” Ofelia defended herself. “My mother is sick! Very sick!”
“That’s no excuse for negligence!” the Faun snarled, his hands writing his anger into the night. “Well . . . ,” he added after a pause. “I’ll forgive you for now. And I brought something that will help your mother.”
The pale lumpy root he held up was bigger than his fist and it looked to Ofelia as if it were spreading twisted arms and legs. Like a baby frozen in mid-birth scream.
“This is a mandrake root,” the Faun explained, handing the strange thing to Ofelia. “A plant that dreamt of being human. Put it under your mother’s bed in a fresh bowl of milk, and feed it each morning with two drops of blood.”
Ofelia disliked the scent of the root as much as its strangely human shape. It resembled a baby born with nothing but a mouth. And without hands and feet.
“Now! No more delays. No time to waste!” The Faun clapped his hands. “The full moon will be upon us. Ah yes.” He removed his wooden satchel. “I almost forgot! You’ll need my pets to guide you.”
Ofelia heard the Fairy chattering inside as he put the satchel on her blanket.
“Yes. You’re going to a very dangerous place.” The Faun lifted a warning finger, the lines on his forehead swirling like whirls in a bottomless river. “Far more dangerous than the last one. So be careful!”
For a moment he sounded sincerely worried about her.
“The thing that slumbers in that place—” He shook his horned head and frowned with disgust. “It is not human, although it may look like it. It’s very old and full of cunning and cruelty—and a great hunger.”
He plucked a big hourglass out of the air and dropped it on Ofelia’s bed.
“Here. You’ll need this, too. You’ll see a sumptuous banquet, but don’t eat or drink anything. Nothing!” This time both hands drew a warning sign into the night. “Absolutely nothing!”
Ofelia looked at the objects on her blanket: the mandrake root, the satchel, the hourglass. Three gifts . . . just like the heroes in her fairy tales often received. These gifts always proved to be very helpful—unless one lost them or used them the wrong way.
“Ab-so-lute-ly nothing!” the Faun repeated, his clawed fingers piercing the night. “Your life will depend on it.”
And before Ofelia could ask him to tell her more, he was gone.
19
A Cave in the Woods
The rebels had found shelter in a cave about half an hour’s walk from the mill. The trees hid it well and there was just enough room for the dozen men and their belongings: a few bundles of ragged clothes, a pile of tattered books, and blankets far too thin to keep the cold away, the last remnants of lives these men had left behind because they couldn’t say yes to marching boots and Franco’s clean Spain. To choose freedom comes with a high price.
“I’ve brought some Orujo.” Mercedes took the bottle of Vidal’s favorite liquor out of her satchel. “And tobacco and cheese. And there’s mail.”
The men who had received letters took the envelopes with shaking hands. As they walked into the back of the cave to read what their loved ones had written, some of the others sniffed longingly at the cheese Mercedes had stolen. The aroma took them back to better times when they’d made their own cheese from their own goats and freedom had not been a luxury to pay for with fear and misery.
The patient Mercedes had brought Ferreira along for was lying on an old cot, reading a tattered book, his head propped on a sleeping bag. The others called him Frenchie and his eyeglasses were the most valuable thing he’d had been able to save of his former belongings. He didn’t look up from his book when Dr. Ferreira bent over his bandaged leg.
“How do you think it’s doing?” he asked Ferreira. “I’ll lose it, right?”
The doctor took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s see.”
Ferreira drew comfort from his profession in these dark times: he liked being a healer when most others embraced destruction, but even healing had become a deadly task. The man he’d come to help had sentenced himself to death by joining the men in the woods, and Ferreira knew he was accepting the same sentence for himself by helping the rebels.
He hesitated for a moment before he removed the bloodstained bandage. Even after all these years, he couldn’t get used to the fact he often needed to cause pain to help. Managing to suppress a groan, Frenchie shuddered when the bandage came off and Ferreira wondered how many of these men in the woods regretted joining a fight that looked more and more like a lost cause.
Mercedes had brought a newspaper and Pedro’s friend Tarta delivered some distraction for them all by reading aloud from it. No one knew why Tarta’s tongue couldn’t form words without breaking them into fragments. In Ferreira’s experience a stutter bore witness to a skin too thin to keep the darkness of the world at bay. The soft and sensible ones developed it, the ones who couldn’t help but see and feel it all. Tarta still looked like a boy, always wearing a hint of melancholy on his gentle face, his dark eyes gazing at the world with wonder and bewilderment.
“‘British and C-C-Canadian troops disembarked on a small beach in the North of F-Fr . . .’”
“France, you idiot,” one of the others snapped, grabbing the newspaper, hiding his own fears of what news it would bring behind cruelty and anger.
“‘More than 150,000 soldiers give us hope,’” he read.