“I did it! Rrawk!
The voice caught the boy’s attention, and he looked around to see where it had come from.
Its owner was dark as the night itself. But then, the boy saw movement: a glisteny, feathery head, pecking persistently at the potato-eye that remained.
“What is your name?” the boy asked.
“Rrawk!” came the reply.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Roark.”
“Rrawk!”
“Mr. Rrawk, then. Beg your pardon.”
He wondered how the crow could speak, but he didn’t think much more about it, because it clearly had spoken, and there was no disputing that fact. There was, therefore, no use in worrying too much about it. Besides, the night was getting on, and the air was growing chill. The boy felt his goose-bumped skin give a fateful shiver beneath his winter jacket, whereupon an idea occurred to him. It was little more than a fancy, but a real idea nonetheless.
“Mr. Rrawk, since you can fly, might you be willing to guide me through this corn maze?”
The one who called himself Rrawk said “Rrawk!” again, as if to make sure the boy knew that was his name. Then, he said, “That would be cheating.”
The shadow of a frown drifted across the boy’s face against the dark night. No matter, then. It had been worth a try. Even so, the boy was lonely. He had been lonely for as long as he could remember being anything. And so, he opened his mouth again and ventured the admit: “I would be grateful, at the least, for your company.”
The crow seemed not to hear him, intent as he was at pecking the potato eye.
Alex was not too disappointed. Rrawk was, in fact, only a crow.
The crow paused in his pecking. “Heard that!” he squawked.
Alex tilted his head to one side. “Heard what?”
“That thing you said. In your head.”
“You couldn’t have. I didn’t say it.”
“Ah, but you did. To yourself. And your self is the most important audiences.” He bowed like an actor on stage at the end of a performance.
The brows over Alex’s young eyes pressed down on them. “Then what did I say?”
“That would be telling!”
Alex did not believe the crow had heard anything, nor was he even sure, any longer, that he even wanted the creature’s company. So, instead of pursuing the matter further, he set his eyes once again upon the corn maze and put his feet upon the path that conveyed him thence.
The crow finished his meal and followed.
So did the scarecrow.
...
The moon was full and the sky was dark a half a world away, as well. Time was not the same on the rolling hills of Yorkshire, running behind the age where Alex dwelt by nearly a century. These were still the days of horse and carriage, though the age of automobile was soon to dawn. Electric lights were recent inventions, airplanes were still a fantasy, and motion pictures a soon-to-be-realized dream.
A girl named Elizabeth, after the queen, stood in the garden behind Ridley Manor, with its fifty rooms.
A gas light burned in but a single one.
Ivy clambered up thick stone walls and entwined itself around the clawed feet of gargoyles who stood sentinel at the roofline.
The girl stood as still as one of them, dark eyes wide like saucers at a mad tea party, magnified all the more by a pair of spectacles that she preferred not to wear but had to on occasion. Her auburn hair flowed in rivulets over her slender shoulders. She had been reading before she’d come down to the garden, beckoned by a passage from a novel that had taken her fancy: “I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty.”
And it had struck her, upon reading these words, that she had always wanted to see what the garden behind Ridley Manor was like. Though she had lived there all her days, she could not remember ever exploring it—and, oddly, even when she looked down on it from her second-floor bedroom, she realized she had never noticed the thing that seemed to be at the heart of it: a grand labyrinth. Dense and green in shrub and ivy, it had always seemed darker than it should have been. And on this, the darkest of full-moon nights, it seemed darker still.
Elizabeth turned back toward the manor and saw the lamp still burning in her window. She should return and attend to it, she told herself, but before she could take a step in that direction, a noise distracted her. It had come from the direction of the labyrinth, and before she could wonder if she had imagined it, it came again.
“Who?” it said.
“I beg your pardon,” the girl replied.
“Who... are you seeking?”
A flitter-flutter of wings defied the silence, and a long-eared owl descended from a hidden nest inside the bush-maze.
“Whom,” the girl rejoined. She had learned her letters well, and memorized the rules of grammar.
“Who!” the owl repeated.
“I do not wish to argue, Miss Owl. I only came to see the labyrinth.”
“Oh, but you cannot see it from there,” the owl said, ignoring the debate of who-or-whom.
“I can, indeed,” the girl protested. “I am wearing my spectacles!”
“Argumentative child.” The owl made a noise that sounded like “Pfft,” although it seemed to the girl that producing such a noise would have required lips. Elizabeth was highly intelligent, because she thought about things a lot. Sometimes, she thought about them so much that she forgot to do anything about them, and just stood there contemplating them in her mirror her mind. She was doing this now.
“You can only truly see from within,” said the owl. “So it is with the labyrinth, as it is with yourself.”
“Silly owl. I knew that, of course.”
A soft wind trifled with the leaves of the garden, caressing them with an unseen hand.
“Then tell me this,” the owl responded, cocking her head to one side. “How did Ridley Manor get its name?”
“A riddle?”
“But of course! Exactly that!”
Elizabeth tapped her toe on the stone pathway. “And I suppose you wish me to solve it.”
“What I wish is not at issue here. It is your wish that matters. What do you wish?”
The girl sighed in exaggerated fashion. “To know the answer to your riddle.”
“Then you must enter it.”
“The riddle?”
“Yes.”
The owl cocked her head toward the labyrinth, and the girl raised an eyebrow. “If you enter the riddle, you will find what you truly wish.”
The girl thought for a moment. She remembered from her studies that the labyrinth had been constructed to keep something inside. She could not recall what that something was, but it occurred to her that the labyrinth might have seemed very much like a riddle to anyone imprisoned within it.
“How long has this labyrinth been here?” she asked, realizing at once how silly it must have sounded posing such a question to an owl.
“Does it matter?”
“Who planted it?”
“You did. Well, you had it planted.”
That made absolutely no sense at all. She was just a young girl, and the labyrinth was made up of fully grown shrubs and hedges that were taller than she was. It had obviously been there for quite some time—even if, somehow, she had never noticed it before. She could not possibly have planted it. The owl was clearly playing games with her.
She set her tone in challenge. “If you are so very wise, help me find my way through the labyrinth.”
“Wisdom finds its own way,” said the owl.
“Oh, you are no help whatsoever!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “I don’t need your guidance, owl. I can do this on my own!”
She failed to notice, in her pique, that the owl had just finished telling her as much. Or that, of a sudden, she was no longer scared of the labyrinth. When one is determined to do a thing, fear tends to be forgotten. Taking exaggerated steps to make her point, she strode resolutely toward the entrance and disappeared inside.
The owl fol
lowed.
Now, the ivy from the labyrinth was the very same ivy that wound itself around the feet of the gargoyles perched on high. And when it rustled in the night breeze, it called to them.
And they, too, followed.
...
Chapter Four
Fowl Play
The corn maze wound down and around and up and through, back in on itself and across again. It reminded Alex of learning to tie his shoe. He’d been stubborn about that. Instead of observing how others did it and copying them, he had insisted on figuring it out himself—and in consequence had created all manner of intricate knots that were nearly impossible to untangle.
“Rrawk! Where are you going?”
The boy turned around, surprised. “Are you still there? I thought you weren’t coming.”
“That’s what you get for thinking.”
“I suppose so,” the boy said coolly. He was not about to admit that he was glad for the company, or that he was hopelessly lost. Already he had been inside the maze long enough that he imagined the proprietor had closed the rickety ticket booth and gone home.
“Lost?” asked the crow.
“No,” said the boy.
“Lost,” the crow declared.
The boy stopped and sat down on a hay bale, in exaggerated fashion, as though admitting defeat. He avoided looking at the crow, and instead focused his attention on pulling bits of hay from the bale, one by one.
“You won’t find your way like that.”
Alex raised his head and fixed the crow with a withering gaze. “You said you wouldn’t help me.”
“Rrawk! I did not!” The crow seemed wounded. “I only declined to guide you, not to help you!”
The boy was about to say something more, known only to him, but the crow did not wait for his answer and instead flew away in a scurry-flurry of night-black wings.
“Figures,” Alex muttered, pulling more bits of hay from the bale as he sulked.
“Yes, it does.”
The boy’s head shot up at the sound of a voice that was not the crow’s. It was higher-pitched and scratchy like an opera singer with straw stuffed down her throat. It belonged, as it happened, to the scarecrow.
“How did you find me?” asked the boy.
“It was not easy, let me tell you, since that evil crow plucked out my eyes!”
“He did not seem evil to me,” said Alex. “Just annoying.”
“You might feel differently if he’d plucked out your eyes,” said the scarecrow.
Alex had to admit that this was true.
“Well, what do you want, then?”
“Revenge, of course!” said the scarecrow, as though it should have been self-evident. “If you help me get it, I will be your guide.” She nodded her head, and it fell off. Fortunately, she caught it before it hit the ground and resituated it on the space between her shoulders. (Alex assumed it was a “she” from the sound of the scarecrow’s voice, although there was honestly no other way to tell.)
Alex noticed for the first time that she was carrying something: a bow and a quiver full of arrows. He was sure he would have seen it if she’d had it outside the maze, and he had no idea where she might have gotten it. Of course, he had no idea how she managed to move at all, let alone converse with him, in the first place, so it wasn’t as shocking as it might have been otherwise.
“For you,” she said, handing him the bow and removing the quiver to offer it, as well.
The boy took it reluctantly, amid the nagging feeling that it wasn’t exactly a gift. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
“Why shoot him, of course,” said the scarecrow, as though it should have been as plain as day—even though it was night.
The boy shook his head. “I can’t do that. That would be murder.”
“Yes, a murder of crows!” the scarecrow threw back her head and laughed at her own joke. “Or in this case, one crow.”
Alex didn’t understand the joke, but he didn’t care to.
The scarecrow suddenly stopped laughing, and her raspy voice turned quite serious. “You will need my help to reach the center of the maze,” she warned. “And you must reach the center before you can get back out.”
Alex scuffed his heel against the dirt path. That didn’t make sense. “I can just go back the way I came,” he said.
The scarecrow laughed again, but there was less mirth in her tone this time. “And which way would that be?”
She had a point. Alex doubted he could retrace his steps and find his way out quickly on his own. But how big could the maze be? He was bound to stumble upon the exit eventually, even if he had to go push his way through spaces in the walls. Except there were no spaces in the walls. The corn grew so thick he could not even see through it, let alone walk through it. Even if he could, would he be closer or farther from the exit? There was no way of knowing.
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
“Then we have a deal,” the scarecrow said firmly. “We will wait here until the crow returns, you will shoot him, and I will take you to the center of the maze.”
Alex frowned. “Why don’t you just shoot him yourself?”
“It’s against the rules.”
“What rules?”
“We’re only supposed to scare the crows, not kill them. It’s written down in triplicate, and all of us are required to sign in blood. Please don’t make me fetch you a copy.”
Alex shook his head, idly wondering whose blood was used, considering scarecrows did not seem to have any.
“Then it’s settled,” the scarecrow said.
Alex said nothing. He just sat there, trying to figure out what he would do if and when Mr. Rrawk returned.
...
It seemed to Elizabeth that she had been walking for hours, though she had no way of knowing how long it had been. It was still dark out, but a bank of clouds had rolled in, obscuring moon and stars, and bringing with it a light but steady drizzle. Before long, it had woven itself into the strands of the girl’s hair, matting it against her head, and chilling her skin where it pressed against her sopping-soaked rose-red dress.
Her new shoes squished-squashed as the sank into the muddy ground, and she shivered involuntarily. It was time to go back, she decided. But the moment she turned around, she found her way blocked by a wall of ivy. That hadn’t been there before. She knew it hadn’t.
There came from the underbrush a skittering sound, like an animal scurrying away. The leaves moved, but she saw no sign of furry feet, then realized that the plants themselves were moving, changing the shape of the path as she moved along it and blocking any possible retreat.
Elizabeth gasped. “How will I ever get back?” she asked, to no one in particular.
“Who?”
She looked up at the owl. “Me, that’s who! You might have told me the labyrinth would change as I went forward.”
The owl puffed out her chest feathers and turned her head almost all the way around, then back again. “I thought you knew,” she said, almost haughtily. “Life is always like that. You never know where you might go, but ‘back’ is not an option.”
“It can be for me!” Elizabeth said, though she didn’t know exactly why.
“Perhaps,” said the owl. “But not here, and not now.”
Elizabeth was growing impatient. “You know where you’re going,” she said. “You can see it all from overhead! Can you tell me the best way?”
“Forward,” Miss Owl hooted. “Always forward!”
The foul fowl was no help at owl.
Just then, a strand of ivy flashed upward from the midst of the labyrinth like a bolt of green lightning in reverse. Before poor Miss Owl could react, it had latched onto her and whipped itself around her left leg, then her right, and began to pull her violently down toward the ground. The girl watched in horror as she thrashed about, and took a step backward as a winged stone gargoyle emerged from the green wall just behind her and began advancing on its trophy.
> Elizabeth wanted to run, but the way backward was blocked, and the gargoyle had placed itself between her and the path ahead. She was amazed to hear Miss Owl shriek, not in panic, but in counsel: “Fear not the obstacle before you! Fear only the one inside you!”
In the owl’s selfless wisdom, Elizabeth somehow found her courage. With a cry, she rushed toward the gargoyle and, closing her eyes tightly, threw herself at it with all the strength she could muster. It seemed like forever between the time her feet left the wet earth and the time she reached her quarry. And in that time, she wondered why she would do this. Why would she do such a thing in behalf of a haughty old bird, and one who had refused to help her when she’d asked? She did not have time to answer this question. She opened her eyes again and saw the stone gargoyle before her, mouth open in a hideous snarl that would have scared the wits out of the bravest soul in Yorkshire.
But she did not have time to be scared, either.
“You never have time,” she thought she heard the owl say softly in a somehow distant voice. “You always think you do.”
In that moment, she was upon the gruesome creature. But when she touched it, it turned to dust, crumbling all around her in a thousand million bits and pieces.
Thrown entirely off balance by this turn of events, Elizabeth tumbled like a cartwheel off its axle, legs flying and arms flailing as she fell and skidded on the muddy earth. Dizzy and befuddled, she shook her head vigorously and rose to her feet, trying in vain to wipe the mud from her rose-red dress and only smearing it all the more deeply into thread and fiber.
“Miss Owl?” she said, looking about her.
But the wise old bird was nowhere to be seen. The strands of ivy that had held her fast lay strewn about, lifeless, on the earth; yet she herself was gone.
There was, however, something else...
The clouds above had parted just enough to admit a sliver of pale moonlight, and this narrow beacon settled on the ground just before her, glinting off something half hidden in the mud.
The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1) Page 3