by Lizzy Ford
White Tree Sound was not only his refuge but hers as well.
She just didn’t know it.
I eye him. “You’re doing it again,” I say uneasily.
The Red Knight of White Tree Sound looks away without speaking. He starts walking.
I couldn’t have offended him. We’ve had much more divisive arguments along our way.
“You left here to find me.” I wish he remembered some of who he was.
“For what purpose?” he asks.
“To find out where you came from.”
“Ridiculous. I know where I came from.”
“You do?” I ask, surprised.
“Space.”
“But you said you didn’t know where you were before you woke up on a spaceship,” I insist.
“I remember now,” he states. “I was born on a planet near yours.”
“Oh.” I frown, disappointed. The version of him I met at the café appeared to believe he’d been from somewhere else, not this story. If he says he remembers, then I have no way of proving otherwise. It makes no sense that he’d lie. “You’re okay with that explanation?”
“I am,” he says firmly. “The longer we’re here, the more I remember about my past, though I can’t understand why I want to say this is really rad.”
I smile. He’s definitely changed a lot during our journey.
Have I? I stood up to my ex and Freddy in the vision. That’s progress. Have I changed in ways I don’t notice that Jared might?
I’m not sure I want to know.
I gaze at the castle. It’s more beautiful than I imagined. Even knowing I created the Black Moon Draw world, I’m still impressed.
Jared doesn’t seem anywhere near as interested as I am. His eyes are on our path, not our destination.
“This is the center of the labyrinth,” I muse. “The Ring must be inside.”
“I can’t imagine it’d be that easy,” he says what I’m thinking.
I really want a nap, a full meal – with dessert! – and to go home to my little apartment and Wookie without worrying about what danger awaits me. I glance down at my mood ring.
“Jared, the ring’s black,” I murmur.
“I’m not surprised. I don’t think our trials are over yet.”
“It does seem too easy to walk in and take the Ring.” I’m starting to think harder about how I’m going to outsmart Jared once we find the Ring. I can’t overpower him, which means I need to outthink him. I created this world. If there’s a secret hiding place or loophole or similar, I should know it.
The trees sigh and creak in a warm breeze, and the familiar blue sky comforts me. I can ignore the fact the world is lit by three moons and appreciate not being stuck in twilight or dawn any longer.
“This reminds me of where I grew up,” I say. “We lived in a forested area in the mountains. But not in a castle.”
Jared doesn’t respond. He’s likely starting to fixate on the Ring again. Sometimes, I like being with him. Other times, I’m not sure what to think. He’s hard to read.
“I miss it,” I say with more longing than I feel comfortable expressing.
He glances back at me. “Do you want to go back to your world?”
“Of course I’m going back.”
“But do you want to?”
I stare at the back of his head. “What kind of question is that?” I reply. “I’m not staying in this stupid labyrinth.”
“If White Tree Sound is in its own world, not on this planet, then would you want to stay there?” He speaks carefully, as if trying to wrap his head around the idea of there being other worlds in addition to his.
“I don’t think it’s a choice,” I say. “When this game is over, I go home. Or wake up.”
“If you had a choice, what would you do?”
I frown. “But I don’t have a choice.”
“Whatever.”
I’m frustrating him without trying to. I’m returning to my world. Of that, I have no doubt. I haven’t worked out how or when or any of the other details. I can’t imagine any scenario in which I don’t return.
The question highlights the fact that Jared and I are on two different wavelengths. I don’t know how to bridge us or even if I should try. He’ll probably stay in fantasyland when I go home. This version of him will, anyway.
“Oh, no.”
My moment of relative peace evaporates when I hear the dread in his soft voice. He stops, and I move to stand beside him.
At first, I don’t see what he does. The drawbridge is lowering. Have we done it? Defeated the labyrinth?
Jared’s not looking toward the drawbridge at all but to the east.
A sad pink Care Bear with a crown hangs in a cage from a tree, surrounded by goblins, on an island surrounded by a moat. I want to say screw the bear and run to the drawbridge, but there are five crystals hovering above the bear and another two promised by the cabbage people. If we save her, we bolster our chances of making it through whatever danger awaits us in the castle.
“We have to do it, don’t we?” I sigh.
“I think so.” Jared strikes off in that direction.
“Don’t you want to create some sort of strategy?” I ask. “We can’t just walk up to a bunch of goblins and ask them to free the princess bear.”
“Why not?”
I hurry after him. Part of Jared’s evolution appears to include a streak of madness. “Do you remember what happened when we challenged the Donkey Kong gorilla?”
“It didn’t end too badly. We got a lot of crystals out of that incident.” He glances at my Swatch. “How many do you have?”
“How many do you have?” I repeat.
“Fourteen.”
Surprised, it takes me a moment to respond. “Same,” I say and show him the face of my Swatch. “We only need two more before we can fight the demon. Assuming we work together.”
The inscrutable look again.
I don’t know what to say. I accompany him, because I know how important it is to rescue the princess for the sake of crystals and her angry boyfriend, who eats the cabbage people. I can’t help glancing towards the drawbridge. No crystals that way. With any luck, it’ll remain open until we’ve finished this part of our quest.
Jared stops walking at the edge of the moat, which is a good hundred feet wide. The water is green-brown and stagnant. Moss floats in some places. Goblins are gathering on the shore opposite us, armed with spears.
“Maybe we should –” I start, gaze on the narrowest part of the moat.
Jared steps into the water. I don’t know if he thinks he’ll walk across it or what, but he drops like a rock into the murky depths. He surfaces, coughing, and treads water.
“It’s deeper than it looks,” he tells me. “Are you coming?”
I grimace. The moat is gross, and our enemies have time to plot how to murder us as we swim across it.
“Why not.” I ditch my shoes and sit on the edge. Rather than dive in like he did, I slide into the water.
It’s warm, too.
Jared swims a short distance away and waits for me. Disgusted, I try not to focus on the moat water and swim toward him. He goes a little farther and waits, repeating this pattern until we’re about halfway across the moat.
He’s not saying how we’re going to survive the goblins. “Is this another of your plans where you tell people to eat me?” I ask, growing concerned.
“I don’t have a plan yet.”
Is that any better?
The goblins begin beating drums. At first, I ignore the thumps. Moss clings to me. I don’t want that shit in my hair and twist my neck from side to side in an attempt to dislodge it.
Da dum.
Da dum.
Da da da da da dum.
I stop swimming. “Oh, no.” It’s my turn to voice my dread. I begin scanning our surroundings for the telltale fin of a shark.
“Something’s going to eat us, isn’t it?” Jared asks.
“Swim!” I cry.
I can’t see it, but there’s also a chance it’s below us. My thrashing isn’t going to help anything. In panic mode, I don’t care.
With longer arms and more strength, he pulls away from me.
The tall, slender fin parts the waters between Jared and me. I stop swimming, horrified by its size. The shark surfaces. I backstroke, kicking my legs as fast as they’ll go.
The shark sinks beneath the surface once more.
“Where is it?” I shout.
Jared is ten feet away, treading water, searching the area around him visually. He has thirty feet to the goblins, and I have forty. It’s shorter than returning the way we came, but every direction is dangerous now.
He’s staring at me, stricken.
“He’s behind me, isn’t he?” I manage. Tears fill my eyes. When I woke up the other day, being eaten by a shark was nowhere on my radar of possibilities.
I don’t look. I’ll just freak out anyway.
Closing my eyes, I experience a whoosh of water washing up over my head and then the hot breath of a monster surrounding me.
Water consumes me.
I wait for the pain.
None comes.
In fact, it doesn’t feel like anything is happening except that I’ve been submerged. I test my arms and legs. They’re still attached, and I move them around without finding the sides of the mouth or stomach of the shark. I open my eyes, but it’s completely dark.
If I’m not going to be eaten, then I’m going to drown. Already, my lungs are burning, and I’m struggling not to try to breathe. I thrash within the belly of the shark. I’d prefer a quick beheading than to drown!
I swim without going anywhere and can find no teeth or stomach walls to beat against. The edges of my mind are going dark, and fear alone keeps me from sobbing and further dooming myself by sucking in water.
I float and the darkness spreads across my mind.
This can’t be how it ends. I didn’t survive the labyrinth only to be devoured by a moat shark.
Horrified, the Red Knight witnessed the great moat shark swallow his companion and guide.
“Elf!” he shouted.
Neither of them surfaced.
He treaded water, too shocked to know what to do. A spear landed in the water beside him. The goblins were shouting. He could do nothing but stare at the place where Elf had been.
Logic pushed its way into his initial panic. Nothing on this planet was as it seemed. He couldn’t imagine she’d die when they were so close to the Ring. She possessed crystals to save her life, which meant, she wasn’t dead.
Then where was she? And how did he move past seeing her eaten by a shark? No blood muddied the water, and no fin or body appeared anywhere around him.
If she died, the Ring didn’t matter. It was this thought above the others that stirred his anger. He’d come too far, learned too much, for this to be how the journey ended.
He had but one choice: to continue. Once he had the Ring, he could find her or perhaps even create a world for her, as she had done for him, if for some reason, she was gone in this one.
A second spear landed in the water around him.
The Red Knight snatched it before it sank and began swimming towards the goblins. He was too angry – and too afraid for Elf – to consider the danger. A tiny thought at the back of his mind reminded him that she’d protected him somehow just by being present. He wouldn’t have her with him.
But he had his crystals. Rescuing the bear princess would give him another five crystals, enough for him to enter the castle on his own. It wouldn’t be enough for a chance to fight the demon, but he could find more crystals in the castle.
He was too close, and too much was at stake, to question himself now. He’d been trained for battle in space and at some point, in a life he couldn’t recall, as a Knight of White Tree Sound.
The Red Knight reached shore, ducked a flurry of arrows and then launched out of the water and onto the shore. He kicked the knee-high goblins nearest him. They landed in the water, screaming. Raising the spear, he batted away several arrows and whirled, stabbing one goblin through the chest when it thrust its spear towards him.
The Red Knight became a flurry of destruction and death, kicking, stabbing and throwing goblins in every direction. He snatched two more crystals as he worked his way from the lake toward the imprisoned Care Bear. He lost one crystal when a goblin ran a spear through his gullet.
The pain was brief. As soon as the crystal disappeared, he recovered. He threw that goblin into the bonfire nearby and then ran his spear through the last. Covered in green goblin blood, he paused to catch his breath at the bottom of the tree in which the sad bear princess hung.
“I’m coming!” he shouted. He circled the tree and dashed up the wooden ladder resting against the trunk. The ladder stopped several branches beneath the Care Bear’s cage. He climbed the rest of the distance, filled with too much fury and desperation to let the thought of falling a hundred feet make him sick. He didn’t have time for weakness of any kind.
He reached her branch and paused to suck in a few deep breaths. “I’m … here,” he told her.
“Good, fair knight,” she said. “I have waited for so long. Surely my love has –”
“Tell me how to get you down.”
“You must cut that rope and lower me down,” she said, pointing.
He followed the length of rope with his gaze. It was attached to a lever, which controlled a huge spool of rope that hadn’t been present when he reached the branch.
When he looked at her again, his breath caught in his throat. In front of her danced five crystals – and a sword.
“You have to choose. Crystals or the sword,” she informed him. “It’s not really a choice, since you didn’t bring a knife with you.”
Even if he had, it still wouldn’t have been a choice. The metal blade glinted in the moons’ light. The jewel in the hilt was red, a symbol of who he had been … or was? … in the world Elf created for him. It was the most beautiful sword he’d ever seen, more beautiful even than his first light saber. It beckoned to him in the way Elf had, on a deep level he’d never be able to explain, except to say they were connected.
The Knight stood precariously on the branch and inched towards the sword floating beside the crystals near the cage. He gripped the hilt. It fit perfectly in his hand. He recognized its weight and the coolness of its metal.
This was his sword, just as the castle was his home and Elf was … what exactly?
He studied the blade, awed by the beauty of the weapon and the sense that he’d put another piece of the puzzle into place.
“You have chosen wisely,” the bear princess told him.
He blinked out of his spell and walked backwards carefully until he reached the lever and spool of rope.
“Are you ready?” he called.
“I’ve been waiting with baited breath to see my love! I cannot wait to –”
“Gag me,” he said beneath his breath. Ignoring the waxing bear, he lifted the sword, marveling at it once more. It, too, filled him with the same joy he’d experienced when he first saw the castle. “Hang on.”
He gripped the lever with one hand and raised the sword with his other. He took a deep breath and counted to three.
The Red Knight slashed through the rope with one strike. He shoved his weight against the lever to keep the spool of rope from unwinding too quickly.
Except … the lever wasn’t connected to the spool but to the buckets the goblins filled with food and water for the bear.
The Care Bear plunged towards the ground, screaming.
The Red Knight moved as fast as he dared to the end of the branch, observing his mistake with no small amount of shock.
The bear princess and her cage smashed into the ground and exploded into pink blood, white fluff, and pink fur.
He grimaced. “Grody to the max,” he muttered more words he’d never heard before and barely understood. He stood, staring down at the mess he’d
unintentionally made. His hand tightened instinctively around the sword, and he silently dared the planet to take it from him.
His sword remained. Five crystals disappeared from his palm.
The Red Knight roared in frustration. For every success they managed to make, they were thrust immediately after into situations in which they could never win.
Light permeates the murkiness around me. I can’t swim towards it; my limbs don’t work anymore. But I don’t have to. The light is coming closer to me. The bubble in which I float collapses, and I hit the ground and begin coughing violently.
I’m on a ledge with a wall on one side and an expanse of dark water on the other. This resembles a sewer of some kind.
The giant moat shark sinks beneath the surface once more. I drag myself away from the edge of the stone ledge I’m on, struggling to recover. The shark swallowed me and spit me out here. I’m grateful not to be dead but also not certain my luck will last. Is he saving me for later? To be eaten by baby sharks?
Wiping my eyes, I forget about the shark. Mostly.
I’m in a massive cavern of some kind with no doors or windows that I can see. Even if there was one, I wouldn’t care.
A pirate ship floats in the middle of the expansive of black water. It’s lit from within and has a broken mast. It lists to the side but still floats.
“Treasure,” I breathe. Or maybe … the Ring?
I stand and then drop to my knees. My body hasn’t had time to recover yet. When my breathing is under control, and my limbs no longer shake, I use the wall to help me stand.
How do I get to the pirate ship? I can swim but …
Yeah. No.
I shudder. I got lucky not being eaten. I’m not going to test my fortune in this madhouse. Which leaves me in a dilemma. I’m located on a ledge the width of a sidewalk. It runs as far as I can see around the wall in either direction. I can walk along it, but it won’t take me closer to the pirate ship or out of here.
Jared’s theory about writing our own rules, or ignoring the labyrinth’s, seems to work fifty percent of the time. Those are pretty good odds in my book.
I’m not sure what else to do but start walking around the perimeter of the cavern. My eyes stay on the pirate ship, and I trail my fingertips along the wall, just in case my tired body decides I need a break. I reach the first corner and turn, following the path. I circle the pirate ship as I walk and study it. From this distance, it appears to be unmanned. I’m not certain who lit the lanterns hanging from several points inside and out, but that person isn’t showing him or herself.