Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(2)

A human eye.

Ofelia looked around.

All she could see were three withered stone columns, almost invisible among the high ferns. The gray rock from which they were carved was covered with strange concentric patterns and the central column had an ancient corroded stone face gazing out into the forest. Ofelia couldn’t resist. She stepped off the road and walked toward it, although her shoes were wet with dew after just a few steps and thistles clung to her dress.

The face was missing an eye. Just like a puzzle missing a piece—waiting to be solved.

Ofelia gripped the eye-stone and stepped closer.

Underneath the nose chiseled with straight lines into the gray surface, a gaping mouth showed withered teeth. Ofelia stumbled back, when between them a winged body as thin as a twig stirred, pointing its long, quivering tentacles at her. Insect legs emerged from the mouth and the creature, bigger than Ofelia’s hand, hastily scuttled up the column. Once it reached the top, it raised its spindly front legs and started gesturing at her. It made Ofelia smile. It seemed like such a long time since she’d last smiled. Her lips weren’t used to it anymore.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The creature waved its front legs once more and uttered a few melodic clicking sounds. Maybe it was a cricket. Did crickets look like this? Or was it a dragonfly? Ofelia wasn’t sure. She had been raised in a city, between walls built from stones that had neither eyes nor faces. Nor gaping mouths.

“Ofelia!”

The creature spread its wings. Ofelia followed it with her eyes as it flew away. Her mother was standing just a few steps down the road, Officer Serrano by her side.

“Look at your shoes!” her mother chided with that soft resignation her voice held so often now.

Ofelia looked down. Her damp shoes were covered with mud, but she still felt the smile on her lips.

“I think I saw a Fairy!” she said. Yes. That’s what the creature was. Ofelia was sure.

But her mother wouldn’t listen. Her name was Carmen Cardoso, she was thirty-two years old and already a widow and she didn’t remember how it felt to look at anything without despising it, without being afraid of it. All she saw was a world that took what she loved and ground it to dust between its teeth. So as Carmen Cardoso loved her daughter, loved her very much, she had married again. This world was ruled by men—her child didn’t understand that yet—and only a man would be able to keep them both safe. Ofelia’s mother didn’t know it, but she also believed in a fairy tale. Carmen Cardoso believed the most dangerous tale of all: the one of the prince who would save her.

The winged creature that had been waiting for Ofelia in the column’s gaping mouth knew all of this. She knew many things, but she was not a Fairy—at least not in the sense we like to think of them. Only her master knew her true name, for in the Magic Kingdom to know a name was to own the being that carried it.

From the branch of a fir tree, she watched Ofelia and her mother get back into the car to continue their journey. She’d waited for this girl for a long time: this girl who had lost so much and would have to lose so much more to find what was rightfully hers. It wouldn’t be easy to help her, but that was the task her master had given her, and he didn’t take it lightly when his orders weren’t followed. Oh no, he didn’t.

Deeper and deeper into the forest the cars drove, with the girl and the mother and the unborn child. And the creature Ofelia had named a Fairy spread her insect wings, folded her six spindly legs, and followed the caravan.





2


All the Shapes Evil Takes


Evil seldom takes shape immediately. It is often little more than a whisper at first. A glance. A betrayal. But then it grows and takes root, still invisible, unnoticed. Only fairy tales give evil a proper shape. The big bad wolves, the evil kings, the demons, and devils . . .

Ofelia knew that the man she would soon have to call “Father” was evil. He had the smile of the cyclops Ojancanu and the cruelty of the monsters Cuegle and Nuberu nesting in his dark eyes, creatures she had met in her fairy-tale books. But her mother didn’t see his true shape. People often grow blind when they get older and maybe Carmen Cardoso didn’t notice the wolfish smile because Capitán Vidal was handsome and always impeccably dressed in his gala uniform, boots, and gloves. Because she wished so badly for protection, maybe her mother mistook his bloodlust for power and his brutality for strength.

Capitán Vidal looked at his pocket watch. The glass face was marred by a crack, but the hands underneath still told the time and they indicated that the caravan was late.

“Fifteen minutes,” muttered Vidal, who, like all monsters—like Death—was always punctual.

Yes, they were late, just as Carmen had feared, when they finally arrived at the old mill Vidal had chosen to serve as his headquarters. Vidal hated the forest. He hated everything that didn’t keep a proper order, and the trees were far too willing to hide the men he had come here to hunt. They fought the very darkness Vidal served and admired, and he had come to the old forest to break them. Oh yes, Ofelia’s new father loved to break the bones of all those he considered weak, to spill their blood, and give new order to their messy, miserable world.

He greeted the caravan. Smiling.

But Ofelia saw the contempt in his eyes as he welcomed them in the dusty yard where once upon a time, peasants of the surrounding villages had delivered their grain to the miller. Her mother, though, smiled at him and allowed the Wolf to touch her belly swollen with his child. She even gave in when he told her to sit in a wheelchair like a broken doll. Ofelia watched it all from the backseat of the car, despising the prospect of offering the Wolf her hand as her mother had told her to. But finally she climbed out, to not leave her mother alone with him, pressing her books against her chest like a shield made from paper and words.