The Yellow Pine

Chapter 20 - The Black Labyrinth

The sunlight stopped abruptly at the edge of the threshold. Spinning around in alarm, Maisie was comforted to see the door still standing open behind her. Taking a deep breath, she turned slowly toward the interior of the black room. Without light, it was impossible to tell how large it really was, but she had the sense that it was immense. She placed her left hand on the wall behind her, next to the doorway. The stone was warmer than it should be, and had an unpleasant fleshy texture that seemed to breathe underneath her hand. She wanted to take her hand away, but knew that without a guide she would become hopelessly lost. Dragging her hand lightly along the wall, she walked forward, counting her steps. At thirty-six paces, she came to the first corner. It turned sharply to the right and she followed cautiously, starting her count over. Beneath her feet, the floor dipped sharply downward, and she nearly lost her balance on the unexpected decline. Leaning backwards to keep her center, she shuffled down the ramp for what felt like ages. She became gradually aware of a curvature to the wall, pulling her further to the left and away from the center of the room as she progressed. "One hundred and three, one hundred and four, one hundred and five," she murmured under her breath as she descended. Her personal internal compass told her that she was deep below ground now, and that she had curved around enough to have spiraled back in a circle the way she'd come in. If she were right, she imagined that she would now be deep below the entrance, and far left of the building itself. The ramp suddenly stopped at a vertical wall, which she ran into with a squeak. Her squeak was answered by a thick, watery cry and the rustling of dry wings. Heart pounding, she pressed herself into the corner where the wall met another to her right as far as she could and waited. The cry was answered by another, and another, while the sharp flapping continued around her. The sounds circled around her, growing closer, and she crouched down to the floor and made herself as small as possible, wondering if the creatures could see in the dark. After an endless eternity of deep, abiding terror, the sounds stopped and silence pressed in close to surround her once more.

Now resting her hand on the wall to the right, she followed the new passage to the left, crawling along slowly and silently, still afraid to stand. Her left hand suddenly bucked forward into thin air, and she choked back a scream and backed up. Feeling out in front of her blindly, she found the edge and reached down. She was relieved to feel another ledge several inches down. Continuing like this, she discovered that she had come upon a set of stairs. Taking a deep breath, she stood up and shuffled her feet forward until she found the edge, then stepped down carefully counting once more. Seventy-seven steps followed slowly in this manner, until she reached another level. Ahead, she could just barely make out a rectangle of light, perhaps another doorway. Keeping her hand on the warm, throbbing wall, she headed towards it. Only twenty steps had passed before she got close enough to see clearly. As the door filled her field of vision, she was puzzled to view a familiar vista outside. "No way. That's impossible," she whispered. She walked on, completing the last few steps, and finally reached the door. It was the same door by which she had entered a lifetime ago. The black spires of Dyleth-leen rose in the distance, and she could see the port off to the right, where the brackish water broke on wooden docks and hulls. Although she felt as though many hours had passed, the sun told a different story. It had not moved at all in the sky. She exited the Black Labyrinth and circumvented the tiny building. It seemed even smaller than before, and had no other openings that she could see. Steeling herself and taking a deep breath, she started again, this time keeping her hand on the right side wall and heading around in the opposite direction.

This time, her path took her through room after room, each one branching off to the right and entered by way of a small staircase going up. She exited each room by the opposite wall, and climbed two or three more steps to the next hallway. Again, she found herself right back where she'd started, at the same time of day, despite having spent was was surely hours within and following a path that by all rights should have put her far to the right and several stories high. On the third and fourth tries, she skipped doorways and chose different paths, but the result remained the same. No matter how she went, she came right back out at the solitary entrance to a world in which no time at all had passed. Her legs were aching and her feet rubbed uncomfortably against the insides of her shoes. Tears choked her throat and she wanted nothing more than to sit down here and give up.