Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun

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Food, medicine, we’ll store it all. Right here.” Vidal pointed at the spot that marked the mill. “We need to force them down from the hills. That way they’ll come to us.” He knew the son would step into the trap. Oh yes, he knew how to do this. The generals shouldn’t have wasted his talents in this forest. He could have done great things. The creature spread its wings. Ofelia followed it with her eyes as it flew away. Her mother was standing just a few steps down the road, Officer Serrano by her side.

Ofelia goes to bed with her mother, but is kept awake by creaking and wind. “Why did you have to get married?” Ofelia asks, and her mother tells her that she was alone for too long. When the baby begins to act up, Carmen asks Ofelia to tell it a story, which she does. Oh, we’ll be late!” Her mother sighed, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. “He will not like that.”The winged creature that had been waiting for Ofelia in the column’s gaping mouth knew all of this. She knew many things, but she was not a Fairy—at least not in the sense we like to think of them. Only her master knew her true name, for in the Magic Kingdom to know a name was to own the being that carried it. One night, while her mother is sleeping, Ofelia dresses the unborn baby growing in her belly. She speaks to her unborn little brother and tells him that he will meet their mother soon, and easily be taken in by her beauty. The flames dancing in the fireplace painted shadows of knifes and rifles onto the whitewashed walls and the faces bending over the map. Mercedes put her tray down and cast an unsuspicious glance at the marked army positions.

She bent her head to make herself small. Most men didn’t want a woman to be tall. Vidal was no exception. Vidal’s eyes were narrow with suspicion. He is always suspicious, Mercedes, she thought, calming her racing heart. He liked to watch his gaze spread fear on a face, but she’d played this game often enough to not give herself away. Just a mouse. Invisible. She’d be done for if he ever came to believe that she was a cat or a vixen. Then one day Moanna was gone. And Cintolo remembered how often she’d asked him about the sun and the moon and whether he knew what the trees, whose roots laced the ceiling of her bedroom, looked like above the ground. This book is not for the faint of heart or weak in spirit. It’s not for skeptics who don’t believe in fairy tales and the powerful forces of good. It’s only for brave and intrepid souls like you, who will stare down evil in all its forms. Ofelia looked down. Her damp shoes were covered with mud, but she still felt the smile on her lips.I do,” Mercedes replied. “You’ll see, you will love your little brother. Very much. You won’t be able to help it.” Her mother’s hand felt so hot when Ofelia covered it with her own. Yes, she could feel her brother too. And no, he wouldn’t go away. He wanted to come out. The driver throttled the engine with a grunt. Wolves—that’s what they were, these soldiers accompanying them. Man-eating wolves. Her mother said fairy tales didn’t have anything to do with the world, but Ofelia knew better. They had taught her everything about it.

I’ll be the judge of that.” Although Vidal enjoyed fear in a man’s face, it made him angry at the same time. It’s just a pile of old stones,” Mercedes said. “Very old. Older than the mill. These walls have been here forever—long before the mill was built. You shouldn’t come in here. You could get lost. It has happened before. I’ll tell you the story one day if you want to hear it.”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. Tell it to find her, Your Horned Highness,” the sculptor said. “I promise it will neither rest nor die before he does.”

The novel diverges from the movie in interesting and satisfying ways. While the film was ambiguous as to whether Ofelia’s fairy tale life was real, leaving the barrier between the real world and the world of myths and legends up to the interpretation of the viewer, the book establishes early on that there is no such ambiguity. The book tells us quite clearly that fairy tales and magic are more deeply true than the limited reality that most humans experience in their brief lives. The Faun smiled, for he noticed another rare quality in the old man’s face: faith. Faith in his art and in what it could do. And for the first time in many years the Faun dared to hope again. My young nurse.” She pushed her hand under Ofelia’s arm with a tired but happy smile. “Close the doors and turn off the light, cariño.”

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When Vidal discovers that Dr. Ferreiro has been working for the rebels, he is angered and suggests that the doctor ought to have obeyed him unquestioningly. The doctor responds with this line, suggesting that blind obedience is not something that everyone has an easy time doing, insulting the captain's fascist politics. Ofelia felt so safe in her embrace. For the first time since . . . since when? Since her father died. Since her mother met the Wolf.