The Cure

Chapter 18 : XVII

  "What are we going to do?" Ofelia is enraged when I bring them home. I'm begging her to understand, you can't just leave two starving children out in the cold. She however is immovable on the subject. "Please!" I beg. "At least until we can send them on their way safely."

"We should turn them in," is her response.

"What? No! We can't do that."

"Why not? Would you rather wait and have Reese find them himself and turn in not only these two children, but us as well?"

"Why would Haim and his guards have an arrest warrant for two small children? Just because they ran away? All's he has to do is have them put back in their region and move on. You can't arrest little children...can you?"

"Well, let's not find out, okay? Take them back to the woods."

I glance at the girl on the couch and the boy in my arms. "They're so cold, and hungry. Just one night, please."

Ofelia sighs. I'm sure she's going to give in but what she says is different. "Put the boy down and come here." I do so and follow Ofelia to the basement doorway as we descend the stairs into darkness and ash.

"You see all this?" she says. "This is because of them."

"What?" I'm terribly confused.

"I wanted to help them the moment they should up outside the woods. I found them the night you went out with Griffin. I felt the same way you do now. They were lost, cold and hungry. I couldn't turn them away so I let them in, just for a night, I told myself. Then it became two and three then they were living in the basement permanently. I told myself it was harmless so long as you didn't find out. But they didn't listen to me. They didn't stay where I told them. They came out at night and wandered around.

"They tore through everything; the basement, the kitchen, even your bedroom, when you were gone."

I remember coming home from Griffin's apartment, the day I found out his mother was ill. The kitchen covered in dirt, cupboards flung open, food everywhere. The time I came back from the barn, finding my room in tatters, clothes everywhere. It all makes sense now, why Ofelia lied.

"Then they even disappeared completely," Ofelia continues. "Gone one day and then back, the next, asleep in the basement."

"Wait," I stop her. "You said they were gone, for a day?"

Ofelia nods. "The fire was their latest act. All the candles, I have no idea where they got them, but I knew you'd find them if I kept them any longer, so I told them to leave. Said I'd turn them in if they didn't go. The girl didn't believe me and stubbornly stayed. The boy, I've never heard him speak a word. I had to leave and when I got to the top of the hill, I saw the smoke and knew what had happened. When I got back with the guards all I found was you, and they were gone."

I'm stunned. Even now I realize there's much more to Ofelia than I thought I knew. "Did they tell you where they are from?"

After a slight pause Ofelia remarks, "No, they never gave the slightest clue as to where they're from or where they're headed. They're about as far east as you can get, if they really are from the Western region like everybody says."

"I think there's more to this than what we know."

"They can stay," Ofelia relents. "Only under one condition."

"Yes, sure. Anything!"

"They stay in your room."

Wait. This is not what I was expecting. "Where are they possibly going to stay in my room?" I follow Ofelia back up the stairs to the house and she leads me to my room where she moves my hutch in the "closet" and reveals a tiny door.