Where the Path Leads – Chapter 35
- MARY DRAKE –
A New Way Out
As she made her way back upstairs, the hallways under the castle somehow seemed longer than they had on the way in, perhaps because she was alone, instead of following Maria, perhaps because she wasn’t really focused on what she was doing but was instead regretting that Will must remain. How could he stand it down here, she wondered, as her fingers groped along the cold, slimy stone walls. The smell of excrement faded the farther she got from the garderobe, but there was still an unsavory smell, like dirt and something rotten. Mold? Mildew. Like wet towels left too long on a locker room floor.
Carefully counting her turnings and always going left, she was reminded of the maze at the Renaissance Faire, but it hadn’t been dark, and smelly. At the fourth turn, she was relieved to hear voices. Maybe Maria had left the door open at the top of the stairs. The smell of food wafted to her, and reflexively her mouth watered. But it wasn’t beef stew or meat pies; it was a strangely sweet aroma, like sugar, mingled with hot grease. Was it . . . funnel cakes? A faint breeze sifted through her hair, and on it was another familiar smell–woodsmoke. Far ahead, the darkness began to resolve into grey. Was it someone with a light? But when she called, no one answered. Emily let go of the wall and headed toward the grayness, feeling like she was jumping into the unknown. Maria had specifically said to follow the walls and move left. But she had to find out what it was. Were the food smells drawing her? Or was she being guided by intuition? To where? Part of her hoped to find something familiar, like the stone stairway. Then she could join the feast upstairs. Perhaps at that very moment Arthur was pardoning her and Will. She wanted to thank him, tell him how much his help had meant. Even though they hadn’t found romance, they had found friendship, and she was beginning to realize just how important that was.
But there was no stairway. Instead, there was the sound of birds twittering. Birds in the basement? Like a canary in a mine? Or was the grayness a doorway to the outside? She hadn’t seen one on the way in, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Even though it seemed far in the distance, her hope soared and she broke into a run, not caring anymore if she got lost, if the hallways were like a labyrinth.
As she neared the grayness, a small opening took shape in which she saw a stile—three or four steps, which one must climb to get outside. Beyond, a breeze made the boughs of the trees dance, as if flaunting their bright new spring leaves; tender grass poked up through a mat of last fall’s leaf litter. She stood for a long moment in wonderment, then realized that this was the way back. She hadn’t needed to worry about finding it; it had come to her. But Will, and Thea, and, especially, Arthur were still on her mind. If she left now, she wouldn’t get to say goodbye. She was sorry to leave them behind, just as one regrets the end of a much-loved book, wishing it could go on longer, hating to leave the world of the book behind. Yet this was the world where Sophia had been allowed to slowly starve to death. But it was also the world where she had been reborn. Now Emily knew that when someone died, part of them continued to live on through you. The reincarnated Sophia might remain here, but the friend Sophia had been to her went home with Emily. With that thought, she had the resolve to take the few steps of the stile over into the other world, her world, where her home lay.
A hand on her arm startled her.
“Where’ve you been?” Lyn stood beside her, cheeks flushed. “We went through the labyrinth hours ago, then to the joust. It was awesome. Damien had a mock duel with one of the knights, and . . . .” She trailed off breathlessly. Shadows were starting to lengthen. “Where were you, anyway?”
Before Emily could answer, Damien and his buddy Preston appeared behind Lyn, Damien poking Lyn playfully in the ribs.
“See you finally found her,” he said. Then to Emily, “I was hoping the dragon had you for lunch.”
She smiled wryly, recalling that it almost had. “I got sidetracked,” she mumbled. Just then, a breeze rattled the sign for Leviathan’s Labyrinth and Emily was glad not to be getting her feet wet in the bog of an old growth forest.
“Well, tell me about it when we get back to the bus,” Lyn said, looping her arm through Emily’s and joining the crowd heading out. Damien and Preston fell in behind them.
Emily resisted the temptation for one last look back at the labyrinth.
Later that week as she arrived home from school, Emily was surprised to find the door unlocked. Her mom was upstairs in the bedroom that her parents had shared.
“You’re home early,” Emily greeted her.
Her mom didn’t look up from the stack of dress shirts she was folding and stacking in a box. She had just finished buttoning up a shirt completely, flipping it over, placing each sleeve diagonally across the back, folding each side in, then bringing the bottom up to meet the collar. When she turned the shirt back over to pack in the box, it looked exactly like a new shirt coming out of the package.
“I don’t know why he didn’t take these,” was her mom’s terse reply.
Emily sat down on a corner of the bed.
“Mom . . . ?”
She continued folding.
“. . . I’m not moving out.” She hoped her mom knew that she wasn’t taking sides, just staying home.
Her mom finally looked up and Emily thought she saw understanding in her eyes.
“He depends on me too much, you know,” her mom said, without interrupting her folding. “He’ll have to start remembering things for himself.” Then she added, “I have to go back into work tonight.”
“Really?” Emily was surprised. Her mom sometimes worked late, but usually once she was home, she stayed there.
Her mom made a face.“Tax time. The company’s gone through restructuring so we have to get the books in order for the accountants.”
Emily imagined hundreds of people bent over huge tomes, scribbling endless numbers in a cramped hand while the accountants stood over them, tapping their toes like impatient gods.
“What about dinner?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Em.”
Usually only her dad called her that.
“Tom’s at baseball practice and I told your father I’d drop these off. He called and said he’s got a job interview tomorrow.”
Her mother glanced at her and Emily thought her face looked thinner, more haggard, which accentuated the lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows. Although the separation had probably been her mom’s idea, she thought they were all going through a difficult time.
“I don’t feel much like eating,” her mom sighed.
Emily considered just taking a snack up to her room, but she missed their family dinner times more than she would admit. Her mom seemed melancholy and anxious. Maybe a few minutes of sitting down to eat would help.
“When do you have to leave?”
She looked at her watch.
“I should leave no later than 6:00.”
“Why don’t I fix something before you go, and we can eat together?”
For the first time, her mom stopped folding and stared at her. It reminded Emily of how Sophia had looked at her the first morning she’d gone to work in the water meadow, rather than lose Blossom, as if seeing some new quality in Emily that she hadn’t seen before.
“Well . . . nothing fancy,” Emily backpedaled. She didn’t know that much about cooking, but you had to start somewhere. “Maybe hot dogs and a can of corn. You’re always telling me not to skip meals.”
Her mom put the shirt she had just folded into the box and began another, but her lips were no longer so tightly compressed, and the line between her eyebrows seemed less prominent. She didn’t exactly look happy, just a little less unhappy.
Emily stood up. “It won’t take long.”
“That’s nice of you, Em. But you realize, this may start a trend.”
Emily shrugged. “We have to eat.” As she went downstairs to the kitchen, she thought, Well, at least it’s easier than cooking in the continuous cauldron, and she smiled to herself.
THE END
