Vidal took cover one last time. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap into his eyes. Corpses were sprawling their limbs over the rocks like pale roots torn out of the ground. Only two rebels were still fighting, but when Vidal ordered another attack they fell with muffled cries, hit by several bullets.

  Oh, the silence of Death. There was nothing quite like it. Vidal often wished he could record it and listen to it while shaving his face. Its silence was only disturbed by the sound of the rain pouring through the trees and falling onto the lifeless bodies, soaking their clothes until they seemed to melt into the ground.

  Vidal walked up the last stretch of the hill, followed by the soldiers who’d survived the attack. Their losses were nothing compared to the rebels. The first one Vidal stopped at didn’t stir. He made sure he was dead nevertheless by firing twice into his silent face. It felt good. Each shot neutralized some of the poison the shame of being fooled had left in his blood. But he needed to find one who could still talk.

  Serrano came, as always, running like a well-trained dog when Vidal called him to his side. They found another two of their enemies lying between the rocks on top of the hill. They were only boys, maybe fifteen years old. One was dead, but the second one was still moving. He was pressing his right hand against a bullet wound in his neck, his pistol beside him. Vidal kicked it away.

  “Let me see,” he said, pulling the boy’s bloody hand away from the wound. He said it almost gently. Vidal enjoyed being calm with his prey.

  The boy still had some fight in him, but it was an easy task to pull his hand off the wound. He had no strength left and for sure not much life. The throat was covered with blood.

  “Can you talk?”

  The boy gasped for air, staring up at the clouds that were covering his face with rain.

  “Damn it.” Vidal got up and drew his pistol.

  When he pointed it at the boy’s head, the fool reached up with his bloodstained hand to push the muzzle aside, his fading eyes filled with defiance, almost mockery. Vidal yanked the pistol out of his grasp and took aim again. This time the boy pressed his hand against the muzzle, but the bullet went easily through flesh and bone. Vidal put another bullet into his rebellious head.

  “These are useless. Neither of them can talk.” Vidal waved at the bodies covering the ground around them. “Shoot them all.”

  Serrano had watched the assassination of the boy uneasily. Vidal suspected Serrano sometimes imagined his own head beneath his capitán’s pistol. Garces for sure didn’t have such thoughts. He went to work as ordered.

  “Capitán!” he called. “This one is alive. Just a wounded leg.”

  Vidal stepped to his side. One look at the injured rebel was enough to make him smile.

  “Yes, this one will do.”

  24

  Bad News, Good News

  Soldiers are usually silent after lost battles. Vidal’s men, though, were shouting and laughing when they returned from the forest. Mercedes knew something terrible must have happened. The other maids were standing in the kitchen doorway watching the turmoil in the yard when she came running into the kitchen.

  “What happened?” She was so breathless from fear she could barely speak. When had she last breathed calmly? She couldn’t remember.

  “They caught one. They caught one alive.” Rosa’s voice was shrill with panic. Rumors were she had a nephew in the woods. “They’re taking him to the barn!”

  They all knew what that meant.

  Mariana called to Mercedes when she ran back out into the pouring rain, but Mercedes couldn’t make herself be cautious. Not today. The fear she felt was a beast devouring her heart.

  “Mercedes! Come back!” Mariana’s voice was hoarse. The other maids gathered around the cook like a flock of frightened hens, their faces stiff with both fear and hope: fear that Vidal’s men would drag Mercedes into the barn; hope that she might find out who they’d caught.

  Who had they caught?

  “Pedro!”

  Mercedes whispered her brother’s name as her feet slipped in the mud.

  “Pedro!”

  She’d almost reached the barn when she saw the soldiers dragging their prisoner in through the open door, his legs helplessly ploughing the muddy ground behind him. Mercedes took another step to glance into the barn, but all she could see were the soldiers, their rain capes shimmering in the dark, tying a limp figure to one of the wooden beams inside.

  “Mercedes?”

  Vidal was standing behind her with Serrano at his side.

  “Capitán.” She was surprised the sound her lips formed made any sense. She could barely take her gaze off the prisoner. His head was hanging down, his face hidden under a dark cap. Her brother wore a cap like that.

  “I need . . . to check on the supplies in the barn.”

  Surely he heard how desperate she was. Even to her own ears she sounded like a lost little girl. Luckily Vidal was far too eager to get to his prisoner to pay any attention.

  “Not now, Mercedes,” he replied impatiently. “I want no one in the yard or the barn. Check on my wife, if you’d be so kind. . . .”

  She nodded obediently. But she couldn’t move. She just stood there and watched Vidal take the cap off the prisoner’s drooping head. He raised his face and looked at her.

  Tarta.

  His eyes were as wide as those of a lamb being dragged into the slaughterhouse. Wide with the knowledge of what was about to come. Mercedes felt his gaze like a hand reaching for hers, but Tarta didn’t give her away. He didn’t scream for help, he pressed his lips together, determined to be brave, those lips that broke words like porous clay.

  Mercedes was still standing in the rain when Serrano shut the barn doors. She was ashamed to feel relief that they’d caught Tarta and not Pedro. The relief only lasted for a moment, though. Tarta knew where Pedro was. And he knew all about her and the doctor.

  He knew everything.

  Mercedes was surprised her feet found the way back to the kitchen. The others were chopping vegetables for the soup they would serve the murderers. Is my brother still alive? she kept asking herself as she joined them to cut roots and parsley. And how about the others? Were they all dead in the woods, their blood mixing with the rain? No! She told herself. No, Mercedes, they wouldn’t have kept Tarta alive if they’d killed them all.

  Slowly, as if her fingers belonged to someone else, she cut another root into pale slices with her apron knife. All she saw was the knife’s sharp blade. What was happening in the barn? It took all her strength to prevent her thoughts from going back to the wide-eyed boy and imagining what they would do to him.

  Mariana was watching her, her round face lined by life. “That’s plenty, dear,” she said when Mercedes pushed the chopped vegetables over the table and reached for another root. Which line was life drawing right now onto their faces? So many lines, of fear, of grief . . . Mercedes was surprised she was still beautiful.

  Mariana held up a tray of food she’d prepared for Ofelia and her mother. “Shall I take this upstairs?” Mariana didn’t have loved ones in the woods, but she had two sons of almost the same age as Tarta.

  “I’ll do it,” Mercedes said, taking the tray from her hands—anything to prevent her imagination from running wild, but it didn’t work. What has happened to Pedro? The question repeated itself at every step she took up the stairs. What is Tarta telling them?

  Dr. Ferreira was with Ofelia’s mother. He looked up from the glass of medicine he was preparing when Mercedes walked in. Do you remember Tarta? she wanted to ask him. How he can’t read the newspaper fast enough for the others? Now he can give us all away if they make him talk.

  Ofelia didn’t notice Mercedes’s fear.

  She was too happy to notice. Her mother felt well enough today to play cards and when Dr Ferreira handed her the glass with medicine she shook her head.

  “I don’t think I need it, Doctor,” she said. “I feel so much better.”

  “That’s why I’m giving you only half the dose, and yes, you’re much better,” Dr. Ferreira replied with a smile. “I don’t understand why, but I’m glad.”

  Ofelia knew. She looked at the jug of fresh milk Mercedes had brought. The mandrake would soon need it. Along with a few drops of blood. All would be well even though she’d disobeyed the Faun and caused the death of his Fairies. She still heard their screams in her dreams, but her mother was smiling again and, after all, she had fulfilled the second task and brought back the Pale Man’s dagger.

  Yes, the Faun would understand.

  In her heart Ofelia knew that he wouldn’t, but she was too happy to allow those worries to cast a shadow.

  25

  Tarta

  Vidal was taking his time. To question a prisoner was a complex process. It resembled a dance, one slow step back, then a fast one forward, and back again. Slow, fast, slow.

  His prisoner was shaking and his face was streaked with sweat, though they had only roughed him up a little. His fear was doing most of the work so far, the fear of what was going to come. It would be easy to break him.

  “Damn, this cigarette is good. Real tobacco. Hard to find.” Vidal held the cigarette so close to the boy’s face he felt the heat of the burning tobacco.

  Tarta tilted his head back when his captor pressed the cigarette to his trembling lips.

  “G-g-go to hell.”

  “Can you believe it, Garces?” Vidal turned to his officer. “We catch one and he turns out to be a stutterer. We’ll be here all night.”

  “As long as it takes,” Garces replied.

  Tarta could tell this officer didn’t enjoy the situation as much as his capitán, who was the kind of uniform-wearing devil Tarta had always dreaded meeting. He was in their hands and he knew what those hands would do. If you’re ever caught, think of someone you need to protect, Pedro had taught him, when they’d practiced how to stay silent even under torture. Someone for whom you’d die. It may not help, but it doesn’t matter. Think of someone, Tarta. Who? Maybe his mother. Yes. Though thinking of her might make it worse as he could just imagine how she would cry if she lost him.

  Tarta lowered his head. If only his limbs would stop shaking. Even if Pedro’s advice could help his mind escape, his body betrayed his fear.

  “Garces is right,” the capitán said. “As long as it takes.”

  He opened his shirt, the cigarette dangling from his lips. Tarta wondered whether he’d take it off to not ruin it with his blood. “You’d do better to tell us everything. But to make sure you do, I brought along a few tools. Just things you pick up along the way.”

  Vidal picked up a hammer. He had lined up his tools very orderly on an old wooden table.

  Shaking. Didn’t people say one could die from fear? Tarta wished he knew how to make his fear kill himself.

  “At first I won’t be able to trust you.” The Devil weighed the hammer in his hand. He was clearly proud of his torturing skills. “But after I use this, you’ll own up to a few things. Once we get to these—” He picked up a pair of pliers. “We’ll have developed . . . how can I put this . . . ?”

  Tarta detected a hint of discomfort, maybe even compassion on the other officer’s face. He had the same mustache as Tarta’s father.

  “Let’s say it this way.” The Devil opened and closed the pliers. “We’ll have grown much closer by then . . . like . . . brothers. And when we get to this one—” He held up a screwdriver. “I’ll believe anything you tell me.”

  Tarta started sobbing. He tried so hard not to, but there was so much fear in him, so much loneliness and despair. It all had to take some kind of shape, even if it was just tears.

  His captor took another satisfied puff from his cigarette and put the screwdriver back on the table. Then he picked up the hammer again and approached Tarta.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, pressing the hammer’s heavy head against Tarta’s trembling shoulder. “If you can count to three without stuttering, you can go.”

  Tarta lifted his head to look at his torturer even though he knew his eyes would give away how desperately his terrorized heart wished for a glimmer of hope. He also looked for it in Garces’s face . . . Garces, yes, that was his name. Tarta was glad the rebels didn’t tell each other their true names; he was too good at remembering them.

  Garces’s mustached face was drained of any expression.

  “Don’t look at him!” the Devil snapped. “Look at me. Above me there’s no one. Garces?”

  “Yes, Capitán.”

  “If I say the asshole can leave, would anybody contradict me?”

  “No one, Capitán. If you say so, he can leave.” Garces returned the shaking boy’s glance. That’s all I can do for you, his eyes seemed to say. That I don’t look away.

  Vidal took another puff from his cigarette. Oh, he enjoyed this so much.

  “There you have it.” He brought his face once again close to Tarta’s. “Come on. Count to three.”

  Tarta’s trembling lips tried to form the first number, while his body cringed in fear.

  “. . . One.”

  “Good!”

  Tarta stared at the ground, as if he could find some last shreds of dignity there. His lips tried again, and then he pushed the syllable out.

  “. . . Two.”

  Vidal smiled. “Good! One more and you’re free.”

  Tarta’s mouth twitched with the effort to speak clearly—trying to deliver unbroken words to the man who would break him. But this time Tarta’s tongue wouldn’t obey. All it uttered was a stuttered “T-t,” the tremor of a broken thing.

  He looked up at the Devil, his eyes pleading for mercy.

  “Shame,” Vidal said, summoning a note of compassion to crown his performance.

  Then he drove the hammer down into the pleading face.

  The Bookbinder

  Once upon a time, there was a bookbinder called Aldus Caraméz, who was such a master of his craft that the queen of the Underground Kingdom entrusted him to bind all the books for her famous crystal library. Caraméz’s whole life was contained in those volumes, as he had been very young—still a boy—when the queen asked him to bind the first book for her, which was a volume that contained drawings by her mother.

  The bookbinder still remembered how his hands had trembled as he spread the delicate portraits of fairies, ogres, and dwarves on his workbench; of toads (whom the queen mother had a special affection for), dragonflies, and of moths nesting in the tree roots that covered the ceilings of the palace like curtains of breathing lace. For the binding, Caraméz had chosen the skin of an eyeless lizard, whose scales reflected candlelight almost as lushly as silver. These lizards were fierce creatures, but the king’s hunters slayed one from time to time when they tried to prey on the queen’s peacocks, and Caraméz always claimed their skin for his craft, imagining he’d give them eyes by making them into books—quite a naive idea, but he liked it.

  The queen loved the first book he had bound for her so much that she kept it on her bedside table, along with a volume Caraméz had bound for her daughter, Moanna, just a few weeks before she disappeared. Caraméz had created a whole library for the lost princess, and it held hundreds of the most richly illustrated books about the animals of the Underground Kingdom, its fabulous creatures and often miraculous plants, its vast underground landscapes, and all its different peoples and rulers.

  Moanna had just turned seven—oh yes, Caraméz remembered those days very well—when she requested a book about the Upper Kingdom. “What tales do they tell their children up there, Aldus?” she had asked. “What does the moon look like? Someone told me it hangs like a huge lantern in the sky. What about the sun? Is it true it’s a huge fireball swimming in an ocean of blue skies? And the stars . . . do they really resemble fireflies?”

  Caraméz remembered the sharp pain that had pierced his heart when the young princess had asked those questions. Many years before, his older brother had asked these same questions and a year later, he had disappeared, never to come back. When the bookbinder shared his concerns with the queen, she replied: “Create and bind her the book she asks for, Caraméz. Make sure it contains everything she wants to know, for that way she won’t try to see the moon and the sun with her own eyes.”

  But the king didn’t agree with his wife. He forbade Caraméz to fulfill his daughter’s wish, and the queen decided to not fight his decision, as she had to admit that her daughter’s request troubled her as well.

  Princess Moanna, though, kept asking her questions.

  “Who told you about the Upper Kingdom, my princess?” Caraméz asked when she once again visited his workshop, requesting that he at least make her a small book about the birds of the Upper Kingdom. Moanna had never seen a bird. Bats were the only flying creatures in the Underground Kingdom. And fairies.

  The princess answered Caraméz’s question by handing him a book. Of course! Her parents’ library! Libraries don’t keep secrets; they reveal them. The book Moanna handed the bookbinder contained reports from her mother’s ancestors who had traveled extensively in the Upper Kingdom.

  “Keep it,” Moanna said, when Caraméz hid the book hastily behind his back. “I don’t need the book. I’ll just listen to the roots of the trees. They know everything about the Upper Kingdom!”

  It was the last time the bookbinder talked to the princess before she disappeared. Caraméz still remembered her voice, though there were days when he couldn’t recall her face. From time to time he still caught himself making a book for Moanna filled with tales the fairies told him or with stories whispering in the skins of the eyeless lizards.

  Maybe the Faun had heard about those books. He usually didn’t come to Caraméz’s workshop. The Faun didn’t believe in books. He was much older than the oldest manuscripts in the queen’s library and could rightfully claim that he knew so much more about the world than all their yellowed pages. But one day he suddenly stood in the door of the bookbinder’s workshop. Caraméz was slightly afraid of the Faun. He was never sure whether he could trust those pale blue eyes. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Fauns eat bookbinders.

 

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