“The capitán is waiting for you in his office.” Mercedes straightened her back and didn’t look at Dr. Ferreira as he descended the stairs. His steps were heavy, as if he felt guilty walking away from Mercedes’s desperate face.
Ofelia couldn’t move.
Secrets. They add to the darkness of the world but they also make you want to find out more. . . .
Ofelia was still standing by the open door when Mercedes turned. Her eyes widened with fear the moment she saw Ofelia and she hastily hid the parcel under her shawl, while Ofelia’s feet finally obeyed and she stepped back to latch the door, wishing Mercedes would just forget she had seen her.
“Ofelia! Come here!” her mother called from the bed.
At least the fire spread some light in the dark room, along with two flickering candles on the mantelpiece. Ofelia crawled into the bed and wrapped her arms around her mother.
Just the two of them. Why hadn’t that been enough? But her baby brother was already kicking in her mother’s belly. What if he was like his father? Go away! Ofelia thought. Leave us alone. We don’t need you. For she has me and I take care of her.
“Heavens, your feet . . . they’re frozen!” her mother said.
Her body felt so warm. Maybe a bit too warm, but the doctor hadn’t seemed too worried about the fever.
Around them the mill was moaning and creaking. It didn’t want them. It wanted the miller back. Or maybe it wished to be alone with the forest, tree roots breaking through its walls, leaves covering its roof, until its stones and beams became part of the forest again.
“Are you afraid?” her mother whispered.
“A little,” Ofelia whispered back.
Another moan rose from the old walls, and the beams above them sighed as if someone was bending them. Ofelia pressed closer against her mother. She kissed Ofelia’s hair, as black as her own.
“It’s nothing, cariño. It’s nothing, just the wind. Nights are very different here. In the city you hear cars, the tramway. Here the houses are so much older. They creak. . . .”
Yes, they did. This time they both listened.
“It sounds as if the walls are speaking, doesn’t it?” Her mother hadn’t held Ofelia like this since she had learned she was pregnant. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m giving you a surprise.”
“A surprise?” Ofelia looked up at her mother’s pale face.
“Yes.”
Ofelia felt so safe in her embrace. For the first time since . . . since when? Since her father died. Since her mother met the Wolf.
“Is it a book?” she asked. Her father had often given her books. Sometimes he had even tailored clothes for them. Linen. To protect the binding, Ofelia, he would say. They bind them in very cheap fabric nowadays. This is better. Ofelia missed him so much. Sometimes it felt as if her heart were bleeding and it wouldn’t heal until she saw him again.
“A book?” Her mother laughed softly. “No! Not a book! Something much better.”
Ofelia didn’t remind her mother that for her, there was nothing better than a book. Her mother wouldn’t understand. She didn’t make books her shelter or allow them to take her to another world. She could only see this world, and then, Ofelia thought, only sometimes. It was part of her mother’s sadness to be earthbound. Books could have told her so much about this world and about places far away, about animals and plants, about the stars! They could be windows and doors, paper wings to help her fly away. Maybe her mother had just forgotten how to fly. Or maybe she’d never learned.
Carmen had closed her eyes. At least when she was dreaming she saw more than this world, didn’t she? Ofelia wondered, pressing her cheek against her mother’s chest. So close, their bodies fusing into one, as they had been before she was born. Ofelia could hear the tide of her mother’s breath, the soft thumping of her heart beating so regularly, like a metronome against bone.
“Why did you have to get married?” Ofelia whispered.
As the words escaped her lips, part of her hoped that her mother was already asleep. But then the answer came—
“I was alone for too long, my love,” her mother said, staring at the ceiling above them. The whitewash was cracked and lined with spiderwebs.
“But I was with you!” Ofelia said. “You were not alone. I was always with you.”
Her mother continued to stare at the ceiling, suddenly seeming so far away. “When you’re older you’ll understand. It wasn’t easy for me, either, when your father—”
She drew in her breath sharply and pressed her hand on her swollen belly. “Your brother is acting up again.”
Her mother’s hand felt so hot when Ofelia covered it with her own. Yes, she could feel her brother too. And no, he wouldn’t go away. He wanted to come out.
“Tell him one of your stories!” her mother gasped. “I am sure that’ll calm him down.”
Ofelia felt reluctant to share her stories with him, but finally she sat up. Under the white sheets her mother’s body looked like a mountain covered in snow, her brother sleeping in its deepest cave. Ofelia put her head on the bump in the blanket, caressing it where her brother was moving, deep under her mother’s skin.
“Brother!” she whispered. “Brother of mine.”
Her mother hadn’t given him a name yet. He would need one soon to get ready for this world.
“Many, many years ago . . . in a sad, faraway land . . .” Ofelia spoke in a soft, low voice, but she was sure he could hear her. “There was an enormous mountain made of black flint . . .”
Behind the mill, in the forest as dark and silent as the night, the creature Ofelia called the Fairy spread her wings and followed the sound of the girl’s voice, the words building a path of bread crumbs through the night.
“And atop that mountain,” Ofelia continued, “a magic rose blossomed every dawn. People said whoever plucked it would become immortal. But no one dared to go near it because its thorns were filled with poison.”
Oh yes, there are many roses like that, the Fairy thought as she flew toward the window behind which the girl was telling her story. When she slipped into the room, her wings fluttering as softly as Ofelia’s voice, she saw them: the girl and her mother, holding each other against the darkness of the night outside. But the darkness inside the house was far more frightening, and the girl knew that it was fed by the man who’d brought them here.
“People talked about all the pain the thorns of the rose could cause,” Ofelia whispered to her unborn brother. “They warned each other that whoever climbed the mountain would die. It was so easy for them to believe in the pain and the thorns. Fear helped them believe that. But none of them dared to hope that in the end the rose would reward them with eternal life. They couldn’t hope—they could not. And so, the rose would wilt away, night after night, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone. . . .”
The Fairy sat on the windowsill to listen. She was glad the girl knew about the thorns, as she and her mother had come to a very dark mountain. The man who ruled this mountain—oh yes, the Fairy knew all about him—was sitting downstairs in his office, the room behind the mill’s wheel, polishing the pocket watch of his father, another father who had died in another war.
“The rose was forgotten and lost,” Ofelia said, pressing her cheek to her mother’s belly. “At the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone until the end of time.”