Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun
Guillermo Del Toro
Dedication
For Alfonso Fuentes and his men, who saved my house, my trees, my donkeys, my memories, and my notebooks from the Woolsey Fire
—C.F.
For K, the solution to all the riddles, the way out of the Labyrinth
—G.D.T.
Prologue
It is said that long, long ago, there lived a princess in an underground realm, where neither lies nor pain exist, who dreamt of the human world. Princess Moanna dreamt of a perfect blue sky and an infinite sea of clouds; she dreamt of the sun and the grass and the taste of rain. . . . So, one day the princess escaped her guards and came to our world. Soon the sun erased all her memories and she forgot who she was or where she came from. She wandered the earth, suffering cold, sickness, and pain. And finally, she died.
Her father, the king, would not give up searching for her. For he knew Moanna’s spirit to be immortal and hoped that it one day would come back to him.
In another body, at another time. Perhaps in another place.
He would wait.
Down to his last breath.
Until the end of time.
1
The Forest and the Fairy
There once was a forest in the north of Spain, so old that it could tell stories long past and forgotten by men. The trees anchored so deeply in the moss-covered soil they laced the bones of the dead with their roots while their branches reached for the stars.
So many things lost, the leaves were murmuring as three black cars came driving down the unpaved road that cut through fern and moss.
But all things lost can be found again, the trees whispered.
It was the year 1944 and the girl sitting in one of the cars, next to her pregnant mother, didn’t understand what the trees whispered. Her name was Ofelia and she knew everything about the pain of loss, although she was only thirteen years old. Her father had died just a year ago and Ofelia missed him so terribly that at times her heart felt like an empty box with nothing but the echo of her pain in it. She often wondered whether her mother felt the same, but she couldn’t find the answer in her pale face.
“As white as snow, as red as blood, as black as coal,” Ofelia’s father used to say when he looked at her mother, his voice soft with tenderness. “You look so much like her, Ofelia.” Lost.
They had been driving for hours, farther and farther away from everything Ofelia knew, deeper and deeper into this never-ending forest, to meet the man her mother had chosen to be Ofelia’s new father. Ofelia called him the Wolf, and she didn’t want to think about him. But even the trees seemed to whisper his name.
The only piece of home Ofelia had been able to take with her were some of her books. She closed her fingers firmly around the one on her lap, caressing the cover. When she opened the book, the white pages were so bright against the shadows that filled the forest and the words they offered granted shelter and comfort. The letters were like footprints in the snow, a wide white landscape untouched by pain, unharmed by memories too dark to keep, too sweet to let go of.
“Why did you bring all these books, Ofelia? We’ll be in the country!” The car ride had paled her mother’s face even more. The car ride and the baby she was carrying. She grabbed the book from Ofelia’s hands and all the comforting words fell silent.
“You are too old for fairy tales, Ofelia! You need to start looking at the world!”
Her mother’s voice was like a broken bell. Ofelia couldn’t remember her ever sounding like that when her father was still alive.
“Oh, we’ll be late!” Her mother sighed, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. “He will not like that.”
He . . .
She moaned and Ofelia leaned forward to grab the driver’s shoulder.
“Stop!” she called. “Stop the car. Don’t you see? My mother is sick.”
The driver throttled the engine with a grunt. Wolves—that’s what they were, these soldiers accompanying them. Man-eating wolves. Her mother said fairy tales didn’t have anything to do with the world, but Ofelia knew better. They had taught her everything about it.
She climbed out of the car while her mother stumbled to the side of the road and vomited into the ferns. They grew as densely between the trees as an ocean of feathery fronds, from which gray-barked trunks emerged like creatures reaching up from a sunken world below.
The two other cars had stopped as well and the forest was swarming with gray uniforms. The trees didn’t like them. Ofelia could sense it. Serrano, the commanding officer, came to check on her mother. He was a tall, bulky man who talked too loudly and wore his uniform like a theater costume. Her mother asked him for water in her broken-bell voice, and Ofelia walked a little way down the unpaved road.
Water, the trees whispered. Earth. Sun.
The fern fronds brushed Ofelia’s dress like green fingers, and she lowered her gaze when she stepped on a stone. It was gray like the soldiers’ uniforms, placed in the middle of the road as if someone had lost it there. Her mother was once again vomiting behind her. Why does it make women sick to bring children into the world?
Ofelia bent down and closed her fingers around the stone. Time had covered it in moss, but when Ofelia brushed it off, she saw it was flat and smooth and that someone had carved an eye on it.