“Twenty. Maybe fewer.”
Vidal felt for the pocket watch, but he had left it on his table. He couldn’t help but wonder whether it had announced his father’s approaching death by ticking louder. He tried to mock the thought with a smile, but the pain this caused him was another reminder of just how badly things had gone wrong.
If he couldn’t get his hands on Mercedes, he would kill the girl.
Ofelia was still standing in Vidal’s room holding her brother. So small, so warm, his face all fresh and new under the white cap their mother had made for him, his eyes, clear and trusting, looking up at her.
Sister. Brother.
Ofelia had never been a sister before, just a daughter and a girl who’d ruined her new dress in the woods and still wasn’t sure what the moon-shaped mark on her left shoulder meant.
Sister. The word changed everything.
“We’re leaving,” she whispered into her brother’s ear. “Together. Don’t be afraid.”
Her brother uttered a timid whimper. This is all new to me, Ofelia believed to hear him say. Please protect me, sister.
“Nothing is going to happen to you.” She pressed him firmly to her shoulder.
That is such a tough promise to keep.
She was walking toward the door when she heard his father’s voice on the stairs. Oh, why hadn’t she left a moment earlier?
“When the rest of the squad gets back, have them report to me immediately.” The Wolf’s voice was close. Too close.
Ofelia hid behind the door. Don’t cry, brother! she begged silently. Don’t give us away! Though he hadn’t listened to her pleas for their mother’s life.
“Radio for enforcements,” she heard the Wolf say. “Now.”
And there he was, back in the room. Hold your breath, Ofelia.
The Wolf walked over to his table and put the watch that lay next to the glass into his pocket. Then he reached for the liquor. Ofelia slipped out from behind the door the moment he turned his back and gulped the brandy down. Her brother slept peacefully in her arms and his trust in her made it easy to trust her luck. But it didn’t hold. Ofelia had just made it through the open door when an explosion shook the walls of the mill. It came from the yard. The shine of flames ripped the cloak of the night and painted the walls around Ofelia in bright reds and whites. The Wolf spun around and saw her standing in the doorway, frozen like a hunted deer, with his son in her arms.
“Leave him!” His voice was a knife, a hammer, a bullet.
Ofelia held the Wolf’s gaze and shook her head. That was all she managed to do.
The Wolf took a step toward her but he swayed, barely keeping his balance, and Ofelia sent a prayer of thanks to Dr. Ferreira for protecting her from his murderer.
Then she turned. And ran.
Vidal followed her, but he barely made it through the door. His head was swimming. What was wrong with him? He didn’t suspect the brandy, he was too proud to consider the idea that a child had drugged him. No, it was the wounds the other witch had dealt him. He would find and kill her as well, but first the girl. He had known she would bring bad luck the moment she’d gotten out of that car. Her eyes were like the forest, her face so full of silence. He couldn’t wait to break her neck.
She was still on the stairs when Vidal stumbled out of his room, but he was barely able to draw his pistol and the wretched girl was out the door before he could take aim. He saw her disappearing under the trees when he finally made it down the stairs and stepped outside. Why had she taken his son? Would she bring him to the rebels so they could kill him as revenge for her mother’s death?
No. For the rebels had come to the mill. The trucks and tents were burning, there was smoke and fire everywhere and men fighting, their silhouettes as black as paper cuts against the red flames. Vidal should have killed the girl. And Mercedes. For she had kept her promise to Ofelia. She’d come back for her with her brother and his men. But when she and Pedro reached Ofelia’s room, it was empty. Mercedes called Ofelia’s name but there was no answer. All they found was her pale green jacket—and the outline of a door, drawn with white chalk on the floor.
The Echo of Murder
Once upon a time, a nobleman ordered five of his soldiers to arrest a woman named Rocio, who he accused of being a witch. He told them to drown her in the pond of a mill deep in the old forest where she lived. It required two men to drag her into the cold water and one to hold her down until she ceased to breathe. That soldier’s name was Umberto Garces.
Garces had killed before, but his master had so far never ordered him to kill a woman. The task was terrible, and at the same time it aroused him, maybe because the witch was quite beautiful.
It usually didn’t bother Garces to kill. He was surprised he couldn’t find sleep that night.
He couldn’t sleep for ten days, for the moment he lay down he once again felt the cold water on his skin and saw the witch’s hair floating on the surface of the pond. When, on the eleventh night, those visions once again haunted him, Garces got up from his bed, saddled his horse, and rode through the moonlit forest back to the mill.
Garces had hoped it would give him peace to see the water of the pond unstirred and the witch’s body gone from sight, as though she’d never existed. When he stepped closer to the water, though, Garces wished he’d never returned. The water was as black as his sin, and the trees seemed to whisper his judgment into the night: murderer!
Surely, she had been a witch. Wasn’t this the proof? This could only be her doing! The whispering trees, the visions and sensations that haunted him . . . she had cursed him. They had been right to kill her. So right!
Garces felt the guilt lift from his heart, all that disgust with himself, the regret—gone. Maybe he should become one of those witch hunters who cleansed the country of them. The Church paid them very well and as he’d killed one already, he figured it would be easier the next time. Yes. He would be able to do it again. And again.
He laughed. And turned to walk back to his horse.
But he couldn’t move.
The mud held his boots as firmly as if fingers had grabbed them.
Curse her! He was sure it was her.
“I’d do it again!” he shouted over the silent water. “You hear me?”
His boots sank deeper into the mud and his hands started to itch. He lifted them to his face. His skin was covered in warts and webs were growing between his fingers—the fingers he’d used to hold the witch down.
He screamed in terror so loudly the sound woke the miller and his wife. They didn’t dare venture outside, though, to find out what all the noise was about.
Garces screamed again. By now his voice had changed. Hoarse croaking escaped his throat and, his spine twisted and bent until he fell to his knees, digging his webbed fingers into the mud.
Then he leaped into the same muddy pond water he’d drowned the witch in.
37
The Final Task
This time the Fairy didn’t come to guide Ofelia. She had to find her own way through the labyrinth. The last task is always the hardest.
The explosions at the mill continued to tear through the silence of the night, but her brother was peaceful in her arms and part of that peace found its way into Ofelia’s heart. She was sure the Wolf was following her, though she couldn’t see him through the smoke drifting up from the mill. A wolf . . . No, he was not a wolf. Her fairy tales were wrong to give evil the shape of a magnificent wild creature. Both Ernesto Vidal and the Pale Man were human beings who fed on hearts and souls because they had lost their own.