Authors: Marissa Doyle
When she paused under a bulb to catch her breath after running through one such dark stretch with her eyes nearly closed, she heard it—a scratching, scrabbling sound, coming from somewhere overhead. She glanced up. Bright eyes peered down at her from the shadows between the pipes clustered near the ceiling. Rats! She shuddered and walked quickly away, but the scratching sound never seemed very far away. How could Grant have stood this for all these weeks?
So far the passage had had no branches or divisions, which made her feel better. Then it had to be a true labyrinth. At least she wouldn’t need the string to find her way out again. Her and Grant’s way, she amended. Theo remembered the intense girl, a Greek and art double-major at her undergraduate college, who had created a labyrinth out of gravel and colored sand on one of the college greens as her senior thesis. Walking a labyrinth was a form of meditation for some, a way of reaching into oneself to discover hidden truths. If she weren’t so cold and scared, she might have enjoyed walking this one.
That was a good idea, though—meditate. Relax and let her brain do the work. She slowed her pace and closed her eyes, letting her hearing guide her. At least with her eyes closed she wouldn’t have to see the mildew-stained, peeling walls and the sudden gleam of small rodent eyes peering down at her from the sweating pipes. After several minutes of just listening, keeping her breathing slow and even, she let herself start to think again.
How far would it be to the center? She had counted two turnings so far, separated by fewer paces each time. An ancient classical labyrinth usually had seven nested circles, seven layers. Two down, five to go.
But it couldn’t be that easy. She doubted she would find Grant at the labyrinth’s center, calmly awaiting her. Grant’s state of mind when she had visited him in his sleep had been anything but calm: she had felt his confusion, his fear, his sense of being somehow imprisoned.
Or was his sense of imprisonment from something else, some other type of captivity than just physical? She shivered again.
It wasn’t until the third turning that she noticed that the corridor around her had changed. The pipes had dwindled in number and finally vanished, and the flaking painted walls had changed to bare concrete, like the floor, and then something else. She paused under a lightbulb and rubbed it with her fingers, realizing as she did that the corridor had widened. Where before she had shrunk from brushing against the walls as she walked, now she saw that three normal-sized people could walk through this hall and not feel cramped or jostled. The ceiling too had risen. Now it was at least ten feet or so above her head. She stared up at it, and saw that it was rough and uneven.
“Stone,” she murmured. “It’s all turned to stone.” She rubbed the wall again, marveling.
That lightbulb was the last one. A flickering caught her attention in the corridor ahead, and she saw that it came not from a blinking, dying lightbulb but a flaming torch. She paused under it and held up her hands, but the bright flames gave off no heat. She rubbed her bare arms to warm them and wished she’d worn a sweatshirt as she paused for a moment to listen and think.
She had passed the third turning and must be well on her way to the fourth. Halfway there. But to what?
As she had walked, she had started to reach out with her new senses to search for Grant. At first she’d felt nothing. But lately, there had been a feeling of of something—some entity, just waiting. It had repulsed all her attempts to explore it, to identify it. Surely it couldn’t be Grant, whom she’d been able to feel plainly in her dream-journeys to him. But if it wasn’t Grant, then who—or what—was it?
The fourth turning came and went. The length of time between the turnings was definitely shortening, so she must be getting closer to the center. At the same time, the sense of some other presence was growing.
All right. So what if it was a Minotaur at the center of the labyrinth she was sensing? What would she do?
Sword
, she demanded, holding out a hand. An enormous claymore, as tall as she was, appeared in her hand and nearly pulled her over with its weight. She’d never be able to use anything like that. Not even if it were a more reasonable size. She let it clatter to the ground and tried again. This time a small pink plastic sword-shaped cocktail pick, complete with an olive, manifested in her tense grip. That made her laugh, but the laugh sounded alarmingly like a sob.
Gun
, she tried next, and found a handsome old chestnut-stock flintlock cradled in her arms. That was as bad as the claymore. She knew as much about guns as she did about particle accelerators. She set it carefully down this time, just in case it was loaded and did something unpleasant and explosive.
What else—club? Spear? Rocket launcher? Did she honestly think she would be able to wield any weapon effectively enough to slay or disable a fearsome monster that was half bull?
Cape
, she muttered ruefully, and a red toreador’s cape appeared and draped itself over her arm. She laughed again, and the torch she had just passed burned brighter for a minute.
“If I can’t bullfight with it, at least I can keep warm,” she said to herself, and pulled the cape over her shoulders. Weapons were obviously not the answer. But what was?
The fifth turning came. Theo noticed it distantly, her thoughts turned inward. Would the Minotaur be able to speak? Or at least to understand? Perhaps she would be able to talk to it, to find some way to help it, in exchange for Grant’s release. What would one use to bribe a Minotaur these days? Infinite grass? A private ranch in Texas? Plastic surgery?
The sixth turning came. She began to realize how tired she was. How long had she been down here? It was difficult to estimate time here in the dark and featureless passages. She paused under a torch to look at her watch, and saw that it still read shortly before three—the time she had first set foot in Dr. Bellow’s office. Had time stopped inside the labyrinth, or just her watch? How would she be able to tell if she were reaching Grant in time?
“You can’t. So maybe you’d better get a move on, girl,” she murmured aloud. “He won’t get rescued if you just stand here.”
She hadn’t taken more than three steps, however, when a sound made her stop again. It was not loud or sudden: rather, it built in volume and then faded away, like a moan. A low, inhuman moan. She shook herself and continued walking, but she began to hear it more frequently as she continued. It reminded her of the lowing of cattle. Her mind veered from that thought.
Whatever it was, it didn’t sound happy. Could it be Grant, injured or ill? Should she call out to it?
That was when she began to notice the smell—not the damp mustiness of the sub-basement that had nearly nauseated her at the start of the labyrinth. This was different: sharper and musky, like an animal’s den. Like an animal’s—
A louder noise made her jump. The lowing sound abruptly ceased, and a rumbling, breathy growl rolled toward her. She had scented whatever it was; had it scented her? In the torchlight ahead she saw a turn in the corridor. The seventh turn. So just beyond it must be the labyrinth’s center, along with the labyrinth’s inhabitant. The thought made her pause, the fear she had set aside before flooding back over her. But Grant had to be there, too. Theo took a deep breath—and plunged ahead.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The first thing Theo saw was light. At least eight or ten torches were set in iron rings around the perimeter of the circular chamber she stumbled into, making her blink at the unexpected brightness and dancing shadows. The musky animal smell was almost overpowering to her divinely sensitive nose; she opened her mouth and breathed through it instead, but the smell still filled her, making her swallow hard to keep down her churning stomach.
Next to her at the chamber’s entrance was a large pile of sour-smelling hay and a battered tin bucket. The old hay stirred memories of her horse-crazy days at age eleven and made her indignant; livestock needed fresh clean hay daily, not this moldy mess. No wonder the whatever-it-was (she avoided thinking about large bovine creatures) sounded so unhappy.
You’re fixating, Fairchild. I don’t think you should be worrying much about cruelty to animals just now—
Sudden movement scattered these irrelevant thoughts. She turned to her left, and tried to shriek. But the only sound that emerged from her dry, constricted throat was a tiny bleat. She registered its silliness even as she started to back away from the hulking figure that shambled around the edge of the room. It caught sight of her and stopped.
Theo knew what a Minotaur was. She had seen artists’ interpretations of them in her beloved books of mythology growing up: the sepia-toned snoring bull-headed figure lying amid a pile of human bones in her
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths
had haunted her dreams for weeks after she first saw it at age nine. But no illustration, no matter how terrifying, could have prepared her for this.
It was tall—taller than a man by several inches and correspondingly broad. She stared into the glittering black eyes that were widening in surprise, the bloodshot whites visible around the dark irises. They were shockingly bright in the black-furred head on its thick muscular neck. It was not just a human with a bull’s head on its shoulders but an eerie amalgam of man and animal: the snout shorter and the eyes placed farther forward than was usual with a bull, the body thicker and squarer and more heavily furred than a man’s. And its hands—she glanced at the useless, bifurcated stubs and looked away again.
“I—I’ve come to get Grant Proctor,” she managed to say in a hoarse whisper. The Minotaur gawked at her, and she saw the short fur on its neck and shoulders bristle like a dog’s, saw the ears flatten and the long yellow horns point directly at her as it lowered its head and lumbered toward her.
She thought about what those wickedly pointed horns could do to an unprotected body, thought about ripping flesh and gouging, goring, tearing spikes driven by that powerful neck. She gasped, and suddenly found herself on the opposite side of the chamber. She had involuntarily transported herself.
Necessity is the mother of invention, even in magic
, she thought incoherently as she watched the Minotaur stagger to a halt in mid-charge, looking for her. She saw that its tail was sticking out stiff and straight behind it, and a hysterical giggle caught in her throat
. I didn’t think it would have a tail—how cute
. But then it turned and spotted her again, and all irrelevant thoughts fled as it snorted angrily and charged at her again, moving awkwardly on its human feet, as if it were not quite sure how to use them.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” she just had time to cry out before she blinked and magically dodged once more to the other side of the room. The Minotaur paused again and bellowed in fury as it looked for her.
She tried to keep an eye on it while she looked around for some sign of Grant. She managed a kick at the hay pile before teleporting again, wondering if he were buried inside it for warmth, but her foot swished through it without touching anything solid. Then where could Grant be? There hadn’t been any sign of him in the passages of the labyrinth. Had June maliciously tricked her? Could this whole labyrinth just have been a red herring of Julian’s to keep her occupied until time ran out? She put that thought to one side, but her hope flickered like a dying candle.
“I need your help. I’m trying to find someone. His name is Grant Proctor. Please. Do you know where he is?” she gasped out. The creature snorted angrily and ran at her once more. She vanished again, the Minotaur’s horns a mere foot from her throat. Think! If Grant wasn’t here, then where was he?
“Tell me!” she panted, shouting across the chamber at the enraged half-beast. “Where is Grant? Isn’t he here? What did you do with him? Give him back to me!”
The Minotaur roared back at her, a furious, inarticulate cry of rage. The sound of her speech seemed to antagonize it: again it stumbled clumsily toward her, broad feet slapping on the stone floor, and she noticed something just before she whisked away from its savage horns.
It was limping.
What should she remember about limping? She watched the Minotaur as it stormed at her once more, looked into the dark angry eyes, and saw something else there—a pleading, entreating spark of consciousness, all but buried beneath the bestial wildness and frenzy.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” she said, dodging sideways this time so she could still see its eyes. “Your foot—”
It slowed, its rough panting making its sides suck in over pitifully prominent ribs with each breath, and stared at her in confusion. She felt lightheaded as she looked at it. A livid scar twisted just below its ribs, barely visible under the black hair, and then she knew. Shock twisted through her gut.
“Grant,” she whispered, and took one cautious step forward. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
The Minotaur moaned uncertainly, head lowered as it looked at her. She saw the stiff tail slowly relax and hang still. Was it true? Had Julian made Grant take a Minotaur’s form? What was it that he had said? “I can’t imagine you wanting to embrace the physical Grant just now.”
“Oh yes I would. I’d embrace you in whatever form you were in,” she said aloud, taking another step toward it. “I know it’s you, Grant. Your scar is there. And you’re limping. I could feel that you’d hurt your foot somehow, when I came to you in your dreams.”
A shiver passed through its frame as she reached out a hand to close the last distance between them. “Grant,” she whispered. “It’s me, Theo. I know you’re in there.” She touched the hairy shoulder, and it quivered but didn’t move. She reached out with the other hand, and slipped her arms around it, drawing it to her. “Grant,” she murmured once more, resting her cheek against the furred shoulder.
The Minotaur stiffened and threw its head back. Theo gasped and nearly jumped back as the body in her arms began to shake, then to change, to
flow
. “Grant!” she cried once more.
But the figure in her arms was not Grant. Instead, she was shocked to find a large dirty-brown lizard clasped in her arms. Clawed forefeet clutched at her shoulders, and a long forked tongue slipped out a slash of a mouth with a sibilant hiss. Flat yellow eyes with vertical pupils stared into hers.