The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1)

by Stephen H. Provost

  The girl stepped forward, bent down and picked it up.

  She wiped the mud off and opened it. It was a pocketwatch that looked to have been fashioned from an oyster shell that formed a perfect circle. The mechanism itself was inside the shell, and appeared to have been set in a giant pearl, its gears working in perfect time as it ticked and tocked in cadence against the silent night. She opened it and saw the time was midnight now, exactly, and at the center of the watch face were two round, yellow eyes blinking back at her from another face.

  “Miss Owl!”

  “Now,” she said, “you have time. Use it wisely.”

  The eyes closed and vanished in a heartbeat.

  ...

  The scarecrow hid behind a corn stalk as the crow flew into view. He was carrying something in his beak and wearing something on his head, but the boy couldn’t tell what either was.

  “There he is! There he is!” the scarecrow whispered excitedly. “Be ready with your bow.”

  Alex raised the bow tentatively and aimed it in Mr. Rrawk’s general direction.

  “Wait till he’s in range! But don’t let him see you!” The tone in the scarecrow’s raspy voice was a cross between giddy and desperate.

  “You promise to get me out of here?” the boy asked, seeking to reassure himself and assuage his already-guilty conscience. The crow was flying nearer now, and was close to being in range. Nervously, Alex fingered the bowstring, feeling the tension, a match for the tension within him. He reminded himself of how sorry he felt for the scarecrow, at having her eyes pecked out so cruelly. But then he thought of how mean it was, also, to scare the poor bird away from his meal. He had only been hungry, after all. And if the scarecrow had let him feast on the corn, he would never have been tempted to peck out her potato-eyes! Still, he hadn’t needed to do it.

  Why does life have to be so complicated? Alex thought.

  The truth was, he realized, that he was being tempted now. Of all the reasons and motives that tumbled around inside his skull for doing the scarecrow’s bidding, the one that made him even consider such a thing was his own desire. Truly. He wanted to be free of the maze. The longer he remained inside it, the more he lamented that he might never find his way out again, and it was this fear that drove him to contemplate the madness of actually shooting Mr. Rrawk.

  Suddenly horrified at himself, he loosed his hold on the bowstring and watched as the arrow fell harmlessly to the earth.

  An odd sound reached his ears a moment later, like two straw brooms being slapped repeatedly together.

  He turned to see the scarecrow.

  She was... applauding.

  “Bravo! Well done!” she announced in her creaky-croaky voice as the crow descended to alight on her shoulder.

  Alex’s eyes went wide.

  “But...,” he protested.

  “Rrawk!” said the crow. It sounded oddly like a laugh. “Fooled you, did we not?” he said, seeming overly pleased with himself.

  “You passed our little test,” the scarecrow added. “I must confess I was worried for a moment there, but you came through with flying colors.”

  “Test?” said Alex. “Then you are...?”

  “The best of friends,” the scarecrow announced. “But we had to make you think otherwise, to be sure you were worthy to reach the heart of the maze.”

  “We’ve become quite good at acting,” Mr. Rrawk boasted. “She pretends she wants to scare me, so I can eat the farmer’s corn.”

  “And he only eats the ears of corn that fall to earth, so I can keep my job!”

  “But—your eyes!” exclaimed Alex.

  The scarecrow chuckled. “Really, now, dear boy. Could you see with a potato?”

  “Well, I suppose. ...”

  “I don’t need eyes to see, in any case—no more than I need a tongue to speak.”

  Alex looked again at what was left of the scarecrow’s painted-on mouth: the bits that hadn’t run down her straw chin in the rain. “Please don’t stare,” she said curtly. “It’s impolite. I know I need to do my makeup!”

  The boy averted his eyes quickly. He had no wish to be rude. Or cruel, for that matter. He had been the one and nearly the other in the space of just a few minutes. Turning toward the crow, he noticed now what he was wearing on his head: It was a miniature baseball cap, embroidered with a face of a smiling bird.

  “That’s an oriole, not a crow,” Alex observed. He certainly knew the difference, although he preferred the New York Yankees to the Baltimore Orioles.

  Regardless, he was quite the baseball fan, although he had never seen a game in person. He received a small allowance from his guardians, and he typically spent it all the packs of baseball cards: Topps, Bowman, Donruss and the glossy Upper Decks. Once they were in hand, he made sure to memorize all the important stats by all the best players, past and present, which were printed on the back. He had so many baseball cards in his collection that he had full sets from several seasons, along with duplicates of many players (usually not the prized All-Stars and Hall of Famers, but lesser ones with funny names like Razor Shines, Oil Can Boyd and Van Lingle Mungo—an oddball asset he had found in a previous foster home’s attic).

  “I realize it’s an oriole,” the bird quipped. “Do you know of a team named the Crows?”

  “Well, no...”

  “Then I suppose a Baltimore oriole will have to do, won’t it? Did you know the greatest player ever to play the game was born in Baltimore?”

  Alex nodded. “Babe Ruth,” he said. “But he wasn’t the greatest. He wasn’t even the best on his own team!”

  “I thought you might say that,” Mr. Rrawk continued, “which is why I brought you this.”

  He flew from the scarecrow’s shoulder to the boy’s, which took Alex by such surprise that he winced and ducked before realizing that the crow had no intention of attacking him. The bird then hopped down his arm on one foot—for he was carrying something in the other—careful not to break the boy’s skin with his talons. (It rather tickled, Alex thought.) The boy reflexively opened his hand, wherein the bird deposited a small piece of cardboard encased in a clear plastic sleeve.

  Alex turned it over and looked at it. He jumped in such surprise and joy that his feet actually left the ground.

  “A Lou Gehrig baseball card!” he exclaimed.

  “If I’m not mistaken, it’s older than any of those you have in your collection,” the scarecrow observed.

  “And more valuable, too,” Mr. Rrawk chimed in.

  “Yes!” Alex said, giddy. Indeed, Alex didn’t have any cards nearly as old as the 1925 black-and-white card, emblazoned with Gehrig’s full name, Henry L. Gehrig, in the lower left-hand corner. Most of his cards were far more recent, purchased in bubblegum packs displayed at the drugstore checkout stand.

  Lou Gehrig had always been his favorite.

  “How did you know?” he said.

  “It’s easier to know things in the maze,” the scarecrow answered, as though this were self-evident.

  Alex had always wanted to own cards showing players like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Dizzy Dean: players who had made the game great. But he had wanted a Gehrig card more than any other, because he knew the story of the man they called the Iron Horse.

  Gehrig had earned that nickname because he’d appeared in more games without missing a single one than any other player in the history of baseball: two-thousand, one-hundred and thirty. Alex had memorized that statistic, and it had always amazed him that a man could have played in every single game for the New York Yankees over the course of fourteen years. Babe Ruth hit more home runs, but he could never match that!

  As Alex reflected on these things, he heard voices inside his head. Where they came from, he couldn’t be sure.

  If they say it cannot be done,

  you can be the only one!

  Time stands still

  for the one who stands firm.

  The one who perseveres

  will get from there to here.


  Alex suddenly remembered his manners. “Thank you so much!” he said.

  “Thank yourself,” said the scarecrow, and the boy watched in amazement as she vanished before his eyes.

  “Where did she...?” he started to ask the crow. But Mr. Rrawk was nowhere to be seen.

  “He must have flown off,” the boy muttered to himself, unwilling to admit that he would have seen a fluttering of feathers from the corner of his eye and felt the crow—who had, after all, been perched upon his shoulder—lift off and take to flight. It could not possibly have been all in his head, now, could it? No. He glanced down and saw that he still held the Lou Gehrig card in his hand.

  It looked, he thought, a tad peculiar, though. It was something in the eyes. They didn’t look quite human, and they appeared to be all black. As he stared at them for several moments, Alex would have sworn that one of them winked at him.

  “Mr. Rrawk?” he breathed.

  It winked again.

  ...

  Chapter Five

  Waylaid

  The clouds again obscured the stars, and a chill breeze blew through the labyrinth, dipping down into its winding corridor so that the girl was not spared its ire. Elizabeth did not know whether to be grateful that the rain that soaked her had ceased, or to be disconsolate about the snow that now replaced it. It hurried and scurried in flurries on the north wind, chasing her along as though it were a border collie nipping at the heels of a wayward lamb.

  Snowflakes began to stack up, one atop the other and all atop the green wall of foliage that kept Elizabeth hemmed in. They fell on the path before her, too, some of them melting partway to create a slushy, muddy mess that looked a bit—but she was quite sure didn’t taste—like chocolate ice cream.

  The snow shouldn’t have surprised her. It was, after all, just before Christmas. Elizabeth had all but forgotten that, however, since—for reasons of her own—she tended to put that particular holiday out of her mind.

  “Oh, bother,” she said, barely catching herself as she nearly slipped and fell on the icy path. At least the labyrinth had stopped changing shape around her, but she still had no way back because it had already grown there, and it was impossible to tell whether the way forward was clear or blocked. Or impossibly convoluted. She felt like she had been walking half the night and should have been clear of the place by now, but she hadn’t even reached the center, as far as she could tell.

  The snow seemed to fall more heavily, the farther the girl progressed, and through the snowy screen, she saw a large shadowy figure appear up ahead. Somehow, it stood out against the darkness: A silver glow appeared to emanate from it.

  Elizabeth stopped where she stood and raised a hand to shield her eyes, not wanting to get any closer without knowing what stood in front of her. It was certainly large, and not in the shape of a person. It was, clearly, an animal of some sort, a fact that made her all the more reticent to approach it. Animals were unpredictable, even the tame ones. She’d been thrown from a horse when she was learning to ride: It had reared at the sound of a hunter’s gunshot. Another time, she had gone to visit a family friend near Pocklington, and a friendly German shepherd had bounded out from behind a hedge and leapt at her. The animal had only wanted to greet her, but she’d been very small at the time and, in its excitement, it had knocked her to the ground. She still had nightmares about it, in which the dog was reimagined as a giant snarling wolf.

  Whatever stood ahead of her in the labyrinth didn’t look like a wolf, or even a dog. It was, in fact, much larger and appeared, through the snowfall, as though it wore a crown upon its head. She felt like its eyes were upon her, studying her. Did it think of the girl as prey? Was it getting ready to charge? What was it? With the snow falling heavily from the gray-black sky, she still could not be sure. Her curiosity was beginning to make war against her fear, demanding that she know. Besides, she reasoned, there was no way to go but forward, and the animal was blocking her path. She had no other choice, not really.

  Elizabeth took a tentative step toward it and heard her foot squish-scrunch on the half-muddy, half-frozen path.

  The animal did not move.

  She put a hand out against the hedge, as much to steady her convictions as her balance, and took another step.

  The animal seemed frozen in place, more frozen even than the snow and ice.

  A third step. She might have been able to see more clearly, but the snow fell more thickly each time she moved forward. It was so dark, in any event, that she could only see that silver glow surrounding it, and much of that reflected off the soft white, whispered snow.

  Still the animal didn’t move.

  She crept slowly nearer, squinting as the snow fell still more heavily, until she was nearly upon it. She could hear it breathing; see the chest expanding and contracting. It stood as tall as she was, and the “crown,” she now realized, was a magnificent set of antlers. They were almost as long as the animal was tall, and she had never seen anything like it. It was like a deer, only larger, more majestic. She was certain it was not native to Yorkshire, and that it must have been brought here by someone from very far away. Who would do such a thing, and why? She had no way of knowing.

  Puffs of steam escaped the animal’s nostrils, wafting out into the chill night air. At last, the snow seemed to abate just a little, and she could see more clearly as the animal dipped its head toward her, dark eyes blinking lazily as it stared at her.

  It? It must be a “him,” with antlers as large as these.

  She stretched one hand forward, tentatively, and touched the great beast’s forehead, whereupon he nodded slightly in assent.

  “Do you speak as well, like Miss Owl?” she asked.

  He did not answer, and she assumed he was either shy or, more probably, an ordinary animal that lacked the capacity to speak. As she was thinking this, the animal pulled back from her, tossed back his head and emitted a sound that was a little like a grunt and a little like a bark.

  The girl jumped back in surprise at the sudden movement, but it was clear the animal had no wish to alarm her. Elizabeth steadied herself and waited, and the animal repeated the motion, grunting, it seemed, somewhat more urgently this time.

  Elizabeth waited, and so did the animal, but when she did nothing, the creature made the same motion a third time, the grunt more like a honking now. Each time, he tossed his head in the same direction: behind and beyond him, where the path led onward. She realized he wanted her to follow.

  “All right, then,” she said, and nodded her own head in the same direction.

  The animal must have understood her, because he grunted softly and turned around; then, to her amazement, he knelt down right there in the pathway, and a voice inside her head said, “Climb aboard!” It was not her own voice, nor was it anything her ears could detect. She realized it must have come from the animal, whatever kind of animal it was.

  “Caribou,” came the response. It could read her thoughts, as well!

  “I’ve never heard of that,” she said aloud as she climbed on.

  “Ouch! Don’t pull the fur, please! And no need to speak aloud. I know your thoughts the moment you think them.”

  “Sorry,” Elizabeth said.

  “Sorry,” she repeated in her thoughts. She found it mildly disconcerting that the... Care-i-boo... which she had never heard of, knew what she was thinking. She was used to letting her thoughts out at her own discretion, not having them taken from her before she was ready to share them. “What is a Care-i-boo?” she asked, enunciating each of the syllables in exaggerated fashion as she settled onto the creature’s back. A moment later, he rose to his feet as he stood, jostling her so much that she nearly fell off. She started to panic, recalling the time she had been thrown from the horse, and grabbed on to the caribou’s fur again.

  “Ouch!” he said again, accompanied by an audible grunt of surprise and dismay. “Please! If you need to steady yourself, use the antlers.”

  “Right.” Eliza
beth hastily let go of the caribou’s fur and placed both hands on his antlers.

  “Much better, thank you,” the caribou said as he began to amble forward. Elizabeth got the feeling that he was moving quickly, for him, even though his pace was rather plodding. She sensed, too, in his thoughts, a certain urgency. Something was amiss that had him concerned. And, for some reason, her presence was required.

  “A caribou,” he said, addressing her earlier query, “is what you might know as a reindeer.”

  Elizabeth vaguely remembered hearing of reindeer, but she could not place where she had heard of them. Had she cared more about Christmas, she might have known, for then she would have read the poem entitled A Visit from St. Nicholas, wherein they were first mentioned. In fact, her mother had once read to her this very poem, but she had dismissed it from her mind, as she had all else to do with the holiday. As has been mentioned, she did this for reasons of her own.

  “If you are a reindeer,” she asked, “does that mean you like the rain?”

  The caribou chuckled. “Reins, as in reins on a horse,” he answered. “They aren’t very comfortable, but they are necessary to perform the task I’m charged with.” Elizabeth sensed a hint of pride in the caribou’s thought-voice at this last statement. He seemed to consider this task, whatever it was, quite important.

  “Oh,” she thought. “Do you have a name?”

  “Most people call me Comet, because I’m so fast,” he declared. “But you may call me Cary.”

  As Cary loped along, it seemed to Elizabeth he didn’t seem fast at all. Cary seemed a much better name, especially since he was carrying her.

  “Don’t get used to that,” he quipped. “I am NOT a beast of burden!”

  His ability to read her thoughts would take some getting used to.

  “You should be grateful you can do it,” he said. “Only those capable of believing the greatest things can hear thought voices. It’s a pity you don’t believe in Christmas, but I have a feeling that will change. Ha!”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what he meant by that, but she had a feeling she was about to find out.