by S L Mason
Great. Just what I’ve always dreamed of—a labyrinth run by a Goblin King.
“There will be spikes with all kinds of poison. You need to watch out for lashing creepers. They’re poisonous if they manage to wrap themselves around you, and they’ll inject you with poison, paralyzing you while slowly eating your flesh. That is just one of the lovely things Jacques likes to keep in his garden.”
Stay away from the nasty man-eating vine. Check.
My hands clasped and unclasped.
“When you reach the center disk, whatever your prize is, I’m sure it will be there. I’m not sure how you get out. Perhaps your garrote will help you, or perhaps not. I do not know.” He sucked in and released air. He ran his hand over his face, allowing it to trail down a strand of long white hair.
Now that sounded exciting to go through a constantly moving labyrinth of deadly vines amongst other things.
The rocking of the carriage came to a stop. My heart sped up. Janice helped me down from the carriage, and I straightened for a better view, only to spy box hedges. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed it was France. Near one of the water gardens, water tinkled and splashed. Water was a noise that soothed, but something told me that garden was deadly. Don’t drink the water, don’t eat the fruit.
He led me over to a corral filled with girls, the most beautiful girls I think I’d ever seen. Some with short pixie hair, others with long, gleaming tresses, and all were wearing armor similar to mine with their padded hats tucked under arms or on the ground around us. All were smothered in fear.
One of the girls had dirt under her fingernails. She wore jeans and a torn T-shirt. Everything about her screamed feral human. Her hair was tangled and filthy, and her eyes kept darting from the left to the right. There were thousands of girls black, white, Asian, Latin, Islanders; they’d stolen the best of humanity. We were all young.
Janice closed the gate on me, and I was corralled with them. I was one of them. My chest clenched, and moisture formed on my hands. I rubbed them across my belly to still the butterflies there.
The feral girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen. I put my hand out and petted her hair. She darted away and curled up into a ball next to the gate. She’d probably survive better than the rest of them; they were too relaxed. Maybe they knew what we were facing. I was shaking and terrified, and I expected everybody else to be as well.
We were divided into four groups, and each was led to a different section of arched entryways shaped out of boxwood.
I was only surrounded by humanity, but I could feel it humming. When Lavender said every living thing had its own key, I hadn’t been able to understand. Her close proximity interfered with my ability to hear the notes. I wasn’t listening but standing amongst humans, because they weren’t intrinsically involved with the music. I heard it vibrating, making my skin crawl and dance at the same time.
I reached out to the hedges, and I heard the sweetest C in the world. It was a middle C, a perfect C, and it wasn’t a minor or major; it was all-natural. The type of C you only heard from a freshly tuned piano. Mother would sing it and play it. I didn’t know how I knew all of this, but I did. It was a part of me, inside of me. It felt right, and I knew the boxwood would be a C. One of the girls with brown hair reached out and broke a few leaves off, and the vibration in the boxwood changed. It dipped down to a low C, natural but angry.
“I wouldn’t do that again if I were you. Everything in Fae is alive, and you have no idea how it’s gonna react to you attacking it.” The words were out before I could take them back.
She cocked her eyebrow at me. “Well, egghead, did I really attack the bush? It’s a bush, a plant. How do you attack a plant?” Her smug reply irritated me.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Not long ago, we thought fairies weren’t real.”
She laughed and flashed her hazel eyes. “Yeah, fairies exist, and they’re trying to kill us. Stay out of my way, egghead.” She put her finger on my chest and pushed me back. Her swagger was out of place with the rest of us.
I always liked to win. You didn’t have to demoralize your opponent to win. It wasn’t my style, and I didn’t have to. I felt the anger in the boxwood, and it was gonna go after her first, I just knew it. She’d already sealed her own fate. It didn’t matter who she was or what her story was. It was all over because she disrespected a boxwood bush. How pathetic was that?
“You should respect life. If you don’t, they won’t respect ours. That’s why we’re here. You should be better than them. Even a lowly boxwood bush deserves respect.” My fingers ran over the leaves of the boxwood, and as I petted the plant, its volume grew and my words made it happy. Could a plant be happy? I got the distinct impression that it was pleased.
She threw her hair over her shoulder and glanced away, wiggling and weaving through the other candidates.
The feral girl looked up at me. “You really think the plants are alive like that?”
My eyes darted down at her voice. “Absolutely.”
She tucked her head back down, keeping her hands balled in front of her. She stared off into the sea of legs standing around her. She’d phased out again, but her eyes darted around looking for danger. I thought she was a lot smarter than the rest of us. I still smelled the fear on her, or maybe it was me.
“Greetings, Fae. His Royal Grace, Jacques, welcomes you to his domain. As you can see, the candidates have been gathered. This is the best humanity can provide.” The proclamation was followed by twittering of laughter around the arena. “Each and every one of our candidates was brought into the Hallowed Hills with a friend, lover, or someone from their family. Each of them will have to save whomever it is they were brought with. Anyone who doesn’t reach the center of the maze to free their companion not only will they die, but their companion dies with them. Your lives are connected. Without you, someone you love will die. Your test is to see how much you truly love your friends and family. Because the only way to rescue them is with true love, and you cannot trick a Fae.”
Arty, my heart filled my throat as I turned to the gate.
With that, a loud clanging filled the air, and the gates to the garden swung open.
That’s it? No rules, no further information? Just simply go save someone you love? Bullshit.
The girls in my group filtered tenuously through the arched opening. I ran my hand along the box hedge, feeling the hum of its life.
“If you help me through the maze, I will bring you some fertilizer,” I’d whispered into the bush.
Okay, it sounds a little crazy, talking to plants. I just offered it fertilizer. If bribing a plant helps me through the maze, then I’m absolutely willing to bring it something to eat. Hopefully, it doesn’t eat humans but likes water.
“Are you talking to that bush?”
I turned and threw a look over my shoulder. “What difference does it make to you? Go save whomever it is you love.”
“The girl I was captured with, I don’t love her; I can’t stand her. We were at school.” She waved her hand around and cocked a hip to the side.
“Well, then you should love yourself enough to go and save her because your lives are tied together. Or didn’t you hear that part?” I raised an eyebrow at her.
She put her finger up to her face, tapping her lip with her index finger. “I guess you’re right.” The shallow wench tossed her hair over her shoulder and trotted away. What is with all the self-absorbed abductees?
I ran my fingers through the tiny leaves as I passed under the arch. Passageways led off in five different directions like spokes on a wheel. I didn’t know which way to go. Most of the girls picked randomly. I saw one of them do an eenie, meenie, miney, moe. As if you could actually control which one it landed on. I didn’t know which way to go either. I placed my hand on the hedge trailing around the spokes, passing every corridor. I was hopeful somehow or another the plant would tell me where to go if I listened.
One of the corridors sounded sw
eeter, higher, and cleaner than the rest. It had to be the way. It was the only one that sounded different. That was the path I chose, my feral friend following behind. She too trailed her fingers along the bush until we came to a T.
I didn’t want to acknowledge her or be responsible for her.
The left sounded sweeter than the right, so I turned in that direction. The screaming began far off in the distance. One high-pitched, shrill scream wrenched the air, only to be joined by another, and it didn’t stop; it kept going. I moved faster, and the hedge led in the opposite direction. For me, that naturally said safe.
Off to the left, I heard another scream, but I couldn’t see anyone. The hedges had to be at least fifteen to twenty feet high. They created a gloom. My feral friend still followed close behind. I began to hum a boring song, something I’d made up as a child. It was mindless and off-key, and everywhere I hummed my little ditty, a small hole appeared in the hedge.
The little leaves, holding themselves back on each other, created this little portal where you could see into the next row, almost as if I’d been telling the bushes to open up. I came to a three-way split. I could go straight ahead, right, or left. None of the three of the directions sounded better than the other. My feral friend sat at the T.
“Which way does the bush tell you to go?” she whispered it out.
“It doesn’t. They’re all the same. Even going back the way we came doesn’t sound any better.” My hands found my hips, and then I scratched the back of my neck. What the fuck do I do now?
“How do you know it’s alive?” She tilted her head up, showing me one eye.
“Can’t you? Don’t you feel the vibration?”
She shook her head. “My mom used to sing to our plants. They always grew big and beautiful, and she said the plants liked it when you sing to them; it made them happy. You’re the only person I’ve ever seen do it other than her.” She wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling them tight.
I smiled down at her. “I feel pretty stupid singing to a plant.”
She shook her head. “My mom never did. She said the plants knew, and she could feel it. I can’t feel whatever she was talking about. But if singing to plants saves our lives, maybe we should do it.” She gave me a tight-lipped smile.
She was right. Maybe we should do it. I had my song, and it created some kind of opening in the hedge. There was no north or south. You could look up at the sky, but with the dim gloom of glowing globes so far away, I could barely see if there was even a ceiling up there. I noticed that all around the garden area they had increased the light sources. Floating globes gave off illumination. I looked up to see that there was one following us.
It’s more than light.
Time to commit. I chose the right. I couldn’t tell where the center of the maze was, and I didn’t know if the maze was round, rectangular, triangular, or an octagon. Janice left that little tidbit of information out when he was informing me of what I’d be facing. So I went to the right.
The bush screeched out a C-flat. It was bizarre like it was screaming at me. I stopped mid-step. After hearing the noise I didn’t want to move. I stepped back into the T and turned for the middle, but the bush screeched again, hurting me. I stepped back.
The lanes moved, crashing together before altering the junction. Where the three lanes had been, they all disappeared and merged to form one and then divided into three new lanes.
I smiled down at my feral companion, and she returned a tight-lipped smiled.
“I bet if you sang right now, it would do something for you.” She batted her eyes away and rocked back on her butt.
She was probably right. But I didn’t know what to sing. The bush would save our lives if we’d gone down any of those corridors, or we might’ve been trapped or headed in the wrong direction. Maybe being nice to plants was smart. It didn’t take me but a moment to realize which lane I needed.
I took the path to the right; that was my intended direction anyway. But this path led somewhere else. The C was sweet and natural, so I followed. It curved; we weren’t going straight anymore. You could see the slight right angle of the hedges. Until the curved ended in nothing.
A dead end.
The C still rang sweet, and I hummed along with it.
It curved into nothing. There had to be a corridor on the other side, somewhere I could go. As I hummed, a hole opened to reveal a face. A girl’s fawn brown eyes creased in pain met mine. Green trendles with sharp leaves wrapped around her neck and face, covering her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream, but her body stopped moving.
As soon as I stopped humming, the hole closed. I grabbed my companion’s hand, running back the way we came.
I didn’t want to hear the screams. We had to run from them, but they followed me. They came from my friend and I, but then they turned into whimpering. Slowly, the whimpering turned into nothing. Nothing meant death.
We made it back to the T, but it was different. The maze had changed again. I followed the C. My new friend didn’t walk, so I dragged her. I didn’t want to stop. My legs were shaking, and I’d dropped my padded hat somewhere; I didn’t care. We stopped and leaned against the bush. A sweet C was still ringing in my ears. It vibrated on my skin all the way down the backside of my body. My chest heaved. Tears rolled down my face. The girl next to me cowered at my feet.
“Who was eating her?” Her voice came out a whisper, and she choked the words.
I shook my head. “A vine. She was eaten by a vine.” My voice shook.
Janice had been right. The terror in that girl’s brown eyes, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
My feral friend’s eyes darted around, searching for vines. I didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t reach out through the bushes at any time and grab us. They could’ve been lurking out of sight beyond those small innocuous oval leaves hanging there.
I stood and straightened myself. My tears had created green streaks on the fabric. Apparently, the sadness caused me to change the color of my clothing. Now I looked like I’d been dragged across a grass field. The more I tried to wipe it away, the more the spot spread. It became a big blob of a mess over my belly.
CHAPTER 21
My head whipped to the left and to the right. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about or cry over what happened. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my breath came in gasps and gulps. My hands clutched leaves, hoping that sweet C would come back to me. Maybe by humming, something would happen. But everything was frozen, scared, and trying to hide. It wasn’t just the hedge that had gone quiet. Everything became deathly quiet.
When I first stood near the garden, I heard humming, the low keening of a song. Plants and creatures each with their own tune, all that humming was gone. In the silence, I could make out my own breathing and that of my friend.
“What’s your name?” My eyes darted to the left and right as I pressed my back against the hedge again. Barely making out a vibration, I had to stick my hands in deep.
“My name is Zoe. If I don’t get out of here, my sister’s name is Olive. Try to help her, please.”
“I’m Sarah.”
I looked down at her, eyes wide with fear. She couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen. I didn’t want to speak, so I nodded, crushing my lips together. I shook my head vigorously. I turned my head back and forth, searching for what was different. What had changed? A crackling came from the background. Fire. We were in the middle of the garden, and there weren’t any fires. What could’ve possibly sounded like a fire?
We weren’t allowed to bring weapons. Nothing about the ground had changed. It appeared the same—brown marble stepping stones, hedged in by a regular box hedge with oval-shaped green leaves. No vines or flowers. Nothing, except for Zoe, who was cowering down by my ankles.
Off in the distance, the dry ground moved. Every now and again, there would be a spark as if somebody was rubbing fire rocks together or flicking a lighter without any fluid in the dark. The li
ttle sparks would rise and then crackle like fire, getting closer. The bush behind me shifted almost as if it’d pulled back so I could lean into it.
“Zoe, stand up. Stand up and get ready to run.”
She shook her head at me, bringing her fingers up to her mouth and biting her nails.
“You want to live and save your sister? You die here and she dies wherever it is they have her. Our lives are tied together. Stand up and get ready to run when I say go.” My insides quivered. God, I wish Arty was here.
Her lips trembled, eyes darting, as she glanced to the side. I grabbed her hand. Her entire body was nothing but shivers and trembling. Or maybe that was me, I didn’t know.
I surveyed the other direction. My heart sank. It was coming from both directions. There’s nowhere to go. I saw the fear in Zoe’s eyes.
“We are never getting out of here, and it’s all my fault,” she moaned. “Olive’s going to die, and she never even got to live.” Her voice hitched at the end.
I reached in deeper to the bush. Instead of humming my little ditty, I sang it, letting the words come out loud. I wanted to power through whatever fear this bush had. It was afraid. Every plant was afraid of fire. Nobody wanted to burn.
The bush from the inside pulled back, and there was enough space for me to shove Zoe through. I yanked her arm to me and then thrust her into the opening and away from me.
“No, no, no! Don’t let go of my hand! Please don’t leave me alone.” Her head was shaking. I was still singing, but it wasn’t enough to keep it open. The opening collapsed. I tried to sing it open again, but I choked. The acrid smoke burned my throat.
I heard Zoe on the other side singing.
“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, let Sarah jump over the candlestick. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, let Sarah jump over the candlestick.” She kept singing it, but nothing happened. She was singing out of tune. It wasn’t going to work. Whatever it was that she wanted to happen, it had to be the right vibration, the right key.