Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(6)

Ofelia felt reluctant to share her stories with him, but finally she sat up. Under the white sheets her mother’s body looked like a mountain covered in snow, her brother sleeping in its deepest cave. Ofelia put her head on the bump in the blanket, caressing it where her brother was moving, deep under her mother’s skin.

“Brother!” she whispered. “Brother of mine.”

Her mother hadn’t given him a name yet. He would need one soon to get ready for this world.

“Many, many years ago . . . in a sad, faraway land . . .” Ofelia spoke in a soft, low voice, but she was sure he could hear her. “There was an enormous mountain made of black flint . . .”

Behind the mill, in the forest as dark and silent as the night, the creature Ofelia called the Fairy spread her wings and followed the sound of the girl’s voice, the words building a path of bread crumbs through the night.

“And atop that mountain,” Ofelia continued, “a magic rose blossomed every dawn. People said whoever plucked it would become immortal. But no one dared to go near it because its thorns were filled with poison.”

Oh yes, there are many roses like that, the Fairy thought as she flew toward the window behind which the girl was telling her story. When she slipped into the room, her wings fluttering as softly as Ofelia’s voice, she saw them: the girl and her mother, holding each other against the darkness of the night outside. But the darkness inside the house was far more frightening, and the girl knew that it was fed by the man who’d brought them here.

“People talked about all the pain the thorns of the rose could cause,” Ofelia whispered to her unborn brother. “They warned each other that whoever climbed the mountain would die. It was so easy for them to believe in the pain and the thorns. Fear helped them believe that. But none of them dared to hope that in the end the rose would reward them with eternal life. They couldn’t hope—they could not. And so, the rose would wilt away, night after night, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone. . . .”

The Fairy sat on the windowsill to listen. She was glad the girl knew about the thorns, as she and her mother had come to a very dark mountain. The man who ruled this mountain—oh yes, the Fairy knew all about him—was sitting downstairs in his office, the room behind the mill’s wheel, polishing the pocket watch of his father, another father who had died in another war.

“The rose was forgotten and lost,” Ofelia said, pressing her cheek to her mother’s belly. “At the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone until the end of time.”

She didn’t know it, but she was telling her brother about his father.





5


Fathers and Sons


Vidal cleaned his father’s pocket watch every night, the only time when he took off his gloves. The room Vidal had made his office was the one right behind the huge wheel that had once helped grind the miller’s corn. Its massive spokes covered most of the back wall and at times gave him the feeling of living inside the watch, which was strangely comforting. He polished the richly engraved silver casing and brushed the dust off the gearwheels as tenderly as if he were caring for a living thing.

Sometimes the objects we hold dear give away who we are even more than the people we love. The glass of the watch had cracked in the hand of Vidal’s father at the very moment he died, which his son took as proof that things could survive death if only one kept them clean and in perfect order.

His father was a hero. Vidal had grown up with that thought. He had built himself around it. A true man. And that thought brought a memory, almost invariably, of the day when he and his father had visited the cliffs of Villanueva. The rugged seascape on the horizon, the jagged rocks beneath—a hundred-foot drop. His father had gently guided him to the edge and then held him fast. He had grabbed his son when he recoiled, forcing him to look down into the abyss. “Feel that fear?” his father asked. “You must never forget it. That is what you must feel every time you grow weak—when you try to forget that you serve your fatherland and your station in life. When you are faced with death or honor. If you betray your country, your name, or your heritage, it will be as if you take a step forward to take a plunge. The abyss is invisible to you, but it is no less real. Never forget it, my son. . . .”

A knock on the door made the present delete the past. It was a knock so soft that it betrayed who was asking for permission to enter.

Vidal frowned. He hated anything interrupting his nightly ritual. “Come in!” he called, keeping his attention on the shiny workings of the watch.

“Capitán.”

Dr. Ferreira’s steps were as soft and careful as his voice. He stopped a short distance from the table.

“How is she?” Vidal asked.

The wheels of the pocket watch began to move in their perfect rhythm, confirming once again that there was no end to well-kept order. Immortality was clean and precise. For sure it didn’t need a heart. A heartbeat became irregular so easily and at the end it stopped, however carefully one treated it.

“She is very weak,” Dr. Ferreira said.

Yes, soft. That’s what the good doctor was. Soft clothes, soft voice, soft eyes. Vidal was sure, he could have broken him as effortlessly as he could a rabbit’s neck.

“She’ll get as much rest as she needs,” he said. “I’ll sleep down here.”