The boy stumbled through the door, slamming it behind him, and managed to bar it with a thick branch. Then he ran into the forest, shaking with both terror and relief. Serafín didn’t know where he was going. He only knew he had to get away and somehow back to his village and his family.
By the time the boy ran past the mill, where years ago a nobleman’s soldiers had drowned a witch, the key he still clutched in his hand felt like a curse. What if it could draw its owner to him? Serafín didn’t notice the huge toad watching him when he hurled the key into the pond, nor that it had the eyes of a man. Neither did the boy see the toad swallow the key with its wart-covered lips. (That is another story.)
Serafiín Avendaño escaped that day and, later on, he became an artist who throughout the rest of his life painted images of great beauty to light up the darkness he’d seen as a child.
39
The Return of the Princess
Mercedes had never gone all the way into the labyrinth. She’d always feared what she would find and she had been right. She knew it when she saw Ofelia lying by the side of the well.
Mercedes handed Pedro the baby. She would have to forget the baby’s father or she wouldn’t be able to love the child, and love was what they all needed so desperately. It felt strange that another woman had passed two children into her care. Mercedes prayed she would be able to keep at least her son safe. She for sure had failed her daughter.
When she knelt by Ofelia’s side, the pain tearing at her heart was as sharp as if the girl truly were her child. Ofelia was dying. She didn’t even have the strength to turn her head to Mercedes, her fading eyes staring blindly at the blood dripping from her hand into the well.
The blood reddened the rainwater at the bottom of the well. The rain had filled the patterns of the labyrinth surrounding the column and the reflection of the moon floated in the shallow water like a ball of silver, the kind of ball fairy-tale princesses lose in a well. The edges of this one, though, were dyed red with Ofelia’s blood. Some drops had found their way onto the weathered stone of the column, and crimson flowers were growing from the chiseled image of the girl holding the baby.
Tears running down her face, Mercedes began to hum the lullaby she’d once sung to Ofelia. Softening the girl’s laborious breathing, the tune filled the night with memories of innocence, of hope and happiness, and the full moon covered Ofelia with a blanket of silver. She felt its light cool her feverish skin and her aching heart.
Such brilliant light.
“Arise, my daughter,” a voice commanded.
Mercedes didn’t hear the voice. But Ofelia did.
The moonlight turned into liquid gold, enveloping and caressing her.
It was so easy to rise to her feet. Her limbs, so heavy with Death a moment before, suddenly weighed nothing, and she found herself wearing a coat in lavish crimson and gold. It was sewn from the most precious red silk, as red as blood. And the golden thread pattern on it held fast many precious stones: rubies, emeralds, and opals. Her shoes were red too, and they fit her feet perfectly.
Gone was the aching, gone was the pain, and when she looked around, she saw she was standing in a hall so huge the ceiling seemed almost as far away as the sky. On one wall was a stained-glass window, as round as the full moon, breaking the light into every color of the rainbow, and in front of the window were three magnificent thrones rising high above the golden floor on pillars sculpted like the slender trunks of birch trees.
Ofelia’s lips formed a long-lost smile. The woman sitting on the left throne looked very familiar.
“Mother!” she exclaimed. Her tongue had so yearned to speak that word again.
The woman on the throne was holding a baby. Her brother?
“Ofelia.” The crowned man on the center throne was calling her.
He was wearing a robe that resembled royal robes from her fairy-tale books, but his face was one Ofelia knew—a face that used to lean patiently over a piece of fabric.
“Father . . . Oh, Father . . .”
“You have sacrificed your own blood rather than the blood of an innocent,” he said with the soft voice Ofelia remembered singing her to sleep before the world became dark. “That was the final task and the most important one.” He looked over to his wife.
The mother-queen looked so young and happy. The Fairies were fluttering around her—all three of them, alive!—and from behind the queen’s throne stepped the Faun, his body as golden as the walls of the hall. He spread his arms with a welcoming smile as the Fairies swarmed around Ofelia, chattering with excitement.
“And you chose well, Your Highness!” their master exclaimed, bowing his head so deeply his horns almost touched the floor.
“Come here, my daughter!” the queen called, gesturing to the third throne. “Sit by our side. Take your rightful place. Your father has been waiting for you for so long.”
In the galleries above them, people rose to their feet. Through their applause, though, Ofelia could still hear Mercedes crying while the blood of the dying girl in her arms was dripping down into the well. She recognized the lullaby Mercedes hummed.
And then . . .
Ofelia smiled—oh so faintly—and then could hear no more.
And Mercedes bent over the dead girl and sobbed until the dark hair was wet with her tears.
Epilogue
Little Traces
Soon after our story ended, the woods were vacant again. A few years passed and the moss and the earth reclaimed what was left of the mill.
History forgot Vidal, but it also forgot Mercedes, Pedro, Dr. Ferreira, and all the others who sacrificed their own happiness and sometimes their lives to fight fascism. Spain stayed under the regime of Franco for decades and the allies did betray the rebels because they didn’t consider them useful allies against their new enemy, the Soviet Union.
As for Ofelia, the morning after she died a small pale flower sprouted on the branch of the old fig tree she had freed from the Toad. It grew in the exact spot where Ofelia had hung her new clothes to keep them safe while she fulfilled the Faun’s first task. The petals of the flower were as white as the apron her mother had made for her and at the center of the flower a yellow sun full of pollen and life emerged.
A few years later a poacher came past the burned-down mill and the labyrinth. He couldn’t resist stepping through the stone arch and lost himself in the ancient corridors until he was worried he’d never find his way out. But finally the labyrinth led him back to the arch and he felt so tired that he lay down under the fig tree, which by now was in full bloom and festooned with flowers and leaves.
The poacher fell asleep in the gentle shade and in his dreams he heard a story—about a princess birthed by the moon but in love with the sun. He returned to his village and told everyone who listened that the ancient tree had whispered him a story and that it ended in this manner:
And it is said, that the princess Moanna returned to her father’s kingdom, and reigned there with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. That she was loved by her people and left behind small traces of her time on earth visible only to those who know where to look.
It’s always just a few who know where to look and how to listen, that is true. But for the best stories, a few are just enough.