8:9
Running into the maze, Siobhan nearly smacked into Kim’s back where she stood just inside the entryway. An alchemy light bobbed out of the dark to the right, revealing Ben in its uneven glow.
“I say we go left.”
Siobhan threw a look back over her shoulder, her gaze going to where those left behind still stood in loose formation, giving some indication Gryphon was still bound. Then she turned back to the darkened path in the maze, noting Prairie and Patti standing further down the left path illuminated by the alchemy torch in Prairie’s hand. “Good a plan as any. Let’s make the most of the time we have.”
Prairie and Patti started down the path, their steps a fine balance between urgent and cautious. Hitting the place where there was the choice of right turn or straight, Prairie poked the alchemy torch in and did a quick survey in its phosphorescent green light. A quick conferral with Patti and she stepped back and continued to go straight as they had done before.
“Here.” Ben stepped around Patti and Prairie. “I should go first in case there’s any traps.”
“Okay.” Prairie stepped back to let Ben pass her, then fell in leaving a five foot distance between them in case she or Patti needed to react to anything Ben triggered.
A twist of the wrist kindled a small flame in Kim’s hand. She jerked her chin in the direction the others walked, indicating they should follow.
As she and Kim drew up to the intersection with its right or straight choice, Siobhan frowned down at the base of the bush. “Huh.”
“Huh?” Kim looked where she was looking, sweeping the flame in her hand to light the area.
“The flower from before is gone.”
“That’s weird.”
“It is.” Siobhan crouched and carefully poked at the bush.
“Maybe someone picked it?”
“Who?”
“Yeah, kind of a stupid question. So, plants don’t usually move themselves.”
“They do not.”
“But,” Kim formed air quotes with her free hand, “The House.”
“Yes.”
“Still weird.”
Siobhan dusted her hands off and rose. “Yes.” She gave the maze wall another narrow-eyed look. “Weird.” A long beat, then she asked, “Do you think it has a purpose?”
“The House?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.” Kim looked around at the bushes then tipped her head back to stare at the sky. “I just question if we’re smart enough to understand it.”
“Do you think we need to?”
“Less talking, more walking!” Ben called from around the corner, effectively ending the conversation but leaving the questions hanging between them.
Kim looked down the path. “You heard him. Less talking, more walking.”
Siobhan hitched the strap of her bag higher across her chest and headed along the path. Kim fell in beside her.
“Should we be keeping a map of where we go?”
“Might be smart.” Without slowing her pace, Siobhan routed around in her bag. “I think I have some paper in here somewhere.”
Kim snorted. “Of course you do.”
“Ha!” Siobhan pulled a piece of paper from the bag. Flipping it over she saw it was the first page of the Gryphon story. Rather than dig more she shrugged, flipped the page over, and confirmed the back side was blank. It was. Good enough.
“Can you stop for one mikro?” she asked Kim as she pulled a pen out of the depths of her bag then turned to hold the paper against the hedge wall.
“Sure.” Kim eyed the wall. “You think it will eat the paper?”
“Oh. Duh.” Siobhan yanked the paper away from the wall. The surface, with all its vines and thorns, hadn’t been very conducive to writing anyway. Bending down she lay the paper across her thigh and started to draw a rectangle to represent the boundaries of the maze. She frowned as the paper bent around the outside of her leg.
“Here.” Kim turned and presented Siobhan with her back, holding the flame in her palm by her side so it wasn’t blocked by her torso. “Try this.”
Siobhan looked at Kim’s back then pressed the paper against it and finished the rectangle. After that she drew a straight line with an arrow along the bottom from about halfway across, marking where they’d entered the maze and where they’d taken the left turn. She made another line next to this, breaking it to show where the right turn was that they hadn’t turned down. Satisfied enough she lifted the paper from Kim’s back. “Good enough. Let’s catch up.”
Kim turned back in the direction the others had taken and started down the path. At the end of the path they turned right as that was the only direction to take. Up ahead some hundred feet Ben, Patti, and Prairie were peering into another break in the wall to the right.
“Right or straight?” Ben asked as Kim and Siobhan reached them.
Siobhan looked down the path, which was to say straight, then over Patti’s shoulder around the right turn. “How about we go straight and mark all the turns, if there more, then we backtrack and try each one?”
Ben screwed up his face. “Backtrack seems bad. We could end up heading back and running into the others or Gryphon.”
“Valid.” Siobhan rubbed her cheek. “Let’s go right.” She indicated the piece of paper she was holding. “I’m keeping track of what turns we make.”
Prairie nodded. “That’s smart.”
“So,” Patti, who was closest to the right turn, said, “right then.”
So saying she stepped into the path revealed beyond the right turn. “We’ve got another right and a left.”
“Go to the right. It will probably meet that right turn we didn’t take, but we have at least a few meros right now to try that and then we’ll have it mapped.”
“Sounds good.” Patti turned right and the others followed. Another turn, to the left and deeper into the maze, met them about thirty feet back in the direction of the front wall. The option was straight again or turn deeper into the maze. By consensus they continued to straight to test Siobhan’s theory that they’d eventually hit a turn that would lead back to the right they hadn’t taken. After making a left turn at the end of the path, the only option open to them, they passed another left turn which Siobhan noted on her map before they continued straight until they came to an opening to the right. Ben stuck his head out the entry, determining it appeared to open to the original path.
“Keep going straight?” he asked, pulling back to the path the others stood on.
Siobhan looked up from noting the turn on her impromptu map. “Might as well.”
“This is going to take forever!” Patti said even as she started forward again. She walked about twenty feet then was forced to turn left as a wall loomed in front of her.
Siobhan strained to hear anything beyond the maze, trying to get some idea if Gryphon had broken free yet and the others were engaging him. All she heard was the rustling of leaves from the bushes, the soft fall of their feet on the grass path, and the susurration of their breaths. She turned to Kim. “Is there any way you can do something with air so we can hear what’s going on out there.”
Kim cocked her head then tipped it back to look at the sky while scrunching her lips up in thought. “Huh. Yeah. Maybe?”
Head still tipped back she concentrated on the sky, her lips moving on a silent conversation. After a few mikros, she curled her lips in and said, “Huh.” Then she tilted her chin back to plumb. “Air is going to give me updates. Maybe.” She frowned. “Probably.” A shrug. “Unless it forgets. Air doesn’t always concentrate so well but I think it will try.”
Siobhan patted her flower crown, straightening it slightly. “Better than nothing.”
“Yep.” Kim jerked her chin in the direction of the dogleg ahead. “We need to keep moving.”
The sharp turn to the left was followed almost immediately by another one. Then a right. And another right. And then a left. Siobhan folded the paper, making it as stiff as she could so she could mark the turns without stopping ever few feet to find a surface to right on. It wasn’t going to be ideal but it was at least going to be something.
They took a left, another left, then a right before they came to a point where they had the option to turn either left or right.
“Just pick a turn,” Siobhan called up to Prairie, Patti, and Ben. “At this point I’m not sure there’s a wrong choice. I’ll keep marking the turns.”
“Got it!” Ben called back, taking the right at the intersection. “Feels like moving forward instead of in circles this way.”
“Works.”
Probably another twenty feet forward and they came to another wall, forcing another left or right choice.
“Right feels like its going backwards.” Ben said as Siobhan and Kim drew up behind he, Patti, and Prairie.
“Left it is then.” Patti said, turning that way. Siobhan quickly noted the intersection on her diagram and moved to follow. The path continued for a distance, probably another sixty or so feet, then they were faced with an option to turn left or keep moving forward. They opted to move forward, coming to a wall that required them to turn right about twenty more feet in.
“There’s movement in the rose garden,” Kim announced as they turned the corner.
“Coming towards the maze?” Ben asked.
Kim went quiet a mikro, then said in a slow voice, “No.” Her eyes searched the darkness for several more mikros, then she added, “They’re running around the rose garden with Gryphon chasing them.”
“Smart,” Ben said. “Giving us more time to explore. But, eventually they’ll probably have to enter the maze. It gives them more chances to slow him down. So that means we need to speed up.”
Everyone agreed with this assessment and started down the path. They’d moved another thirty feet or so when they found another option to turn right or go straight. They went straight, coming to a wall that required a right turn a short distance later. The path almost immediately hit another wall, dictating a left turn. Shortly after that they came to another intersection offering the option of right or left.
By this point the path picked out on Siobhan’s map was a bit meandering.
“Feels like right is just back the way we came,” Patti said.
“I think its smart to keep taking the same direction when we have a choice of right or left,” Prairie said in a quiet voice. “We’ve been going left and up or in. I say we keep doing that.”
“Okay.” Ben turned left. The others followed. They came to another wall which dictated a left turn. They’d walked about thirty feet in what Siobhan’s drawing indicated was the direction of the left wall, if they were facing the maze from the outside, when they came to another option to turn left or go straight. Ben started heading straight, sticking with their logic of turning left only when faced with the option of left or right, when Siobhan noticed something in the wall of the hedge. She’d been keeping her eyes on the hedges rather than the path, the better to orient herself and draw the walls on her map. Up to then it had been all green hedge and green vines, green thorns and red roses, presenting a very similar dark palette. So, the something light jumped out at her.
She stopped and a mikro later Kim stopped too, looking back at her. “You stopped.”
“I did. Can you shine your light over here?” Siobhan indicated the base of the hedge next to the left turn they were passing. Kim’s light illuminated the yellow rose with a white eye and red stamen growing at ground level.
Siobhan crouched to get a better look, cupping the rose in her hand. She eyed the rose, eyed the turn, eyed the path going straight, then eyed the rose again. “Do we have time?”
Kim didn’t seem to need explanation for the question. She paused, looked at the sky, cocked her head to the side like she was listening to something, then looked back at Siobhan. “Feels like.”
“Hey! Hold on!” Ben, Patti, and Prairie stopped at Siobhan’s call. She rose from her crouch and swept a hand towards the left turn. “There’s something here I want to check out.”
Ben wandered back in that direction, scratching his head. “What is it.”
“Something that doesn’t belong. I think. I want to try this path.” Again Siobhan pointed down the left path. “See this flower?”
This time she pointed at the yellow rose. “Notice its a different color than everything else?”
“Huh,” Patti walked up behind Ben and craned her neck to look at the flower. “It is.”
“Wondering if The House is telling us something.”
“Like its laying a breadcrumb?” Patti suggested to which Siobhan shrugged.
“We won’t know unless we check it out. Kim says the others are running around the rose garden still. We have a meros max to test this.”
Ben poked his head through the gap in the hedges. “Okay.”
That said he took the turn and the others followed in loose formation. They came up to a wall which required a right sot hey took it. Another wall and another right. Then a wall required a left. That was followed quickly by another wall requiring a right. Another wall loomed making them turn right again. Doing so Ben walked directly into a wall with no turns. A dead-end. Following close as they were Patti and Prairie ran into him as he stopped dead. In the dead-end.
“Okay. Dead-end,” he noted, pitching his voice to carry to Kim and Siobhan who got jammed up at the last turn before the turn that lead to the dead-end. “Turn around.”
He popped a finger against Prairie’s shoulder to further direct her to step back down the path. Kim and Siobhan turned, leading the way back through the zig-zagging turns until they reached the spot with the yellow flower. Unlike the first yellow rose Siobhan had found this one remained, its light color standing out against the green of the hedge.
“Okay.” Siobhan stepped aside to make a note on her map of the location of the yellow rose. “That told us something.”
“What?” Patti asked, peering over Siobhan’s hand to look at the map.
“I’m not sure yet. The next yellow rose we see at an intersection we should turn for. If it goes to a dead-end then we can assume that the yellow-roses are where we shouldn’t go.”
“Does that mean that we shouldn’t have gone straight down the path to start?” Kim asked
“Why ask that?” Ben asked, well, that.
“There was a yellow rose at the first right turn we came to when we entered the maze earlier. But,” Siobhan added as Ben opened his mouth to add something, “it disappeared. It wasn’t there when we entered this second time.”
“Yeah,” Patti reached up to tug her earlobe. “That isn’t weird at all.”
“What about this place isn’t weird?” Kim asked in a dry tone.
“True,” Patti acknowledged with a subtle eye roll. “So back to the left or straight or whatever?”
“Yes.” Siobhan drew a square around a small flower she drew on the map then looked up. She then turned to Kim. “Anything yet?”
Kim did the quiet stare at the sky thing for a mikro, then took a definite breath. “They are running towards the maze. Gryphon is chasing.”
“Okay.” Urgency lent speed to Siobhan’s words. “Straight slash to the left.”
She didn’t have to say it twice. Everyone hurried down the path, coming to another wall in about thirty feet which required them to turn left. Forty or so more feet and they came to another intersection that required a choice of straight or right. As per the plan Ben started going straight, only to have Siobhan call out a halt.
Ben looked back as Siobhan shook out her map and asked Kim to hold her flame close enough that Siobhan could see the lines on the paper.
“I think going straight might take us back in a loop. Not sure if its good or bad to do that. My map suggests we might be close to the wall at this point.” She frowned and turned the map completely upside down so what was at the top was now the front wall they’d entered through. “I think. Do we want to go that way and then turn right, whenever we can turn right, so we’re going straight again?”
Ben squinted at the map. “Because that isn’t confusing at all.”
Siobhan sighed. “Definitely didn’t suggest it wasn’t. I’m not sure which is a better bet.”
“Let’s turn right and try to get to the wall, unless it turns us around again.” Prairie tapped the map with her finger. “I think having an idea where the boundary of where we can’t go any further is can be helpful.”
Siobhan nodded then folded the map like an accordion again to reestablish the stiff surface she could draw on. “That makes sense. So, we go right.”
And so they went right. Ran up to a wall that required a left. Then another wall requiring a right. Then another right and another forced left before they came to an area where the path widened to about double its size. The path carried to the wall where it had a defined right turn, but there was also the option to turn left along the wider path.
“Where now?” Ben asked Siobhan, deferring to her by this point as she had the map and it seemed clear they’d need to apply logic based on the paths they’d already covered at this point. Siobhan eyed the map for a mikro then said, “Left. It looks like we’re very close to the wall. I think another right and we’ll see it.”
“Okay.” So saying Ben headed that way. The others trailed behind.
Patti dropped back the little bit it took to come up abreast of Siobhan. Kim stepped forward to walk beside Prairie as Patti was the one with the light between the two. Once this switch was established, Patti side-mouthed to Siobhan. “What’s the point?”
Siobhan looked up from the map. “What point?”
“What’s our goal?”
Siobhan frowned. Before she could formulate an answer Prairie spoke up from in front of Patti and Siobhan. “This maze is the only thing here so there must be something within it that we need. We just need to find it.”
Siobhan lofted her chin in Prairie’s direction. “That.”
“Okay.”
Ben ran up against a wall, requiring either a left or a right. Consulting the map, Siobhan called up to him. “Take a right. I think that’s the exterior wall.”
“Got it.” Ben took the right. Kim and Prairie started to follow then Kim came to an abrupt stop.
“Siobhan?”
“Yes?”
“Yellow flower. To the right.”
“Okay. We should go right to confirm if we hit a dead-end. Do we have time?”
A short pause then Kim said, “They took the right. Smart. Ivan probably figured we’d head in the original direction we took.”
“Okay. Take the right.”
Again Ben called, “Got it!” and continued down the path leading to the right and likely along the exterior wall. They walked a good distance, heading straight, probably a hundred feet, then Ben called, “Dead end!”
They all stopped and turned to walk back the way they’d come, Siobhan falling to the side to note their movements and the location of the yellow flower. She heaved a sigh as the group stopped to form a loose half-circle around her.
“So, it seems like the yellow roses mark a wrong turn or a dead-end. Do we assume the original yellow rose Kim and I saw, the one that disappeared, did the same?”
“Maybe?” Kim’s voice rose on the question. “But does that mean we shouldn’t have turned right into the maze?”
Siobhan’s tone was hesitant. “Probably.”
“But then we couldn’t turn right into that entire area we just walked through and going straight lead us to another rose here which means we couldn’t go straight either. That means-”
“We have to go in the direction the others are leading Gryphon,” Patti spat out.
Siobhan’s nod was reluctant. “Feels like.”
“Or,”Ben said, “Can I?”
He pointed at the map. Siobhan handed it to him and he unfolded it then traced their path with his finger, stopping at the point where they’d turned left and headed down the long path that, per Siobhan’s drawing, corresponded to a point near where they initially entered. “What if we turned right here instead of left?”
Prairie leaned in to peer around his arm. “That looks like it would take us to the right at the entry while maybe giving us a wall between us and the entryway.”
Ben nodded. “I think that might be the wall that formed the first path, the one I took a right down and then turned left at the first break in the hedge.”
“Okay,” Patti leaned in and traced her finger back along the path that ran along the exterior wall. “But couldn’t we just head back to the front wall this way and then take that turn Ben did?”
“But,” Ben added, “we run the risk of running into Gryphon in the others that way.”
“It feels like six of one or half a dozen of the other,” Kim said with a frown. “But,” her gaze went vacant a mikro and then focused again, “we’re running out of time. The group somehow turned around and is heading back towards the entry. I say we go back along the path Ben suggested just because it doesn’t put us on a direct course for the entryway.”
“Done.” Ben folded the map up and handed it back to Siobhan. “Lead us, oh Leader.”
“Not the leader,” Siobhan responded in a dry tone.
“You are for now,” Patti said, pointing at the turn back into the winding part of the maze. “Lead on.”
Following Siobhan’s map they wended back to the turn Ben had picked. They turned right where before they had turned left and walked round about thirty feet before they came to a wall with a forced left.
When Ben moved to go in that direction Kim darted forward and grabbed his arm. Frown in place he turned to stare at her. She held a finger to her lips then pointed at the sky. Instantly the others went still and silent. From the other side of the hedge they heard shouts and then the sound of pounding feet. Kim made a fist, dousing the flame in her palm. Patti shoved the torch she held between her shield and her body and Ben flipped open his jacket to stash his torch inside. Instantly the path was cast into darkness. Robbed of sight their sense of sound was enhanced, throwing every foot fall and yell beyond the hedge into sharp relief.
“Back into the garden!” they heard Ivan yell.
“I can’t keep him confused! His mind is too slippery!” Gwen’s pitched voice was weak with strain.
There was the sound of a body slamming into something, either the wall or the ground.
“Got you!” Dempsey grunted then came the sound of something being lifted and hitting something with a thump. Gwen let out a whoof and then the area beyond the hedge went silent. For a mikro. After that came the sound of a rawr and the pant of breath definitely not from human-type lungs. A mikro later and that was gone too.
Ben tensed and started to lunge down the path. Kim’s hand curled around his arm, yanking him to a stop. “Do your job.”
Ben turned around and yanked his arm from her grip. “What?!” The exclamation was somewhere between whisper and roar.
“You can’t run out there and get him from behind. Your job is to get us through this maze,” Kim whisper snarled back.
There was a sharp exhalation of breath, then Ben gritted. “I know. It’s just-”
“Instinct.” Kim nodded. “I get it. You good?”
“Fine.”
“Cool. Promised myself you’d stay conscious the entire adventure.”
“Ha. Ha. Funny.”
The darkness hid Kim’s grin. It might also have hidden Ben’s.
Patti pulled her light out from behind her shield, Kim ignited a flame in her palm, and the group moved on, responsibility weighing their shoulders and adding urgency to their movement.
Ben stepped into the lead, pulling the torch out of his jacket as he moved. The green glow cast odd shadows on the hedge walls, revealing the dark maw of a break to the left.
“They came from the far end. Suggests there might not be an opening there or it loops around. I’m going to turn here.”
Siobhan’s “Okay” overlapped with Kim announcing, “They have him down in the garden. I can keep watching or I can actually walk. Preference?”
“Walk,” Prairie and Patti said, voices layering with Ben’s, “watch.”
“Walk it is then,” Kim said. “I’ll stop and check each time we hit a decision point. Works?”
“Yeah.” Ben’s voice was partially swallowed by the bushes as he took a sharp left then a quick right when a wall loomed in front of him. “Makes sense.”
The others filed in behind him. They walked forward about sixty feet before coming to another wall with only the option to turn right. They followed that turn another twenty feet or so then came to another wall forcing another right. Ten to fifteen more feet and there was another right followed within about five feet by yet another right.
Patti frowned, the expression picked out in ghoulish detail by the green light she held up at shoulder height. “Are we going in a circle?”
“Feels like it,” Kim muttered. “Whelp, nope,” she corrected as the next right dogleg folded into a left turn followed within five feet by another left. “I think its a key pattern.”
“Key pattern?” Patti asked.
“A pattern found in ancient art. Uses a continuous line that kind of spirals then unspirals. So, right, right, right, right, left. If I’m right there’ll be another, yep,” Kim said as she approached the next turn about fifteen feet ahead, “another left.”
They were going at enough of a clip the walls blurred a little in their peripheral. About twenty, twenty-five feet ahead they came to another left, leading Kim to say, “Totally a key. Cool.”
“Anyone else feel a little seasick?” Patti asked. A sad little peep came from the house hanging off her belt.
“Your brain is having trouble processing what your inner ear is sensing,” Prairie explained. “Relax. Here,” she gently laid her hand on Patti’s arm. When Patti didn’t flinch away she moved to cup Patti’s elbow in her hand and pulled her to a gentle stop. “Close your eyes and count backwards from one hundred. I’ve got you. Ben?” At her soft call Ben stopped and looked back.
“Yes?”
“We need a moment.”
Ben looked back over his shoulder at the path leading into the dark the back at Prairie and Patti. He sighed and let his shoulders drop. “A moment is about all we can spare.”
Patti swallowed heavily and then opened her eyes and straightened away from Prairie. “I’m okay.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah. Let’s keep going.”
“No alarm,” Kim said quietly, “but they’ve reentered the maze.”
“It would be cool if one of us was a telepath, we could let them know to not come down this path,” Patti said, shoving her hand through her hair, combing the longer portion at the top back and twisting it into a small bun. “Anyone got a pin?”
“Here.” Siobhan dug into her bag, grabbing a pin from the pocket inset near the top and holding it out to Patti.
“Thanks.” Patti stabbed the pin into the hair then focused on the path in front of them. “Let’s go.”
Patti’s comment about telepathy brought up a new concern in Siobhan’s mind. Quietly she laid it out to Kim who had moved to walk next to her. “If we find what we’re looking for how do we get that information to the rest so they can join us?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we find it. Maybe we can make a copy of your map and send someone back with it.”
“Splitting the party worse.”
“We aren’t looking for perfect, just good enough. At this point we’re already split. I’m not comfortable sending one person out alone but, again, we’ll cross that bridge when we find it. Maybe we’ll be able to spare two people to go back and three of us can stay. We need to find what we’re looking for before we worry about telling the others how to find it.”
The path came to another wall with another hard left. A ways further they hit another wall that sent them to the right.
“Feels like we’re moving deeper into the maze.” Siobhan noted and made another line on her map.
“Probably a good sign.”
The path continued to take them to spots where their choices were made for them, either requiring a left or a right rather than offering two choices.
“This feels promising,” Patti muttered to Prairie. “Like we’re being lead somewhere.”
“Hopefully not to our doom,” Prairie muttered back. Patti stiffened and shot Prairie a quick look.
“Don’t joke.”
“I wasn’t really joking.”
“Not really what I wanted to hear.”
“Sorry.” Prairie offered Patti a timid smile and curved her shoulders forward, which then lead Patti to gently pat Prairie on the shoulder.
After walking what felt like a mile along the winding path Ben called back, “I think there’s a clearing ahead. Or a room.”
“Wait for us,” Siobhan picked up her steps, “we’re almost there.”
Rushing to keep up with Siobhan, Kim projected her voice to carry to Ben. “Don’t get knocked out before we get there!”
“Ha,” Ben called back, “Ha,” pausing between each “ha”.
Enter The Woods 