Godmother

Chapter Ten

..

Mirabel dropped into the water, as she suspected she would. Since she fell the first time, between letting go of the chain and waking up submerged in the still pool of the other place was a blank, but it was slowly coming back to her now. She never even touched the flames; it was like she dropped through a hole in the atmosphere.

And now, the space between the roof of Casíta and the ground didn't exist, she passed straight through into the other place. The water was black in the dim light, but she didn't struggle to swim. All the little pains that had been bothering her, the itch under her skin, the bone-deep ache in her shot leg, gone in an instant. If she could breathe underwater, she would have stayed there.

The butterfly queen's elongated arms slipped through the water to find her and plucked her out, so much stronger than they looked. Her plumes furled and waved as she hummed a sonorous greeting, echoed by every member of her court. A deep vibration crept along her limbs and skittered across Mirabel's skin, shaking off the water and leaving her completely dry.

This felt familiar, as clear a childhood memory as her father's bedtime stories or her mother cutting obleas into tiny pieces so she wouldn't choke. How had she forgotten?

The butterfly queen clearly hadn't. She brought Mirabel in to sit in front of her, wrapping her wings around her and stroking her head with her plumes. They fit perfectly together. The little creatures flitted around in service, dropping fruit and edible flowers in front of Mirabel. She hadn't realized until she took her first bite that she was ravenously hungry.

But of course you are, you have barely eaten since you left us.

The butterfly queen's voice seemed to come from inside Mirabel, not even from her mind but starting somewhere in her heart, running through her veins.

We have been watching. We are always watching.

That made sense, there were an unusual amount of butterflies around Casíta's grounds these days. She could hear Isabela complaining about them from her bed, they chewed the leaves and blossoms of her flowers and covered the fruit in little pits.

Mirabel had questions, but they died in her throat when she tried to give them a voice. She tried to follow the butterfly queen's voice, pushing through to her heart.

My mother thinks her child was stolen and replaced with your child.

A hissing rose in the court of the little creatures, tiny outrage.

I have stolen nothing from mortals. What is mine was given freely.

If that answer had come from a human, they might have been called out on giving a roundabout excuse for an answer. These creatures, though, had no capacity for lies, Mirabel knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

You are mine, beloved child. You carry a part of me with you.

The little veins in the queen's wings thrummed and glowed golden, shaking shiny powder into the air. Mirabel's blood pulsed gold in response, clearly visible under her skin.

If I am yours, why did you send me back?

A high-pitched tremor floated off of the queen and touched the water, sending ripples out into the dark.

Mortals belong to the mortal world. We would have you with us always but you are not ready. We have always been with you.

The queen rose to her feet suddenly, lifting Mirabel to stand with her.

I will show you.

She walked with Mirabel perched on her back, nestled between her wings. The court fluttered alongside, singing their marching rondos and lighting the way with their luminescent bodies. After a time, a gap appeared between a large crystal and the overlapping branch of a tree.

Hold tight to me, and do not allow your feet to touch the ground.

Wherever it was that they stepped out onto, it was a lifetime from Colombia. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, and the trees that surrounded them were strange, jagged and thin. Mirabel shivered in her thin cotton nightgown, and the queen pumped heat through her wings to warm her.

The veil is thin here. We may stay for a while.

Just past the trees was the distinctive orange glow of a bonfire. Listening closely, Mirabel could hear human voices, chanting quietly in a language that sounded harsh, guttural to her ears. Something was being rammed into the ground over and over in time with the chanting, shaking the earth under the queen's feet.

They call for our favour. In this way, our paths may cross.

The queen crept closer. Mirabel clung all the harder to her as she craned her neck to see what was ahead. In a forest clearing, circling the bonfire were a dozen nude women. Some were old and bent, others young and vital. They threw their arms to the sky and pounded the earth with their feet, uncaring of the cold night wind. The chant rose in pitch until they were screaming into the sky.

Then, a thin trail of gold dust was brushed from the queen's long plumes. The wind carried it to the chanting women and their feet began to leave the ground, carrying them into the air screeching with unfettered glee.

Brujería!

The word popped into Mirabel's mind, unbidden.

They offer gifts and we reward them.

They passed back into the other place, where the air was comfortably warm and Mirabel could dismount for a moment. She hadn't realized it, but the chant had somehow infused the butterfly queen with energy, her body hummed with it. Some of it had made its way into Mirabel too, and it made her feel dizzy.

She crouched for a few moments on an island to catch her breath. The butterfly queen raised her wings for her court to descend on, a carpet of coloured dots covered her entirely. They fed on her energy, glowing all the brighter once they had their fill. It was truly amazing how clear Mirabel's vision was in this place; she could count individual eye spots on the wings of the tiniest creatures from a great distance.

What would happen if I was to stay here forever?

The butterfly queen shook her body and her court scattered. Her spindly forelegs dropped to a kneel in front of Mirabel, so that her liquid black eyes could look into her own.

Mortals who find themselves in our world become like us, but they can never return to the mortal world except how we do, where the veil is thin. You have too much love in your heart to leave your family behind you.

And what if you stayed too long in the mortal world?

I would wither and die, and there would be no-one to feed my court. They would wither and die too. I remained to watch over you for as long as I dared.

Some things that had lingered in Mirabel's mind for a long time suddenly clicked into place. How she used to sleepwalk, and said she heard voices calling her in her dreams. Why she was always compelled to add butterflies to her drawings, and later her clothes. Why her mother's cooking had never fixed her eyesight.

You are halfway between worlds now. One day, you will choose one or the other, but it is not this day.

The queen's tapered arms plucked her off the ground again and perched her on her back, setting off in the opposite direction of the last gate.

There are many of us that slip in and out of the veils.

Another gate loomed up before them, suspended in a waterfall. The queen's wings wrapped more firmly around Mirabel as they passed through.

Do not look into his eyes. If he sees you, he will want you for himself.

In contrast to the last place they journeyed to, this new place was temperate but flat for miles around, covered with an ocean of grass. Through this grass a young woman was wading, wrapped in furs, clutching a small bundle.

Can't she see us?

Not unless I want her to. But she may sense our presence. She is not here for us.

A flat rock jutted out of the grass and the woman made her way to it. She unwrapped the furs covering her bundle, revealing a baby. Newborn, possibly, and misshapen. It had a withered leg and a head swollen with fluid. The woman took her furs from it and left the baby on the rock, without looking back.

Mirabel wrestled with the temptation to go to the baby, though the butterfly queen didn't move. This was probably why she had wrapped her so tightly in her wings, to stop her from putting her feet on the ground.

She's really going to leave her baby there?

It is a gift. Her child will know only pain and a short life with her.

The grass rustled, and the ground began to shake. Long bony spikes began to rise from the grass, followed by a head that was halfway between some sort of deer and a painted human skull. A ridged back followed, hunched forward, and long pendulous arms. When it stood to its full height on two human-like legs covered with dingy grey fur, it was nearly nine feet tall.

He's not going to eat the baby, is he?

It was such a childish thing to ask, but Mirabel asked anyway in panic as this being reached its long bony fingers out to pluck the baby from the rock. The baby made a soft sound, the start of a cry strangled by a malformed throat.

No. He will take the child and raise it. It will become like him.

The being saw them, and whipped himself around to face them. Mirabel ducked under the butterfly queen's wing, avoiding his glare. A low growl began in the being's throat, countered by a piercing shriek bubbling up in the queen's. Her wings unfurled and she raised herself to full height, shaking clouds of golden dust into the air.

Then, with a dismissive snort, the being stalked off with the baby. The queen relaxed, stroked Mirabel's face with her plumes.

You did well. Mortals have looked upon him and had their hearts stop beating.

Would he have fought you?

For you, maybe. But we rarely fight, it causes such damage to the mortal world if we die here.

Will he be good to that baby?

As good as he can be. Many mortals gift their babies in this way, to all kinds of beings.

Why?

Because their children are born ill, or malformed. Or they are starving, or they have too many to raise. Or they just have no love in their heart for the child. It matters not to us, a gift is a gift.

…..

"Mira, what the hell are you doing?"

When Mirabel's eyes fluttered open, she tried to make out what the blurry tan things in front of her were. Someone's feet, evidently. Sandals, black leather. Surrounded by something green? Tiny legs skittered across her arms and feet, papery little wings brushed against her skin.

"...Camilo?"

A pair of hands poked out of a familiar ruana and started shooing away the butterflies that were covering her. Reluctantly, they fluttered off in a little multicoloured cloud.

"That's right, genius! What are you doing out here?"

Oh.

She was lying on her side on the front lawn, barefoot, in her nightclothes, without her glasses. What was she doing out here, indeed. How could she even begin to answer that?

"I don't know, I don't remember..." she mumbled, sitting up and rubbing her head.

"Are you sleepwalking again? How did you even get down the stairs?" Camilo asked, sounding genuinely worried.

"I have no idea..."

"It was really cold last night, you could have froze to death! And what do you think they're going to say if they go into your room and you're not there?"

Even with her terrible eyesight, Mirabel could see the sun was barely up. Nobody in the house should be awake...

"Wait, why are you out here so early?" she asked.

Camilo paused mid-sentence. She could almost hear his guilt.

"This isn't about me," he said quietly. "I mean, you're lucky I just happened by to see what was..."

"Were you out all night?"

Bingo. She could just about see his cheeks turning red.

"Okay, look," he began. "If I sneak you back into the house, this never happened, okay?"

"Deal."

He loaded her onto his back, and he made a few perfunctory jokes about her being too heavy for him (too obvious a lie to be offended, she was worryingly light and they all knew it) and shimmied up the drainpipe with her clinging to his back. Once they passed through the second story window he piggybacked her tiptoe across the landing to the nursery, both keeping their ears trained for any sign of someone else being awake.

"Hi guys!"

When Antonio gave his peppy little greeting after the door of the nursery was opened, they both froze in the doorway. Mirabel held her finger over her mouth and shushed him until Camilo could drop her onto the bed.

"That jaguar is the worst guard dog ever," Camilo groaned, flopping into a nearby chair.

The jaguar yawned in response.

"Actually, when I came in to check on Mirabel, Juan Pablo said I didn't have to worry 'cos she went out the window herself," Antonio explained. "And Juan Pablo said he could see her from the window this morning so he wasn't worried, the butterflies were keeping her warm."

"How does Juan Pablo know that? They could have been drinking her blood for all he knows!" Camilo said with a dismissive huff.

"That's bats, not butterflies," Antonio insisted. "Why did you go out the window, Mirabel?"

She didn't know how to answer him. Luckily, Camilo did it for her.

"She doesn't remember, looks like she's sleepwalking again."

"Again?"

"Yeah, before you were born she used to sleepwalk all the time. We kept finding her in people's gardens in the vegetable patches."

Mirabel swallowed back a lump in her throat. She hadn't been merely sleepwalking, she was being called out of Casíta to the butterfly queen's side. She knew that now.

"It's either that or Casíta just got sick of her shit and booted her out in her sleep," Camilo laughed, and then he stopped, a little stricken. "I shouldn't have said that, forget I said that...shit, I'm sorry."

A particularly cruel thing that Isabela used to say as a child to Mirabel was that Casíta wanted her to go away and never come back. She developed a complex about it, every time a door slammed shut for no clear reason or a piece of furniture fell over was proof that Casíta was trying to drive her out. Eventually Casíta did go the extra mile in communicating to Mirabel that she was very much wanted there, but that lingering doubt never really left.

Maybe there was more truth in that old insult than Isabela knew. Maybe Casíta changed its mind when it was sure that the butterfly queen's hold on Mirabel was truly broken.

"Don't mention the sleepwalking to the adults, Antonio. It'll just make them worry. Okay?" she told him.

Just then, the door swung open and Julieta walked in with the first of Mirabel's palm-sugar-and-milk feeds. She was very confused to find her two nephews there as well.

"What are you two doing in here?" she asked.

"I had a nightmare," Antonio told her. "I wanted Mirabel to tell me a story."

"I heard him having a nightmare," Camilo shrugged. "Offered some brotherly support."

Juan Pablo the jaguar yawned.

…..

El Verraco was dead, so the rumours said.

Some said that he ended his own life out of guilt for driving the young girl he kidnapped to suicide. Some said that one of his long-time allies stabbed him in the back while the suicide distracted him. Some say he walked into the fire to search for the girl and was overcome by the flames.

The truth was so strange that no rumour could have gotten it right.

El Verraco did indeed walk into the forest to look for his child bride, but it was after the fires had burned themselves out. He went alone with a handful of weapons, expecting to see nothing but a burned corpse but hoping it would be different. There was magic in the girl, it could have saved her.

He wasn't expecting to see her at the riverside.

Unharmed, unconcerned, she was picking flowers that survived the blaze close to the water and humming to herself. He was so used to seeing her terrified into stillness that her appearance shocked him. There was something deeply unsettling about it.

Still, unharmed as she was she could still bear his children, even if the drop and the fire had driven her to madness. He could seed her right there in the ashes of the forest, that would make an interesting bawdy tale for his men.

But as he crept up on her, she saw him and bolted. Strange, for a girl he knew had been shot in the leg she could run fast. She ran to the river's edge and waded in, he just about caught up to her when she was waist-deep in the water. He grabbed her arm and pulled her up against him, locked her in an iron grip.

And then, she did something he wasn't expecting.

She reached for his face with her little hand and caressed him, stroked him with tenderness that wasn't compelled by fear for her life. Nobody had touched El Verraco like this since he was a child. She hummed softly to him and he knew the tune. His own mother sang that tune while she cooked his meals when he was a boy. It touched him, and he drooped.

Her fingers traced the outline of his missing eye, they didn't shy away from the ruin of what had been a handsome face. His grip on her slackened a little but he didn't let her go. Her other hand crept up to his face and gently, so gently, she brought his head down to hers to kiss him.

If he had been in his right mind, he would have noticed that her hands on his face were unnaturally strong. He would have noticed that her features were sharper, thinner than before. He would have noticed her eyes were threaded with glinting bolts of chlorophyll green. But he had never taken the time to look properly at his bride-to-be, these details escaped him.

And now, lulled into a sleepy state by her tenderness and his own melancholy, he didn't realize that his feet no longer touched the bottom of the river, his head was submerged, he was breathing water instead of air. His lungs burned and his eyes registered when her arms grew and her skin turned to scales, she wrapped her arms around him like a vice and pulled him deeper.

He was still concious when her long, sharp teeth pierced the skin of his throat, but it was over quickly.