Emma and the Minotaur (7 page)

“We’re just playing, sir,” Emma said. She peeked behind him and beyond the trees she could see a bulldozer and the beginnings of the Paigely Builders construction site. “But I think we got lost.”

“Do your parents know you’re here?”

“No, sir,” Emma said.

“You kids better come with me,” he said.

They were taken through the construction site, past the parked bulldozer and in between newly built houses and construction equipment. The entire time the German Shepherd walked along beside Emma.

They ended up at a portable office. There was a sign next to the door and it said “Security” on it. When they entered, the German Shepherd sat down in front of the door, just inside, and from there he watched Emma.

Inside the room, there was a desk, some filing cabinets, and three chairs. The walls were bare and the place looked more like a prison cell than an office. The security guard sat them down before leaning against his desk. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a pack of gum. He started to chew a piece loudly and then crossed his arms.

“I’m going to have to call your parents. What are your names?” the guard said. Emma read the man’s name off his chest. His name tag said, “Aaron Humphries.”

“Emma Wilkins and Jake Milligan,” she said.

“Milligan? Are you related to Andrew Milligan?”

Jake looked up at the man and nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “He’s my dad.”

Emma couldn’t think of anything else to do but come out with the truth. She told him that they were in the forest looking for Jake’s father. She told him also about how her own father had forbidden her from doing so and that she would be in a lot of trouble if he found out.

“Alright, listen,” Aaron said when she finished. “I won’t call your parents. But you have to stay out of that forest. The police are doing everything they can to find the missing persons.”

“It’s been almost a month,” Jake said.

Aaron nodded and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

He led them back outside, out the front gate of the construction site, and onto Lockhart Road. The German Shepherd followed.

“Now, go straight home and don’t go back in the forest again,” Aaron said. “Stay out of trouble.”

They walked back up the road, the trees of the forest looking down on them on their right.

“How did we end up there?” Jake said as they went.

“I have no idea,” Emma said. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Also, I didn’t think you’d tell him everything!”

“He asked! What was I supposed to do?”

They walked on in silence until they turned down Belle Street. The Blue Jay, the one from before, Emma thought, was still there, though on a different tree. It watched them walk by.

“So what do we do now?” Jake said.

“You still want to do this?”

He nodded.

Emma sighed. She had already broken the rules anyway.

“Okay,” she said. “I have a plan.”

The Blue Jay chirped and flew away.

The following day after school, Jake rode the bus with Emma and Will on the pretense that he was coming over to visit again. When the three of them were walking from the bus stop to their house, Emma grabbed Will by the arm.

“I have to tell you,” she said.

“What is it now, Emma?”

“We’re going to go to the forest,” she said. “To look for Jake’s dad.”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “Dad will kill you.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I need you to promise me you won’t snitch. I’ll be back before he comes from work.”

Will shook his head and walked around her. Jake looked at Emma questioningly, but she could only shrug her shoulders. The older boy didn’t speak at all until they were back inside their house. They put their bags down on the floor, just inside, and Will turned to Emma.

“Okay,” he said.

“You won’t tell?”

“No,” he said. “I’m coming with you. Someone has to take care of you.”

Emma was happy to add Will to their search party. The three children went to the forest. Because of what had happened the day before, with their getting turned around and ending up at the construction site, Emma made sure this time that they were headed in a northerly direction.

“We keep the sun to our left,” she said, “and it’ll keep us going north.”

“So you think we can do better than we did with all those other people that one time?” Will said. “In only an hour and a half?”

“No,” Emma said. “We’re going to do this every day.”

“That’s the plan then? Come to the forest every day straight from the bus and then try to get back home before dad gets there and kills you?”

“Yup.”

“Alright,” Will said. He turned to Jake. “She’s crazy, you know?”

Jake nodded. “I know.”

They laughed together. Emma punched Will in the shoulder.

They continued on toward the north for a while, with Will keeping track of the time on his watch. Though Emma made sure that they did not deviate from their intended direction, eventually the Paigely Builders construction site appeared in front of them.

“Look,” she said. “It’s the construction site.”

“How is that possible?” Jake said.

“I don’t know. It’s to the east of where we started. There is no way we could’ve ended up here.”

“Maybe you were distracted,” Will said.

“Me? You were the ones not paying attention!”

“Well,” said Will. “We have to go back anyway. Time’s up. We’ll just have to pay better attention tomorrow.”

They went back home and Jake picked up his backpack before he left on his way to the bus stop.

They repeated their search the next day but this time, before they left the house, Emma went to the lunchbox under bed and took out an old compass. It was a clunky, metal thing on a yellow and black lanyard.

She pulled it over her neck and ran outside to where Jake and Will were waiting.

“I got this thing,” she said. “We won’t get lost with it.”

This time, in the forest, Emma looked at the compass every so often to make sure that they were following the needle. The two boys kept quiet, but they jostled with each other now and again.

“Are you sure you can handle the compass?” said Will. “Big responsibility.”

Emma ignored him.

They came across an enormous log that lied across their path. Jake and Will climbed on top of it and pushed at each other. Emma rolled her eyes, but soon she climbed up as well.

She stood at the end of log and tried to get a better look at her surroundings in order to memorize any landmarks that she could see. A few metres ahead, a small rabbit was sitting up on its haunches. It was staring her and, presently, it cocked its head to the side before it ran off into the forest.

“Hey, I have an idea,” she said.

“What?” Jake asked.

“Well,” Emma said. “This is weird. I’m sure we’re going north but something’s off. This area doesn’t look familiar. But what if we mark the places where we’ve been?”

Will jumped off the log. “Let’s bring a knife and carve arrows into the trees next time,” he said.

“No,” Emma said. “Don’t hurt the trees. I have a better idea.”

They continued to search and, as they went, Emma began to look at the compass more often. Eventually, she ended up holding it in front of her as she walked.

A while later, she stopped them. “Oh no,” she said.

“Are you sure you can use that thing?” Will said.

“We’ve been following the arrow the entire time!”

There was a soccer field ahead of them beyond the trees. Past it, there arose familiar buildings that were part of the University of Saint Martin. To the right of the field, there was an enormous parking lot.

“What’s the matter?” Jake said.

“We can’t be here if we’ve been going north this entire time,” Will said. “There is just more woods to the north and eventually a lake. To get to the school you have turn west at some point.”

“Huh,” Jake said. “That’s weird.”

“Really weird,” Emma said.

“Impossible,” said Will. He looked at his watch and then turned them around to head back on home. “We’re doing something wrong,” he said.

“Yeah,” Emma said, nodding. “I have another idea though. But I need to get some things. I’ll do it tomorrow after school.”

“What are you going to do?” Jake said.

“We’re going to get organized.”

The next day after school, when the bus dropped her off, Emma walked up The Hill to the University of Saint Martin. It was hot and sunny, and the road was busy.

On her way up The Hill, Emma passed university students who were walking both to and from the school. The journey didn’t take her as long this time as it had in the rain and soon she was under the shade of the building housing the geography department. At that time of day, there was plenty of commotion in the hallways and she received more than few odd looks and smiles. She was out of place, being only eleven and small for her age on top of it.

Her destination was on the second floor of the building. In the middle of the hallway, there was a doorway that was flanked by rows of big windows. Above the door, there was a sign that read, “Map Library.” She peeked inside and saw that there were maybe a dozen students sitting in a study area and a few more were moving about in between the shelves and cabinets where the maps were kept. There was a desk next to the door and an elderly woman was sitting in front of it typing on a keyboard and looking at a computer screen. When Emma walked in, she waved and smiled at the woman. The woman cocked an eyebrow in response and then went back to her typing.

Emma had been to the Map Library before. At one point she’d had an obsession with maps and her father had indulged it by taking her there and showing her how to find the ones that were interesting. The maps Emma liked the most were the old ones that were sometimes incorrect about certain details.

Today she was looking for an accurate map. Local maps were on a shelf in the middle of the room and Emma made her way to it. There was a crowd gathered around it as two students poked through the map collection. One of them, a boy who was wearing thick glasses, found what he was looking for and removed a book from the shelf. He walked past the crowd and sat at one of the tables. Another student, from those who were waiting, took the boy’s place at the shelf.

Emma approached the boy with the glasses and asked him what was happening. He informed her that they were all first year geography students and that they were working on an assignment. She decided to try to squeeze through the crowd rather than wait for them to finish. Her size proved an advantage in this as most of the students got out of the way of the small girl.

It didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for. She slid a big binder out of the shelf and went to a table and spread it open. In the binder there a number maps of the area surrounding the university. She paged through it until she found a map that consisted of stitched-together aerial photographs. The map showed the entirety of Glenridge Forest. She took the map out of the binder, walked to one of the photocopiers at the back of the room, put in a quarter, and copied it onto two pages.

She put page back into the binder, and the binder back on the shelf, before she left the Map Library. The woman behind the front desk cocked her eyebrow at her again.

Out in the hallway, she turned to go back to the stairs but then she heard someone call her name. She turned left and right and saw that halfway down the hall, coming toward her, was Lucy Leroux.

“Hey, Emma!” Lucy said when she reached her. She leaned down to look at her at eye level. Her pink headphones were hanging around her neck. Emma could see now that they had stickers of black skulls on them.

“Hello, snitch,” Emma said.

“What?”

“You told on me.”

They were in the middle of the hallway and they were blocking the flow of traffic so Lucy motioned for them to go sit on one of the benches next to the wall. They did so and Emma put her backpack on the ground, still holding onto the new map.

“What do you mean I told on you?”

“You told my dad that I was at the mall. I got in trouble.”

“I didn’t realize you’d get in trouble. I’m really sorry. I thought he knew.”

Emma studied her face and decided that she was telling the truth. She nodded.

“What’d you got there?” Lucy said.

“A map,” Emma said.

“Oh? A map for what?”

“The forest. We’re looking for someone.”

Lucy asked to see the map and Emma handed the pages to her.

“Are these photocopies? Where did you get these?”

Emma pointed back to the Map Library. “From there,” she said. “Didn’t you know about it?”

Lucy shook her head. “I’m in biology,” she said. “Who are you looking for? Why do you need a map?”

“You have lots of questions, you know?”