The Journal of Hortensia Lynch del Solar

We travelled for nearly a month, across the ocean to Nightingale City, through their Portals and across the Realms, to stop here in the swamp called Magwytch Town. Our bed creaks, but by lantern light I can write without waking my sleeping husband. The new house is quite a bit larger than our home in Santiago. One bedroom is furnished, the other, bare. Nicolás tells me it is for us to decorate as we like, that he’ll make me a studio for my painting, but I see how it was papered, in soft blue and yellow. From the window, I can see the broken bassinet, stuffed behind the neighbour’s house, but I do not tell him that I know how the Company dressed a nursery for our darling Nico. He is so happy here. So happy to be of import to these strangers. I do not wish to take that from him.

I do not know if I will ever grow accustomed to the wet marshland beneath my shoes. Nicolás insists on having more paving stones brought for the garden, but even that will not diminish the smell of moss and mud and rot. ‘Think of the flowers it will nourish in the spring’, he says. I think of Nico and how those flowers would wreath his tiny head as he played in the yard. In those moments, I see how this place, even with its dark skies and damp houses, could be a home. If only his little feet ran through these corridors. If only he were holding my skirts in the town square. Perhaps then, the other women would not seem to me like a herd of vigilant llamas, guarding their young from the starving culpeo in their midst. I tried to paint today. A portrait of you, <i>mijito</>, smiling as I remember. Nicolás squinted at it, as if looking into the sun, and said something I could not understand. That you will love it when you’re older.

Nicolás was made mayor today. The town held a party in his honour, with food and music and dancing. He smiled and laughed the night away. All the while I followed him like a waiting banshee. These people love him, and they barely look at me. I see how they avert their eyes when I pass. And yet, I cannot blame them. When I look in the mirror, I do not recognise the withered creature staring back. Nicolás tells me to spend more time in the garden, to let the sun warm me. I tell him there is no sun here, and he sits me outside as he leaves. When I paint the landscape, it is in grey and green and black. No matter how long I wait, the flowers of spring never bloom. I think of how Nicolás promised those flowers. How he promised my Nico’s health. How he took him from my arms as I slept. When he tries to hold me in the night, it stings like the touch of a stranger. Oh, <i>mijito</>… What I would not give to be back in Santiago, breathing the fresh mountain air with you in my arms, but those days are far behind us.

Dear Nicolás, I pray that I am gone before you find this. You will want to stop me, to tell me all the ways this mire will soon be made home, but we both know when you are lying. Magwytch has always been <i>your</> dream. While you bask in your successes, I am entombed, a brick each day, that I might rot along with all the painful memories you ignore. Our life <i>was</> beautiful, but it was stolen, and in every false smile I see only the gaping emptiness where our son should be. You would act as though we never lost him, when you speak of him at all, holding on to those gentle moments. As if denial could return us to who we were before he was sick. But I see that night each time I close my eyes. I feel the weight of his body in my arms even now. There is only one man alive who was there to share that nightmare, yet he would deny his knowledge, even as his wife begs to know that the ache is not hers alone to bear. I must let it go, even if you cannot follow. Hortensia