Chapter 21

Limbo

It’s really bright, just a pool of light surrounding us, like we’re stood directly under a streetlight. My eyes sting, and I blink, trying to get used to the light, and the weight of my body on my ankles once more.

The brightness makes the darkness beyond even more impenetrable. And it’s cold, that sort of cold that seeps inside you, into your bones, fills you up until it’s the only thing you feel.

We’re stood on a circular platform that sways gently, like a boat bobbing on the sea. It’s no more than a couple of steps across with a knee-high wall running around it, small stones strewn all over the flat rock floor. The surrounding wall has four holes in it, each about as wide as a door, set opposite one another, ninety degrees apart.

“What now?” Alice asks, looking around.

My stomach squeezes into a ball. It looks like there’s no way out, no clear path. This can’t be right. “There has to be a way.”

Alice goes to look at one of the gaps. I head over to another and look out.

There’s nothing. Nothing at all.

My heart knocks against my ribs.

I cup my hands over my eyes, blocking out the light, squint into the darkness. Still can’t see a thing past the edge of the platform. Down below the darkness rises and falls like the sea.

Alice comes to stand beside me. “Crazy, isn’t it. Same over that side too.” She wrinkles her nose. “Not too keen on jumping straight in. You?”

I shake my head. “Bad idea. Probably.” There’s a small pebble at my feet and I stoop, pick it up and drop it into the black. The stone falls but doesn’t hit the flowing darkness. As it reaches the surface it separates into lines of light, like a rainbow made from the colours in the stone – shades of grey and yellow. These shoot forwards into the darkness like a comet tail.

There’s something out there, way out in the darkness.

The light hits it, flares brighter then disappears.

Alice turns to me, mouth wide open. “Holy guacamole. Did you see that? It was, like, another platform. I think.”

I nod, hope kindling in my stomach. “It was. I saw it.”

There’s always a path, you just got to know where to look.

I grab another stone from the floor. “There’s four holes in the wall. That’s four possible paths.” I walk around and drop the stone into the blackness. This time it sits on the surface for a moment before sinking down and disappearing.

Alice scoops another stone from the floor and drops it through the next gap in the wall. Like the last, it hits the darkness, floats a second then disappears down.

I grab one more. “If this one sinks, I think we can get off this island.”

She clicks her fingers. “That would mean the first one is the right path?”

“Hopefully.”

Heart pounding, I throw the stone through the final gap. It sinks.

I swallow heavily. “I’m gonna step off Alice, over there.” I point to the first gate.

She puts a hand on my arm. “I’m going first.”

“No. You’re not.”

Alice shakes her head, rattling the beads in her hair. “I am.” She looks down and bites her lip. “If anything happened, like, went wrong. I don’t want to be left here alone.”

I stare at her and my heart seems to stretch out like an elastic band. “We test it one last time.”

She nods and picks a pebble off the floor.

Together we walk to the gap, and she throws it in. My heart snaps back into place, the pressure clearing from my head as the stone shoots out into the darkness once more. It’s definitely another platform out there.

Our eyes meet, hers seeming to shine in the dying flare from the last stone.

“Wait,” I say. “Let me try with something else first.”

“Another stone?”

“No. We need something from us.”

Her eyes widen. “Like what?”

I bite my thumb nail, tearing a piece of it off then hold it up. “Like this.”

She pulls a face. “Eugh! That’s gross.”

I shrug before flicking the bit of nail into the blackness and for a moment lose sight of it, then a tiny, pinky-grey line of light shoots forwards and flares against the other platform.

I look at Alice. “You sure?”

She shakes her head. “I’m ready.”

“You’re really sure?”

She attempts a smile. “We can’t stay here forever, can we?”

Alice brushes herself down then goes to stand on the edge, toes of her trainers just poking over. She turns to me. “See you on the other side.”

Before I have chance to reply she steps out into the black, falls forwards and dissolves into Alice-coloured lines of light, these rocket forwards and flare against the platform and my heart swells as I see her waving to me before the darkness covers her once more.

Leaping into the unknown seems to have become something I do on a regular basis now, but my stomach still lurches as I stand on the edge of the platform.

Always look forwards, never down.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I take a huge stride forward.

Something grabs me in a vice-like grip. I can’t move, not even wiggle my fingers. Time stops for a moment before I accelerate faster than the best roller coaster I’ve ever been on. The air fills with small, spinning spheres, all rotating endlessly around one another. Spheres jump from one orbit to the next, sparking as they do. An endless exchange. It seems to me that when one has more strength, more energy, then it gives it freely to one nearby. And although that makes it slightly weaker, it makes its neighbour a bit stronger so that all are strong together.

And that’s how balance is maintained.

That’s how it should be.

That’s friendship.

The spheres start to lengthen into lines of light, stretching out like giant elastic bands and for some reason what my dad said to me ages ago pops into my head.

We are all made of stars.

I suck in a massive breath of cold air and step forwards, blinking.

“Yes! You made it!” Alice yells.

“Er. What the…” I breathe out, long and slow. “That was nuts.”

She grins at me bouncing on the soles of her feet. “I saw stars. Millions and billions of stars.”

“I saw like little spheres spinning.”

“Yeah. Like stars and planets, right?”

I shrug. “Dunno. Maybe.”

We’re on another platform – a bit like the last – only this one’s got an obvious exit. A large dark-wooden double door with heavy iron rivets fills the only hole in the wall. In the middle of each door is a bulls head with a thick iron ring set into its mouth.

I point. “Least we know which way to go.”

Alice grabs my hand and leads me forwards.

There’s a smooth stone set into the floor just in front of the door:

Labyrinth of the Lost

My heart thuds in my throat. “Great.”

She sticks her lip out. “It’s just a maze. Dad told me you stick to the left wall and you’ll never get lost.”

My stomach swirls. “Ever heard the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s a legend, about a king who built a labyrinth and put a Minotaur to guard it.” I point to the door handles. “A Minotaur’s got the body of a person and the head of a bull. People who went in the labyrinth never came out until Theseus managed to kill the beast and escape.”

Alice’s forehead wrinkles, her eyes flick between me and the door. “Doesn’t mean this is the same,” she says slowly.

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t either. And why put a bull’s head on the handle then?”

Alice draws her foil. “We’ve got no choice. No turning back, remember.”

“No turning back.”

I step forwards and grab the cold metal of the rings. The bull looks mean, its face wrinkled in hatred. I tighten my grip and turn. There’s a loud creak followed by a heavy thunk before the doors swing wide. Musty air rolls out, full of dust and loneliness.

Beyond, an old stone bridge leads over the flowing black of Limbo and on to another platform. I was expecting a long low tunnel, but the platform beyond is open to the endless black above. I draw my foil, remove the safety cap and put the cap safely in my pocket. “That looks like Gunwaddle’s bridge. Let’s be careful.”

“Agreed.” Alice readies her foil.

We walk slowly over the bridge, my heart thumping harder with each step we take. But nothing happens and we stop in the middle of the next platform. There’s a wooden pole driven into the ground and four exits, including the one we just came from, straight ahead, left, right and behind. Each one has a bridge spanning the darkness, but I can’t see what lies beyond.

“What’s this post for,” Alice asks.

I bend down. There’s nothing written on it. No markings at all. “Dunno,” I say, standing. I pull at it but it’s stuck fast. “Seems useless.”

Alice’s eyes flick between the next three bridges. “Dad always said stick to the left.”

We head over the bridge and another platform appears in front of us, exactly like the one we just came from. The post seems identical to the last and like the other doesn’t budge when pulled. I step back. “Left again?”

Alice nods but seems a little less certain this time.

Crossing the next bridge, we find ourselves in an identical place.

“Hang on,” I say, making a mental map in my head. “If we go left again, that should take us back to the platform with the door on it.”

Alice bites her lip. “But there wasn’t an opening to the left of that platform.”

A wrinkle of fear creases my stomach. “Yeah. You’re right. This is weird. But let’s try.”

We walk over the bridge and find ourselves in yet another identical room with four exits. My stomach folds again. “We could get very lost in here.”

Alice nods. “Let’s see what happens if we retrace our steps.”

We walk back over the bridge we entered on, turn right, right again and right one more time. The tension in my stomach drops away as we cross the last bridge and stand once again at the entrance to the labyrinth.

Alice taps her chest and breaths out heavily. “I was getting freaked out.”

“Me too. We can’t just wander in here. If we forget one turn, we’ll never get back.”

“So, what then?” She taps her foil gently against the palm of her hand.

I rub my forehead. “In the tale of the Minotaur, Theseus uses a thread given to him to find his way out of the labyrinth. But we don’t have…”

An image of the dream catcher that Hazel gave us pops into my head, along with the words she said. “Use this when you’re lost,” I whisper.

“What?” Alice asks.

I sling the Angelmere bag from my shoulder and open it. The dream catcher is there waiting for me. My fingers close tightly around the polished wood handle as I draw it out.

“How’s that going to help?” Alice asks. “Those threads are tiny.” She peers closer. Then lifts her free hand and flicks the side of the dream catcher.

The red thread comes loose and hangs down. I pull at it, and it gets longer. “Woah.”

One end is still tied tight to the wooden circle that holds the other coloured threads in their pattern. A little light of hope kindles in my brain. I pull again and the thread lengthens. I hold the dreamcatcher up, a grin spreading across my face. “Hazel said to use this when we were lost. Maybe we’ve got as much thread as we need.”

“Then let’s test it.”

I look round at the door. “We can tie it to one of the rings in the bull’s mouth! That way we can’t ever get lost.”

“Nice work, Theseus!”

I close the Angelmere bag and sling it back over my shoulder then tie the loose end of the thread onto one of the rings. “Let’s do this.”

We take the bridge to our left again, the thread spooling out behind us. Made brave by knowing we can return we walk quicker, our steps solid as the stone beneath us. Excitement shimmers through me. “The pole! I know what it’s for!”

“What?”

I walk around it in a circle, looping the thread, holding it steady.

“Wicked,” Alice says, grinning.

We turn left and head over the next bridge, loop the thread around the pole there and go left again. My eyes widen as we enter the next platform. There’s a red thread cutting our path. It extends from the darkness of the entrance to the right, loops around the pole and heads off into the black of the exit opposite. “Looks like we’ve been here before.”

Alice runs to the thread around the pole. “It looks like our thread,” she says. “But is it?”

“Let’s follow it, then we’ll know for sure.”

“Wait,” Alice says. She pulls a strand of hair from her head, wincing as she does, then ties it onto the thread near the post. “Now we’ll know for sure.”

We follow the thread forwards, go left, left, and left again. My heartbeat rises as we enter the next room and see a double length of thread around the pole in the centre.

We both run over, and I pump the air with my fist. “There’s your hair!”

Alice smiles and points to the exit to our right. “So, the one with no thread must be the way we go! The others would just lead us round and round endlessly.”

We work our way over bridge after bridge, sometimes meeting the thread again almost straight away, sometimes not for a room or two. It’s slow going but I feel on top of the world. We’re doing this.

Ten rooms in a snarl echoes around us, making my heart leap and sending a wave of cold down my spine. I grip my foil tighter. “What was that?!”

Alice raises her foil. “How big is a Minotaur?” Her voice wavers.

“Big,” I say. “And strong. Let’s go slow.”

She swallows. “I’m scared, Brad.”

“Me too. Stay close.”

She swishes her foil through the air. “Let’s hope real sword fighting is a lot like fencing. If it is, we might just stand a chance.”

As we walk over the next bridge the tension in my arm that’s holding the dream catcher disappears. I look down and see the red thread has unattached itself and is slithering like a snake back over the bridge.

“You made it.”

The voice is deep and cruel, the silence after punctuated with a wheezy sort of breathing.

Me and Alice spin round together.

Fear crawls across my shoulders like a spider. On the bridge opposite, wreathed in shadow, stands a huge creature. It’s just a silhouette – a featureless shape in the dark – but I can see enough to be terrified. Large horns stick out from its head and in its hand is some sort of massive club, almost as thick as my body. I think I see spikes sticking out the end.

Alice gasps and moves in closer to me.

I want to run, but where am I going to run to? Back to limbo? Back to the dead end. No. I need to face this thing. And beat it.

I step forwards holding my foil out in front of me. “Let us pass,” I shout, keeping my voice steadier than I feel. “We don’t want to hurt you!”

There’s a moment of silence before the creature steps forward into the light.