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8

A Princess

Ofelia didn’t tell her mother about the labyrinth or the Faun. She’d felt so close to her before the Fairy came to get her. But the Faun’s words echoed in her mind when she crawled back into the warm bed and Ofelia lay in the dark looking at her mother’s face wondering whether she maybe wasn’t her daughter.

The crescent moon. Mother.

She felt very guilty when the pale morning sun shone through the dusty windows and her mother smiled at her and kissed her forehead, as if she wished to kiss those thoughts away.

Don’t betray her! Ofelia told herself while Mercedes and another maid filled the tub in the adjoining bathroom with steaming water. She is so lonely! As lonely as I am. . . . The tub looked as if someone had brought it from a much grander home in the city. Many such houses had been destroyed in the war that had also killed her father, and Ofelia had often played in the ruins with her friends, pretending they were the ghosts of the children who once lived in the deserted rooms.

“That bath is not for me. It’s for you, Ofelia! Get up!” Her mother smiled at her, but Ofelia knew the smile was meant for the Wolf. She wanted her daughter clean and dressed up for him, her hair combed, her shoes polished. Her mother’s eyes glazed and her pale cheeks glowed when he was near, although he barely paid attention to her.

Ofelia longed to tell Mercedes about the Faun, maybe because she’d warned her about the labyrinth or because Mercedes had secrets of her own. There was a knowledge of the world in Mercedes’s eyes that Ofelia didn’t find in her mother’s.

“Ofelia!”

Her mother looked like a bride this morning in her white dress. She sat once more in the wheelchair, as if the Wolf had stolen her feet. He had crippled her. She used to dance in the kitchen while she was cooking. Ofelia’s father had always loved that. Ofelia had climbed on his lap and they’d watched her together.

“Your father is giving a dinner party tonight. Look what I made for you!” The dress her mother held up was as green as the forest.

“Do you like it?” She caressed the silky fabric. “What I would have given to have a dress as fine as this when I was your age! I also made a white apron for it. And look at these shoes!” They were as black and shiny as the soldiers’ boots. They didn’t belong in the forest and neither did the dress, although it was green.

“Do you like them?” Her mother’s eyes were wide with excitement. She looked as eager to please as a scolded little girl. Ofelia felt sorry for her and embarrassed.

“Yes, Mamá,” she murmured. “Yes. They are very pretty.” Her mother’s eyes grew wary. Help me, they pleaded. Help me to please him. It made Ofelia feel so cold. As if she was back in the labyrinth, the shadows of its walls darkening her heart.

“Go on now.” Her mother lowered her glance, her eyelids heavy with disappointment. “Take your bath before it gets cold.” All those stitches . . .

Carmen had spent so many hours sewing that dress, she didn’t want to see the truth in her daughter’s eyes: that she hadn’t made the dress for Ofelia but for the man she told her daughter to call “Father” even though a dead man owned that title.

We all create our own fairy tales. The dress will make him love my daughter, that’s the tale Carmen Cardoso told herself, although her heart knew Vidal only cared for the unborn child he had fathered. It is a terrible sin to betray one’s child for a new love and Ofelia’s mother’s fingers were trembling as she opened the buttons of the dress, still smiling, pretending life and love were what she wanted them to be.

The bathroom was filled with white veils of steam. Ofelia felt it warm and wet on her skin when she closed the door behind her. The tub looked like an inviting white porcelain boat ready to leave for the moon, but the hot bath was not the reason why Ofelia was eager to finally be alone.

She’d hidden the Faun’s book and the little pouch behind the bathroom radiator last night, afraid her mother would find them. It was her secret, and apart from her mother’s dislike for books, she was worried the Faun’s gift might lose its magic if anyone else saw or touched it.

She could barely hold the heavy book on her lap when she sat down on the edge of the bathtub. Its leather binding felt like weathered tree bark and the pages were still empty, but she somehow knew that would change. All the truly important things hide from view. Ofelia was still young enough to know that.

And indeed, one of the blank pages began to bleed brown and pale green ink the moment Ofelia touched it. An illustration of a toad emerged on the page on the right, then of a hand and of a labyrinth. Flowers began to cover the edge of the page and at its center the image of a tree took shape, old and crooked, its leafless branches bent like horns, its trunk split and hollow.

A girl was kneeling inside and peering out at Ofelia. Her feet were bare but she was wearing a green dress and a white apron just like those Ofelia’s mother had made. Once the image on the right-hand page was finished, the left-hand page began to fill with sepia brown letters, as old-fashioned as if an invisible illuminator were writing them with a brush bound from the hairs of a marten’s tail. The letters were so beautiful for a few moments Ofelia just admired them, but then she began to read: Once upon a time, when the woods were young,

they were home to creatures

who were full of magic and wonder. . . .

“Ofelia!” Her mother knocked at the door. “Hurry up! I want to see the dress on you. I want you to be beautiful. For the capitán.” Betrayal . . .

Ofelia stepped in front of the mirror. Steam covered the glass, blurring her reflection. Ofelia pushed her bathrobe from her left shoulder.

“You will look like a princess!” her mother called through the door.

Ofelia stared at her reflection.

There it was: a sickle moon surrounded by three stars, as clearly as if someone had drawn them onto her skin with the sepia ink that had filled the pages of the book. The Faun had told the truth.

“A princess,” Ofelia whispered.

She looked at her reflection.

And she smiled.