Where the Path Leads-Chapter 3

• By Mary Drake-

Last month, Emily went on a school field trip to a Renaissance Faire and had her fortune told by a gypsy who said she is confused and lost. Then she and her friends enter a labyrinth at the Faire and she becomes truly lost.

Chapter 3: A Strange Exit

She had gotten more lost in the labyrinth than she could have imagined. “Lost” wasn’t even the word for it.

When they first entered, she and Lyn were amazed by the realistic pictures of a medieval village painted on the walls of the corridors. They went past a cobbler’s shop, a sign shaped like a shoe hanging over the door; a blacksmith’s, where he stood pounding his anvil, sparks flying; past a shepherd guiding his flock through the town; and past women filling their buckets at a well or kneeling to tend small gardens alongside equally small cottages. They let the murals draw them along until Lyn thought she heard footsteps and wondered if Damien was following them.

Still, they wandered on until the village gave way to rolling fields where workers walked behind ploughs pulled by huge, lumbering oxen. Roughly clad women and children spread seed by hand, most giving their attention to their task, but a few peering out at them from the paintings with life-like faces lined by weather and work.

Lyn began losing interest, being more and more distracted by approaching voices.

Up ahead was the depiction of a castle, and Emily wanted a closer look. She didn’t really want to encounter anyone in the labyrinth, especially the boys. The place felt too secluded, too secret. She hadn’t been counting the turns they had made while following the paintings, but she felt sure the end of the labyrinth couldn’t be far. She was sure of finding her way out, with Lyn or alone.

The massive grey, stone castle was just like what she’d imagined castles to be, with a crenelated wall, a moat, and a heavy wooden drawbridge. Lyn wasn’t impressed and passed it by quickly, disappearing around another turn. Emily lingered, wishing she could cross the drawbridge and go inside to see what life was like there, but when she hurried to catch up with Lyn, she was nowhere in sight.

Instead, all around her she found images of a vast forest with seemingly endless trees, some so large that it would take several people joining hands to encircle them. This is how she had imagined the Forest of Arden when they had read As You Like It in her English class–ancient trees creating a green world of their own. With each turn in the labyrinth, more trees appeared, their spring leaves already forming a canopy that darkened everything below.

She started feeling uneasy.

The entrance to the labyrinth had said something about a dragon, and now the gnarled roots of enormous trees began to resemble a long curving tail with spikes. Were those impressions in the soil made by huge taloned claws?  She had the creepy sensation of being watched, and a shiver ran up her spine. Suddenly aware of the quietness, she stopped, closed her eyes and listened intently for the sound of human activity: the voices of faire-goers, cheering from the tournament, trumpeting to announce the Queen’s arrival. Even traffic noise or lawn mowers or airplanes overhead. Instead, she only heard leaves rustling in the wind and the melancholy cooing of a mourning dove. This place felt more eerie and unpredictable than the haunted barn she and Lyn had gone to for Halloween, and she hadn’t been alone then. Maybe she should have kept up with Lyn, or waited up for those behind them.

But listening was suddenly replaced by feeling as a slight tremor ran through the ground. Her eyes shot open and she stumbled forward, reaching out for something to steady herself, and her hand encountered the rough bark of a tree. She drew back in shock, feeling like an elevator had just dropped out from under her. She was no longer looking at a forest but was in a forest. Was this the center of the labyrinth or had she somehow wandered out? How could a forest this huge exist alongside the Renaissance Faire? She didn’t remember seeing it earlier.

Determined to get back, she continued walking, looking for some kind of path. There had to be a way out. The labyrinth couldn’t just swallow people up, she reasoned, brushing off occasional brambles that reached out to grab her. She was immersed in these thoughts when she noticed something cold on her feet. 

“Ugh!”  Water had seeped through the mesh of her athletic shoes. In the small clearing where she found herself, bright blades of spring grass poked up through a mat of decaying leaves. Her foot made a sucking sound as she lifted it, trickles of water moving to fill in her footprint. She stepped on a rock as she tried to move away from the marshy ground and bent to discover, hidden beneath the many autumns’ accumulation of dead leaves, a small circle of rocks surrounding a spring that bubbled up from the ground–a trickle of clear, cold water.

Crunching leaves and a tinkling sound suddenly distracted her from the spring and her squishy feet and she whirled to find herself facing an enormous cow with a bell hung around its neck. It nibbled at the edge of the clearing before raising its head to look at her. She had only seen cows when her family drove in the country, and they had always been behind fences. Why was this one wandering alone? She hadn’t realized how big they were. Were they dangerous? Did they bite or charge? 

As she and the cow had a stare down, its long pink tongue suddenly came out of its mouth and licked up inside one of its nostrils. She couldn’t help but smile. Then it reached around with its head and began licking its side, making the hair stand on end. So that was where the term “cowlick” came from, she thought. It lumbered forward, as she backed away, and drank from the spring, then turned to leave.

         Wait. Didn’t horses know their way home. Dogs and cats, too. So why not cows? What about the saying, until the cows come home. Maybe it would lead her back, so for lack of any other plan she decided to follow it. The cow, however, didn’t mind crashing through brush that got in its way, but Emily found herself scratched and pricked by thorny undergrowth that snatched at her dress and hair.  She would have worried about her costume if she hadn’t been more worried about finding her way out.