Emma and the Minotaur

by Jon Herrera

somewhere inside the forest. It hadn’t come from far away and the booming footsteps that followed didn’t take long to reach them. Before any of them could react, a monster emerged from the darkness of the trees.

  Bill gasped.

  The beast was tall, eight feet or more, and heavy with bulging muscles. Its head was that of a bull, its nostrils flared in anger, and its eyes glowed red with fire. The creature’s horns were long and black and ended in sharp points. Its body was an exaggeration of a man, impossibly large and full of power. In place of feet, the monster’s legs had great hooves on their ends.

  Aaron tried to yell the word “run,” but before he could speak, the monster was upon them. It was impossibly fast, so fast that it almost seemed like it had transported in front of them. Aaron jumped back and landed hard on the ground. He watched as Bill and Joel were snatched up like dolls. He saw the men kick and punch at the beast as they tried to escape its grasp. The monster’s hands were big enough hold Bill upside down by his thigh. There was pain on Bill’s face as he struggled.

  Joel was being restrained by the elbow and he managed to swing around and kick at a giant leg. The monster twitched its wrist and Aaron heard the sound of breaking bone as Joel’s elbow shattered. Joel screamed.

  Aaron struggled to his feet as the monster made his way to the tree. He saw a line of light about the height of a man split the ancient oak down the middle and open up to create a portal. The beast threw the screaming men inside the tree one by one.

  Aaron turned to run. He took two steps before he slammed hard into the chest of the monster, who now barred his way. He looked up at the fury in its eyes and despair overtook him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the fear, he realized that the music in the forest was still playing behind him.

  The monster picked him up with both hands and Aaron felt like a small child in the arms of a strong adult. He knew that it was pointless to fight. It would be no contest.

  He resigned to his fate and the demon threw him into the tree. Just before the light of the portal enveloped him, he saw a pretty woman enter the moonlight of the clearing, but he didn’t believe that she could be real.

  Rebecca Robins was running.

  She had left her house at precisely eight o’clock as was her routine. It was a stringent one that she rarely deviated from. Her weekdays were spent always in the same manner: she stayed after work at Briardale Middle School to do marking and lesson preparation until five o’clock; she arrived home at five thirty and made dinner, which she ate at six o’clock at her dinner table; at six thirty, she went to her living room with a cup of tea and read a novel until seven forty-five when she changed into her running clothes. Rebecca ran for an hour every night.

  There was a jogging trail that snaked through an old quarry near Rebecca’s house. For years, she had run that trail to the point that she could probably do it with her eyes closed. She was not one to deviate from routine but tonight she was running along a dimly lit street near the woods. Rebecca wasn’t sure where she was or how she had ended up there.

  Something had been nagging at the back of her mind since she’d arrived home that afternoon. She had felt as though she had forgotten something important and it was pulling at her from somewhere but she couldn’t remember what it was no matter how hard she tried. Something told her that it might have to do with the girl Emma and her awful behaviour. She considered the little girl to be a monster, hell-bent on causing chaos in her class. Today she had given the girl a third strike and sent her down to the principal’s office.

  A cool drop of water fell on the back of her neck and she stopped and looked up in fear that it had started to rain again. Above her head there were branches that protruded from the woods. The wind had caused some of the rainwater to fall down just as she’d passed underneath.

  Somehow, looking up into the leaves made her remember why she’d gone off course. It had been a sweet kind of music that she had heard, faint but enchanting. It had felt as though it had been calling to her.

  Just as she thought about the music, it began to play again from somewhere inside the darkness of the forest. She had no choice but to follow it.

  Rebecca didn’t know how long she followed the music. It was a wet journey because the forest was still moist from the rain. She hardly noticed. The music was sweet and lovely and it made Rebecca happy. It filled her senses and it was all that she cared to notice. There were booms of thunder and what sounded like giant footfalls but they were to Rebecca like irrelevant background noise to the beautiful symphony.

  Even as she came within sight of the clearing, she was not taken aback by the violence within. There were three men there and a monster. There was screaming and crying out and struggling. The monster crushed the arm of one of the men at the elbow with a squeeze of its great hand. Two of the men were thrown into a hole of light in a tree.

  The third man barely put up a fight. As he followed the others into into the tree, he looked directly at Rebecca, and Rebecca looked back at him. When he was gone, she raised her hand awkwardly almost as if to wave goodbye.

  Then it was just Rebecca and the monster alone in the clearing.

  She took a few delicate steps forward. The monster watched her. She looked it over under the light of the moon and saw raw power in its body and fire in its eyes. She began to feel afraid and, as she did so, she saw the creature’s muscles tense up as if they were readying for an assault. Before Rebecca could panic, the music became louder and it filled her senses again. She turned toward the tree and, though she could not forget that the monster was there, she became so intoxicated by the sound that its presence did not seem to matter as much as it had a moment before.

  The school teacher smiled dreamily and took brisk steps toward the tree. The beautiful music was coming from inside it. In her peripheral vision she saw that the monster was watching her but that it did not make any move toward her.

  She reached the tree and tried to look inside but the light was like a wall and her gaze could not penetrate it. A small voice inside her head cautioned that this was dangerous and tried to point out the strangeness of the situation but the music was so sweet that it made her heart ache. It called to her and made her want to be closer to it. She needed to know its source.

  Rebecca Robins took one last look at the world around her, and at the creature standing guard near the tree, and then she walked willingly into the portal to another world.

  9 The Portents of War

  “There is a war coming.”

  Emma was standing near the ancient oak and Domino was leaning against its trunk.

  Now that Emma had a good look at the faun in the daylight she could see that his skin was tattooed everywhere except for his face. There were lines and shapes all over his body, except where there was fur, but Emma could not understand their meaning. It occurred to her that maybe they weren’t tattoos at all, but a part of the creature. The flute that the faun carried with him was longer than Emma’s and, whereas hers was plain, the one belonging to Domino was elaborate.

  Emma was afraid and uneasy.

  “There are two worlds, Emma, this one and the World of Light, and their fates are intertwined, as they have been for a very long time. In that other world there lives a great power. He rules there and waits for the time to strike, when he will return to this world and make it his own again like it was once before.

  “That time is here, Emma. He is coming and this is only the beginning. He means to make war with this world and rule over it. There is no one that can stop him but you.”

  The faun’s voice was deep and musical. He spoke in a manner that sounded as though he was making a rehearsed speech. As she listened, Emma tried not to stare at the tattoos but she thought that they shifted about as he spoke. This did not help her unease.

  “Me?” she said.

  “You, Emma,” he said. “So my friend has foretold.” He motioned toward the tree. “The trees are older than all of us and they understand far more about this univer
se than we do. We all come from the trees. The trees all have names and purposes and will guide all of us along if we let them.”

  “What is his name?” asked Emma.

  “I can’t tell you. The tree may tell you his name one day.”

  Emma frowned. “I’ll call him Mr Oak,” she said.

  Domino smiled and it frightened her.

  “I don’t think I understand anything,” she said.

  “Emma,” said the faun. “All stories are true. The trees and the Lord of Light were here first, but it’s not known to anyone if he made the trees or the trees made him. He ruled over this world once and then he left, to his World of Light, but now he seeks to return to make the world his own again.

  “That is the mission of the minotaur. He is the vanguard. He comes to prepare the way. The humans who have disappeared are the first prisoners of war.”

  “So they’re alive?” she said. “Where are they? We have to tell everyone so they can be rescued!”

  “No one can go where they have been taken and no one can save them. No one but maybe you, Emma, and of that I’m not sure.”

  “Why me? How can they not be saved?”

  “They are in another world. When you are ready, maybe the trees will send you there but I don’t know. First you must stop Minotaur. This, I do know.

  “You see, they are all coming back, Emma. All the creatures