by Lizzy Ford
“Are you developing a messiah complex?” I retort.
“By your tone, I don’t care to know what that is,” he returns.
He reaches me and holds out a hand. In truth, I’m kind of worried he can walk on air and I can’t. I take his hand and do my best to hide my fear. He tugs me away from the wall.
I take a tiny step. The air feels as solid as the wall. Relieved, I inch forward. Jared pulls me, and I careen into him, frozen, waiting to fall like Wile E. Coyote.
I don’t. I’m perfectly fine.
Jared’s arm is around me, and I clutch the material of his space suit.
I release him when I’m certain I’m not about to break a leg or my spine by plummeting to the earth.
“This might work,” I say.
“It might.”
That intensity again. This close, it sends my stomach into butterfly mode, and warms my lower belly. If he’s too nice to me, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to keep him from penetrating the walls around my feelings - or defeat him.
Affected by the attraction between us as much as I am, he steps back, and his arm falls away. “Hopefully we can do this all the way to the center.” He turns smartly and begins walking.
Something’s different between us. He’s transformed from a two-dimensional villain I’d love to push off a cliff to someone more complicated I’m hoping I don’t have to.
My thoughts are broken up by anxiety when he pauses on the other side of the next wall. I’m praying our first success wasn’t a fluke and brace myself in case it was. I may have told him I would leave him, if he breaks his leg. It’s not true. I think I’d cry and then try to carry him.
He walks into midair and crosses the empty space once more.
I trail him.
We traverse five open areas, seven, ten. I’m at first relieved we’re not suffering from broken legs.
Then I get pissed. Has it been this easy the whole time, and we didn’t know it? What’s the purpose of everything we’ve gone through?
“I see it,” he says in excitement.
Too busy watching my feet, I look up.
A second mountain, this one much smaller, lies straight ahead of us.
“I really hope the castle is at the top,” I whisper. “I can’t handle another level.”
“It has to be. We’re running out of time,” he replies. “Come on!” Thrilled, he begins running across walls and empty spaces.
I’m not quite as trusting of the labyrinth and trot rather than run. He stops at the base of the mountain, eyes directed upward.
“Righteous,” he whispers.
“It’s not as far,” I observe. “Think you can handle this one without killing us?”
He laughs.
And then stops just as suddenly, appearing as surprised as I am.
“Did you see anything else in your dream? Hidden rope? Stairs? Elevator?” He no longer acknowledges it when he says something he doesn’t understand, and neither do I.
“No.” The surface of this cliff is generally flat, too. It’s not like we have handholds to help us if we try to climb.
“Think, think, think,” he says quietly and begins to pace. “We created our own rules to reach the mountain. What would let us ascend without a rope?”
“I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Try.” He ceases pacing and studies me.
“You give me way too much credit,” I say and crane my head back to observe the cliff from the point in front of us to the top.
“I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit,” he responds. “You’re the reason we’ve made it this far.”
“Whatever.”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
“It means, screw you for making fun of me!” I respond.
“But I’m serious.”
Something had definitely flipped in him. “You figured out how to cross the maze going straight, not me,” I point out.
His gaze is penetrating once more, as if I’ve said something of life-or-death importance.
“You’re kind of freaking me out,” I tell him.
“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s what’s freaking me out. You’re being nice. It’s weird.”
He smiles and looks away.
Okay, he’s definitely going through something. It’s a good change. I don’t know how far I should trust a villain. When we reach the castle, we’re both going for the Ring.
“Any thoughts?” he asks again.
“None,” I reply.
The Knight had tested his belief that Elf wouldn’t let anything happen to him as long as they were together. He didn’t know how to discover which Elf it was – the one accompanying him or the little girl who created these worlds. He wasn’t certain it mattered. If they wanted to eliminate the danger they faced, all he had to do was go first. Nothing had – or would – happen to him. He’d passed out twice climbing the first mountain. She had saved him once and probably indirectly the second time as well, because they survived.
Neither time had gotten them to their goal, however. If they climbed this mountain, there was no guarantee they’d reach the castle at the labyrinth’s center. He’d spent time strategizing space battles and couldn’t determine the best way to find a place that didn’t want to be found – except that somehow, he and Elf controlled whether or not they made it. They’d been lost, helpless, until this morning, when they decided to walk straight across the maze and ignore the logic that said it couldn’t be done.
What was next? It was one thing to walk straight in a twisty labyrinth. Quite another to climb a cliff.
“We’re missing something,” he murmured.
“We’ve been missing something since we got here,” Elf replied. There was no heat in her tone, just defeat. “What happens when we reach the castle?”
“What do you mean?” he responded in an even tone.
He understood what she meant.
“We become enemies, right?” she asked.
“Depends on you and if you decide to stop me from obtaining the Ring.”
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
“Then yes,” he said firmly. Before, he’d wanted the Ring because it was what he was supposed to do: take over the galaxy. After his visions, he needed the Ring for a greater purpose – to protect her and take over the galaxy.
He dared not think too long about anything he’d been through or how, when his adventure with her began, he hadn’t understood why he was after the Ring in the first place.
“What does your ring say?” he asked. “We haven’t consulted it in a while.”
She held her hand out towards the cliff. “Yellow.”
“What about the direction we came?”
Elf tested each direction and received four different colors. Black, yellow, green and red. No blue, which he’d hoped to see after learning it likely meant a safe route.
“Black,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” she asked, eyes lifting from the ring to his. “You remember what black means, don’t you?”
“We’ve been running from danger since this started. What happens if we face it instead?” he countered. “We stop playing the labyrinth’s games in every way.”
“I really think that’s a terrible idea.”
“I’ll go first.” He strode away from the cliffs, across an open space between walls, and directly toward the danger.
“You seem suddenly confident about everything,” she said, an odd note in her tone.
“I’ve come to believe this place will not hurt me.”
“Seriously?”
He continued walking and heard the brush of her shoes against stone as she followed reluctantly.
“I’m pretty sure this place wants me dead or permanently lost or to fail,” she stated. “After all you’ve seen, how can you think otherwise?”
How did he explain what he’d learned in a vision
without alerting her as to what that vision was?
“We always find a way to prevent the moons from aligning,” he said finally and pointed to the moons on the verge of an eclipse. “We find crystals and assistance when we need them.”
It was mostly true. He was pretty certain luck had a lot to do with it, when it came to matters that didn’t involve him being in danger. What happened if the moons aligned before they collected enough crystals to face the demon?
He glanced up. He didn’t want to imagine that scenario. He had to think that, by not playing according to the rules of this game, they had a chance to survive and succeed.
“I’m not convinced,” she replied. “But if you want to be my human shield and face imminent danger, I’m not going to dissuade you.”
“Harsh,” he said with a snort. “But I think we’ve got a better chance facing …” He stopped.
A form rose up in front of him. And up and up and up. The creature in suspenders was soon twenty feet taller than the walls. It pounded its chest and let out a roar of fury. At its feet were stacks of barrels.
“You were saying?” Elf whispered, crowding him from behind. “That’s King Kong. He’s not exactly friendly.”
“The word of the day is … screwed.” The Knight swallowed hard. He’d proven the labyrinth wouldn’t hurt him, but he wasn’t feeling any of the confidence he’d survive this encounter.
“Are you feeling the need for speed again?” she asked.
“Totally,” he replied.
Elf whirled and ran a few seconds before he did.
A barrel hit his knees, knocking him onto his stomach. It continued to bounce onward, toward Elf.
A crystal disappeared from the count on his palm.
“Jump!” he shouted.
Elf looked over her shoulder. She leapt into the air, knees tucked to her chest, a breath before the barrel sailed beneath her.
“There are more!” she yelled, eyes past him on the angry gorilla throwing barrels at them.
The Knight bounced to his feet and began running sideways. He leapt over five more barrels, collecting one crystal per five, and then was sent sprawling by a sixth, which immediately took his hard earned crystal away. He heard Elf curse and guessed she’d been flattened by a barrel as well.
The journey to the cliff took much longer than it had when he chose to take them towards danger.
He hadn’t considered the idea he’d be safe – but lose the game because he lost all his crystals.
Elf had reached the cliff and was jumping over barrels as they came. The barrels dropped harmlessly over the wall and settled against the base of the mountain.
The Knight joined her, and they began collecting the ever-critical crystals. On occasion, one of the barrels succeeded in knocking one of them to the ground.
The moons tocked backward, apart from one another, once, twice, three times.
“We’re buying ourselves more time,” Elf said in excitement.
They jumped and jumped and jumped, until the Knight’s legs and lungs were burning.
Elf disappeared from his side with an oof. The air bridge between the wall on which they stood and the mountain had disappeared, and she landed in a heap on the ground.
“Elf!” he exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“Elf!”
“Yeah. Fine. Look at this,” she said, a note of awe in her voice.
He risked a look over his shoulder. When he saw what she did, he forgot all about the barrels. One smacked into him, sending him flying over the wall to land beside her. Elf knelt where she’d fallen.
“We did it,” the Knight said.
Another barrel bounced over the wall and landed in the pile that had formed against the mountain. The pile of barrels reached the top of the cliff. The labyrinth had provided them with a solution after all.
The ground beneath them trembled, and the King Kong roared again.
Elf and the Knight scrambled to their feet and darted towards the barrels. They began to climb the makeshift ladder.
A second cry rang out, this one familiar.
“Care Bear,” Elf breathed.
The blue beast and the gorilla began to fight.
“Climb!” the Knight urged.
Elf hurried up the stack of barrels. Her breathing and his soon filled the air around them.
The barrels trembled, and they stopped to look at each other in concern. Stones smashed together behind him.
The Care Bear and King Kong were thrashing in the middle of the labyrinth. Every time they hit a wall, it exploded. The Care Bear threw the gorilla into a wall. The gorilla, dazed, rose slowly.
The Care Bear knocked over a wall, headed towards the Knight and Elf.
King Kong smashed into the blue beast once more. They left a swath of broken walls behind them.
“They’re destroying it,” Elf breathed. “Does that mean … do you think we’re defeating the labyrinth?”
The barrels quivered again as the two creatures smashed into each other.
“I think we need to hurry, yo,” the Knight replied.
They climbed and climbed and climbed. The barrels began to tremble more violently and those near the bottom of the pile started to fall away. The Knight glanced up as often as he did down, gauging the distance between where they were and where they needed to be.
He reached the top of the pile – and the edge of the cliff – ahead of Elf and stood, grateful to have his feet on solid ground again.
A sign by the cliff’s edge designated this as Level 4.
Below him, the beasts were laying waste to the labyrinth. The walls around them began to crumble even without them running into them.
Level 3 was eroding quickly.
“Hurry!” he called to Elf.
She fumbled with her handholds, and her feet slipped. The mountain of barrels began to crumble from the bottom upward.
The Knight’s heart raced. He stretched out on his stomach and held out his hand.
She paused to wipe sweat out of her eyes. Stretching upward, she was still out of reach.
The Knight saw what she did not: the barrels around her crumbling into dust.
“JUMP!” he shouted.
The barrel beneath her right foot collapsed. Elf leapt upward off her left foot, hand outstretched.
The Knight caught her wrist – barely. While he was confident nothing bad would happen to him while they were together, he didn’t know the same about Elf.
The barrels turned to dust. Elf hung over the side of the cliff while the beasts below rampaged.
Her breathing was rapid, her eyes on the long fall to the bottom. She was reaching for the cliff wall, threatening his fragile hold on her.
“Stop squirming,” he said urgently. “Elf!”
She didn’t respond. The Knight inched farther out to keep hold of her wrist. Fear shot through him. If he moved as much as an inch more, they’d both fall.
“Elf!” he said more loudly.
She looked up. Panic was in her blue eyes.
“I’m going to pull you up, but you need to stop moving.”
She slipped an inch.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever,” he vowed. “You have to trust me.”
At the back of his mind, he was surprised by his own words – and how sincerely he meant them. It was as if his life hung from the edge of the cliff.
“Okay,” she whispered hoarsely and ceased moving.
The Knight gripped her wrist with two hands. He began moving backward in tiny increments, dragging her with him, until certain he wouldn’t topple over the side of the cliff if he pulled her up.
He managed not to drop her or lose his balance. Within seconds, they sat on the edge of the cliff. She rested against him, trembling, and he wrapped his arms around her instinctively. She felt like she belonged in his arms more each time he held her. In truth, he wasn’t certain he wouldn’t collapse beside her, if he let her go. Emotions he couldn�
��t understand were growing stronger, and they all had to do with Elf.
They watched the creatures destroy the labyrinth far below them.
“We made it to level four,” she murmured. “I really hope there isn’t a level five. I am so sick of this place.”
“Ditto.” The Knight looked over his shoulder at what awaited them. He, too, was tired of this game.
His breath caught in his throat.
The castle. Except this time, he recognized it. Unlike the snow world, the castle was surrounded by a summery forest, just past rolling hills, and at the base of a peak. A road led to the fortress he’d first seen in a vision. He sat, frozen, wondering how to keep his secret from Elf when they were headed straight towards the castle she created for him long ago. The moons were clear above in a gorgeous blue sky. Not twilight. Not dawn. Not night – but true daytime.
“It’s beautiful,” Elf said. She had shifted in his arms and was gazing over his shoulder. “I know this place.” She pushed his arms away and stood, taking a couple of steps towards their destination. “So should you.” She faced him.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He got to his feet and stood beside her, hoping his features revealed nothing.
“White Tree Sound,” she pressed. “You came from here to visit me in my world. Or, a version of you did.”
“White Tree Sound,” he repeated. “Red Knight.”
“Exactly. This was your home. Do you remember?” She searched his features with apprehension and excitement.
“No,” he replied. “I have no memory of my life as a Knight of this place.”
White Tree Sound. He hadn’t recalled the name until she spoke it. The kingdom was named after the large tree with white bark in the courtyard and the sound where the ocean and river mixed in a channel.
This was where their journey began and where, somehow, they’d returned. Except she didn’t remember this place had always existed or that, when he came here originally, he had not been a knight of any kind but a boy whose death in her world she hadn’t been able to accept.
His gaze went from the castle to her. When he thought of what she’d done and why, he was filled with indecipherable emotions.
She created this place when she needed it as a child.
She’d recreated it when she needed it as an adult.