“I will do as you say,” he said, “but if you make a fool of me, and my wife does not find what she has lost, I will have you drowned in the millpond.”
Rocio answered him with a smile.
“I know,” she said. “But we all have to play our parts, don’t we?”
Then she walked back to her hut.
It took two months to build the labyrinth. Ayuso’s workers used only stones from the deserted village, as the witch had directed, and built the walls, the well, and the stairs exactly as the witch had described them.
Alba had to wait seven nights until the moon rose like a silver coin above the finished labyrinth, casting the shadow of the arch the workers had crafted to span the entrance onto the mossy forest floor. They adorned the arch with the horned head of Cernunnos, a pagan god who had once been worshipped in these woods. Rocio, it was said, still prayed to him.
From dusk till dawn that night Alba stayed in the labyrinth, walking its crooked paths, even though her infant son was crying for her milk in her chambers. Ayuso didn’t follow her, afraid the labyrinth wouldn’t reveal the answers his wife so desperately yearned for in his presence. He waited all night in front of the labyrinth and when Alba finally came out, Ayuso saw in her face that she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for.
Every month for the next twelve months, on the night of the full moon, Alba went back into the labyrinth, but all she found between its stone walls was silence, and her sadness grew and grew until one moonless November night, she fell gravely ill. She died before the moon was full again, and one hour after she drew her last breath, Ayuso sent five of his soldiers to the witch’s hut. They dragged Rocio through the woods and into the millpond, although the miller begged them not to curse his mill with such a deed. It took three men to drown her. They left her body drifting between the lily pads for the fish to eat.
Fifteen years later, Ayuso’s son walked into the labyrinth hoping to find his mother there. He was never seen again, and it took another two hundred and twenty-three years until the prophecy of the witch came true and the labyrinth revealed his mother’s true name when she once again walked its ancient corridors as a girl called Ofelia.
10
The Tree
Ofelia had already walked deep into the forest when she heard the horses behind her. But they didn’t head in her direction and soon the murmuring of the trees was louder than the fading hoofbeats. Ofelia read the words from the Faun’s book while she walked. They sounded even more enchanting under the trees—and she read them over and over, although it was not easy to walk holding the open book:
Once upon a time, when the woods were young,
they were home to creatures
who were full of magic and wonder.
Ofelia’s feet followed the rhythm of the words as if they were drawing an invisible path.
The creatures protected one another.
They slept in the shade of a colossal fig tree
that grew on a hill near the mill.
Ofelia looked up from the book and there was the hill. It wasn’t terribly steep, she could climb it with just a few steps, but it would have taken five men to embrace the tree growing on it. The trunk was split, exactly as the book had shown her.
But now the tree is dying.
Its branches are dry,
its trunk old and twisted.
She looked up at the two huge leafless branches growing from the trunk, bent like the horns of the Faun.
There were still more words in the book. Ofelia whispered them as her eyes followed the pale brown ink across the pages.
A monstrous toad has settled in its roots
and won’t let the tree thrive.
You must put the three magic stones
into the Toad’s mouth.
Ofelia opened the pouch the Faun had given her. Three small stones fell into her hand. And the book still held two more lines:
Retrieve the golden key from inside his belly.
Only then will the fig tree flourish again.
From inside his belly . . . Ofelia closed the book and looked at the gaping cleft in the tree. It was very dark inside. She slipped the three stones back into the pouch and took a step toward the tree, when she realized with a start that her new shoes were covered in mud. The heroes in her fairy-tale books never worried about their shoes or their clothes, but Ofelia took off the white apron and her new green dress and hung them over a branch. She could imagine all too well how upset her mother would be if she ruined them. Then she slipped off her shoes and approached the tree. The ground was cold under her bare feet and the wind made her shudder in her thin underdress. The cleft was high enough for her to step through, but the tunnel beyond it was so narrow that Ofelia had to get down on her hands and knees.
Outside the wind was tearing at the ribbons of her new dress.
Beware, it whispered.
Beware, Ofelia, the fluttering ribbons sang.
But Ofelia was already crawling down the tunnel—into the wet wooden intestines of the dying tree. Soon slimy mud covered her hands and knees. It soaked her white underdress and dyed it the colors of the earth. The tree’s roots were all around her, weaving through the wet soil and reaching into the ground like the claws of a huge wooden creature. Woodlice as big as mice crawled up Ofelia’s arms and the mud squelched under her hands as if the ground yearned to devour her.
There seemed to be no end to the tunnel and the maze of roots, but Ofelia wouldn’t turn back. She had to fulfill the Faun’s tasks before the moon was full if she wanted to prove to herself and to him he was right: that she was Moanna, the princess whose father was waiting for her even though Death had made her believe she lost him. For if she was not Moanna, who else would she be? The daughter of a wolf who had stolen her mother’s heart and spelled murder with his eyes. Ofelia stopped for a moment to listen to the sounds of the earth and her own fiercely beating heart. Then she once again sank her hands into the mud and continued to crawl down the endless tunnel.
11
The Creatures of the Forest
It didn’t take Vidal and his soldiers long to find the remains of the campfire that had sent the treacherous smoke into the sky. Branches were still smoldering when he got off his horse and knelt beside it, and he could still feel the heat when he took off his glove to hold his bare hand over the embers.
Yes. They’d been here less than twenty minutes ago.
The rebels must have heard them coming. Of course. Vidal stared at the trees, wishing he could hunt as silently as a wolf. He would have torn them apart by now and licked their blood off the moss that was covered with ash from their fire.
Garces knelt by his capitán’s side. Vidal liked the devotion in his eyes. Garces listened to every word from his lips as devoutly as an altar server read the words from a priest’s lips at Mass.
“A dozen men. Not more.” Vidal had learned to track from his grandfather. His father had only taught him that the worst beasts walk on two legs.
“What do we have here?” He brushed a few wilted leaves aside. A small package was lying between the stones that surrounded the fireplace. They had indeed left in haste. The three glass vials, carefully wrapped in brown paper, looked familiar. Vidal rose to his feet. He held one of the vials up and let the clear liquid catch the sunlight. Antibiotics. That probably meant that at least one of the rebels was wounded. Good.