The Keep

31. The Gift to See

Mafalda's lip tightened as her anger rose. She stepped closer to Hazel as she hissed her words between the whiteness of her lips, "I hope with every breath I take that you are not 'the child of everlasting summer'. Because if you are, I will have no one but myself to blame, for letting you live this long."

There was a reason behind Mafalda's utter hatred towards Hazel that has led to her childhood attempt of murder. As a young girl, Mafalda has had a gift of a Seer. And like her father's gift, Mafalda's too, was more of a curse.

Since she was very young, Mafalda often dreamed of horrifying things so vividly, that it felt like they were real to her. And then, most of them came true. Little Mafalda would only laughed as her dreams turned to other's very real misfortunes, until one dream kept coming back to her.

On the very night Mafalda was introduced to Hazel, she dreamed about a mountain of bloody bodies of her family. Mafalda found herself among them, stuck under the weight of other bodies while she was gasping for her last breaths. 

Standing before the piling bodies was a little girl. Her hands and gown were drenched in blood, and her eyes were gleaming like a feral thing. Little Mafalda thought that Hazel was that blood-drenched little girl.

When Mafalda sought comfort from her drunken father, she was only met by Rodric's belief of Zebina's prophecy. Rodric told his daughter of 'the child of everlasting summer', who would bring the end of a legacy that will end a dynasty, who would kill them all. 

And when Mafalda shared about how she feared that the little girl was Hazel, her newly-taken ten years old cousin, Rodric told her that Hazel was indeed born in a year with particularly long summer, in Indonesia, where the summer never ends. To Rodric's opinion, Hazel may as well be 'the child of everlasting summer' spoken within the prophecy.

The nightmare returned to little Mafalda every night, and it grew more and more vivid and clear each time. The bloody little girl turned more and more vividly into Hazel.

The returning dreams led Mafalda to believe that Hazel was really going to kill all of her family. And later, her growing fear of Hazel's future doing that she Saw in her dreams led Mafalda to drown Hazel into the Black Lake.

"She did it to protect her family from what she feared the most," Hazel remembered how Tatiana consoled her then.

Because of the incident, Mafalda was made to take another medication aside from the Lung-Grazer Potion since, 'to calm her wild imagination', as Tatiana explained. 

Little Mafala's dreams about the bloody little girl gradually disappeared, as well as another returning dreams and nightmares. Soon enough, none of her dreams turned into reality. It meant that Mafalda had lost her gift to See.

As if to pour gasoline to Mafalda's hatred toward Hazel, two years into her marriage, Mafalda found out that she was unable to bear children. The Healers told that her infertility was one of the side-effects of her childhood nightmare tincture. Not long after, Mafalda was divorced.

There was no redeeming for Hazel in Mafalda's eyes. Not only that Hazel has taken her gift to See, Hazel had also taken away her marriage and her chance to be a mother.

"Ada," Violet, Mafalda's mother, called to warn her angry daughter.

"Not fighting over the same old fight, are we, children?" Tatiana walked in. "I surely hope that you two can grow something resembling a decency after two long decades," she sighed a long, tired sigh.

Tatiana picked up the Evening Prophet and glanced the picture of the gossip article. "Hazel?" she asked her grand-daughter.

"It's nothing but empty gossip," Hazel answered shortly.