A fidgeting needle irritated me to wakefulness. I was flat on my back in a softly glowing Labyrinth, staring up at the night sky. More precisely, I lay between the Sphinx’s massive, softly glowing paws with the Sphinx’s massive (and softly glowing) muzzle pointed toward invisible-me--and then I made sure I wasn’t on my back any more.

“Finally,” the goddess tinked. “Fool.”

Once several yards safely back, I checked out my chest.

The main casualty was my clothing. The gouges had ripped through several pockets, splattering their contents upon the sandy flooring. That colorful confetti had been lenses (but not the scope). That amber splatter art? The remains of a handful of lightsticks. The sharp shreds of metal and fuzzy balls of cloth? My new lockpicking kit. At least, the gouges hadn’t dislodged anything important, like the goddess vial in my intact belt. Or my smaller lockpick kit near it. Or Old Reliable--I patted my chest, and it pricked me. Deep. As if it were hiding in a lung somewhere and didn’t want me to give it up. My heart, meanwhile, was trying its best to hide somewhere outside of my body. So no real harm done. At most, I was missing a few tools, a bit of shirt, and my confidence in Old Reliable’s reliability. At least, I wasn’t a meal.

And that wasn’t real calming.

Nor was it calming being watched by the Sphinx, even with her paws tucked safely beneath her. Or rather, being watched by her nearest head. No doubt, the other was in the haze at the entrance, keeping watch for idiots who dismissed too much at first glance--or who listened too closely to voices lying inside their heads. But how the Sphinx lived without a rear, I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. But I did wonder if that meant she was never hungry or twice as hungry as a one-headed, properly rumped Sphinx. And why wasn’t I appetizing?

Then again, cats didn’t always eat what they caught. They liked their toys, too.

But she didn’t bat me between her paws or chew on my hair or the sorry excuse for what was attached. So . . . not playing. Could have forgotten me and was merely exercising her visibility for a while. I took a step forward.

Her eyes did not track me.

Swipe and forget? I think not. “You tricked me. You have two heads. You are a ‘we.’”

Sphinx cocked her head down at me. What, the mouse--or rather, mutton--strung out between your paws shouldn’t demand a second opinion? But she saw me. She wasn’t forgetting me now.

Had she ever? Cats were good at ignoring everyone but themselves, or pretending to.

And what were captive goddesses good at? “You must find a way past her.” “Circumvent her.” “It is a trick.”

No, I knew what the trick was now and whom she had played it on. I glanced at the Sphinx, whom my pocket weed had lead me to, and wondered if the multiple tricksters played together or separately. I brushed white sand and amber gel off my pants. At least they--and all that lay beneath--were intact. But my sense of justice was in tatters.

“Taking cues from Her Lowliness now, huh? I didn’t think you needed any assistance in being two-faced, Mesdames Sphinx, for you have that well in paw, I see.”

The goddess tinked at me, but more worryingly, her accomplice's ears twitched back and her brow wrinkled.

I shut up.

At least, I didn’t flinch back a step.

“I am the Soul,” the Sphinx spoke, far faster and far firmer than before, “and the Flesh--”

“And the Guardian--or should I say Guardians?--of the Labyrinth. Your gentler half already exchanged that pleasantry with me.” So much for shutting up.

“I am the Labyrinth, and, trespasser, you did not heed the warning.” She untucked her right paw.

I tensed. My fists tightened against my legs since I didn’t have a weapon on me that could hurt her. She’d just use the knife in my boot as a toothpick to remove fleshy bits of me from between her teeth.

But as her paw slid toward me, I didn’t end up on my back minus a few strips of soft tissue. Instead, it lifted to show me something. It was vague at first, but upon closer inspection, I saw it: a tangle of thread, a little hazy around the edges, like watching myself while invisible, but brighter and whitish.

I glanced up. “Kitty likes her yarn and capers. So what?”

Her paw fell back down, covering it. “It is your unshaped soul.”

My hand found my chest, the rents in my shirt, the unblemished skin beneath. I could feel my heart beating, lungs moving, myself living. Life. I had expected more than a loss of cloth and time from such a swipe and trespass, not to mention from a sneaky, vindictive goddess. I was inclined to believe the Sphinx.

But I didn’t need to show her that.

Especially not if they were in cahoots.

So, I laughed and shoved out a hand. Forced it to still when it didn’t want to. “My soul is a cat toy? All right, I’ll play.” I wriggled my fingers invitingly. “Return it, Mesdames Sphinx, and I’ll get you an entire ball of yummy yarn.” In the shape of a muzzle. And mittens. Really thick mittens. “Wouldn’t that be nice, mmm?”

“I cannot converse with her yet. She must be bound to complete the warning. Continue your inane conversation until she is freed.”

“Ah, there are you are, Your Weediness.” I patted her through my belt. “You’re a little slow on the cue. You are supposed to be all a’gloat now.”

“Fool. Gloat? Fool. I will revel when I am in the bosom of the sweetest earth of my home and free of this windswept, desiccated rock.”

Funny how you didn’t complain as long as the denizens of that rock catered to your every want and need.

The Sphinx cocked a head, breaking upon my distraction.

Awaiting a reply in her direction, perhaps? About forfeited souls?

How about this one: “Well, well, well, that is a problem, isn’t it? I only have one soul, after all, and I favor the shape it’s in well enough.”

I smiled and stepped close and patted the curled up--and less readily dangerous--paw. The extended one shifted, claws tipping out. I ignored that. Ol' Reliable didn't, rolling inside my chest pocket. But it wasn’t always bright or quick, or I’d be on the other side of the Labyrinth currently, or better yet never inside it at all.

So, all I could do was just keep her talking--and revealing.

“Tell me more, Mesdames Sphinx.” Like what you want. Everyone--even every Sphinx--wanted something, and I could steal that something for a little trade or two.

“The body,” the Sphinx said, “may not escape, and the soul is forfeit.”

She liked redundancy, did she? No wonder why Isle Island chose her for a spokesperson. Spokes-myth. I shook my head. Whatever. Humor her. Play along.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“If it is not mine, whose is it? Yours?” Didn’t want to waste time stealing the wrong stuff for the wrong pers--being of power. I tipped my head to look past her, to the hazy side of freedom. “Or your other half’s?”

“The Master’s.”

“The--” Oh, no. Oh, no, no. No. I belonged to Collector now? Over my soon-to-be-dead vial of seeds. I feinted toward the paw concealing the soul-yarn and then vaulted over the other.

She didn’t swat me down.

She didn’t need to. My feet had simply failed to move, and my hands were buried in her fur. At the slightest stir of her claws, I was on my back, without seeing or remembering how I got from standing to supine. My lungs barely recalled how to move.

I blinked up at the dark sky overhead. I licked my lips. At those successes, I sucked in a deep breath. Wonderful. I tried lifting an arm. No deal. Damn. Well, I had one weapon left: my mouth. Might as well use it.

“Hey, sure you wouldn’t consider a trade? What about your other half? Fancy some new company? Getting tired of talking to yourself over sup--”

She lowered her head and breathed on me. It smelled of meat and something else.

Something sweet.

“--per?” I squeaked. I licked my lips and tried again. “I know where you can get a mean sauc--buck--cistern of milk and a few dozen shanks of Margonian oxen. Much better than tiny, crunchy human.”

Before I could start on my next set of bribes, Mesdames Sphinx’s head reared back, and she went all intent on me. Claws half protruded, ears stiffly swept forward, and her body went pointed and still.

None of that promised anything good.

“Uhm, so you like crunchy? H-h-how about Margonian jerky?”

She cocked her head at me. Then, lowered her muzzle. Whiskers brushed over me from belly to chin, then back again. Ol' Reliable wormed deeper. Human treat, after all? I pulled at my arms. They were a no go.

She snuffled. I pulled harder. Nothing.

She opened her mouth--oh, damn--and sneezed before lifting her head away.

Nice. I lifted a sleeve to scrub away the warm slime--and it worked.

So did my other muscles in getting me up and elsewhere again, somewhere out of paw’s reach. At least some parts of me were still swift. But little of me was feeling at ease. To hide the shake in my limbs, I brushed snot-pasted white sand from my face and torso.

Her gaze followed the movement.

I dropped my hands and held them safely out at my sides. “Sorry, fresh out of blanket-sized tissues.”

An ear flicked in irritation, but at least this interrupted her unnerving staring. “The Goddess from a Far Earth, Vrailne, has informed me of your . . . ” She flexed her claws. “. . . deal.”

So, my betrayer had a little sit-down with my warden? In cahoots or not, no wonder the Sphinx had been tense, listening to that. “Ah, the Virulent One has sprinkled some nettlesome lies in your lovely ears, has she? Let me rake them out--” The goddess loved it when I used evocative words. I added the accompanying movement. She loved that more. “And plant some true, Mesdames.”

The sweet sound of glass-tinging seeds reached my ears, along with matching verbal insults.

Just checking. I smiled.

Not that I was ever sure how she could see from inside her glass prison--or from inside her shells or thorny growths or faceless shadow for that matter. Gods made due, I guess.

“We have little time,” the Sphinx said, interrupting my musings. “I will honor your deal once you complete the one we make.”

“We? Which form of we are we talking abou--?”

Her right paw inched closer. I knew that paw well. So did my chest, back, and five hundred other muscles.

“Young thief, I will keep your soul safe from storage at the Center of the Labyrinth, and I will keep it safe from detection. In exchange, I ask you to retrieve my kitten.”

“Kitten?” Her belly, what I could see of it, looked slender, not bulging.

Actually she appeared a little gaunt, now that I really took her in. Bony shoulders. Sharp cheekbones. Even the paws on this side seemed narrower. Those details softened me nor my back none.

I firmly glanced back up. “Congratulations to the both of you, Mesdames. I’m a thief, not a vet.”

She flicked back an ear, then said, “Retrieve and make safe my offspring, and I shall return your soul and honor your previous bargain. My kitten was caught in her hunt for my location. She is currently held at an establishment the Master has refused to patronize for several years due to his detestation of its security measures.”

A four-tusked elephant-sized detestation, I bet. “Tamay’s.”

“Yes.” Her ears pricked up. “You have knowledge of it? Then you have a chance of success. Go, now, and return her hence.”

Hence? Here? Straight into Collector’s stone prison and potent spells? "By any definition, how is that safe?”

“Fool,” the goddess spoke. “Blind fool. There are worlds here, many a world she can be secured in.”

“Worlds?” I turned around. “Here?” I saw glowing white walls several times taller than a Sphinx in repose, and I saw matching white sand and stone below. And a corner that begged turning down soon. “Where? Down there?”

“Filth!”

I sighed and gave up on the weed--and on seeing these “worlds.”

For now.

I faced again the Sphinx and the one-and-only entrance/exit. “How do you know all this? The Isle Islanders praised and applauded many of your . . . attributes and aspects, Mesdames, but never your all-knowing omniscience.”

Both ears flicked back this time, and she lifted her chin. “My will is bound, not my ears.” Hauteur dropped slightly with her chin as she said, “Go, now, young human male. While you are outside these walls, you have only as long as I can safely conceal the soul from the Master. Even now, the Center calls for it.”

“Tamay’s Pet Shop?” I waved her off. “You have to be kidding.”

“You have six hours. Perhaps seven, if I strain.”

I smiled and thumbed my belt. The gesture lost some of its impact, considering my current state of dress. “As I said, plenty of time.” I ignored another “Fool. Vainglorious fool” tinkling about in my head and asked, “Just out of curiosity, what happens if I am late?”

The Sphinx scraped her claws on the small patch of white stone beneath her. They shrieked. Even the goddess shut up at that. I lowered hands I didn't realize I had raised to my shield my ears.

The Sphinx stopped. “I will be forced to return you, and you will be damaged in the journey.”

“Dead damaged?”

“That depends on the strength of your body.”

Ol' Reliable vibrated warningly. Dead then. And filleted.

Still, not a problem. While the world had been busy forgetting me, I’d been busy remembering . . . everything. Just the way my mind was. Worked wonders on picking up languages as well as less than savory trades. I cracked my knuckles. Ol’ Reliable might have forgotten half its business--and became a rather nervous nelly in the meantime--but my fingers hadn’t lost their skill yet.

But neither had my brain gone soft. Part of it said this was an elaborate ruse. Old friends were sowing tricks for mutual freedom: scratch one vial of seeds free, scratch one’s magic-bound back in return, and leave the foolish, murdering thief trapped inside a white-walled prison.

The other half of my brain, though, was gloating. The Sphinx had given me the handle of her leash. She hadn’t asked her freedom in trade; she had asked for her kitten’s. It was the one thing worth the world to her.

Or worlds, rather.

This was no lie. It couldn't be.

More than that, her offspring meant a great deal to Collector. Something that would hurt, just as greatly, if it failed to come into his grey-gloved grasp. Hurt much more than some juvenile, oversized herbivore’s delay ever had. I would suspect blatant manipulation if all two--three--ladies knew how perfect this was, how much I desired Collector's lasting inconvenience at my expense, but they couldn’t and didn’t. This was no lie, no trick; this wasn’t a mere chance. This was my stars aligning. This was a door I had picked long ago finally opening onto something good. No, something wonderful.

So, I smiled and said, “Well, then, one kitten coming up.” With that, I gave her a bow and a “Mesdames” that any aristocrat would have to think twice on snubbing down.

My grandiloquent exiting gesture lost something upon her admonition that she could not remove herself from my path. I had to scale--or in my case, clamber--over her luminescent arm to escape.

The minute my feet hit the ground my chest twinged.

And that wasn’t from demeaning exertions or Old Reliable.

I pulled at my shirt through the slashes and discovered flat, red "welts" that perfectly aligned with that damage. They weren’t there before.

Apparently, the strength of her claws was no lie either, and thus, I felt no shame in skedaddling myself out of there pronto.