Trick of Fae

by S L Mason

I closed my eyes, and I listened as closely as I could. I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t think of what Janice said or Lavender. The heat from the flames licked not far from me.

  In the loudest voice I could muster, I sang, “Sarah is nimble, Sarah is quick, Sarah jumped over the box-hedge sticks.” With the last word, my body propelled forward and pushed me to the other side of the hedge rising. I caught a quick glimpse of exactly what it was that we were also terrified of.

  A little brown salamander made the fire. I was afraid of a lizard? I was scoffing to myself as I looked back and saw the salamanders reaching my padded helmet. The entire thing burst into flames, and they shot high into the air. Every lizard body that touched the fabric glowed bright red, like metal heated by a furnace or forge. Flames flew high, and I could feel the heat on my feet, just before I cleared the top of the hedge.

  I heard a roar and screaming from somewhere. Frankly, I didn’t care where. We’d gotten away from fire lizards, and that was all I needed to know. I landed, and Zoe let out a scream. I watched in horror as vines wrapped around her.

  “Save me, Sarah! Make it stop!” She fell to the ground, and the wrapping began to squeeze her. I pulled the wire off the end of my braid. I wrapped one end around a spike and pulled the other spike out. With shaking hands, I wrapped the other end of the wire, creating my garrote. I slipped it around Zoe’s body and down to the ground where the vines entered the soil. Zoe’s fell over sideways and I murmured an apology.. I crisscrossed the wire and yanked to cut through all the vines, Zoe screaming bloody murder in the background. Her terror pierced my ears. Finally, I was able to not only choke the life out of the vines but cut it away from their lifeline. Zoe’s eyes glassed over.

  “I wish you could’ve saved me.”

  I put my hand to her face and began ripping the vines off. “No, no, no! Please don’t die, Zoe. Please don’t die! Please don’t leave me alone in this maze. Stay with me! You have to stay with me for Olive. If you die, she dies. Fight it, whatever it is. You can do it! Janice said it just paralyzes you. It doesn’t kill you.” I slapped her face, pulling at the vines and ripping them away from her body. I saw where they cut through her clothing and into her skin. My face was wet with tears running down. After I got most of the vines off, she blinked. I slapped her face as hard as I could, and she coughed. I slapped her again, and her fingers moved. I raised my hand to slap her again.

  “Please don’t hit me again, Sarah.”

  I laughed and cried. I tilted my head back up to where the sky should’ve been and whooped. “Get up! We have to go.”

  “I can’t make it. I can’t stand up and walk alone.”

  I got up off of my knees and gripped both of her wrists. “You grab my wrist back in the middle. I’ll pull you up. It’s a climber’s lock. It’ll keep your hand from slipping off. If you can, we can make it together.” My fingers tightened around her wrists, and I pulled and leaned back at the same time.

  She was so small and slight, I lifted her up off the ground into a sitting position.

  “Grab the wire next to you and hand it to me.”

  She released my wrist and grabbed the wire. She handed it up.

  I wrapped my wire weapon around my waist, twisting the two spikes and locking them against each other.

  There is no way in hell I was ever going to put that thing anywhere near my neck.

  I opened my hands again, and she returned to our climber’s lock. Bending her knees at the same time, she pushed up to her feet as I pulled. Soon, she was standing. Wobbly, but she was up on two feet.

  There were little nicks and cuts all over her face and tears in her clothing. She gave me a tight-lipped smile, and blood oozed from a few of her wounds.

  CHAPTER 22

  I pulled Zoe’s arm around my shoulders, securing it to me with one hand. I took my hand and wrapped it underneath her armpit. She was pretty light, so it wasn’t a big strain to help her walk. She was one of those little pixie girls. I didn’t know what a pixie looked like. “You need to do the best you can to try to walk. I don’t know how long I can hold you up. We need to make it to the center.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Just remember that you’re not doing it for me. You’re doing it for Olive.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, a grim frown descended over her, and her eyes found the ground. I’d seen other siblings do stuff like that. As an only child, I didn’t have anybody to look out for or take care of. My mother never had to say don’t let somebody beat up on your brother. It was just me and then, of course, Arty. But I’d seen other kids with younger brothers and sisters fighting back to back. I was jealous of that. When you’re an only child, you’re always to blame if the lamp gets broken or for the spill on the floor. You can’t blame it on the dog.

  She held her head up a little higher and her back straighter.

  We followed the sweet C. I glanced down at the awful vines, having severed them. They’d withered, turning brown, limp, and desiccated. They looked like they could’ve been lying in the hot sun for weeks. I guess fairies were swift about everything. Life and death.

  The hedges curved. I was certain we’d gone in a circle, but I couldn’t confirm it with no sun, nor any directional skills. We were heading in the right direction toward the sweet C, and it led us right to the exit of the labyrinth. Directly in front of me was a giant cylinder-shaped object moving and turning in a circle. It moved up and down at the same time like a spiraling piston. Janice’s description had failed to mention the giant chasm between the edge of the main part of the maze where I was standing and the piston itself.

  In the gaping chasm were more bushes. The sweet smell of gardenias wafted up, and white flowers bloomed surrounded by hunter green, waxy leaves. The perfumed air was heady with a drugging scent. If I had to guess, I would’ve said they were my mother’s favorite, gardenias, But gardenias were massive, like three inches across and not like these piddly, star-shaped kiddy cutouts.

  “They’re only flowers. We can walk through. There’s a ledge around the base, and we can climb up or maybe find a way to scale the side.” Zoe really thought she could climb it, but I could tell by the way she was walking that she wasn’t strong enough to climb anything.

  I eased her down into a sitting position, keeping my eyes everywhere but her face. Her eyes searched my face and the surrounding area. A rustling off in the distance was followed by the appearance of another contender. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her cocoa skin and black hair shimmered under the light of Fae.

  Zoe curled into her ball of protection, her arms wrapped tight around her folded legs, and she closed her eyes.

  The black-haired girl wandered over to the edge of the leafy chasm. “Oh, beautiful flowers.” Her high, sweet voice cut the tension in the air. She pushed a tendril of glossy black hair over her round human ear.

  I stood at the edge of the chasm, searching for a way across, but I watched her every move.

  She never glanced our way before plunging down into the chasm. The bushes reached her waist. The leaves rose into the air and came alive, and small green humanoid creatures with pointy ears and giant milky blue eyes swarmed as they grabbed her hair.

  My hand slapped over my mouth.

  A scream came from the girl’s lips. The hive pulled at her clothes and glossy black hair. One jumped on her face to gnaw on her nose. I watched the blood spout from the sides of their little mouths. Their piranha-like teeth tore at her exposed skin. She dripped bloody screams, and they dragged her down into the perfumed moat.

  I stumbled back, landing hard on my butt. A different section of bushes lifted up and flew over to their kill. Every hair on my body stood up as the horror struck me to my core. The gardenia bushes weren’t pretty. They were Fae. There’s nothing more dangerous than beauty? Sure, it was pretty. Right up until it kills you. Zoe scratched at my arms, whimpering. I placed my hand on the matted, grimy mess on her head. A hot trail of tears raced down my face. I clutched Zoe t
o me, holding her tight.

  That poor dark-haired girl, she didn’t look before she leaped. Her screams died out, becoming intermittent whimpers until nothing surrounded us but the garden and the thick scent of death. I whipped my head around. There was nowhere to go. The only way to the center was to somehow scale the side of the giant piston but not before crossing the moat of death. The top was edged in box hedges, a bushy wall hedging in trees and vines, some of which trailed down the sides. The gap was ten feet wide, too wide for me to jump.

  I’d scrunched my eyes shut, waiting for the carnage to end.

  Zoe’s low, quaking voice informed me, “You can’t go in there, Sarah. Those things will kill you.”

  “I know. But we have to find a way across.”

  The cylinder garden turned, rising up more than thirty feet and then lowering down to within ten feet of the ledge. The motion was hypnotizing, coupled with the low continuous sound of rock grinding on rock.

  There were no trees in the chasm, no trellis, wall, or anything that you could take apart to use to build a bridge. Nothing. Why in god’s name would anybody build this kind of giant garden of death?

  Screams off in the distance somewhere reached us, but they were quickly silenced. Some turned long-winded and then muffled whimpers into nothing. Every one of those poor girls had been standing in the corral with us. I began unwinding the fabric over my breast.

  Janice, he was right. You could use it, and I knew what I was going to do with it. I took the two spikes I’d used for the garrote and unwound the wire. I crossed the spikes and rewound the wire, crisscrossing over the center and creating an X. I wound it as tightly as I could, weaving the wire this way and that so it wouldn’t shift. I tied one end of the silk to the X. My only hope was that it was long enough. I just needed it to hold long enough. I took the rest of the fabric and looped it loosely in one hand. I pulled out about four to five feet.

  I looked down at Zoe. “I don’t think you can follow me, but as long as you stay alive, I’ll set Olive free for you, okay? They didn’t say that you had to do it. They said your lives were tied together, and if they weren’t freed, you’d both die. There’s a loophole to everything. I think that’s the loophole, and if it isn’t, it’s better than nothing.”

  “No, I’ll try to climb up after you. I think I can do it.” She pushed up into a standing position, jutting her jaw out in determination.

  “If you don’t think that you can make it across that chasm and climb up after me, you’ll only get Olive killed. Stay alive here. Staying alive keeps Olive alive.” I placed my hand on her shoulder, and our eyes met. She nodded her head, tearing her eyes from mine.

  I let the X hang down on one side, holding it back about three feet. Just as my father showed me, I started swinging it around in a circle. When it had enough momentum, I waited for the X to reach the right point in its revolution. It swung up behind me, and about the time it reached my shoulder, I let go.

  I held onto the end, eyes glued to my makeshift grappling hook. It hit the cylinder wall and slid down. I yanked it back, breaking through the gardenia bushes and disturbing the creatures. They flew about, but for some reason, they didn’t leave the chasm. Maybe they’d been trained to not, or it was Fae magic. All fairy magic had rules, and you only have to figure out where the loophole was.

  Pulling air deep into my chest through my nose, I planted my feet shoulder-length apart. I rolled both shoulders and my neck. The blood pounding under my skin made my hands shaky, but I shook them out.

  I wound my fabric up again, loosening three to four feet. I couldn’t swing any more than that without dragging on the ground. I wound up again with the world’s worst grappling hook of all time. I had to get it on the top of that cylinder, and I knew how I’d missed last time—my release. It was short by about a foot because I didn’t wait until the cylinder was at its lowest. But this time I had the rhythm of it. The piston started slowly descending, and my hook rose. Just as it crested my shoulder, I released it. It hit the edge of the upper garden, going over the edge by two or three inches, only to drag back before it latched onto something. I jerked on the fabric, forcing it to dig into the box hedge. I wanted it to be secure.

  The piston reached its lowest point, only to rise again while still holding the end of the fabric. It was too long. If I didn’t do something quickly, I was going to be dragged into the chasm. I wrapped it around my hand three times. I jumped into the air and grabbed for a higher hold while pulling my legs up to my belly.

  Aw, shit.

  Limbs and leaves scratched my backside, raising a cloud of the pixie-like creatures. I pulled hard with my upper arm, loosening my grip on the lower hold to reach above. My body slammed into the side of the piston, and it rose higher and higher. The fabric dragged me across the ledge, twisting my arm in the process. My arm was fully extended above my head, pulling my feet up out of the bushes. A pixie dug his teeth into my shoes, but I nudged him off with my other toe. The pixie became angry and took another bite, but then it shook its head, realizing it wasn’t going to be able to penetrate it. I took my other foot and kicked them off, and the pixie went careening back into the chasm. The pixies flew back to the bushes, and I must’ve passed out of their domain. They ceased to find me of any interest.

  The moment my feet touched the supporting ledge, I realized I was already standing on my tiptoes. The piston was still rising, and my toes were soon touching nothing at all. I was being pulled up by my arm but turning at the same time. I was being pulled away from Zoe’s location. Fear filled her eyes as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Stay alive, Zoe! I’ll do my part, you do yours.”

  She nodded her head, chewing on a fingernail. There was no way I’d be able to get the fabric back to her.

  I turned my body around in an effort to reach above and to give my shoulder relief. It was killing me. Slowly ever so slowly, the piston turned and began its downward motion. Eventually, my feet met the ledge again. My fabric rope loosened, and my left hand was able to reach well above my right. I grabbed the fabric and unwound my hand. I tied a loop and then tied the lower portion of the fabric around my waist, adding a rolling clove hitch to the end. The loop was big enough to put my foot in. Hopping along the ledge, I lifted my right foot and inserted the toe of my boot into the fabric loop. Pushing down with my foot, I pulled up. There wasn’t time to do that trick again, the fabric was fully taught now.

  Standing on one leg, I reached above my left hand and squeezed with all my might. I pulled as hard as I could, and I planted my left foot onto the wall.

  Why hadn’t I paid more attention to rock climbing? Dad said scaling a wall was important. Why didn’t I listen? There was a reason why they taught it in the armed services as a part of basic training and everybody must pass it. Because you never know when climbing a wall might save your life. He made me do it, but I’d always had a terrible time with ropes and knots.

  Rock climbing seemed like geometry and algebra—things you’d never use in real life.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might not have had enough fabric to make it across the pixie chasm of death. My heart sped up.

  The up-and-down motion continued until finally, I thought I would see Zoe again. But she wasn’t standing there anymore; she’d moved.

  CHAPTER 23

  The muscles in my back ached, as did my arms and shoulders. Everything was creaky. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to pull myself up even one more time. Zoe was definitely gone. Everything around the piston looked exactly the same. The hedges opening in shapes, it was an optical illusion, done on purpose to disorient you so you’d lose your way. That was the whole object of a maze.

  But I told Zoe to stay there. I looked up at the rim, and it had to be a good ten to fifteen feet above my head. I was too far gone to give up. If I don’t succeed one way or another, Arty and I would be dead.

  Maybe I should’ve waited and watched for a while longer? I could’ve l
earned something.

  It was easier to pull up when the piston was in its downward motion, like an extra boost from gravity. But as we were going down, at the point that it normally would’ve stopped, it didn’t. It continued lower until my feet touched the ledge again. I removed my foot from its loop and untied the fabric around my waist. The piston continued down, so I pulled the slack back up and knotted it in several places above where I had reached previously. I took baby steps along the ledge. Following the edge at its lowest point I was within a couple of feet of the upper garden. I heaved myself, using my feet to find the knots I had tied and inching up the fabric fighting for purchase on the ledge. With one arm still wrapped around the silk fabric and the other poised over the top of the upper garden ledge, I pulled with all my might to the edge. Finally, close enough I hiked a leg up. There was a slight lip to the inside. My heel locked over it, and my quad strained along with my shoulders and arms as I rolled over the edge.

  I had made it. Unbelievable.

  I watched Zoe appear from the shadowy bushes. The upper garden was still receding down into its resting place until it was level with the pixie chasm. A bridge extended itself to the edge, and Zoe ran. Just as the piston of the garden began to rise, she jumped onto the edge. She wasn’t that far away from where I stood.

  I reeled up my fabric and pulled my grappling hook out of the bush. I wrapped it around my waist, affixing it to me with the X over my belly button. Some weapon would better than no weapon. I raised my arm and waved to Zoe. She waved back. I sprinted in her direction. My body came to a dead stop against some kind of invisible wall. I pounded my hands and kicked at it.

  Zoe was on the other side. She gave me a tight-lipped smile.

  “How did you figure it out?” I heaved a breath with both hands splayed out.

  “Easy. Whoever owns this place had to be able to get to the other garden themselves. It turned like a clock goes around. You had to wait for the right moment for the cuckoo to come out and chirp.” She wasn’t just some stupid fifteen-year-old running around desperate to stay alive.