Chapter 2: Michael in the Labyrinth.
Michael gave into his tears as soon as Mireia and the Goblin King disappeared. It wasn't as if there would be anyone to hear him, he thought bitterly. They were angry tears, because he was very frustrated. He felt betrayed by the world in general. Everything he'd learned for the past twelve years of his life was proving false. The main lie, of course, was that fantasy did not exist. This was a notion that crumbled easily as soon as one came face to face with a Goblin King and his Labyrinth. Mireia had always known it existed, but Michael had been sure it didn't. It had been fun to play along, and Mireia was a creative and exciting friend for a nerdy little boy who didn't know how to pretend. But he'd never suspected that the make-believe might overlay a much more real--and much more sinister--reality.
He couldn't cry forever, however, because no matter how betrayed he felt, at some point there were no more tears. He wiped his eyes, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and stood up straighter. This world didn't play by rules he understood. But he was nothing if not adept at learning new rules. And a world that was held together as strongly and neatly as this, had to have some, even if they didn't make sense to him. He had read Mireia's Labyrinth book, after all. He knew nothing would be as it seemed here. So the first rule was: you can't trust your senses.
He looked at the wall in front of him. It didn't seem to have a door. But then again, he wasn't trusting his eyes. Or his sense of touch. What could he trust, then? He laid his hands flat on the wall, and gave a sigh of despair. This was ridiculous. Why can't there be a door here? he asked himself silently. "I just want a door," he said out loud. He was about to turn away when he realized that his hands were no longer touching stone, but wood. It didn't look any different than the rest of the stone walls. He slid his hands down cautiously over the wood, and found a door knob at elbow level. Barely daring to breath, he turned the knob and pulled.
The piece of the wall swung out easily. Inside appeared to be an overgrown garden. Plants spilled all around the door frame and the garden was lit green from filtered sun rays. Michael stepped inside and quietly shut the door, knowing he had discovered the second rule: the only thing you could really trust was your own will.
He wandered further into the garden. It was like wandering in an uneven green tunnel. And it was very warm. The ground underneath was springy with grass and moss. He walked the only way he could wall, the foliage making a path for him. After a few minutes of this, the plants began to widen out until they formed a sort of bower. Sunlight smiled down in the center of it, and illuminated a fountain. The water burst upward and then fell back with the rest as little diamonds.
Michael approached the edge of the pond and looked inside. Beautiful, rainbow-colored fish swam around beneath the surface. They looked just like fat goldfish, except for their exotic colors. He could not see to the bottom of the fountain, the water stretched downwards until it was lost in greenish darkness. He wondered if he dared drink out of it. He reached out and caught a handful of it as it fell from mid-air. At that same moment, a red fish leapt up and over his hand.
"Drink!" it shouted happily, as it fell back to the water and disappeared with a splash. Then a purple one shot out of the water.
"imbibe!" it yelled, just as gleefully, and disappeared below the surface. Next came a bright yellow fish.
"Guzzle!" it hollered at him. And then came a green, followed by a pink, and last an orange one. They all urged him to drink. He looked at the water leaking between his fingers. Anything that so badly wanted him to do something in this labyrinth, was probably trying to trap him. He let the water fall regretfully back in with the rest, and resigned himself to an uncomfortable trip through the labyrinth. If he wasn't going to get water, he most certainly couldn't expect food. Thirteen hours without food! But it had to be done. Mireia was waiting up at the castle, and he knew she most certainly did not want to become a goblin. He passed the fountain and continued along the green path on opposite side.
Soon the path narrowed again, and it kept narrowing until he was closed in on all sides with thick foliage. Beyond that he had to stoop, and finally he found himself crawling. It was dark and stuffy underneath so many plants. He was very relieved when the path curved and he could see a bright spot ahead. Upon getting closer, he saw it was an opening into a small courtyard.
It was a relief to stand. He was still hedged in on all sides by the tall, plant-covered walls, but he could stand up, and the sky was open. Unfortunately, the path seemed to end here. It was just a rounded little dead-end. He turned back to crawl through again and maybe see if he had missed a turn off somewhere, but found that even his tunnel had gone. The greenery was smooth and uninterrupted. Michael took a deep breath to calm the sudden panic that threatened to arise in the pit of his stomach. He shoved his dark hair out of his face and pushed his glasses up, so that he could glare more convincingly at the walls. He doubted that what had worked for the first door would work again, but he decided to try it anyway. He placed his hands on a section of wall and said aloud, "Open." He willed it. He demanded it. But nothing happened. He stood back from the wall and tried to think of something else.
"You'll never get out that way," said a voice behind him. He turned so quickly he almost tripped over his own feet. Behind him stood a tall woman. She was wearing little more than a few strategically placed scarves, her red mouth curved up in the patronizing sort of smile that was usually reserved for children. Glossy dark hair fell in perfect waves to her waist. She was barefoot. Michael swallowed hard. He wasn't of an age where women could provide too much of a temptation, but he still wasn't immune. He felt small and scruffy. He felt young. "Perhaps you'd like to come with me," she offered in a musically beautiful voice. "I have a pavilion not far from here, and there's a fairly straight path leading from it to the Labyrinth's center. That way," she gestured to her left and suddenly there was a path. "The center is your destination, I take it."
Michael blinked. It was not that the path appeared out of nowhere. It had been there all along, and yet Michael knew it hadn't been there a few seconds ago. He also knew that although they were nowhere near water, and he wasn't on a ship, this woman was still what Mireia would call a siren. Nobody had hair that perfect. On the other hand, he hadn't much of a choice. There was no where else to go. The woman was unquestionably a trap, but then again, so was the dead end he's been in a few seconds ago.
"Yes," he said, taking a few steps towards the opening, watching her wearily.
"I won't bite," she said laughing. "At least, not until you're a few years older." She led the way, hips swaying and scarves flying. Michael wondered whether he should be averting his eyes from the amount of flesh that showed with each step she took, but he did not want to lose her. He settled on focusing on the back of her head. Unfortunately this caused him to miss the large hole in the path that the woman had easily stepped over. He pitched feet first into it with a yelp.
The woman turned and could be heard to say, "Well, damn. There goes dinner," After which she turned into a rather large spider and walked liquidly away. Michael might have been relieved to see how he had avoided being dinner, but he was in point of fact, rather distracted by the floor he'd just hit.
He sat up with a small groan and rubbed his arm. It wasn't broken but he'd bent it back to a strange angle and it felt pulled. Moving it just a little caused a sharp pain. That meant that he couldn't climb out, even if there had been a convenient way to do so, which there was not.
He got slowly to his feet trying to move his arm as little as possible. It was quite a lot harder than it seemed. Every other muscle movement seemed to jerk his arm. His head throbbed a little bit. As if things couldn't get worse, his stomach started to protest about the lack of food. Michael reached into his pocket to see if he'd any candy. The packet of mini-oreos he found there almost made him cry in relief. He tore them open eagerly, ignoring the pain in his arm, and hurriedly ate half of them. He reluctantly put the rest away for later. Turning slowly, he looked around him in the dim light. He was in a pit. It wasn't very wide, but it was quite deep.
Then he had an idea. He already knew that his main tool here in the Labyrinth was his will. And the woman had been able to create a passage with just a wave of her arm, rather like he had with the first door. It followed that he should be able to create a passage out, but only if he created it in a proper place. Perhaps he'd been trying the wrong spot in the greenery above. It made a strange sort of sense that although the creature created the opening, the Labyrinth would only allow it in certain spots. Otherwise challengers would just be able to go straight through to the center.
Michael scuffed the floor with his shoe and was delighted to find out it was dirt, not stone. He knelt and drew a circle with one finger, around himself in the dirt. He thought for a minute, and then he knocked on it three times. Three was always a very important number in Mireia's books.
On the third knock, light appeared where he'd drawn the circle, and the inside of it, where before there had been dirt, now became a metal manhole cover. He pried at the edges and managed to lift it up. What he saw gave him vertigo. It was the sky. He grasped the edges and leaned upside down into it. Except that as soon as he was halfway through, gravity reversed itself and he found he was climbing out of a hole instead of diving through it. Triumph flooded him, but it was short-lived.
The first thing he noticed was that he was surrounded by six strange-looking creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of horses. The second thing he noticed was the fact that all of them were pointing the business end of some very sharp spears directly at his chest.