The Blackhope Enigma

by Teresa Flavin

  Marin still gripped their arms and said, “Keep silent and do exactly as I say. Our lives depend upon it. We are in a maze made for Sir Innes Blackhope’s amusement. There are many possible ways through it, but each one triggers a threat. The paths can close unexpectedly or open to reveal a predator.”

  “Predator?” Dean gulped.

  “Yes, either human or beast.”

  A leaf tumbled from the sky and landed on the toe of Dean’s sneaker. Marin snatched it up and, after studying the map on it, gave it to Dean. “It is yours. You came through the arch first.”

  “You’re not getting one?” Dean asked.

  “No, we came through as one. Do not let go of that leaf. It shows our route. We stay connected and go through together.” Marin pulled them around the first turn. “If you become detached from us, the girl and I will not be able to follow the route and will have to make our own way.”

  Dean gripped the leaf in his shaking fist. He tripped over his own feet in his desperation to keep hold of Marin.

  “Careful!” Sunni chided him.

  “I’m trying!”

  “Quiet,” said Marin. “Listen.”

  In the distance a deep voice was shouting, “Get back or I’ll banjax you in the snout!” and then, “Hah! That’ll teach you!” The voice trailed away.

  “Make haste.” Marin pulled them even faster. “They are not far ahead.”

  But at the next turn, Dean came to a dead stop.

  “Look!” he shrieked, his eyes focused on a place farther down the path. “It’s coming to get us!”

  “Dean, there’s nothing there!”

  “Yes, there is!”

  Marin held their wrists tightly. “A predator — only the boy can see it. Quickly, we must get past it.”

  “No, I want to go back!” Dean shrank farther away. “Its heads, look at all of its heads!”

  “There is no choice. Make him move,” Marin said to Sunni. “Please.”

  He’s telling the truth, Sunni thought, caught by something in the young man’s eyes.

  She whispered, “We have to trust him. Come on, Dean.”

  Marin and Sunni heaved Dean along, trying to shield him from the invisible predator. As they steered around a corner, he cowered, eyes wide in terror. Something rustled and rushed close by, knocking Dean’s feet out from under him. Sunni and Marin struggled to keep hold of him.

  Suddenly, Dean’s body was yanked up by the foot into midair and something shredded his trouser leg. Deep punctures appeared in Dean’s flesh, welling up with blood, as invisible teeth worked their way up his shin.

  Marin unsheathed his dagger and slashed at the air around Dean’s leg. The unseen predator brushed the hedge as it lurched away, and Dean fell over, pulling the others down with him.

  Marin landed on top, his dagger still cutting the air above them in case the creature lurked nearby.

  “Get off!” shouted Dean. “I can’t breathe!”

  Marin rolled off and knelt next to them. Blood was streaming down Dean’s shin, and Sunni saw that he was swallowing hard, determined not to seem weak.

  “Dean,” she gasped. “I am so sorry I didn’t believe you. Marin, you’ve got to let me help him.”

  Murmuring something, Marin sliced through the children’s vine shackles and allowed Sunni to dab at Dean’s wounds with a scrunched-up tissue she had found in her pocket.

  “We have to keep moving.” Marin started to help Dean up, but the boy stumbled and cried out in pain.

  He pushed Sunni to Dean’s other side so they could both support him while he limped along. “We must go,” he said gruffly. “The predator will be back at any moment.”

  The hunter’s bolt had narrowly missed skewering Blaise through the neck. The hunter himself had vanished over the hedge in a cloud of dust kicked up by his horse’s hooves. In the near distance, Blaise could hear a man screaming in agony. They got Angus, he thought, panic rising in his chest. But you’re OK. Focus!

  He scurried to the next point on the map. There was supposed to be a path, but it was blocked by thick foliage.

  The pounding of horses’ hooves came nearer. Blaise huddled in front of the dense bush, the leaf shaking in his hand. When the hedge shifted sideways without warning, opening a new path ahead, it revealed the hunter coming straight at him, his crossbow trained on Blaise’s chest.

  He threw himself as far under the hedge as he could. As the horse flew past him, the hunter fired a bolt that just missed Blaise’s ankle. Weak with terror and relief, he couldn’t move.

  Then, from nearby, he heard someone groaning.

  “Who is it?” Blaise hissed into the hedge.

  There was a gurgling and a sigh before a low voice, with a distinctive cut-glass accent, said, “I — I am here. By Jove, someone has come at last.”

  Taken aback, Blaise said, “Mr. Fox-Farratt? It’s me, Blaise Doran.”

  “Ah, the boy with that r-ruffian. . . .” moaned Hugo. “N-no matter. Just help me, b-before it returns.” There was a slight sob in Hugo’s voice. “I have little s-strength left. The next time it comes, it will finish me. . . .”

  “The hunter on the horse?” asked Blaise, scanning the path behind him and listening for hoofbeats.

  “No!” Hugo’s voice cracked. “B-body of a beast, wings of a-an eagle. Beak like pincers . . . tearing, tearing!” He suddenly screeched, and Blaise rolled backward from the hedge. There was the sound of thrashing on the other side, and Blaise craned his neck, looking for any sign of a winged beast above the hedge, but there was nothing. The sky was undisturbed and silent, but for Hugo’s unbearable shrieks of pain.

  Blaise dug his hands into the hedge to part it, but it was too dense. Instead he clambered to the top, expecting to see Hugo on the path below him. Astonished to find it empty, he was trying to decide whether to climb over when something caught his eye.

  From farther down the path, the hunter was watching him, smiling devilishly as he lifted his crossbow and took aim. A bolt sped past Blaise’s head, and he fell backward into the maze.

  He heard Hugo moan again, but Blaise couldn’t help him now. He ran blindly this way, then that, wherever the path was clear, until he came to a junction where there were three choices — which should he take? Blaise looked at the leaf and chose the middle one.

  A horrible whinnying sound behind him made him run as he never had before. He nearly missed the next turn, which opened only as he reached it. One more path. Left at the next junction, thought Blaise. He ran straight for the hedge in front of him, ready to hurl himself to the left, but instead of finding the exit, he collided with the leafy barrier. Behind him, the horse was so close, he could almost feel its heat.

  Crushed against the hedge, Blaise screamed, “Let me out!” He turned to see the hunter yet again lift his crossbow and fix it on his prey.

  Blaise closed his eyes, waiting for the fatal shot, but suddenly the hedge shifted behind him and he tumbled backward through open space. The hunter lowered his crossbow and, with an imperious sneer, nodded his head once and disappeared over the hedge.

  Blaise found himself rolling down a grassy incline. The blue sky was gone, covered by a thick mist. He came to a stop with his bag wedged uncomfortably beneath him and scrambled to his feet, looking around him in case the hunter sprang from the gloom.

  He relaxed his curled fist and found the leaf map, crushed. As he smoothed it out with his finger, its jade color faded into gold and the soft surface dried up and crumbled away. All that was left was a burnished skeleton.

  Marin hoisted Dean onto his back and grabbed Sunni’s hand. His touch was warm and sent a current up her arm and straight into her chest, setting her heart racing.

  Marin’s dagger had just defended them against a second attack but not before Dean’s shins were bloodied again.

  “We are close,” he panted, glancing at the leaf. “Just a little farther.”

  Ahead of them there was a gap in the hedge, on the other side of which swirled a pear
ly mist. Marin and Sunni summoned up all their stamina to reach it.

  Dean suddenly whimpered, “It’s there, waiting in the gap. We won’t get past!”

  “Pull out my dagger, girl,” Marin croaked. “Hold it out straight in front of us as we run through.”

  Sunni reached under his cloak with her free hand and yanked the knife from its sheath. Marin pulled her close to his side and told Dean to hold on.

  As they started through the gap, Dean let out an earsplitting yell. Sunni gripped the knife, and it hit something in midair. She drove the weapon in, crying out as something invisible sliced its claws across her hand. After several moments of resistance, the adversary seemed to melt away.

  When they staggered out of the maze, branches sprang up from the ground and filled in the gap.

  Marin laid Dean on the ground and stumbled away to catch his breath. Sunni bent double, gagging at the thought of what she had just done. Then she put her arms around her stepbrother and examined his new wounds.

  “Do they hurt a lot?” She spat on the soiled tissue and pressed it to the worst one.

  “Naw. I’m all right.” His face was white. “Do yours hurt?”

  “Not yet. They’re not too bad. You’ve been amazing. Really brave, Deano.”

  “You’re the brave one,” Dean said shakily. “You got it, Sun, right in its stomach. The guts spilled out and everything. Nice one.”

  Sunni almost gagged again. “Ugh! So glad I missed seeing that. What was it, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, tossing the leaf map away. “It crawled like a giant crab with claws, but it could rear up and it had all these human heads growing out of its back. And it made this sound. . . .” He couldn’t finish, and Sunni gave his arm a squeeze.

  “It’s over now.” She nodded toward Marin. “It’s a good thing he was here with his knife.”

  “Huh? We wouldn’t even have been in the maze if it weren’t for him! And don’t forget he’s got my portrait in his bag. One false move and he’ll stick us both inside a sheet of paper.”

  “We’re already stuck. And who knows where we are now?”

  Marin watched the discarded leaf tumble to the ground and transform into a golden skeleton.

  “Look there,” he said. The mist that surrounded them had drifted apart, revealing a lone, dark-haired figure with a bag on his back, silhouetted in the distance.

  “Blaise,” breathed Sunni as the fog thickened again.

  Blaise felt a surge of loneliness as he trudged down the hill. Sunni and Dean were still lost, Inko had been swallowed by the thorns, and something awful had happened to Hugo — the maze had either made him crazy or killed him.

  Blaise shuddered. The mist around him formed strange shapes and added to his mood of despair. Then it grew still and thickened like porridge. The next thing Blaise knew, he had walked straight into a white wall. Gypsum and glue again. Another layer. What else had Corvo concealed beneath Arcadia? Blaise ran his hands over the wall. It was slightly rough, like sandpaper, with a strange but not unpleasant smell to it.

  Stuck to the wall was a piece of parchment with drawings on it — it looked like a map. Blaise’s fingers found a loose edge, like on a piece of wallpaper that hadn’t been stuck down properly. Bit by bit, he pried it up.

  A sound came from the direction of the maze. He tensed, ready to run, and saw Angus hurtling through the mist some distance away. He had nearly reached Blaise when he doubled over, heaving. Blaise hurriedly worked away at the map. When Angus finally straightened up, Blaise saw that three deep scratches had been raked down the older man’s face from forehead to chin, and his overcoat was shredded, with one sleeve torn off. His fedora was gone, and his long hair was pasted to his face like strands of seaweed.

  “You.” Angus doubled over again.

  Blaise gritted his teeth as he lifted more of the map off the wall — he wasn’t leaving it behind for Angus.

  The big man coughed and ran a hand over his bloody scratches.

  “Did you see it?” he croaked, trying to draw something in the air with his finger. “Claws, tusks, fur — a bit like a wild boar and with a squeal that could turn you deaf. It seemed to be there at every turn!”

  Blaise tugged harder on the map. More than half of it had come loose.

  “What have you got there?” asked Angus, venturing forward.

  With a final jerk, Blaise ripped the rest of the map free and took off.

  He sprinted along the wall, praying for an opening. As he ran, he noticed a blue-green glow through the white. He changed direction, moving more slowly now, and ventured toward the color. A simple wooden walkway appeared under his feet.

  The walkway became a sturdy pier, which Blaise followed until he stood poised at its edge. The world before him was a shining turquoise ocean with blue sky as far as he could see.

  He pivoted around to look behind him. The other end of the pier faded into the white wall, and there stood Angus, a crooked smile on his bloody face.

  Blaise rolled up the map and shoved it into his bag. He looked down into the water, ready to jump, as Angus began limping along the pier.

  Suddenly Blaise saw something gliding across the sea. Two triangular sails were moving swiftly toward him.

  A galley ship drifted up to the pier, white sails shimmering and rows of oars protruding from its sides like a centipede’s legs. The elevated poop deck at the rear was covered with a brightly decorated canopy, and a flag showing a panther fluttered overhead. The prow had a carved figurehead Blaise couldn’t make out at first, but as it came closer, he saw it was a woman holding a lily in one hand and an apple in the other.

  The main deck was bustling with sailors in loose shirts and breeches, bringing the craft safely alongside the pier. Muscular oarsmen were slumped with exhaustion on the benches that lined each side of the deck.

  A sailor with an eye patch slung a rope around a post and gestured for Blaise to cross the gangplank that had been laid down for him.

  As Angus’s shouts grew closer behind him, Blaise jumped onto the ship. The air smelled of sweat and fish. He was greeted by several smiling sailors, ushered down the raised gangway between the oarsmen and up onto the poop deck, where the helmsman guided the rudder. A low rumble began as men grunted and pushed the oars out like the wings of a huge bird. Within seconds the vessel shifted away from the dock.

  Heart still racing, Blaise watched Angus standing motionless at the end of the pier, his face twisted with rage.

  Someone tugged at his sleeve, and he turned around, startled. The one-eyed sailor, whom Blaise immediately nicknamed “Patchy,” bowed and looked expectantly at him. He seemed to be a first mate of sorts, dressed in neater breeches than the others and a tunic.

  A boy peered down at Blaise from the crow’s nest atop the mainmast. Everyone else on deck had stopped work to watch the newcomer.

  Who were they? What did they all want, staring at him like that? The ship pitched and he clung to the side, his stomach lurching.

  Some of the men had dark hair and some had light. The same went for their skin tones and clothes. But Blaise’s stomach contracted again as he realized that their faces were all essentially the same.

  They looked similar to the men in the frozen top layer of The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia. But those men did not move, while these men climbed and rowed and stared at him without blinking.

  A voice broke the standoff.

  “Welcome, Captain. Where you want to go?” asked Patchy in a singsong voice, offering him a skin full of water. “You tell me. We take you where you wish.”

  “Captain? How could I be your captain? Don’t you have one already?” Blaise guzzled water and poured some over his face.

  “No. We been waiting for you, Captain. Now you’re here, and this is your ship.”

  “But how did you know I was coming?”

  “When Captain comes here to find his ship, we come to take him where he want to go.”

  Blaise noticed that many of
the crew had gone back to their work. His stomach calmed a little. “But how do you know I’m the captain?”

  “You were at shore,” said the sailor. “So you’re the captain.”

  “Is this the only ship here?”

  Patchy laughed. “No, other ships are already here — other captains also. But Venus is your ship.”

  “Was Sir Innes Blackhope also a captain here?”

  The sailor bowed. “Yes, yes, of many different ships, but not for long time now. Best captain, best fighter.”

  “That figures,” said Blaise, and then he asked slyly, “What about Fausto Corvo? Was he here?”

  This time Patchy’s face was blank.

  “OK, guess not.” Blaise changed the subject. “Have you seen a boy and a girl about my age, maybe on another ship? She has brownish hair, dark pants, and her coat is green plaid. Her stepbrother is blond and has a dark jacket. They’re my friends and they’re lost.”

  Patchy screwed up his face as he pondered. “No, Captain.”

  “Well, I’m looking for them,” said Blaise, knowing that they were probably very far behind him now. If he tried to go back, he would have to contend with Angus again, not to mention the maze. “If you see any girl or boy, tell me.”

  “I’ll tell the crew.” Patchy bowed and bellowed something across the deck in a language that could have been Italian. Heads nodded, and a few men grunted in acknowledgment.

  “How do you know English?” Blaise finished the skin of water.

  Patchy shrugged. “We all just know it, always.”

  “Corvo thought of everything, didn’t he?” Blaise said.

  “Corvo?” repeated the sailor.

  “The man who made you and this ship and everything here,” said Blaise, waiting to see how Patchy would take this.

  “I don’t understand, Captain.”

  “So you don’t know how you got here?”

  The sailor’s eyes showed no spark of interest or curiosity. “Come now, Captain. I’ll show you your cabin.”

  Blaise had to hunch over as Patchy led him below the poop deck to a small cabin containing a table, chair, and bunk. He folded himself down onto the narrow bunk and stretched out his legs.