Godmother

Chapter Five

..

"If we were doing this at any other time, this would be fun."

Camilo punctuated this statement with a wry little laugh, turning his stick in the fire. The only response he got was a low hum of agreement from Luisa.

The gang they were trailing had stopped overnight in a tavern, and so they were camping out in the surrounding woods. Isabela's gift stopped just short of growing food-bearing plants, besides the odd fruit tree every now and then, so they had taken to fishing in the nearby river and proved to be decent at it. Eating slow-roasted fish and sleeping on a balmy night under the stars would have been a very nice experience if it weren't for the incredibly grim task they were doing it for.

"I promise I will bring you camping when all this is over," Dolores said, one ear tuned in the direction of the town.

"It has to be outside the Encanto, or it won't count," Camilo shot back.

"We can all go," Luisa promised. "Mirabel too, she'd love it. And Antonio, if Pepa allows..."

"Do you hear anything yet?" Isabela interrupted sharply.

Dolores had been listening for any new information, but so far had come up with nothing. While they were on the road, the gang didn't speak much except for barking orders and a handful of crude jokes. Once they were settled in the tavern, she hoped their tongues would be loosened.

"Just more drunk talk," Dolores muttered.

The other three ate their fish in dull silence, watching Dolores' face for any sign that she was hearing something useful. For a long time nothing happened.

And then...

Outwardly Dolores remained still and composed, but her face lost all its colour and she clenched her fingers into her skirt so hard she tore a hole in it. The other three party members stiffened.

"Well?" Isabela hissed. "What is it?"

Dolores held up a hand to keep her quiet. She continued to listen, breathing shakily. When she dropped her hand, she swallowed hard before addressing Isabela.

"I need to talk to you privately," she said, and pulled her deeper into the forest.

Luisa and Camilo exchanged a look. If Dolores wasn't telling them, then it must have been bad. They could hear the low murmur of Dolores' voice mixed with the sharper tone of Isabela's questioning.

Then, very suddenly, Isabela burst back out to their campground, grim-faced, and started packing up their belongings.

"Isa, wait," Dolores huffed, stumbling after her. "Don't make any snap decisions..."

"I am done waiting!" Isabela snarled, stuffing her bedroll into her bag clumsily.

"You can't just go charging in, we don't even know where we're going!"

"We'll find it!"

Camilo and Luisa stood between their sister and cousin respectively, not knowing what to do. Luisa half-heartedly began gathering their canteens.

"Look, if we just wait one more night, we should know more in the morning..." Dolores begged. "I know it's hard..."

"No, you don't!" Isabela screamed, throwing down her bag, bedroll and all. "That's my little sister! She's turning sixteen a week from now, we are no closer to where she is and we were stupid enough to pin all our hopes on a bunch of drunken thugs! I am going to get her myself, you can come with me if you want but don't get in my way!"

"She's my sister too!" Dolores shouted back. "We were all raised together, you think I don't feel the same way? What about Luisa, and Camilo? You're going to get us all killed!"

"I think you need to explain what's going on," said Luisa, moving to stand with her sister in case she needed to restrain her.

Isabela fell silent, visibly trembling with anger, and Dolores massaged her temples with a groan.

"According to the men in the tavern," she began. "The boss of the militia is going to force Mirabel to marry him when she's old enough...and he has plans to get her pregnant straight away."

Luisa and Camilo went very pale. Although it had been somewhat obvious why Mirabel was taken away, they hadn't quite let the implications sink in. And once a girl was legally married, even if her hand was forced, the law couldn't intervene.

"We have a week," Isabela said, her voice cracking. "And no idea where she is."

"Then we start looking," Luisa mumbled, gathering up their camping gear in earnest. "She can't be far away now, right? Los Calaveras...they wouldn't have accepted the job if it was far away, it has to be near here somewhere..."

"We should have brought Antonio," Camilo said, sinking to the ground with his hands gripping his hair. "Antonio could have sent some birds to look around or something...we're not too far, we could go back for him..."

"No!" Dolores ordered. "We stay with Los Calaveras. We need them to distract Los Brutales. We can't go in by ourselves, we'll get ourselves killed and then Mirabel will be stuck there forever."

"What if he's married her by the time we get there?" Luisa asked, aghast at the idea. "What do we do then?"

"It's better than nothing," Dolores sighed. "But we can only hope we get there in time."

…..

Dreams for Mirabel had lately become a shifting pattern of thousands of blinking eyes and whispers, pools of water so deep that they were dark at the core, drifting clouds of powder that glimmered in thin beams of light and, running throughout, what sounded like a human voice translated through the strings of a cello. They weren't nightmares, although they felt so alien, they almost felt comforting.

She was roused from one such dream by a hand on her shoulder, and the feeling of someone sliding under the covers with her.

"Hey, princesa, wake up..."

It was the tall man, because of course it was. No other man was even allowed access to her room.

"What are you doing?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Listen, listen," he whispered, leaning over her. "I've been thinking..."

She froze where she was, because it was exactly where they had been when he stole her from her home; her underneath, him looming overhead telling her to stay quiet. She could smell the alcohol on his breath.

"I've been thinking..." he repeated, "...the old man's nearly seventy years old, you know? He thinks he's still able to make these magic babies he wants so bad, but if he can't do it you know who he's gonna blame? You."

Mirabel swallowed, hard. She didn't like where this was going.

"And I'm responsible, you know?" the tall man shrugged, spilling a cupful of whatever he was drinking on the bed. "You're a nice girl, you gotta be looked after...so if I can get you in the family way before he does, how's he gonna know it's not his?"

Dumbstruck, her mouth opened a few times with no sound.

"And you can have your first time with someone who'll treat you nice," he continued, audibly slurring his words. "I don't mean to brag but I never made a pretty girl cry in my life..."

When he started tugging on the ribbon that kept the bodice of her nightgown closed, she found her words.

"So instead of being raped by one man, you think it's better I get raped by two men?" she hissed at him.

"You don't have to be that way," the tall man chuckled. "You'll get into it, I can make you feel good..."

He dropped his flask of whatever he was drinking beside her pillow where it promptly fell over, soaking her face and hair. The hand that had been holding it went under the blankets, found the hem of her nightgown and started insistently pushing it upwards. The other hand yanked at her bodice as she tried her hardest to keep it in place.

"Don't do this," she said through gritted teeth. "You'll get us both killed."

"The old man won't know," the tall man insisted. "He trusts me, as long as he gets his magic baby he won't care..."

He pressed his face to her throat, open-mouthed, where not so long ago he had held a blade to that same jumping pulse. The flimsy material of the bodice gave way, tearing with such loud rapport in the quiet room it almost sounded like a gunshot. Momentary distracted trying to see her in the dim light, she managed to struggle out from underneath him and fell off the side of the bed, her iron shackle cracking against the floor.

She found herself pressed up against the door of the bathroom, as far as the shackle would allow her to get away from him, holding the torn bodice together with her hands, trembling. He paused on the bed, listening in the corridor to hear if the noise of the shackle on the ground had brought anyone to investigate. They stayed like that, staring at each other, for an agonizingly long time.

"He's going to blame you," the tall man said at last. "I've seen what he does to his women when they don't please him."

"I don't care," she told him.

His face crumpled in disgust. Possibly, probably, he genuinely thought he was trying to help her. Even so, her rejection was a slight to his masculine sense of pride.

"You're going to regret this," he said. "If you come to me asking for my help, it'll be too late."

"I won't. I don't want your help."

With an injured sniff in her direction, he stormed off, locking the door behind him. Mirabel stayed where she was until she heard his footsteps trail away into silence.

She wanted to get up off the floor, change out of the torn nightgown, maybe change the bedsheets to get rid of the smell of alcohol. She wanted to wash it out of her hair and face, but she was shaking too hard. She closed her eyes, tried to get her body back under control.

Breathe in.

There was a breeze coming through the window, heavily scented with the blossoms of the fruit trees all around the plantation.

Breathe out.

If she listened closely, she could hear the river winding through the trees where it had burst its banks with the summer rainfall.

Breathe in.

Horses and mules whickered and snorted gently in their stable, just to the right of her bedroom.

Breathe out.

Moth wings fluttered like dried leaves on the windowsill...had moths ever been so loud as they were now? All night they made their way to the windowsill, during the day they were replaced by butterflies of all shapes and colours.

She opened her eyes and tried to see them in the lamplight. It seemed like there were more of them than usual. Still shaking a little, she got up and walked over to the window. Indeed, there were about thirty of them, pale green and white, swarming over a small pink thing. Gently, she brushed them away from the pink object.

Pata de Vaca?

She knew this flower, its distinctive star-shape and frilly borders and curling yellow pistils. Isabela had grown the tree and the blossoms a handful of times, though she usually passed over it for more showy blooms. It was strange, there were no trees so close to the plantation, and the blossom itself looked like it had been plucked, to place on her windowsill.

That's crazy.

Maybe the moths did it?

While we're making wishes, I'd like a hacksaw so I can saw my way out.

The bloom had a faintly sweet scent, like vanilla, that put Mirabel in mind of her mother's obleas. There was something else familiar about it, something hidden in the perfume, of a powder that coated her tongue and a rich oil that slid down her throat. Inexplicably, her mouth watered and she was seized by the urge to eat the flower.

Do it. Eat it. It's for you.

The gathered moths' wings rustled, their spindle legs tapping against the rock to create a low hum.

Before she even realized what she was doing, the flower was in her mouth. The pistils burst with powder and the blossoms melted. The instant she swallowed, she stopped shaking.

She managed to get changed, changed the sheets, washed the alcohol out of her hair and even got a few more hours of sleep before the sun came up, soothed by the flower. The moths flew away at sunrise, and when she woke there were almost a hundred butterflies swarming at the window.

She found three more Pata de Vaca flowers on the sill, waiting for her.

…..

"That's it!" Dolores announced, pointing at a spot on a distant cliffside. "That's the one they were talking about, that's where she is!"

With just two days before Mirabel was due to be married off and thus probably lost to them for good, the cousin group had trailed Los Calaveras to this distant spot on a border of the deep forest.

"Are you sure?" Isabela asked, sounding hopeful for the first time.

"Yes, absolutely sure," Dolores assured her. "The guy who confirmed it was part of Los Brutales, it was supposed to be an old fruit plantation but the old owner got chased out by his debts. Los Brutales scooped it up as a hideaway, so he says. Everyone thinks it's abandoned 'cos nothing grows out here."

Isabela's brow furrowed. Looking at the area closely, she could see why. The plantation was on the verge of being taken over by the forest, fast-growing trees loomed over the building. It had been built on the side of a cliff, with the rock underneath threaded by thick vines and a deep valley carpeted with endless greenery yawning directly under it. It was being eaten.

"We could just sneak in from here, right?" Camilo asked, cracking his knuckles. "We don't have to wait for Los Calaveras anymore..."

"No, we need them as a distraction," Isabela warned. "The front of the plantation is too open to sneak anyone in, and that rockface isn't stable enough to climb. Plus our gifts are much weaker out here, I don't want to risk you getting caught."

Dolores had removed her pack and was sprawled on the floor, exhausted. She had been up all night listening to the militia for a plan, but they didn't seem like a very organized group. All she knew was that they were deep in the valley, and their group was perched on an opposite cliff to the one the plantation was on. Luisa was gently fanning Dolores, who groaned with appreciation.

"Whatever they end up doing, we'll be ready," Isabela told them. "We can keep a safe distance and I can get us across the valley fast with some vines, I can still do that much. For now, let's get some sleep."

They slept deeply that night, out of a combination of relief for having found Mirabel's prison and exhaustion from being on the road for so long. They slept so deeply that the first indication that something was very wrong passed them by.

When they finally woke up and ran to the cliff edge, they discovered that the entire valley was being consumed by flames. Hundreds of acres of trees and vegetation crackling and warping, toxic black clouds reaching skywards, and they could barely see the plantation anymore.

"Díos Mío," Dolores muttered. "What have they done?"