PRINCESS CARMELITA
(Adapted from the movie “El Laberinto Del Fauno” or “Pan’s Labyrinth”)
Maya was awakened by the creaking noise the floor made and the soft rumbling sounds the mixture of cat and lion purrs. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, Faun came into view, making a house call.
“You did not carry out the task,” Faun said in a matter-of-fact way.
“No…” Maya replied apologetically, “Well, you see, there’s the engagement ceremony, and then my mother-in-law suddenly fell ill…”
“Bah!” Faun waved her explanation away hastily. “That’s no excuse for negligence.”
“I apologize…”
A few seconds later, Faun materialized a piece of root that looked like a crossbreed between ginseng and ginger and handed it to Maya, saying, “Look, this is a mandrake root. A plant that dreamt of being human. Put it under your mother-in-law’s bed in a bowl of fresh milk and give it two drops of blood each morning. That should do the trick.”
Maya brought the mandrake root closer to her nose and smelt it. As usual it smelt of earth like Faun, but was also mixed with the overpowering smell of ginger and manure. She grimaced and hid the root under her mattress.
“Now we have no time to waste,” Faun said, getting back to business. “The full moon will be upon us soon. Here, take my pets to guide you through,” he said, handing over his cylinder-shaped box with the fairies inside to her, “You are going to a very dangerous place, so be careful. The thing that slumbers there, it is not human.”
Maya gulped nervously. Not human? What kind of creature could be worse than a toad or Faun, who was not so human himself?
Faun then handed her an hourglass made of copper, with sand the colour of the moon’s light, and warned, “You will see a sumptuous feast before you but do not eat or drink anything displayed there. You hear me? Absolutely nothing!”
Maya nodded, but Faun must have noticed the questioning eyes she was giving him because he said these before he disappeared into the darkness:
“Your life depends on it.”
*
Pedro, after lolling Maya to sleep, went to attend businesses of his own. After double-checking everything in the house and making sure everyone was sound asleep, he sneaked through the backdoor of the kitchen and made his way into the woods. In his pockets were copies of documents he made on the business transactions of slave trading. With his oil lamp in hand, he made a signal by covering and uncovering the light several times and paused between intervals before signaling again.
Sure enough, his fellow colleagues came out from their hiding place and they began switching information and news before shaking hands and departing from each other. Being the youngest member of the law-enforcing unit’s secret agents division, he had volunteered to go undercover when his team was assigned to the case of Count Miguel Garcia, suspected of being the mastermind behind countless smuggling of children from Africa and aborigines from parts of the Australia outback to be sold as slaves and cheap labour workers, and throughout his mission he had seen many of them who barely knew enough about the world being brutalized and sometimes even killed by the manhandling of the Count and Alberto’s team. During the day, he would run the usual household errands for both the Count and Countess, including babysitting Maya, and at night, he would work on preparing meals for the children in the cellar and helped call for carriages whenever there were transfers needed to be made. At the end of the day, when everything was said and done, he would go and report to his team which were camped out in the middle of the woods every chance he got to accumulate all the evidence they for the day. To bring down a Count with millions of connections like him, they need all the evidence they can get and more.
He had counted on the Count trusting him to be just an errand boy who would do his biddings without questions and judgment and would easily be ignored as he was just a worker and nothing else, but he had not counted on having his future daughter-in-law to fall for him. He knew it was just puppy love of sorts, but his experience growing up with two elder sisters told him that girls definitely mature much faster than boys emotionally, which is no wonder she had developed a crush for him.
He personally did not agree with matchmaking and arranged marriages, and certainly not the kind that Maya was going through, but he was in no position to question that. It was the way of their culture and his main focus is complete the mission.
Nothing more than that.
While Pedro quietly made his way back to the manor and into his room, Maya was getting ready to get down to business. She took out the book from the bathroom cabinet and opened it. As usual, the pages began to fill up, but with words and pictures this time. There was a drawing of a weird-looking man who was bald, tall and gangly, with two dots for his eyes and huge mouth filled with ugly sharp teeth. His hands stretched and curled into the shape of circles and in them was a little girl drawing something on the wall on the left and the little girl standing in front of a doorway on the right, while between the man’s legs that were bent in the shape of an O, the little girl was facing three small lockers with keyholes ready for her key to fit in. the instructions on the next page went as followed:
Use the chalk to trace a door anywhere in your room. Once the door’s open, start the hourglass. Let the fairies guide you. Don’t eat or drink anything during your stay and come back before the last grain of sand falls.
Maya did just as the instruction gave her. She took out the chalk she had hidden under her pillow and looked around for a place wide enough to trace a door. She picked the wall her bed was leaning on and traced the shape of a door as straight as she could. To her surprise, a seam began to appear on the wall where the chalk marks were, forming a small gap that could open like a door. She slowly pushed it open and found herself staring down a long, gloomy hallway, with blood-red walls and tall, bone-like pillars along it. The floor was tiled in pink and white, like a checkerboard and she could occasionally hear low exhales of breath from down the hallway.
Maya took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway, taking with her the fairies in the cylinder box and the key in her nightclothes’ pocket. She upturned the hourglass so that the one with sand was on top. Not wanting to waste anymore time, she made her way down the hallway towards the sound of exhaling breath. Moments later, she saw in front of her a huge dining room like the ones in kings’ castles she read in her storybooks. Here, the ceiling above was concaved like a half circle, and sure enough, as mentioned by Faun, there was a huge, long table laden with everything delicious and edible, from pot-roast to pumpkin pie to fruit salad, from fried chicken to baked fish and potatoes, from cherry-covered fruit cake to ice-cream to jugs upon jugs of all forms of drinks imaginable. Everything was there ready for the taking, but Faun’s warning rang through her mind and she dare not touch them, tempting as they were.
At the main seat, there sat with its back facing the fireplace the creature that was depicted in the Book of Crossroads. Like the drawing, it was bald and skinny, tall and gangly-looking, with both of its hands on the table. Its face was bare save two holes for its eyes and a mouth that looked like the one she saw when one of the cooks was removing the scales from a catfish. It had skin hanging from his arms and face, and its bones were jutting out, including its ribs, as if it had not eaten for a very long time. Its hands were bony as well, with black fingernails to match, and between its hands laid a plate that had two tiny balls on it. Seeing that the creature did not react at her presence, she picked up the plate and saw that the balls were actually eyes. It finally came to her that the holes on its face were not eyes, but a pair of nostrils for it to breathe. So, if those were its eyes and it couldn’t see without them, where did they go on its face? She shuddered to think of it as she replaced the plate back between the creature’s hands.
It was when she looked up to see the mosaic on the ceiling and the shoes the size of children’s feet at one corner of the dining room that she knew the seriousness of the situation. According to the mosaic, it was a creature that did not eat normal food, but children’s flesh. Illustration of it grabbing children, stripping them and carving them with its dagger before stuffing them into its guts showed the fact that Faun was right about it: it was not human. Maya got goose pimples and a chill went down her spine just thinking about what it would do to her. It was best to heed Faun’s words for now.
She opened the box to release the fairies inside it. They flew out, chirping with glee that they were getting some fresh air and led her to another corner of the room, revealing a tall cabinet where there were three small lockers made of copper, silver and gold each on the upper level. They flew back and forth from the copper to the silver to the gold locker and back again until her fairy friend stopped at the silver locker and pointed at the keyhole excitedly. Maya took out the key from her pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
When she was about to turn the key, instinct told her that this was not the locker she should open. She didn’t know why, but somehow something inside her told her that this was not the right one. She shifted her gaze towards the gold locker and shook her head again. Definitely a far cry than this silver locker, she thought and took out the key, putting it into the copper locker. As luck would have it, the key turned, unlocking the door and slipping it open. She slowly reached in and felt something velvet inside it. She then took hold of it and took it out, revealing something that was wrapped in expensive-looking red velvet. When she unwrapped it, it revealed a shiny dagger that shone brighter than any blade she had ever seen with a handle of welded gold and silver and the same design of surreal fire from the stone slab she saw in the labyrinth on it. She would’ve marveled at it even longer if she hadn’t been reminded by the fairies’ chirps that time was ticking and that the sand in the hourglass might run out sooner or later.
That was when she stopped short for a moment. She caught sight of her favourite snack: bars upon bars of chocolates readily broken into bite size as finger food. She had not eaten much since the incident during the engagement ceremony and the sight of chocolate fed her hunger pangs. The fairies realized her intentions and waved their hands at her, telling her not to even think about it, but the chocolates were simply too irresistible for her to ignore. She stole a look at the creature that was still sitting there without moving. Since it didn’t even see or react to any of her movements before, what’s a chunk of missing chocolate going to do? Not much difference, I’m sure, she thought.
Finally her weakness for chocolate overcame the warnings of Faun and the fairies. She waved them away and shooed them like one would do to a fly and took a chunk of chocolate from the bowl. Unbeknownst to her, as soon as she popped the chocolate into her mouth, the creature immediately came to life. It inhaled long and hard before reaching out to take its eyes on the plate, putting them into the holes on its palms. Holding up the back of its palms onto its face, it could see very clearly a little girl who was eating off one of the food from its dinner table. A very delicious-looking girl.
Maya was oblivious to what was going on behind her. All she could think of right now was popping another chunk of chocolate into her mouth. Still thinking that there’s no harm done, she took another chunk (waving the fairies away and wrestling it out of her fairy friend who tried to take it out of her fingers in the process). As she popped it into her mouth and licked her fingers, she finally heard the commotion that was going on behind her. She spun round to see the creature alive and kicking and very much intent in turning her into a three-course meal. The other fairies were trying to protect her by keeping it busy and distracted, but ended up getting caught and eaten by it within seconds.
Maya’s survival mode kicked in. She quickly made a dash for it, running for her life towards where she last left the door open. Except this time, the door was slowly closing, signaling that she was running out of time. The last grain of sand was falling and the door was threatening to shut her in with the creature after her tail.
“No! No! Don’t close! I’m still here! NO!!!”
Too late. The door had slammed shut. No matter how hard she pounded, it would not open for her. Even the seams that formed the door were gone. She had no choice but to draw another door. Out of nervousness, her chalk broke into half while she tried to draw. Her fairy friend, who was the last one standing, warned her that the creature was coming close. She could see it screeching bloody murder and moving as fast as its zombie-like body could towards her. There was no time to pick up the broken chalk. Climbing one of the pillars, she drew a door on the ceiling while praying hard not to get caught and become dinner as she could hear the creature coming closer and closer towards her.
Finally a door opened for her. Her fairy friend flew up first before she struggled to climb up. More screeches echoed down the hallway as the creature realized that its meal was running away. She could hear its footsteps gaining momentum and coming closer towards her. She could almost feel its breath against her ankles. Her fairy friend helped her as best as she could by pulling at her sleeves, but a little fairy could only do so much.
It was a close call. Before the creature’s black finger nailed-hands could grab her, Maya managed to climb up into her bedroom and slam the door shut before it could climb in after her. She watched as the seams of the door disappeared as the creature pounded at it, trying to get in. Maya’s heart almost stopped at the horrific ordeal she went through. So horrifying it was that she almost forgot to breathe. As she sat back on the bed trying to catch her breath, she realized the severity of the situation she was in.
“I did something wrong now, didn’t I?”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Comments