The goblin agreed. He put on the suit—green, red, yellow, black—and for one night, he walked the streets of Madrid as a harlequin. He danced. He mimed. He juggled. But he did not laugh. And in the morning, he found that the suit had sewn itself to his skin. He tore at the fabric. He screamed. The diamonds burned.
“Ah,” he said. “The singer. I have heard you. You sang at the Feria de Abril last year—‘La Nana del Caballo.’ Your voice made a man in the fourth row weep. But that was sorrow, little bird. Sorrow I can use. What can you do against me?”
Mateo didn’t look up. “Who?”
Mateo stood. For the first time in seven years, he smiled. “I will wear the old suit. The one El Duende stole from my grandfather. It is still sewn to him, but I am the tailor. I can unstitch it. One thread at a time.”
“El Duende.”
“Thank you,” El Duende whispered. And then he crumbled into dust. They say that on the first night of spring in Seville, if you walk down the Calle de los Suspiros, you might see a procession of figures in diamond suits. They do not speak. They do not dance. They simply walk, hand in hand, and sometimes—just sometimes—one of them will laugh. It is a small laugh, a fragile one, like a glass bell ringing underwater.
“Don Mateo,” she said, “I saw him tonight. In the plaza . He was dancing. Not flamenco—something wrong. He wore your grandfather’s suit. And when he danced, the people laughed. But it wasn’t real laughter. It was carcajadas —hollow, ugly, like breaking glass. And after, they couldn’t remember why they were happy.”
El Duende was waiting in the courtyard. He wore Cristóbal’s suit, but it was now black as tar, the diamonds oozing like wounds. His face was half-laugh, half-scream. The silver threads had all but dissolved. One more laugh, and he would be free.