Castillano jolted awake and looked out. The stars told him sunrise was still hours away. He knew every noise in that big stark house, and he'd be damned if there wasn't somebody at the main hall. He jumped out of bed and wore his trousers, sharpening his ear. No more footsteps or moves. He stepped out of the room anyway. The soldier slept sprawled in the armchair, so deeply he didn't even snore that night. Castillano took the pistol from his belt and tiptoed toward the main hall, scanning the shadows at the end of the corridor. A muffled sound stopped him two steps away from the door. What the hell?
He stuck to the wall, his finger on the trigger of the pistol up by his face, and waited. The same shuffle again. Like a suffocated voice. If he found one of the maids having fun there, the racket would wake the whole city up.
He risked a glance past the door. The main hall was empty. He tightened his grip on the pistol butt and looked out again. His eyes had already adjusted to the shadows, and he got a glimpse of a bulk on the first steps of the stairs. He strode out of the corridor, aiming his pistol at the bulk, and the hand holding the gun dropped limp by his leg.
Marina was there, curling up on the third step, her arms around the knees that hid her face, her shoulders trembling.
Castillano sighed and settled the pistol on the corner table, by a vase full of fresh jasmines. He sat down by Marina with a sad grimace. The girl struggled to hold back her tears. He ran his hands through his loose hair, wondering what to do. And what could he do to comfort the child, who wept over the death of the man he'd seen murder his father? But he didn't want anybody else to hear her and come around, to found them there, hardly dressed in the middle of the night.
He rested a hand on her head and stroked her raven hair, still only a couple of inches long. Marina shivered from head to toes and covered her mouth to muffle a groan. She leaned to rest against his side. Castillano looked up, as if asking for Heaven's assistance. Why was it that she always ended up in his arms because he betrayed everything he believed in? Was it his fate, comforting her at the expense of each and every one of his principles?
"Go to sleep, Velazquez," he grunted. "Before you wake the whole house up."
"Are you deaf?" she replied, her face against his shirt. "Can't you hear them fight?" She covered her ears, shivering again. "No truce, no pause! How can you sleep like this?"
"Nobody's fighting, Velazquez, or now you believe in scary tales?"
Marina shifted away from him, turning on the step to turn her back on him. She grabbed the handrail, her face against the thin carved bars.
"He's so dead," he heard her mutter.
"You finally find out," he grumbled, annoyed.
"No, no, you don't get it. I've felt my father, countless times. His soul lives in the Phantom and he laughs in the waves, so alive. But here... Here..." A groan broke her voice. "Here he's dead, dead, dead..." She let go of the handrail to press her chest with both hands, desperate. "Here's only cold, and pain, and death!"
"Enough already, Velazquez. Both of them are as dead now as they've been for the last twelve years."
Marina turned to him as if he'd slapped her, a shocked grimace on her face. He met her eyes, not hiding his own distress. In the quiet shadows looming around them, she looked at him for a long moment, still shaken, breathing heavily. She looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. And maybe she was.
Castillano moved away from her until his back hit the wall when she raised her hand to touch him. Tears overflowed her black eyes again and her fingers hesitated before resting on his cheek. Castillano tried to steal his face away, but she wouldn't let him, and rested her other hand on his other cheek. She made him face her gently.
"Say you're sorry and I'm punching you in the face," he snarled, his face in her hands.
It was his turn to shiver, when he had a glimpse of the sweet smile pursing Marina's lips in the dark hall. She held his eyes what felt like forever, and then leaned in to rest her forehead against his. Castillano didn't dare to move.
She didn't move either, breathing deep to calm down, holding in her hands that proud hot head of the one who always ended up losing his heart in order to rescue her from the abyss. When she was sure she wouldn't cry again if she spoke, she straightened up and brushed the messed fair hair off his face and behind his ear. Then she kissed his temple.
"God bless you, Hernan Castillano," she murmured.
Castillano kept his head down when she stood up and her light footsteps climbed the stairs. A moment later he heard her door click open and closed. He let out a shaky sigh, rubbed his face and forced himself back to his room. He paused by the door to look down at the pistol in his hand and the soldier, sound asleep. He dropped the gun on the man's lap and walked into his room.
Next morning, Marina got up early and went to the kitchen, to have a hot tea before the sun was high.
Alma noticed she looked pale and lost in thought. "Did you sleep fine, Marina?" she asked.
The girl wasn't able to smile as she shook her head. "I hear them too, Alma."
The housekeeper pressed her shoulder with an understanding grimace.
Castillano didn't look any better. Dolores saw their grave faces and wondered what she could do to cheer the mood up a little, because that breakfast felt like a funeral.
Alma told her and Marina to leave Castillano alone. It wasn't the first time over the last weeks that he was in that gloomy mood. She took Dolores and Marina to what used to be the family parlor, under the upper-floor gallery, where they still kept Doña Isabel's piano.
Marina had learned music years ago, when her mother lost sleep, looking for activities to distract her from her dreams of the deep. Alma offered an embroidery with an easy design to Dolores, fetched her own, and they sat down to listen to Marina try to find her old acquaintance with the keys and the score. Soon her fingers had loosened enough to play a short piece without sounding like a drunk donkey pounding the keys.
She played the whole morning, letting music wash away the shadows and the sorrows of the night.
Castillano stayed out of sight. He heard the melodious sound of the piano on his way to the library and paused. A maid was bringing tea to the parlor, and when she opened the door, he spotted Alma and Dolores embroidering while Marina played. He lowered his head and resumed his way to the library, where he stayed until noon.
Like echoing the bleak mood looming over the house, clouds covered the sky, dark and menacing. Soon after lunch, Alma and the maids had to go all over the house, lighting lamps and lanterns. The wind blew hard from the sea and it soon made the windows clatter. Rain came in the early nightfall, with a hellish cohort of lightning and thunder that shook the ground.
Marina kept growing upset, and she excused herself from dinner. She went to her room before seeing Castillano again since breakfast.