Malig Tumora

by James Moloney

  ‘It’s guess work at first,’ Aden told him. ‘The trick is to remember what you’ve already learned.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like where the dead ends are, and when you are going round in circles. That way, you can make a kind of map in your head.’

  ‘Well, come on, let’s go!’

  Twenty.

  Berrin took his first real look around. Their world had been reduced to walls and passageways again. It wasn’t much different from the menagerie itself, though these passages were much narrower and the grey walls not as high. They were made of wooden panels, he realised when he pressed his hand against one. But the panels were too strong to break through and certainly too high to climb.

  The only light came from the open sky. The height of the walls meant they could see only ten metres or so along the passageway before visibility was lost in shade and shadow.

  Standing with their backs to the door, they had only two choices to start with. ‘Do we turn right or go straight ahead?’ Berrin asked.

  ‘Take your pick. I told you — at first it’s all guesswork.’

  They went straight ahead and quickly found a passage to their right. They followed this until they came to three large boxes marking its end. They turned around immediately without taking much notice of the boxes. ‘We can’t let ourselves get trapped,’ said Berrin.

  Aden grunted dismissively, as though this was nothing to do with him.

  Forty.

  They backtracked to the first passageway and continued along it until they reached another opening to the right.

  ‘Another dead end?’

  Aden shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We’ll skip it then,’ Berrin decided.

  ‘No, that’s a mistake,’ Aden insisted. ‘We have to learn as much as we can now, or we’ll be left to guess too much later on.’

  Sixty.

  ‘But time’s running out. We’ve been in here a minute already.’

  ‘We’ll split up. You go ahead and I’ll turn right. We run for ten seconds, then turn around and come back here.’

  Berrin wasn’t sure if this was a good use of time, but he had chosen Aden and now he had to trust him.

  They parted. Berrin quickly reached the end of the passage and found a turn to the right. He followed it, counting seven, eight, nine. He was about to turn around when he reached yet another corner and saw Aden jogging towards him.

  ‘It’s an island. It didn’t matter which way we chose, we were going to end up here. Come on, that way,’ he said, pointing.

  A little further and the boys reached a T-junction. ‘There’s time still,’ Aden said. ‘We’ll split up again. Ten seconds and turn around, understand?’ Aden sounded more confident now. He hurried along a straight passage to the right, leaving Berrin to explore to the left. In an instant he found another passage branching off to the left. He followed it but found his way blocked. Strangely, there were the same three boxes in the shadows of the dead end. He backtracked and sighed in relief when Aden joined him.

  They shared what each had discovered. ‘I’m getting confused,’ Berrin confessed.

  ‘No, it’s easy,’ said Aden. ‘Look, I’ll show you where we are.’

  Dropping to his knees in the dirt, he used his finger to draw a diagram of the maze they had explored so far. ‘We’re here,’ he added, marking the place with an X, ‘and there are those box things here and here.’

  He poked his finger into the dirt making three dots for each.

  Berrin had lost count of the passing seconds but he realised their head start had come to an end when he heard the heavy door slam shut, shaking the walls of the maze. Then came that terrifying noise — a frenzied grunting that escaped into the air as a bark.

  The map at their feet told them the pig-dog could come at them from two directions. They hurried away in a third.

  ‘That way’s no use!’ shouted Berrin, pointing into the dead end he had already explored. They reached the end of the passage and, to their relief, discovered a corner to the right. It was more of a U-turn really and, straightening up, they took the first corner to the left.

  The barking was growing closer and much too quickly for the boys. The pig-dog hadn’t wandered into any dead ends, it seemed. No, it had found the right path first time.

  Berrin turned, worried that the beast would reach them at any moment. When he faced forward again, there was no sign of Aden. Had he run straight on or had he taken the turn that suddenly appeared on their left?

  The pig-dog was coming. Berrin couldn’t call out. He couldn’t afford to stand still. Which way? He had to decide.

  He chose the turn and then another to the right, driven by his terror to take the first route his eyes fell on. He could hear the pig-dog on his trail and this sound alone gave his legs a speed he hadn’t known they possessed.

  Another T-junction. Left, he decided, and left again and then he stopped. Three boxes. He was trapped in a dead end. If the pig-dog followed him, he would be cut to pieces.

  He heard it approaching the T-junction and knew his life hung in the balance. He stayed completely still. Held his breath. He would have stopped the thundering of his heart if he could.

  The pig-dog turned to the right. He heard it gallop down the passage, away from him. Berrin collapsed against the wall with relief. His body wanted to slide slowly down to the sand for a rest.

  No, he told himself. He was in a dead end. The beast would be back and this time it would explore the directions it had missed. He crept silently to the first corner and dared a peek. Nothing. With his eyes fixed on the darkened end of the long passage, he moved back to the junction.

  Then he screamed. He had bumped into something, something warm and alive.

  It screamed too. It was Aden.

  ‘Where did you go?’ they yelled at each other.

  It seemed that Aden had found a dead end as well, and only luck had saved him from the marauding pig-dog.

  ‘Which way?’ It was the only question that mattered.

  Aden thought for a moment, adding what he had just discovered to what he already knew. ‘Follow the pig-thing,’ he said.

  ‘Follow it?’ Berrin gasped.

  But Aden insisted. ‘If it was a dead end up that way, it would have come back looking for us by now.’

  They set off, following the passage to the right and then the left, until they reached another T-junction. The pig-dog’s footprints went to the right. Trailing it still, they pressed on until they found themselves in a long passage, both ends too far away to see.

  ‘We’ve been moving in a circle, I think. I’m pretty certain we’ve been close to here before,’ said Aden. He was quickly on his knees, recreating the earlier map and adding more to it.

  He traced a twisting, turning line in the sand with his finger. ‘This is the route we’ve followed since the U-bend,’ he said. ‘And now we’re here.’ He added an X, and then four lots of three dots to show the boxes.

  ‘No red door yet,’ Berrin commented bitterly. ‘Where is the pig-dog?’

  ‘It could be going round in the same circle, behind us,’ Aden said, pointing out the way on the makeshift map. ‘Or it could have gone back to the blue door. The truth is, it’s probably more lost than we are.’

  The pig-dog might have been lost but it wasn’t as far away as they would have liked. As they stared down at the map, it appeared from the direction of the U-turn and moments later was bounding towards them.

  SEVEN

  Three Boxes

  THERE WAS NO DECISION to be made this time. Or at least, only to run, and their legs had already made it. They careered down the long passage, a direction they hadn’t explored before. Their luck held out and at the end the passage turned to the left, but they were still in unknown territory.

  ‘Where will this take us?’ Berrin shouted.

  ‘To the corner of the maze, I think. It might even take us to the red door.’

  It was just as likely to be a dead end,
Berrin realised. There was nothing to do but find out. The end of the passage was coming nearer. He strained his eyes for a flash of red. Nothing. All he could see was a grey wall.

  Aden saw it too. ‘It’s a dead end,’ he shouted in horror, and for a moment it seemed he would stop altogether.

  ‘Keep going!’ Berrin urged.

  ‘What’s the point? It doesn’t go anywhere.’

  Berrin could see a little better now, enough to be sure of one thing. ‘There aren’t any of those boxes,’ he shouted. ‘It’s not a dead end, it’s a corner!’

  The corner gave them an escape route, but the pig-dog was still after them. They hurled themselves to the left and then left again.

  ‘We’ve been here before,’ shouted Aden. ‘Up ahead is where we saw those footprints in the sand.’

  He was right, and moments later they reached the corner he had described.

  ‘Give me your jacket,’ Berrin demanded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t argue. Just give it to me,’ Berrin snapped, already pulling it off the boy’s shoulders.

  As soon as it was free, he tossed it as far as he could along the direction of the footprints. Then, grabbing Aden’s hand, he tugged him away to the right. Aden knew better than to speak as they ran on silently. His quick mind worked out Berrin’s plan. The pig-dog would follow the scent from his jacket. Clever! But at best, it would bring them only a little more time.

  The boys raced along the familiar passageway to the junction where they had collided in fright. ‘Up this way. It leads to the only part of the maze we haven’t tried,’ Aden whispered.

  A right turn at the next corner took them back into unknown territory. The pig-dog was on their heels again. A left turn and a lengthy passage brought them to another T-junction and there they stopped.

  ‘What now?’ asked Berrin, through heaving breaths.

  ‘At a guess, I’d say the left leads to one corner and the right to another. The red door will be at one of them.’

  ‘Yes, but which one?’

  How could they know?

  The pig-dog was coming closer every second they delayed.

  ‘Let’s try the left,’ said Aden.

  The choice was made.

  RIGHT AGAIN, MORE RUNNING and then left.

  ‘We should be near the corner of the maze by now,’ Aden called.

  Indeed, it seemed they were, but there was no red door, just another left-hand corner.

  ‘I don’t think this is the right way,’ gasped Aden.

  Could they turn back? The horrid barking told them no.

  ‘Come on,’ Berrin urged and he ran off, forcing Aden to keep up or be left to face the beast alone. The passageway was particularly dark but they could see the grey wall ahead. Would there be a corner to save them?

  The answer came soon enough. Berrin skidded to a halt. In front of him sat the last thing he had hoped to see: three boxes.

  ‘We’re finished,’ Aden said desperately. ‘No way out, no weapon and that pig-dog will be here any minute.’

  Berrin barely heard him. He had thought of something. ‘Why are these boxes here?’

  ‘To show it’s a dead end.’

  ‘No need for boxes to tell us that. What are those markings on the sides?’ Berrin took a closer look at the middle box. ‘Hey, there’s a picture of a sword on the side of this one,’ he called excitedly.

  He tried to open the box from the top but it was sealed. ‘Maybe you have to push it over.’

  He was about to do just that when Aden shouted, ‘No, wait! Look at the other pictures.’

  When Berrin took the time to inspect them, he gasped. On another side of the same box was a scorpion, and on the top, a snake. Checking the others he added fiery flames to the list of dangers, but he also discovered the picture of something even more useful than a sword — a gun.

  ‘Look, on the wall, there’s some kind of writing,’ said Aden, pointing. He read the words aloud:

  ‘Three boxes standing all the same

  Two are deadly, one is tame

  What lies beneath will be inside

  Have you the courage to decide?’

  ‘It’s some kind of puzzle, like the maze itself. If we pick the right box, we’ll have a weapon to use against the pig-dog,’ said Aden.

  The boxes were positioned at an angle which meant they could see three pictures on each from where they stood. Berrin hurried behind the middle one. ‘Hey, the pictures on these two sides have been painted out.’ He checked the other two boxes and found they also had two faces blacked out.

  ‘And the last side is face down,’ Aden muttered. He had been studying the rhyme on the wall. ‘I get it. Whatever picture should be on the bottom, that’s what we’ll find inside.’

  ‘We have to guess then. A sword, or a gun. We have two chances out of …’ His voice faded away as he counted.

  ‘Six,’ Aden told him quickly. ‘These boxes are cubes, so they have six sides.’

  ‘We have two chances out of six, then,’ said Berrin. ‘That’s the same as one in three. Yes, I see what those words mean now. Two are deadly, one is tame. We’ll have to trust our luck and pick one.’

  ‘No, the odds are against us,’ Aden insisted. ‘There’s a better way. See what else the rhyme tells us? Three boxes all the same. We have to learn the pattern and then we’ll know the right one to choose.’

  ‘Well, what’s the pattern?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but there must be a way of working it out from the evidence in front of us,’ said Aden, but before he could set his mind to the problem, the pig-dog rounded the corner. Only the length of the passage separated them from the savage beast. The boys turned to see its deadly tusks lowered for attack.

  ‘Aden, which box?’ Berrin shouted but his companion was frozen with fear. He couldn’t even answer to his own name, let alone solve the puzzle of the boxes! Without a weapon, they were as good as dead. Berrin had to find that sword.

  He looked at the boxes himself. The wrong choice might set another pig-dog onto them, or a coiling snake or something even worse.

  Think! Look at the boxes! Find a pattern!

  The pig-dog charged. With a determination he hadn’t known he could muster, he pushed the fear from his mind. Think! There is a pattern, look for a pattern.

  Pig-dog and fire. He could see them both on the left and right boxes, but one was on the top and the other on the side. The boxes were identical. In his mind he flipped one over to make them match. On the left hand box he could also see the gun but on the right, the scorpion. That meant the scorpion and the gun must be opposite each other on all three boxes. Discovering the pattern sent a momentary thrill through him, until he realised that the gun could not be under any of the three. He had to find the sword.

  Vicious snarling brought Berrin back to the danger charging towards him. The pig-dog was halfway along the passage. He had only seconds left to make his choice.

  Don’t give in to panic. No gun and he could see a sword on the side of middle box. The sword could only be hidden under the left box or the right. Think!

  Then he saw it. The middle box and the right. Scorpion and gun were in the same place, yet the middle box showed the snake on top and the sword on the side. The right-hand box had fire on top and the pig-dog on the side. In his crowded, desperate mind, he rotated one box carefully, keeping the scorpion and gun in place until they matched.

  ‘The snake must be opposite the fire,’ he muttered to himself and that meant the pig-dog was opposite …

  With death bounding towards them, now only metres from the terrified Aden, Berrin pushed over the left-hand box. Waiting for him on the sand was a sword.

  He snatched it up and in one furious, flowing movement swung it at the charging pig-dog as the creature launched itself towards the petrified Aden.

  Berrin’s blow caught the beast on the jaw, bringing a yelp of pain. It was enough to force it away for a few moments, stunned and bleeding, but not enough to k
ill it. In fact, it seemed more ferocious than ever as it circled the boys, its tiny pig eyes focused on the blade as it flashed in the half-light.

  It came at them again, but Berrin slashed and whirled the sword, making it retreat. ‘Aden, move with me,’ he called.

  But the horror was too much for Aden. He stood in one spot, his eyes flicking between the pig-dog and Berrin. ‘Help me,’ he cried weakly.

  ‘I’m trying to,’ Berrin hissed, but when the beast charged again, Aden was too scared even to back away. Before Berrin could drive him off, a tusk had ripped into the leg of Aden’s pants. He screamed but fortunately there was little blood.

  Berrin realised he couldn’t fight the pig-dog and protect Aden at the same time. With the sword in one hand, he grabbed Aden by the arm and dragged him back towards the boxes. The pig-dog circled ominously, ready to charge.

  Let it hold off for just a few more seconds, Berrin pleaded silently. He couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the pig-dog for an instant. Instead, he felt with his feet until he found what he wanted.

  ‘Aden,’ he said in the boy’s ear, ‘get inside this box.’

  ‘What?’ Aden replied, confused.

  ‘Inside,’ Berrin repeated, kicking the overturned box that had hidden the sword. ‘Quickly, down on your hands and knees.’

  Aden did as he was told, without the least idea of why. Berrin had to be quick. Even lightning had never moved so fast. With the sword still in one hand, he tipped over the box until Aden was sealed inside.

  He had thought this might bring him relief, but quickly discovered he would have to think again. The pig-dog roared in and only a well-aimed blow at its shoulder forced it back. Despite the blood flowing from the wound, it attacked again and, before Berrin could get his breath, a third time.

  Berrin was tiring rapidly. He couldn’t keep fending off the creature like this. Eventually, he would be too slow and those terrible tusks would rip open his leg. Once he had fallen to the ground … he couldn’t bear to think of it.