beta-ed by Gelsey

The Boys in the Labyrinth


"Why are all of these branches here?" Bruce grumbled as he kicked one aside.

The other two had no answer--after all, there were no trees to be seen, though scrubby shrubs and patches of moss poked out from the brick from time to time. The place needed a gardener, but none of the boys wanted to volunteer. Lenny picked up a stick and dragged it along the side, finding other hidden passages and hitting the odd little plants as he went, even though they had closed up and shrunk back to the brick wall.

The stick left a mark all along the wall. They trudged on for a while, stopping every so often to see if Wilf was following them. They tried back-tracking a couple of times but found more walls where there had been passages and passages where there had been walls. They followed the trail that the stick had blazed, but it disappeared entirely where the wall took a sharp left turn. Lenny dropped the stick and helped Bruce boost Owen up to the top of a wall; he then pulled them up. The wall's top was narrow and a bit crumbly. They sat on it and looked toward the castle.

"I suppose we should go back for Wilf," Bruce said, doubtfully.

"We need to get to Leia," Owen retorted.

"Chaucer is with her," Lenny reminded him. "She's probably turned all of the chickens into calio cats or something really stupid by now."

"Yeah, you're right," Owen said. "And we can't go home until we get back to the castle."

"We could send Chaucer back to find Wilf. The sooner we get to the castle, the faster we'll get him," Bruce declared.

They tried to walk on top of the wall again, but it was too narrow. They jumped down and went a bit further. The bricks walls gave way to large squared stones, which were harder to climb as there were fewer handholds. They got back on top, but it was difficult going, as the tops were decorated with oblisks and spheres, spaced out at irregular intervals. They sat on a wall and looked around and they could hear, very faintly, music from the castle.

"Sounds like Leia's getting her way," Owen grumbled. "She always does." He pulled a chess piece out of his shirt. It was the knight he and his cousin had fought over.

"A lot of good that will do us." Lenny said, watching it wave its tiny sword around.

Owen put it next to him and they watched the knight prance around until it fell over the edge. After it hit the ground, it picked itself off and trotted off. "I'll get it," Owen said. He jumped down off of the wall and chased after it. It went around a corner and out of sight. Owen followed after it.

The other two boys sat and waited for Owen to reappear.

He didn't.

"He should've been back by now," Lenny remarked.

"Hey, Owen, come back now!" Bruce shouted. "If you're hiding, it's not funny."

~@~

Owen couldn't hear them. Just as he had grabbed the chess piece, the stone under his feet vanished and he fell into a small pit. The walls around him had huge grey hands that grabbed him. He shouted and fought and tore at the hands. "Let go of me," he screamed. He was dropped. A second later he sprawled out on a hard and lumpy surface. The hole he had fallen though vanished and with it, the light. All was dark and he was afraid he was blind. "Hello? hello?" he called out. "Is anyone here?"

There was no answer.

"I wish I had a light," he muttered.

If felt as if he'd fallen on a rock. A hard, squirming rock. He rolled over, and light appeared on the walls and ceiling, reflected from the floor.

He rolled back and the light disappeared. He sat up and saw that the light was coming from the knight, which he had landed on. The light increased, throwing more shadows on the walls and Owen saw that he was in a small prison. Chains were on the wall, and there were bones and refuse lying about. The place had a bad odor, but it was faint. He was able to breathe as there was a tiny draft. The knight wandered around the room as Owen explored the walls and floors and saw for himself that there was no way out. There were some glittery rocks in the wall, and he prised them out, but they were just flakes of common mica. He tried talking to the small figure but it made no reply. He had no sense of time--he only knew he was tired--and finally, the boy fell asleep, clutching the glowing knight for comfort.


~@~

"Owen! Owen!" the boys called as they walked down the passages, turning left, then left, then right, and another left.

"He's probably halfway there by now," Bruce muttered. "I'll bet Lucy told him how to get through."

"Maybe we should have done what the worm said," Lenny replied. "Maybe the quickest way is through the stinky swamp."

"No, we're better off this way. You can see the castle from here." Bruce pointed.

The path had odd artwork of abstract geometric and bas relief along the walls. Flower planters show up from time to time, giving it a feel of habitation, though they saw no one. They could hear the music in the distance--it sounded like something Leia would have composed, so the boys were in no hurry to finish their journey.

The two boys rounded a sharp corner and found themselves standing in front of two tall doors, each had a shield with an armor-wearing being behind it. The beings had two heads, one on top (where one would expect to see one), and the other hanging down between the legs.

"What's this about?" Bruce demanded.

"You have to try one of these doors. One of these leads to the castle, the other leads to certain death," the bottom heads replied.

"That's stupid," Bruce told Lenny.

"How did you know my name?" one of the top heads demanded.

"I figured it out," Bruce retorted.

"So which door do we pick?" Lenny asked.

"Why bother? We'll go around them."

"You can't do that!" one of the top heads shouted.

"Stop!" the other three ordered.

"Walnuts up your nose!" Bruce jeered back.

He boosted the younger boy to the top of the wall, and Lenny pulled him up. The talking heads sputtered and shouted but the boys ignored them.

They walked along until the stone gave away to tall shrubbery and they were forced back to the ground.

"I wonder if those guard guys sounded an alarm," Lenny remarked.

"We're wizards; we can deal with them. I've fought off a Muggle before," Bruce said. "After all, if Lucy went through all of this, it should be a piece of cake."

"You fought off a Muggle?" Lenny asked.

"Yeah, some guy tried to grab me when I was running around the city, and I burned his hands. Kinda like what Leia did in the castle."

They looked around, checking for Muggles and goblins. There were some stone statues around, and most of the shrubbery had been shaped into topiary, but they didn't see any other beings. The music from the castle continued, but it sounded different now. They thought they heard footsteps but decided it was probably some other noise caused by fairies that they couldn't see that might have been playing in the bushes. The noises went away.

They sat and rested for a while. Lenny fished around in his pockets and rediscovered the Gobstones.

"Lot of good those will do us," Bruce grumbled.

Lenny thought for a bit. "The idiot used balls for magic." (Bruce interrupted with a rude snort.) "Maybe that's what works here." He looked at Bruce, who rolled his eyes in disbelief. Lenny put the whole one on the ground. It wobbled for a while, and then started to roll away. Lenny jumped up and followed, while Bruce dragged himself behind, muttering and grumbling. The ball rolled around as if following a set course. Past the closest bush, it turned left, went down a ways, and to the right, then straight and then right. Once it got caught in a crack and Lenny had to put it back on flat ground, and it rolled straight again.

"Hey," Bruce said, "I hear voices." He stopped to look around.

Lenny heard them too, but the ball kept rolling on a straight course so Lenny kept following.

"Lenny!" Bruce called after him, and he started to run after him. A goblin soldier appeared from nowhere, blocking the way between the boys, and facing Bruce. In the distance, he could see Lenny taking a turn. Bruce tried to run past the soldier, but more appeared. "Out of my way!" The boy was quickly surrounded by a ring of small ugly pink creatures that gnashed their big teeth at him. He could see the helmets of the goblins behind the monsters. "Lenny!" he shouted. "Lenny!"

Lenny turned back immediately and saw the goblins and their long lances surrounding Bruce.

Panicking, he pulled out the broken Gobstone. "Help me!!" he cried. Instantly it swelled up and enveloped him. He could see through a crack that the goblins were shoving Bruce. He trotted back to the area, but Bruce and the goblins disappeared from his vision. He turned back to the way he came, but he couldn't find the other Gobstone. He ran around in circles for a while, then sat down, still inside the Gobstone. He was tired of walking, his friends were gone, he was lost, he was getting hungry and he was envious of Wilf having tea, until he wondered what worms ate. He wondered if Owen had found a short-cut to the castle. He was scared, and he didn't think he could escape goblin guards any better than Bruce had. He thought for a while about what had happened with the Gobstones and decided to try something else: "Carry me," he said.

The giant Gobstone rolled over, and Lenny rolled with it until he was lying on the bottom of the broken sphere. He sat up and found he could see over the jagged edges. It lifted and floated above the hedges. "Carry me to the castle," he said.

It slowly began to drift in obedience. The music in the air sounded louder.

.