26
Only Two Grapes
This time Ofelia was awakened by laughter, a soft, hoarse laughter echoing in the darkness that drowned her room like black milk.
“I see your mother is much better, Your Highness.” The Faun looked enormously pleased with himself. “Surely you must be relieved!”
He looked even younger now, though his goat legs still creaked with every step he took toward Ofelia’s bed. Despite the ancient patterns covering his cheeks and forehead, his skin was so smooth it reflected the light of the almost full moon.
“Yes, thank you,” Ofelia replied, casting a nervous glance at the Faun’s satchel peeking out from under her blanket. “Things haven’t turned out that well, though. Not all of them, I mean.”
“Ah? No?” The blue cat eyes widened in surprise.
Ofelia was sure he already knew. She’d come to believe the Faun knew everything—about this world and any other.
“I . . . had an accident,” she murmured, handing him the satchel. The surviving Fairy was chattering inside. Ofelia hadn’t dared to let her out, fearing she might come to harm as well.
“An accident?” The Faun repeated the word in unveiled disbelief.
He opened the satchel and growled.
The Fairy fluttered out and landed on his shoulder. The longer the Faun listened to her, the more sinister his face became until he finally bared his pointed teeth and groaned with anger.
“You broke the rules!” he roared, pointing a claw at Ofelia.
“It was only two grapes!” she cried, hastily pulling the red velvet-wrapped dagger from under her pillow. “I thought no one would notice!”
The Faun snatched the dagger, and shook his head in anger. “We’ve made a mistake!”
“A mistake?” Ofelia could barely hear her own voice.
“You have failed!” snarled the Faun, towering over her. “You can never return!”
Ofelia felt as if the night were opening its mouth and swallowing her.
“But it was an accident!”
“No!” the Faun roared again, his eyes narrow with rage and contempt. “You—can—not—return! Ever!” Each word hit Ofelia like a stone. “The moon will be full in three days! Your spirit shall forever remain among the humans.”
He bent toward her until his face nearly touched Ofelia’s.
“You shall age like them. You shall die like them! And all memory of you—” He stepped back, his hand raised as if to enforce the prophecy. “You shall fade in time. As for us”—he pointed accusingly at the Fairy and at his own chest—“we will vanish with you. You will never see us again!”
Then his body melted into the night, as if Ofelia’s disobedience had turned him and the Fairy into mere shadows dissolved by the light of the waxing moon. And Ofelia sat in her bed, filling the silence they left behind with desperate sobs.
27
Broken
Dr. Ferreira knew what Vidal needed him for the minute Garces knocked at his door. For a moment he was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard the knock. What had brought him to this outpost of hell? Ferreira wondered while following Garces into the rain: fate or his own decisions? It had rained all night, and the day promised to continue under a weeping sky.
Appropriate.
Vidal was standing in front of the barn, washing his hands in a bowl of water. Ferreira was not surprised to see the blood on his fingers. Yes, it would be exactly what he had expected. Another broken man.
“Good day, Doctor.” Vidal was once again all virile pose. It was at times hard to not laugh at it, but Vidal was far too frightening a man to consider such a slip.
“Sorry to wake you so early,” he said, rolling down his sleeves. “But I think we need your help.”
His shirt was clean. Vidal always made sure of that. Appearance is vastly important for those who rarely take off their masks, and Ferreira had never seen Vidal without his. What had he looked like as a child? Had his gaze been already as emotionless as now? Had he ever called someone his friend? The mask wouldn’t tell.
While following Garces through the rain, Ferreira had tried to prepare himself by imagining what they’d done to the prisoner. His imagination had failed him. He almost didn’t recognize the boy who had tried to read the newspaper in the cave in the woods.
Ferreira could barely keep his hands from shaking as he opened his bag. He felt so much rage, sadness, and helpless disgust as he pulled out bandages and disinfectant to clean the wounds Vidal’s tools had inflicted. The boy was sitting on the floor, his back against the beam they’d tied him to, cradling his hand, if one could still call it a hand. Blood was running from his mouth, and one of his eyes was so swollen Ferreira wasn’t sure it was still there.
Tarta . . . yes, that was the nickname the others had called him. He moaned when Ferreira gently took his arm to have a look at the shattered hand. The fingers were crushed, all of them. One was just a bloody stump.
“My god, what have you done to him?” The words just wouldn’t stay in his mouth, although Ferreira knew it was unwise to comment like this. But what he saw made even wisdom nothing but a folly, a useless distraction from the cruelty of men.
“What we have done to him? Not much.” There was a clear hint of pride in Vidal’s voice. “But things are getting better.”
Vidal had walked over to Ferreira’s bag and pulled out a vial just like the ones he’d found up by the rebel campfire. Ferreira didn’t notice. All he saw was the swollen face of the boy, the one open eye clouded with fear and pain, watching him.
“I like having you handy, Doctor,” Vidal said behind him. “It has its advantages.”
Ferreira was too busy to hear the hint of mockery. Four of Tarta’s ribs were broken, probably kicked in. He heard Vidal order Garces to come back to the house with him.
Good! Leave! Ferreira thought, when they left him alone with the broken boy. Before I call you what you are. If I find a name for it.
“I talked,” Tarta murmured. “Not much. B-b-but I talked.”
The boy’s visible eye asked for forgiveness. It tore Ferreira’s heart into shreds like a piece of worn cloth. So much darkness. Too much of it.
“I’m sorry, son,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.”
The lips covered in blood tried once again to form words. The torture hadn’t made it easier for them, but finally the letters came together.
“Kill me!” the boy begged. “Kill me now. Please.”
Too much.
28
Magic Doesn’t Exist
Vidal had kept the vials he’d found by the campfire in the woods in a drawer of his table. When he came up to his room to compare them to the vial he had taken from Dr. Ferreira’s bag he wasn’t surprised that they proved identical.
“Son of a bitch!” he hissed under his breath.
He had let himself be fooled by the softness of the good doctor’s face. Another mistake. But he would fix this one.
Ferreira was still with Tarta when Vidal put the vials back into the drawer of his table.
The doctor was kneeling next to the tortured boy, unaware that his betrayal had been discovered. The liquid he’d pulled up in a syringe was as golden as the key Ofelia had taken from the Toad. Tarta had closed his eye, the one Vidal had left intact, but his mouth was open. Each breath was an act of courage, as it brought so much pain, and when Ferreira hesitated to place the needle, Tarta grabbed his arm with his one good hand to make sure the syringe found his flesh. He lifted his head for a last glance, a wordless thank-you from a boy whose life had been cursed by a tongue that wouldn’t obey him. In the end it had made him a traitor of the only friends he had ever known.