.: :CHAPTER TEN: :.
After taking a few steps into the hedge maze, Amry stopped. Her head was still swimming with everything she'd just experienced and it felt important that she make some sort of sense of it all before putting it completely behind her.
She found that she was looking back the way she'd come in; back out into the now empty piazza. "What was that all about?"
Amry closed her eyes and shook her head. This place was so endlessly weird.
But hadn't everything else that had already happened taught her that nothing here was going to make sense? Odd how long it took for her mind to really accept that chaos was the only logic.
Sighing, she switched her attention to the task at hand– the hedge maze. She blinked hard, forcing herself to recall the view she'd had when she's first arrived and was standing outside the walls of the maze. From what she remembered seeing, being in the hedge section indicated she was about a third of the way through the entire labyrinth – which would be pretty impressive except she knew her progress was owed simply to dumb luck. Still, progress was progress.
The green prickly walls of the neatly kept maze were thick and tall. She tentatively ran a hand along the nearest section of wall, the scratch of the sharply trimmed branch-end and rough waxy leaves digging into her palm. Peeking over the tops of the hedge walls were occasional distant stone points – part of massive stone sculptures, she figured, the same as had been found occasionally in the first stone section of maze.
She started forward, watching for the first turn or twist in the path ahead. And yet, what if the way forward was the way back. . .what if she was supposed to have taken the crystal she was being offered?
Amry realized she had stopped. She twisted her head around to cast another thoughtful look back towards the piazza.
And found herself looking at a green hedge wall right behind her.
She spun around, startled. There was now a wall behind her, where she had just walked a moment ago.
A wall, boldly in place as though it had never not been there. Green and living and defiantly impossible.
She stepped forward and pressed up against this new wall, affirming by touch its solidness. Her thoughts, which she had been working so hard to ground, were sent off into spinning confusion again. The maze was moving. Actively changing around her.
What was she supposed to do in an environment that was constantly changing and never predictable? Sure, that could describe her whole experience in the maze so far, but now the very walls of the maze itself were taking on the characteristics of this madness!
She stepped away from the hedge wall and found herself rubbing the black pointed crystal between her fingers again, working out her frustrations in the small motions. She looked down and watched her fingers for a moment, the crystal flashing opaquely as it moved against her fingertips.
Anger rose up in Amry, an anger that surged down into her hand and around the crystal she held.
She suddenly seized the crystal and violently tore it from around her neck. She felt the chain catch, resist, and then break free. She pulled her arm back and with all the strength she could manage, she threw the necklace away from her. The blood pounded hard in her ears.
As the crystal sailed off into the distance, she felt her anger draining away. The remnants were now twisting into a new, unexpected emotion. . .panic.
What had she done?
She was panicking – but why? Why did she suddenly feel naked and vulnerable? Why was there a sudden urge, no, a NEED to run and search for that crystal? Why?
Before Amry could find the answers, she found herself obeying. She was running, doing her best (considering the maze limited her options) to keep with the direction she'd thrown the crystal necklace. She was filled with an explainable desperation. She had to find it.
Left.
Right.
Straight for a stretch.
Right again.
Then she stopped.
Amry was standing in front of an arched stone doorframe embedded in a section of hedge wall. She couldn't see what was inside – the darkness beyond the reach of daylight was too thick for her eyes to penetrate.
She thought she heard a distant tink tink tink echoing out of that inky blackness. The crystal necklace...?
She leaned forward and peered inside the arch. Feeling around blindly, all she could determine was that there were what seemed to be a set of stairs leading downwards. A cold stone wall pressed closely in on either side of the stairs, smooth and curving. She hesitated only a moment longer before she stepped boldly through the doorway amd started down the stairs.
The sound of Amry's shoes clumsily thudding against the stones echoed irreverently in the dark stillness. There was absolutely no source of light that she could make out, so she had to feel her way slowly and blindly down the narrow winding steps. She moved each foot carefully, taking it one cautious step at a time.
Down, down, down – down it seemed into the very heart of the world.
Fear washed up over Amry, but she swallowed it back. Something stronger kept her going, a hope of finding her lost necklace…
"OOPH!"
Despite her caution, Amry had managed to walk right into a wall. As she backed up, her foot caught something small.
Tink tink
Amry bent down and frantically felt the ground around her feet. Her fingertips brushed something cool and smooth. The crystal! The necklace! Amry leaned over a bit more and pinched the crystal between her fingers.
She stood back up, the necklace securely in hand. The rush of excitement at the accomplishment made her feel giddy and, for the first time, confident. She was even so bold as to be a little curious. Where exactly had the stairs led her? What was this place she now found herself?
With her free hand Amry felt along the stone wall... her fingers found something metal and smooth, a long thin curved shape ... was it a handle? A door?
Well, there was only one way to know.
Gripping the shape firmly, she twisted. There was a thick click and, as she had guessed, a door fell slightly ajar. Light illuminated its small rounded outline; an inviting light that drew Amry in from the now broken darkness. She pushed the door open wide and looked inside.
The light beyond the door originated from a collection of candles. They were thick, waxy pillars unevenly arranged so messy drips collected in huge lumpy mounds around the long flames. The candles cast a flickering orange glow over a set of steps that continued on down from the door a considerable distance until the floor leveled below. Amry could see she was looking into a room, a vast stone room with ornate arched ceilings. Almost the entire wall behind the candles was covered in a huge network of what looked like thin, silvery spider webs. Deeper in the room she could make out large shadowy rectangles standing like towers in a vast city.
The air was old, thin, and stale. She stepped through the door, careful to leave it open, and started down the last stretch of her descent.
Finally, she reached the floor of the vast room and could more fully take in her surroundings.
The large shadowy rectangles were actually humongous stone bookshelves – and humongous wasn't an adjective Amry assigned lightly. She seemed to be standing in some kind of vast ancient library. The ever-present layer of spider webs gave her the impression of lengthy neglect – yet there was no layer of dust. Intrigued, she moved toward the nearest bookcase. She reached out and pulled from it a heavy black leather book. There was a small wooden table nearby, the edges covered with groupings of low burning candles to provide better reading light. She laid the book heavily onto the desk, settled herself into the spindly chair delicately perched before it, and opened the creaky leather cover.
The yellowed page was filled with a spidery thin cursive almost too delicate to decipher. She leaned her face closer to the page, squinting at the writing.
A rustling sound echoed through the room. Amry instantly straightened in her chair.
Slowly she moved her head to look around, staring into the deep shadowed corners of the room she hadn't noticed before. Then she realized...spider webs lining every wall, but no dust... and now, a rustling sound, like the movement of many legs. . . how could she not have guessed. . .?
Amry hesitated only a moment longer in the chair. Her eyes had grown wide with fear, her pupils rapidly darting back and forth.
Then she moved so suddenly her chair tipped and noisily clattered. She was running. Legs pumping, arms swinging, eyes set on her goal: the stairs just ahead. The rustling noise was more pronounced now, moving in close behind her.
Her toe jammed on an uneven section of stone floor- she choked on her scream as she fell forward. The hand that had been holding the necklace opened involuntarily, the crystal flying from her palm.
Her body hit the floor hard but the terror she felt numbed the pain. She didn't dare move, didn't dare rise from where she'd fallen. Maybe if she was still. . .?
And then she saw it - a dark shape moving against the light. Multiple black eyes shone bright on its head, long curved pincers slowly opening and closing. . .
She stared transfixed in a wordless horror. It moved closer, everything she'd ever imagined in her nightmares. A long, thin leg reached out and stiffly brushed past her arm while two more legs lifted and placed themselves on her back. A loud and rapid clicking started, the pincers flicking and flexing.
She wanted to scream. If only she could scream.