Ofelia doesn't obey this command from her magic book of instructions when she wanders down to the banquet hall where the Pale Man is sitting. This is the only rule that she must obey while she is down there, and she reads it with care before descending into the labyrinth. The next day, Vidal opens the store room to the villagers, so they can collect their rations. A guard tells them that the communists lie to the villagers, as in a united Spain, everyone gets daily bread. Vidal silenced his officers with a wave of his hand. The fear on their faces never ceased to please him. It even made him forget what a miserable place this was, so far away from the cities and battlefields where history was written. Being stationed in this dirty, rebel-infested forest—he would make it count. He would plant fear and death with such precision that the generals who had sent him here would hear about it. Some of them had fought with his father. She smiled at Ofelia. There were secrets in her smile, but Ofelia liked her. She liked her very much. The dinner party is beginning at Vidal's, and Ofelia is nowhere to be found. At dinner, Vidal unveils plans to distribute one ration card to each family. "We can't allow anyone to send food to the guerrillas," Vidal says, and pulls out the antibiotics he found at the camp that day. Seeing this, the doctor looks over at Mercedes with alarm, as Vidal makes a speech about the misguided beliefs of the rebels, who insist that everyone is equal.

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. 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.In the bathroom, Ofelia examines the book again, hoping for clues about her next task. The book fills with red the color of blood, and Ofelia closes it, frightened. When she goes into the next room, she finds her mother, bleeding profusely. You're getting older, and you'll see that life isn't like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you'll learn that, even if it hurts." Carmen The rose was forgotten and lost,” Ofelia said, pressing her cheek to her mother’s belly. “At the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone until the end of time.” He. Nobody spoke his name. Vidal. It sounded like a stone thrown through a window, each letter a piece of broken glass. Capitán. That’s what most of them called him. But Ofelia still thought Wolf fit him much better. There once was a forest in the north of Spain, so old that it could tell stories long past and forgotten by men. The trees anchored so deeply in the moss-covered soil they laced the bones of the dead with their roots while their branches reached for the stars.

But her mother wouldn’t listen. Her name was Carmen Cardoso, she was thirty-two years old and already a widow and she didn’t remember how it felt to look at anything without despising it, without being afraid of it. All she saw was a world that took what she loved and ground it to dust between its teeth. So as Carmen Cardoso loved her daughter, loved her very much, she had married again. This world was ruled by men—her child didn’t understand that yet—and only a man would be able to keep them both safe. Ofelia’s mother didn’t know it, but she also believed in a fairy tale. Carmen Cardoso believed the most dangerous tale of all: the one of the prince who would save her. The evil Captain Vidal taunts the rebel captive he is torturing. He gets all of his information from torturing rebels that he finds, and this line illuminates just what a despicable sadist he truly is. 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. I have a task for you, Cintolo,” said the Faun, “and you won’t be allowed to fail. I want numerous sculptures of the king and queen—as numerous as the uncurling fronds of ferns—to grow from the soil in the Upper Kingdom. Can you make them?”

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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. Her mother hadn’t argued with him when he advised her to stay in bed for a few days. It was a huge wooden bed, with plenty of room for her and Ofelia to share. Her mother hadn’t been well at all since they’d come to this miserable place. Her forehead was wet with sweat, and pain etched fine lines into her beautiful face. Ofelia was worried, but it comforted her to watch the doctor’s calm hands prepare the draught. Mercedes sneaks outside after dinner and makes a signal with her lantern in the direction of the forest. As she does so, she sees Ofelia coming out of the forest covered in mud. It’s nothing, cariño. It’s nothing, just the wind. Nights are very different here. In the city you hear cars, the tramway. Here the houses are so much older. They creak. . . .”

Her body felt so warm. Maybe a bit too warm, but the doctor hadn’t seemed too worried about the fever. The faun hands Ofelia The Book of Crossroads, which include the instructions for how to complete the three tasks. After he disappears, Ofelia opens the book and is confused to find that there is nothing inside. Ferreira still looked at him with bewilderment. Did I ever meet a man like you? his eyes seemed to ask. “For the moment,” he replied, “there is no reason to be alarmed.” 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.”The film blends ordinary stories told in the realist mode—the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl who is on the brink of outgrowing the fairytale stories to which she is so attached—with more fantastical elements. The title card at the beginning of the film presents the aftermath of a fascist regime and a real war, but soon enough, we are shown a fantastical world, with underground kingdoms, princesses, kings, labyrinths, and immortal promises. The mythological and the real are set in tension with one another, coexisting in the world of the film from the very start. I do,” Mercedes replied. “You’ll see, you will love your little brother. Very much. You won’t be able to help it.” She smiled once again. There was sadness in her eyes. Ofelia saw it. Mercedes seemed to know about losing things too. Perfect for fans of the movie and readers who are new to del Toro’s visionary work, this atmospheric and absorbing novel is a portal to another universe where there is no wall between the real and the imagined. A daring, unforgettable collaboration between two brilliant storytellers. Spain, 1944. “The Civil War is over. Hidden in the mountains, armed men are still fighting the new fascist regime.” We see a child lying on the ground with a bloody nose, as a narrator tells us, “A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a princess who dreamt of the human world. She dreamt of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine.”