by Otto Penzler
The dust settled. Upheld by shattered timbers, Ann moaned. Her brain cleared. Silvery light splotched shadow around her, and slowly she became aware that she was penned in a pyramidal space of shattered, jagged timbers, that beneath her the ground was soaked, muddy with blood, that behind her there were small whimperings, tiny noises of infinite suffering. The whimperings faded at last to silence. Her bewildered mind struggled with these things, and realization finally dawned on her. That last, hopeless grab of hers, that last frenzied clutch, somehow had seized upon the key beam of a precariously balanced heap of timbers. It had collapsed, and missing her, by some miracle had fallen upon and crushed the crawlers behind her, and their master. . . .
A miracle? Perhaps. And then again . . . “Oh God!” Ann sobbed. “Oh God, I thank Thee.” Perhaps she was right. Perhaps He in whose sight no sparrow’s fall is unnoted . . .
THE SUN MAY have warmed them to courage again, the men whom the crawlers had routed from Deadhope and sent careening away in marrow-melting fear. At any rate, it was they, bristling with automatics and borrowed rifles, who returned, when that desert sun was already blazing high in the sky, to dig Ann out from under the blood-spattered beams, and fetch her again delirious husband from the strange pit where he lay. They carried them to the room prepared for them in the bunkhouse and aided them with rude surgery till a doctor and nurse could be summoned from Axton to take over the job.
But it was not till a week later that Ann came sufficiently out from the shadows to talk to Bob. “It’s all like a horrible nightmare,” she said. “I still don’t understand what it was all about.”
“We’ve pieced it together from what we’ve been able to find here, and the things he said to you, and what little was known about him.” Travers’ mouth was still lined with pain, his eyes somber. “The man’s real name was Grandon Rolfe. He knew your Uncle Horvay in the old days, knew that his silver vein had petered out till it was unprofitable to work the mine.
“After Deadhope was abandoned he moved in. He got convicts from the prison camp at Pimento, got them out here and made imbeciles of them with an injection extracted from loco weed, that grows wild all through this desert. Then he worked the mine with them, starving them and whipping them into submission. With free labor, with no cost for equipment, it still could be made to pay. . . .”
“But why did they crawl like that?”
“Because to further save expense and time, he excavated only the narrow vein of silver ore and made them work on their bellies, like snakes crawling in their burrows, till they no longer were able to walk erect.”
“Oh, horrible—”
“Not more horrible than some coal mines of which I know, in this country and abroad, where the miners work stooped over all day long, and tiny children are used for any task that requires quickness of movement. Greed inspires horrible things, my dear, and it is only in degree that Rolfe was worse than a great many highly-respected industrialists.
“However, he knew the jig was up when our men came in. He stopped operations, covered over all signs of them, and pretending to be a friendly neighbor, wormed out of them the reason for their activity, my discovery of the new process. He made up his mind to get hold of that and—”
“And his twisted brain conceived the idea of using his crawling idiots to scare them away, and then to frighten the process out of us.”
“Yes. It was only your bravery that defeated him, my dear.”
“Not bravery, Bob. I was scared to death. But all your work, all your hopes would have been ruined.” Then a new thought leaped to her brain, stinging her with anxiety. “Bob! The envelope. The papers with your formulae. They’re gone!”
“No, dear. They had only slipped into a little hole farther back than you could reach. I have them.” His hand reached across the space between their beds, found hers. An electric circuit seemed to close. Its current tingled between them, made them one. “I don’t deserve you, Ann.”
“Silly,” Ann said dreamily. “Someday I shall go through worse things than that for you. . . .”
Bob’s eyes shone. “You mean . . .”
“I think so— Oh Bob, I love you so much!”
LISA TUTTLE (1952– ) was born in Houston, Texas, and received her B.A. in English literature from Syracuse University. She has lived in the United Kingdom since 1980 and currently lives in Scotland with her husband. When still quite young, she joined the Turkey City Writer’s Workshop in Austin, Texas, and was the cowinner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1974.
Her first novel, Windhaven (1981), was written with George R. R. Martin after they collaborated on a short story, “The Storms of Windhaven,” which won a Hugo Award in 1975; she wrote a young adult fantasy novel illustrated by Una Woodruff (Catwitch, 1983) and coauthored a novel with Michael Johnson (Angela’s Rainbow, 1983). She has written ten novels on her own, including Familiar Spirit (1983), Gabriel (1987), Lost Futures (1992), and The Silver Bough (2006).
In 1981, as the Guest of Honor at Microcon, she was awarded the Nebula for Best Short Story, but turned down the honor. In 1989, she won the British Science Fiction Association Award for short fiction, which she accepted. Outside the fantasy and horror genres, she wrote Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986).
“Treading the Maze” was originally published in the November 1981 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
WE HAD SEEN the bed and breakfast sign from the road, and although it was still daylight and there was no hurry to settle, we had liked the look of the large, well-kept house amid the farmlands, and the name on the sign: The Old Vicarage.
Phil parked the Mini on the curving gravel drive. “No need for you to get out,” he said. “I’ll just pop in and ask.”
I got out anyway, just to stretch my legs and feel the warmth of the late, slanting sunrays on my bare arms. It was a beautiful afternoon. There was a smell of manure on the air, but it wasn’t unpleasant, mingling with the other country smells. I walked towards the hedge which divided the garden from the fields beyond. There was a low stone wall along the drive, and I climbed onto it to look over the hedge and into the field.
There was a man standing there, all alone in the middle of the field. He was too far away for me to make out his features, but something about the sight of that still figure gave me a chill. I was suddenly afraid he would turn his head and see me watching him, and I clambered down hastily.
“Amy?” Phil was striding towards me, his long face alight. “It’s a lovely room—come and see.”
The room was upstairs, with a huge soft bed, an immense wooden wardrobe, and a big, deep-set window, which I cranked open. I stood looking out over the fields.
There was no sign of the man I had just seen, and I couldn’t imagine where he had vanished to so quickly.
“Shall we plan to have dinner in Glastonbury?” Phil asked, combing his hair before the mirror inside the wardrobe door. “There should still be enough of the day left to see the Abbey.”
I looked at the position of the sun in the sky. “And we can climb the tor tomorrow.”
“You can climb the tor tomorrow morning. I’ve had about enough of all this climbing of ancient hills and monuments—Tintagel, St. Michael’s Mount, Cadbury Castle, Silbury Hill—”
“We didn’t climb Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill had a fence around it.”
“And a good thing, too, or you’d have made me climb it.” He came up behind me and hugged me fiercely.
I relaxed against him, feeling as if my bones were melting. Keeping my voice brisk, mock-scolding, I said, “I didn’t complain about showing you all the wonders of America last year. So the least you can do now is return the favour with ancient wonders of Britain. I know you grew up with all this stuff, but I didn’t. We don’t have anything like Silbury Hill or Glastonbury Tor where I come from.”
“If you did, if there was a Glastonbury Tor in America, they’d have a lift up the side of it,” he said.
“
Or at least a drive-through window.”
We both began laughing helplessly.
I think of us standing there in that room, by the open window, holding each other and laughing—I think of us standing there like that forever.
Dinner was a mixed grill in a Glastonbury café. Our stroll through the Abbey grounds took longer than we’d thought, and we were late, arriving at the café just as the proprietress was about to close up. Phil teased and charmed her into staying open and cooking for two last customers. Grey-haired, fat, and nearly toothless, she lingered by our table throughout our meal to continue her flirtation with Phil. He obliged, grinning and joking and flattering, but every time her back was turned, he winked at me or grabbed my leg beneath the table, making coherent conversation impossible on my part.
When we got back to the Old Vicarage, we were roped into having tea with the couple who ran the place and the other guests. That late in the summer there were only two others, an elderly couple from Belgium.
The electric fire was on and the lounge was much too warm. The heat made it seem even smaller than it was. I drank my sweet milky tea, stroked the old white dog who lay near my feet, and gazed admiringly at Phil, who kept up one end of a conversation about the weather, the countryside, and World War II.
Finally the last of the tea was consumed, the biscuit tin had made the rounds three times, and we could escape to the cool, empty sanctuary of our room. There we stripped off our clothes, climbed into the big soft bed, talked quietly of private things, and made love.
I hadn’t been asleep long before I came awake, aware that I was alone in the bed. We hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains, and the moonlight was enough to show me Phil was sitting on the wide window-ledge smoking a cigarette.
I sat up. “Can’t you sleep?”
“Just my filthy habit.” He waved the lit cigarette; I didn’t see, but could imagine, the sheepish expression on his face. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
He took one last, long drag and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. He rose, and I saw that he was wearing his woollen pullover, which hung to his hips, just long enough for modesty, but leaving his long, skinny legs bare.
I giggled.
“What’s that?”
“You without your trousers.”
“That’s right, make fun. Do I laugh at you when you wear a dress?”
He turned away towards the window, leaning forward to open it a little more. “It’s a beautiful night . . . cor!” He straightened up in surprise.
“What?”
“Out there—people. I don’t know what they’re doing. They seem to be dancing, out in the field.”
Half-suspecting a joke, despite the apparently genuine note of surprise in his voice, I got up and joined him at the window, wrapping my arms around myself against the cold. Looking out where he was gazing, I saw them. They were indisputably human figures—five, or perhaps six or seven, of them, all moving about in a shifting spiral, like some sort of children’s game or country dance.
And then I saw it. It was like suddenly comprehending an optical illusion. One moment, bewilderment; but, the next, the pattern was clear.
“It’s a maze,” I said. “Look at it, it’s marked out in the grass.”
“A turf-maze,” Phil said, wondering.
Among the people walking that ancient, ritual path, one suddenly paused and looked up, seemingly directly at us. In the pale moonlight and at that distance I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a dark figure with a pale face turned up towards us.
I remembered then that I had seen someone standing in that very field, perhaps in that same spot, earlier in the day, and I shivered. Phil put his arm around me and drew me close.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“There are remnants of traditions about dancing or running through mazes all over the country,” Phil said. “Most of the old turf-mazes have vanished—people stopped keeping them up before this century. They’re called troy-towns, or mizmazes . . . no one knows when or why they began, or if treading the maze was game or ritual, or what the purpose was.”
Another figure now paused beside the one who stood still, and laid hold of that one’s arm, and seemed to say something. And then the two figures fell back into the slow circular dance.
“I’m cold,” I said. I was shivering uncontrollably, although it was not with any physical chill. I gave up the comfort of Phil’s arm and ran for the bed.
“They might be witches,” Phil said. “Hippies from Glastonbury, trying to revive an old custom. Glastonbury does attract some odd types.”
I had burrowed under the bedclothes, only the top part of my face left uncovered, and was waiting for my teeth to stop chattering and for the warmth to penetrate my muscles.
“I could go out and ask them who they are,” Phil said. His voice sounded odd. “I’d like to know who they are. I feel as if I should know.”
I stared at his back, alarmed. “Phil, you’re not going out there!”
“Why not? This isn’t New York City. I’d be perfectly safe.”
I sat up, letting the covers fall. “Phil, don’t.”
He turned away from the window to face me. “What’s the matter?”
I couldn’t speak.
“Amy . . . you’re not crying?” His voice was puzzled and gentle. He came to the bed and held me.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered against the rough weave of his sweater.
“Course I won’t,” he said, stroking my hair and kissing me. “Course I won’t.”
But of course he did, less than two months later, in a way neither of us could have guessed then. But even then, watching the dancers in the maze, even then he was dying.
In the morning, as we were settling our bill, Phil mentioned the people we had seen dancing in the field during the night. The landlord was flatly disbelieving.
“Sure you weren’t dreaming?”
“Quite sure,” said Phil. “I wondered if it was some local custom . . .”
He snorted. “Some custom! Dancing around a field in the dead of night!”
“There’s a turf-maze out there,” Phil began.
But the man was shaking his head. “No, not in that field. Not a maze!”
Phil was patient. “I don’t mean one with hedges, like in Hampton Court. Just a turf-maze, a pattern made in the soil years ago. It’s hardly noticeable now, although it can’t have been too many years since it was allowed to grow back. I’ve seen them other places and read about them, and in the past there were local customs of running the maze, or dancing through it, or playing games. I thought some such custom might have been revived locally.”
The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. We had learned the night before that the man and his wife were “foreigners,” having only settled here, from the north of England, some twenty years before. Obviously, he wasn’t going to be much help with information on local traditions.
After we had loaded our bags into the car, Phil hesitated, looking towards the hedge. “I’d quite like to have a look at that maze close-to,” he said.
My heart sank, but I could think of no rational reason to stop him. Feebly I tried, “We shouldn’t trespass on somebody else’s property . . .”
“Walking across a field isn’t trespassing!” He began to walk along the hedge, towards the road. Because I didn’t want him to go alone, I hurried after. There was a gate a few yards along the road by which we entered the field. But once there, I wondered how we would find the maze. Without an overview such as our window had provided, the high grass looked all the same, and from this level, in ordinary daylight, slight alterations in ground level wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.
Phil looked back at the house, getting in alignment with the window, then turned and looked across the field, his eyes narrowed as he tried to calculate distance. Then he began walking slowly, looking down often at the ground. I hung back, following him at a distance and not mysel
f looking for the maze. I didn’t want to find it. Although I couldn’t have explained my reaction, the maze frightened me, and I wanted to be away, back on the road again, alone together in the little car, eating apples, gazing at the passing scenery, talking.
“Ah!”
I stopped still at Phil’s triumphant cry and watched as he hopped from one foot to the other. One foot was clearly on higher ground. He began to walk in a curious, up-down fashion. “I think this is it,” he called. “I think I’ve found it. If the land continues to dip . . . yes, yes, this is it!” He stopped walking and looked back at me, beaming.
“Great,” I said.
“The grass has grown back where once it was kept cleared, but you can still feel the place where the swathe was cut,” he said, rocking back and forth to demonstrate the confines of the shallow ditch. “Come and see.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.
He cocked his head. “I thought you’d be interested. I thought something like this would be right up your alley. The funny folkways of the ancient Brits.”
I shrugged, unable to explain my unease.
“We’ve plenty of time, love,” he said. “I promise we’ll climb Glastonbury Tor before we push on. But we’re here now, and I’d like to get the feel of this.” He stretched his hand towards me. “Come tread the maze with me.”
It would have been so easy to take his hand and do just that. But overriding my desire to be with him, to take this as just another lark, was the fearful, wordless conviction that there was danger here. And if I refused to join him, perhaps he would give up the idea and come away with me. He might sulk in the car, but he would get over it, and at least we would be away.
“Let’s go now,” I said, my arms stiff at my sides.
Displeasure clouded his face, and he turned away from me with a shrug. “Give me just a minute, then,” he said. And as I watched, he began to tread the maze.
He didn’t attempt that curious, skipping dance we had seen the others do the night before; he simply walked, and none too quickly, with a careful, measured step. He didn’t look at me as he walked, although the pattern of the maze brought him circling around again and again to face in my direction—he kept his gaze on the ground. I felt, as I watched, that he was being drawn further away from me with every step. I wrapped my arms around myself and told myself not to be a fool. I could feel the little hairs standing up all along my arms and back, and I had to fight the urge to break and run like hell. I felt, too, as if someone watched us, but when I looked around, the field was as empty as ever.