Cintolo’s creature felt his death like a sharp pain. Its wooden body, aged and weathered by wind and rain and all the miles it had traveled in its search, stiffened with sadness and its feet wouldn’t take another step. Two columns rose from the ferns lining the path it had followed. They wore the sad faces of the king and queen, for whose daughter it had searched in vain for so long. Determined to fulfill its quest, the creature plucked out its right eye and laid it on the forest path. Then it walked stiffly into the ferns and turned to stone next to the king and queen it had failed, its mouth open in a last petrified sigh.
The eye, forever bearing witness to the old sculptor’s skills, lay on the wet ground for countless days and nights. Until one afternoon three black cars came driving through the forest. They stopped under the old trees and a girl climbed out. She walked down the path until she stepped on the eye Cintolo had carved. She picked it up and looked around to see from where it might have come. She saw the three weathered columns, but didn’t recognize the faces they wore. Too many years had passed.
But she did notice one of the columns was missing an eye. So she walked through the ferns until she was standing in front of the column that had once been Cintolo’s wooden faun. The eye from the path fit perfectly into the hole that gaped in the weather-beaten face and at that moment, in a chamber so deep underneath the girl’s feet only the tallest trees could reach it with their roots, the Faun raised his head.
“Finally!” he whispered.
He picked a ruby flower from the royal gardens to lay on Cintolo’s grave and sent one of his fairies up to find the girl.
6
Into the Labyrinth
Ofelia woke to the sound of fluttering wings. A dry, chitinous rustle: angry, brief, then the rattling of something moving in the dark. The candles and the fire had burned down. It was so cold.
“Mother!” Ofelia whispered. “Wake up! There’s something in the room.”
But her mother wouldn’t wake. Dr. Ferreira’s drops had given her a sleep as deep as a well and Ofelia sat up shivering, although she still wore her woolen sweater over her nightgown, listening. . . .
There!
Now it was right above her! Ofelia pushed the blankets aside to switch on the light, but she hastily drew her legs back into the bed when she felt something brush against her.
And then she saw her.
The insect Fairy was sitting atop the footboard, her long antennae quivering, her spindly front legs gesturing, her mouth chirping softly in a language that, Ofelia was sure, came straight out of the stories in her books. She held her breath as the winged creature climbed down the bed frame and scampered over the blanket on her stiff legs. She crossed the vast field of wool to finally stop barely a foot away from Ofelia, who noticed with surprise that all her fear had vanished. Yes, it was gone! All she felt was happiness, as if an old friend had found her in this cold, dark room.
“Hello!” she whispered. “Did you follow me?”
The antennae twitched and the strange clicking sounds her visitor made reminded Ofelia of her father’s sewing machine and of his needle softly tapping against a button he was attaching to a new dress for her doll.
“You are a Fairy, right?”
Her visitor seemed to not be sure.
“Wait!” Ofelia took one of her fairy-tale books from the bedside table and flipped through to find the page that showed the black cut-paper silhouette she’d looked at so often.
“Here!” She turned the open book to her visitor. “See? That’s a Fairy.”
Well. If the girl thought so. Ofelia’s visitor decided to play along. She raised herself to her hind legs and, turning her back on the girl, lost her antennae and made her dry, elongated body resemble the tiny woman in the illustration. In transforming herself, she gave her wings a slightly different shape. She made them resemble leaves. Then she raised her now-human hands and, brushing her pointed ears with her newly grown fingers, compared her silhouette one more time with the illustration. Yes. The metamorphosis had been successful. Actually, this body might prove to be a new favorite, although she’d taken many shapes in her immortal life. Change was in her nature. It was part of her magic and her favorite game.
But now it was time to fulfill the task for which she’d been sent to the mill. She fluttered toward the girl with her new wings and addressed her with vehemence. Come along! she gestured, giving her signal all the urgency her master’s orders demanded. He wasn’t the most patient one.
“You want me to follow you? Outside? Where?”
So many questions. Humans asked them about everything, but they usually weren’t half as good at finding the answers. The Fairy fluttered toward the door. The leaf wings worked really well, but she had her doubts about the body. The insect limbs had been much lighter and faster.
It mattered none. Her master was waiting.
There was still no fear in Ofelia’s heart when she slipped into her shoes and followed the Fairy out of the house into the night. It almost felt as if she’d followed her before, and who wouldn’t trust a Fairy, even when she showed up in the middle of the night? They probably always did. And you had to follow them. That’s what the books said, and didn’t their tales feel so much truer than what adults pretended this world to be about? Only books talked about all the things adults didn’t want you to ask about—Life. Death. Good and Evil. And what else truly mattered in life.
Ofelia was not surprised when the stone arch surged from the darkness.
The Fairy swirled through it. Mercedes was not at Ofelia’s side to stop her, not this time. The labyrinth’s ancient stone walls loomed to her left and right, leading her farther and farther into endless circles, and each time Ofelia hesitated at a corner, the Fairy urged her on. Follow me! Follow me! Ofelia was sure that was what she chirped, fluttering sometimes high above her, sometimes right by her side.
How long had she been walking? Ofelia couldn’t tell. The ancient walls framed the night sky and her shoes were soaked with dew from the moss that carpeted the twisting passages. It all felt like a dream, and there is no time in dreams. Suddenly the walls widened and Ofelia walked into a large courtyard. At the center a huge stone well opened in the ground. There was a staircase leading into it. Ofelia couldn’t tell how many steps there were; it seemed to be infinite—the darkness swallowed them all. A whisper of dank air surged from the well pit and Ofelia again felt the pang of fear, but also the call for adventure.
She followed the Fairy, who was twittering and swirling ahead, down the steps, deeper and deeper underground. The stairs ended at the bottom of the well, but there was no water, just a sculpted monolith similar to the ones she’d seen in the forest. It looked equally ancient, but this one was much taller and surrounded by stone canals carved deep into the floor that formed a labyrinth mirroring the one above. There was a rustle in the shadows behind the monolith, as if something big was moving there, and Ofelia was by now quite frightened but the Fairy was still urging her on. Finally, she followed her down the last few steps and stood at the bottom of the well.
“Hello?” Ofelia called. “Hello!”
She thought she heard the sound of rushing water as her own steps echoed up the well.
“Echo!” she called, while the Fairy was swirling around the column. “Echoooo!” to chase the silence away.