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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.
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.
Evil seldom takes shape immediately. It is often little more than a whisper at first. A glance. A betrayal. But then it grows and takes root, still invisible, unnoticed. Only fairy tales give evil a proper shape. The big bad wolves, the evil kings, the demons, and devils …
In consiliis nostris fatum nostrum est, the words read. “In our choices lie our fate.”
One can spot kindness as clearly as cruelty. It spreads light and warmth
They didn’t notice her and Ofelia didn’t want to eavesdrop, but she couldn’t help listening. To listen … after all, that’s what being a child is about. Learning about adults’ secrets means learning to understand their world—and how to survive it.
Around them the mill was moaning and creaking. It didn’t want them. It wanted the miller back. Or maybe it wished to be alone with the forest, tree roots breaking through its walls, leaves covering its roof, until its stones and beams became part of the forest again.
Her mother wouldn’t understand. She didn’t make books her shelter or allow them to take her to another world. She could only see this world, and then, Ofelia thought, only sometimes. It was part of her mother’s sadness to be earthbound. Books could have told her so much about this world and about places far away, about animals and plants, about the stars! They could be windows and doors, paper wings to help her fly away. Maybe her mother had just forgotten how to fly. Or maybe she’d never learned.
Sometimes the objects we hold dear give away who we are even more than the people we love.
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.
Once upon a time, when magic did not hide from human eyes as thoroughly as it does today, there was a mill in the middle of a forest,
The heart of the labyrinth still looked the same, a long-forgotten place at the bottom of the world. But Ofelia felt more hesitant to climb down the stairs to the column this time. It is often easier to find something out than to face what you’ve found.
The worst fears are always underneath us, hidden, shaking the ground we wish to be firm and safe.
That’s what kept them all alive: stealing moments.
Libraries don’t keep secrets; they reveal them.
There is one fig tree especially whose story the others like to tell when the wind makes their leaves murmur. It grows on a hill at the heart of the forest.
Death sighed. She was used to men begging for another few years or months, sometimes even hours. There was always something unfinished, something undone, unlived. Mortals don’t understand life is not a book you close only after you read the last page. There is no last page in the Book of Life, for the last one is always the first page of another story.
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.
