Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(21)

The miller’s heart filled with fear as cold as the broken ice and he nearly stumbled over his own feet as he backed away from the pond. He had witnessed the drowning of Rocio eight years ago. He had tried to pull her lifeless body to the shore after the nobleman’s soldiers had left, but the vines that grew as densely in the pond as a waterman’s green hair had kept the woman’s body firmly in their grip. When the miller had finally rowed his boat out to get her, the body had already sunk to the bottom of the pond. What if she is still there? he asked himself. What if Rocio was coming to take revenge on him because he hadn’t saved her from her murderers even though he’d known her since childhood and she’d once healed his wife of a terrible fever?

The miller stepped closer to the water to at least get a glimpse of the creature whose footprints, blackened by the cursed flour, looked so human. Be careful, Javier! the trees whispered with their barren branches. What’s in there was bred by murder and cruelty. The sins of men are not forgotten. They bring forth poisonous fruit.

But men don’t hear what the trees say. They have forgotten how to listen to the wild things, and the miller took another step toward the pond. Something moved under the ice. It was as silvery as the moon Rocio used to dance beneath.

The face emerging from the water appeared female, and was so beautiful the miller took another step forward. The eyes of the creature resembled the golden eyes of a toad and the hands reaching out for him had webs between each finger. The miller didn’t care. He yearned for the touch of those hands more than he’d ever yearned for his wife’s embrace, more than he’d ever yearned for anything. He waded into the water and embraced the shimmering body even though it felt like ice in his arms. The creature’s lips were covered with black flour and the miller felt his heart become as silvery and cold as hers when he kissed them, but he couldn’t let go and they both sank into the pond, united in a fierce embrace.

When her husband did not return late in the day, the miller’s wife went looking for him. She followed two sets of footsteps, one of them her husband’s, into the woods and to the pond, where she called his name over the dark water. When there was no response she ran to the village where her parents lived and yelled across the marketplace that the witch in the pond had devoured her husband.

Soon an angry crowd headed for the pond with nets, pitchforks, and clubs. They stopped at the shore where the miller’s tracks disappeared into the water. Something was shimmering in the depths of the pond like sunken silver treasure, and the villagers forgot about the tears of the miller’s wife. All they could think of was the silver and, when their nets couldn’t bring it up, they set fire to their clubs and to every branch they could find on the frozen ground, setting them adrift on the pond until it was covered with flames and the water turned into white smoke.

The villagers kept the fire going until they’d chopped and burned all the surrounding trees, and all that was left of the pond were dead fish and pebbles covered in soot. The lump of silver lying among them resembled two lovers melted into one.

The villagers backed away and the miller’s wife screamed and fell on her knees as she recognized her husband’s features in one of the faces melted together in a kiss. No one dared touch the silver, and the wife went back to the village with the others never to return.

From then on the mill stood deserted, as what use is a mill without a pond? Then, after almost ninety years, a man moved in, who, as rumors said, had once been a famous watchmaker in the great and faraway city of Madrid. His dogs chased every man, woman, and child who came near the mill. Some even claimed he was guarded by a pack of man-eating wolves. A rabbit poacher once managed to peek through the windows without being torn to pieces and, while selling his poached rabbits to a butcher, reported that the mill’s new owner had brought the silver up from the dead pond and was melting it down to make watches.





14


Keep the Key


The heart of the labyrinth still looked the same, a long-forgotten place at the bottom of the world. But Ofelia felt more hesitant to climb down the stairs to the column this time. It is often easier to find something out than to face what you’ve found.

The walls along the steps were covered with niches. Ofelia hadn’t noticed them during her first visit. They looked like votive sites awaiting offerings for a forgotten god, or the bricked-in windows of a sunken tower. Everything in the labyrinth spoke of forgotten things . . . though maybe they weren’t forgotten. Maybe they were being kept safe.

The Fairy was clearly thrilled to be back. She swirled and fluttered around like someone happy to be home. While they were waiting for the Faun Ofelia took a closer look at the column. A girl holding a baby was carved into the stone. She had no face, time had wiped it away, but the figure standing behind her, his clawed hand on the girl’s shoulder, was clearly the Faun, protecting her, holding her—or holding her down.

Ofelia was just touching the weathered face of the baby when the Faun appeared from the shadows. He looked different. Younger. Stronger. More dangerous.

“I got the key,” Ofelia said proudly, holding it up.

But the Faun just nodded. Ofelia had expected a bit more than that. After all she’d faced a giant toad and saved the fig tree, not to speak of offending her mother. The Faun, though, seemed far more excited about what he was eating. Ofelia couldn’t quite make out what it was, only that it was bloody and raw, maybe a dead bird or a rodent.