by J. A. Rock
“I mean it, man!” A chain dragged against the tarp, and I heard a gun cocked.
“Get back!” the driver warned. “Or I’ll make it slower than the beast would.”
The chain slinked as Rocky Bottom sat again. The door slammed. It was completely dark.
The driver and the passenger climbed in up front, and the truck started. I could feel Kenna and Alle lying tense beside me. The truck made a circle, heading for the gates again.
I have no idea how long we drove. The night had been chilly, but crammed under the canvas with Kenna and Alle, listening to Rocky Bottom’s protests, I began to sweat. There was straw digging into my back, but I was afraid to move. I tried to hang on to the idea of myself as a warrior, vengeful and brave. I was as scared as I’d ever been. As scared as when I’d been told my mother and father were gone. As scared as when I’d been dragged into Rock Point.
We hadn’t thought about how we’d get out of the truck once we arrived on the promontory, but we lucked out. After they were ushered out of the truck, the prisoners made a break for it. We could hear the shouts and the swinging chains. By the time the driver and the assistant had tackled the prisoners, Kenna and Alle and I were out of the truck and hiding in the hedges that lined the path to a towering stone building.
We could just make out the shapes of the prisoners as they were led to the entrance. There was a soft sheen of silver light cast over the pathway. We saw the armed men herd the prisoners to a huge wooden door. The driver of the truck grabbed a heavy-looking iron ring and pulled the door open.
“No!” Rocky Bottom shouted. “No, please!”
Both prisoners were shoved roughly inside, and the door fell shut behind them. The men got back in the truck and drove away.
Slowly, Kenna and Alle and I stood.
The outside of the labyrinth did not look as much like a castle as illustrations had led me to expect. Castles had an ancient and staggered elegance. This was a long building, dirty stone and greasy windows, the whole thing so perfectly rectangular it was hard to imagine anyone getting lost inside. At the front entrance stood spindly, pocked columns that looked like gnawed bones. I couldn’t tell whether the high ceiling was glass, like in the pictures, but there was indeed a massive clock tower such as one might see on an old railway station.
The only numbers on the clock’s luminous face were nine through twelve, and they were a deep, rich red. In the clock’s center was a brutally detailed rendering of a human heart. There was no minute hand, but when the hour struck, a thick blue vein snaked out from the heart and latched on to the number 9.
“What in the hell?” I whispered.
We watched for several minutes as “blood” flowed from the number into the heart, turning the vein red and very gradually sucking color from the symbol.
“So after an hour, the nine will be gone?” Kenna asked. “Like the numbers before it?”
I was enthralled. I thought my soul dark enough to take pleasure in the famed palace’s ugliness, in its promise of death. If I went inside, I imagined, I would feel no fear. My kinship with wickedness would protect me.
Alle’s tension was evident—she seemed trapped and restless in her own body. And Kenna, well—she was playing tough, but her bravery was like satin draped over a wire frame. Walk by and pinch it, and it would all collapse to the floor with a fffwwwsss.
“What’ll you do when you’re rich?” Kenna didn’t look at me as we walked to the wooden door. “I’d buy a place nicer than this. I’d have servants.”
“I don’t know.” I thought about what Alle had said—that I wasn’t here for the treasure at all.
The men who’d brought the prisoners had simply opened the door. That seemed too easy, and yet when I pulled on the giant iron ring, the door creaked open. Inside, there was darkness, broken by red-gold blurs of candlelight.
“Well,” Kenna whispered.
“Go on,” I urged. She and Alle entered while I held the door. I cast one last look over my shoulder at the misty cliffs.
Fearless and foolish, I stepped into the labyrinth.
The entryway was inelegant—a hollow chiseled in the rock, lit by a limp candle in a brass dish. The walls were scuffed, the stones uneven. The floors were sleek black tile, and in front of us a hallway stretched into darkness. There were no decorations, nothing beautiful at all. The door fell softly shut behind us. We walked across the tile, and Kenna giggled as though we were breaking curfew at Rock Point, rather than looking to steal from the most formidable beast in all of legend. I searched for any sign of the prisoners, but the tiles were dusty, as though no one had passed through in some time.
“Where d’you think they are?” Kenna asked.
I watched a gob of wax slide down the candle. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think they’ve tried to hide? And how long does it take the beast to find them, I wonder? I’ll bet she knows all the good hiding places.”
Alle stopped suddenly. I paused too. “What is it?” I asked.
She glanced at Kenna. I stepped closer to her. “Are you all right?”
Several yards ahead, Kenna turned and looked back at both of us. “Have you got cold feet?” she called.
Alle shook her head, but then looked at me pleadingly. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to do this.”
“What about Aaron McInroe?” I whispered.
She shook her head again. Her breath came in faint gasps. She stared ahead at the dark hall that lay before us. She was clutching Rocky Bottom’s ball of thread in one hand. “I’m going to die here. I know I am.” The words were spoken quietly, and they chilled me all the more for that. Her eyes were vacant, her body trembling. “It’s a trap. My dreams . . .”
“Shh-shh.” I glanced over my shoulder and was puzzled to find that while the anteroom was much as it had been, I could no longer see a door. I blinked several times, and the door was there again, but I was shaken by its momentary absence.
Kenna strode over. “What the hell?”
“Kenna, get stuffed.” I turned as though to shield Alle.
Alle pushed past me and faced Kenna. “No treasure is worth our lives.”
Where was the girl who’d told me killing Aaron McInroe once wouldn’t be enough? What had happened to convince her we were in certain danger? And why didn’t I feel it? The labyrinth was eerie, but I didn’t feel afraid.
Kenna clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Grow some tits. We’re in the most amazing place ever. We’re gonna become rich, and you’re being a child about it.”
“Someone needs to stay here,” I said suddenly.
They both turned to me.
The idea had only just dawned on me, but I was pleased with it. “We’ll lose our way in the labyrinth—we could easily become like those people who are said to be lost here forever, so deep in the maze that even the beast can’t find them. But if Alle stands here at the entrance and holds the ball of thread, and if I tie the end of the thread around my wrist, we’ll have a way back.”
Kenna did not look impressed. But Alle let me take the ball from her and wind the thread around my wrist. She helped me tie it.
It was a foolish plan, but I felt a desperate certainty that it would work. “I do want to find him,” Alle whispered as she finished tying the knot. She glanced up at me. “But I have a bad feeling about this. I wish you wouldn’t go.”
My heart beat faster. If I thought you loved me. That you’d stay with me and help me survive, I wouldn’t need a fucking treasure. I wouldn’t even need to be a warrior. I’d just be yours.
I turned away. “We’ll be back as soon as we’ve got the treasure.”
“I’ll be here,” she said softly behind me.
We both must have known there could be no leaving this place the way we’d entered. If that were the case, wouldn’t every unwilling tribute turn and walk back out the door as soon as they were in? I felt the beginnings of dread then.
Kenna and I started forward.
“Wait,” Alle
called.
I spun.
“If you see him . . .” She hesitated. “If you see him, I don’t want to know.”
I felt a flash of my old irritation toward her. I liked vengeful Alle. I wanted her to never rest in her pursuit of Aaron McInroe. How could she do it—be above her anger, push aside that injustice? I burned so often over things I couldn’t even put words to. My abandonment. My preferable sister. My own stupidity and cruelty, my fear that I’d never be able to make things right with Denson. And yet she could feed her anger to her fear and have it vanish.
I nodded, then faced forward and continued on.
The thread unwound gradually as we went.
“Awf, she’s a sap, isn’t she?” Kenna muttered as we ventured down the corridor.
“She’s smarter than both of us put together.”
Kenna glanced sideways at me. “Oh Lord.”
“What?”
Kenna shook her head. “Nothinnn’.”
The hall was tall and narrow—black stone lit by red, thin, snakelike flames in brass candleholders.
“This,” Kenna said, “is wild.”
It was. I began to lose myself in old dreams, take pleasure in the strangeness of the place. We found ourselves on a square patch of grass within the stone hall. The grass looked odd in the orange-gold light from the torches. The wall to our right no longer went up to the ceiling—it was about six feet high, and over it, all I could see was blackness.
“Oh!” Kenna elbowed me and pointed.
From the end of the hall a man was coming toward us, gray-haired and stooped. Walking several paces in front of him was a black-and-white sheepdog with one yellow eye. Before I could think about running, the man gave a sharp command, and the dog dropped into a crouch, its yellow eye trained on us.
“What. The. Hell?” Kenna whispered.
The man whistled, and the dog started toward us—silent and swift, its hackles up.
“Shit!” Kenna shouted as the dog picked up its pace.
“Kenna, up here!” I gripped the uneven stones of the wall to our right and started to climb.
I slipped, heard Kenna scream, and then the dog’s jaws closed around my leg. It wasn’t a painful bite, but the animal shook me a little as it pulled me from the wall. I landed hard on the grass and struggled, finally nailing the dog in the jaw with my foot. It yelped and retreated.
I clambered to my feet. The man whistled, and the dog circled away from me. I leaped and tried once more to scale the wall, calling for Kenna. This time I made it to the top, the thread pulling taut. I balanced on the narrow edge with my arm out, not wanting to break the thread. I turned to see what was going on. The dog had Kenna against the wall. It was growling low in its throat, but didn’t look like it intended to attack. The man hurried toward it, muttering something.
“Come on, then,” I heard him say when he reached Kenna. “Come on, come on.”
“Get away!” Kenna shouted, holding her hands up in front of her. “Get the fuck away. Who the hell are you?”
“Come on,” the man repeated, whistling again. The dog began to herd Kenna down the hall, snapping at her heels so that she jolted and cowered, but moved where the dog wanted her to.
“Kenna! Run!”
But she continued down the hall, whimpering at each nip from the dog, the old man following both of them, whistling an odd tune.
“Hey, you!” I called to the man. “Hey!” But he didn’t turn. I crawled along the wall on all fours, but I couldn’t move fast enough to catch them. There was more slack to the thread as I went, though. Alle must be unraveling the ball. “No!” I shouted, crawling faster. A stone crumbled under my hand, and I slipped to the right. I plummeted over the wall and into pitch black.
I got to my feet, shaking more with anger than with fear. I tried to climb the wall again in the dark, to get back to Kenna and the hallway with the grass, but the stones had become slick and wet. Even when I managed to get to where the top of the wall should have been, there were more stones. I slid to the ground.
I could hear my breathing echo in the lightless space. I gathered the slack in the thread, looping it in my hand. I gave it a series of tugs. A moment later, I felt Alle tug back. That brought me some comfort. I began to walk, feeling my way along the wall, letting out the thread as I went. Every now and then I heard a sharp bark, and a girl’s shriek, but they sounded farther and farther away, and eventually I heard nothing.
I reached a room with red carpet and high, dark wood ceilings supported by carved beams. In little alcoves stood candelabras so clumped with wax they looked like snow-covered branches. There was nothing in the room but an old wooden trunk I could not open and a door in the opposite wall. Beyond the room stretched another dark hall, but I was tired of dark halls. I went to the door and tried it. It opened easily, and I stepped through.
I was outdoors, standing on a rock ledge. The wind immediately tore back my hair, and I looked down about ten feet to a brown beach covered in shallow, murky puddles. All around the cliff was a dark-gray sea, roaring and foaming. Sticking up from the water were great mounds of black rock. Joy and terror burst in me with each crash of a wave against the rocks. The endlessness, the sight of something that existed so far beyond me, that mattered so much more, was splendid.
Waves hit the beach and burst, ropes of white water flinging themselves forward, clawing at the shore and leaving veins in the sand. I am ashamed now to say I forgot about Kenna in that moment. I pulled twice on the thread and felt Alle’s answering tugs, and then I began to walk along the rock ledge.
A wave crashed at the base of the cliff and I swelled with excitement. I began to run along. The waves seemed to chase me, smashing against the rocks, their spray hitting my feet, soaking my shoes. I stopped and stared down at the water. I can’t explain the power I felt in that moment. I took several deep breaths, and then I raised my arms as though I hoped to lift the sky.
The largest wave yet rose from the sea. A plume that was level with my face, spitting froth and awaiting my command. I swung my arms apart and downward, and the column sprayed in all directions and plummeted back into the ocean. I laughed, half-amazed and half-terrified. But that seemed perfectly all right. Life had given me a moment of wonder and set fear beneath it like a flame.
I raised my arms again and brought them down. Repeated this several times, watching the waves obey. I spun on the ledge and watched one of the spouts become a swirling funnel. I thrust my arm forward like I was pitching a baseball, and the spout arched away from me, serpentining through the air before it collapsed. I was breathless, but I wasn’t finished. I looked at the clouds and beckoned them toward me. They came in a jumbled stampede. I tilted my head back and raised my palms, and lightning shot down in white thorny branches, striking the sea and electrifying the spray. Gold light marbled the gray water and I watched, enchanted, as flames burst from the foam, then died.
I clambered down the cliff’s wall, completely unafraid of falling. When my feet touched the wet sand, I felt a jolt. I stared out at the gray water, which had grown calm in the absence of my commands. I began to run along the beach, and the sea’s current mimicked my direction. The thread dragged behind me, its myriad pieces knotted together. All it would take was one undone knot, one too-hard tug, and I would be separated from Alle. Yet in this moment, I didn’t care. I wanted to be alone and in command of this world. The clouds had opened and were pouring rain; the drops pelted so hard they stung my skin and left pocks in the sand.
I stopped when I saw something several yards ahead.
It was a shark, as long as I was tall, gray bodied and black eyed. It lay on its side and whacked its tail against the beach, sending wet sand flying. From its gills spewed pink mush, streaked through with red. Lightning webbed the sky as the shark’s rows of needle teeth met. It fell still suddenly, its tail giving two more convulsive jerks.
I began to shiver. I almost wanted to touch the creature. The shark arched again, its head tilting upwa
rd, its black eye rolling back to reveal a white membrane. Thunder sounded, knocking me into the sand. Each time I tried to rise, another rumble shook the land and goaded the sea, and I lost my footing. I didn’t like it anymore, this illusion of power. The clouds had formed an odd shape—a towering, hulking form. Lightning flashed, outlining the figure of a bull, and the sea careened in all directions, waves knocking into each other, white foam whipping into vortexes in the dark waters.
I fled then, hearing the sea roar after me, the waves once again giving chase, though it no longer felt like a game. I followed the thread back to the cliff, the sand beneath my feet now covered in water. I started to climb but I was not fast enough, and the water rose beneath me. I gasped as salt stung the backs of my legs. I had never held any power here; the power was all hers. I had borrowed it, tried it on, and now I would suffer for it.
A wave lashed upward. I had just enough time to see it over my shoulder before it was pushing me up, up . . .
It deposited me on the cliff’s ledge, in front of the door I’d come through, then plummeted back into the ocean. The rain stopped. The clouds became gray and uneventful. The sea crashed against the rocks, sending spray up to me, but there were no massive waves or whirlpools.
Panting, I got to my feet and stepped into quiet darkness, shutting the door behind me.
The labyrinth seemed at first to be a series of corridors, but eventually I found myself in an open space that had grass and trees and hedges, and a very high ceiling in which I could see a reflection of my movement. The sky was visible through the vast pane—first white-gray, then eventually midnight blue as I wandered, uncertain, across the prickly grass. I felt less claustrophobic here but more exposed. I felt watched, hunted, and I tried to keep close to the trees. I saw a shipwreck half-buried in hedges—a moss-covered hull, broken masts, an unreadable name—and was almost tempted to explore it.
Eventually I came across a man in a sickly garden. He was bleeding from a dozen stripes on his back, his lips peeling from dehydration, his breath rattling through his body. All around him, brown vines curled and flowers looked fuzzed and ugly, like baby birds. He panted and held out an empty glass jug to me. Patted at his throat with one hand and mimed drinking with the other. I didn’t understand why he was so thirsty—there was a stone fountain a few feet away, clear water burbling from the mouths of three carved fish.