Chapter 7

(In which we find Grim, encounter another maze, and learn what is held in Priest's tower)

     The door was thick mahogany, a sharp contrast to the slats composing the walls around it, and had been carved with minute detail, swirling smoke-like patterns and fist-sized faces emerging in bas-relief. But it was almost comically small, its top no higher than Elizabeth's mid-thigh. Priest had to bow down low, almost crawling. He held the door open, a pained and impatient expression on his face as he waited for her to enter.

Despite the diminutive entrance, the inside of the barn was vast, appearing even larger than it did on the outside. The sunken floor was a full body-length below the level of the door, connected to it by a stairway with wooden steps worn smooth with age.

From the top of the stairs, Elizabeth surveyed the strange room before her. The area, much longer than it was wide, had been partitioned into a labyrinthine path of hallways by a series of tapestries and maps, hanging from thick ropes to act as walls. The ropes were threaded through posts that had been driven into the floor; atop each of these were hurricane lamps that gave the room its illumination. The space between the lights was wide enough that there were many dark spaces within the maze, making it difficult to trace the path from one end of the room to the other. The tapestries stopped some feet from either end of the barn, with larger cleared spaces bookending the twisting walkway. The wall on the side near the tower was pitch black; the tower extended right into the barn rather than simply be attached to it.

Priest stood in front of her, in a portion of the oil-light only slightly brighter than outside, but it was enough that she was able to get a better look at him. He had the look of a handsome man, but one who had been through a famine or a war. His eyes were wide and wild, eyelids not touching even the borders of his irises. His hairline retreated from his forehead, and what hair remained corkscrewed from his scalp as though trying to escape. It was black but shot through with grey, with a patch of pure white behind his right ear. A few days’ worth of dark stubble stippled his jaw.

His shirt and pants were charcoal grey, loose but cinched at the waist by a wide leather belt. The feet emerging from his pants were bare; calloused and so filthy that a quick glance might have confused his footpads for sandals. But his hands were clean and manicured, with long graceful digits her father would have described as piano-player's fingers.

Priest led her down the stairs and into the maze, moving with a slow deliberation that could have been mistaken for obstinacy. He pointed the way around the wall of cloth, sidestepping into a space between the maps rather than lifting them to clear a passage.

The hanging maps were stitched to their neighbors without regard for scale: some of them showed details of small unfamiliar villages, while others described the relationships of continents and oceans. Tacks or nails were driven into parts of the maps as markers, with colored twine winding around and connecting them. Some of these traced lengths on the maps, following roads or rivers. Others transected the halls to attach to a hanging opposite them. Elizabeth followed Priest as he stepped over or ducked under the twine, muttering to himself whenever he brushed one of these obstacles. His pace was too swift for her to closely examine the maps. Most of the places they described were unfamiliar, but some were from her world (she saw outlines she recognized as pre-World War II Europe, and one of South Carolina), and some were outright bizarre...unless a poster of the board of the game Candyland was somehow representative in Edge.

They turned a corner into a small cave within the hallways, its walls created by oceanic maps and tide charts and which, in contrast to the majority of the maze, also had a map arranged as a roof. In this makeshift room, emerging from a pile of blankets, Elizabeth could see Grim's face poking out like the head of a mole from a subterranean warren.

The blankets rose and fell with his breathing; this was comforting, because his face lacked any convincing evidence that he was still alive. His eyes were open, but he showed no recognition that she and Priest had arrived. His skin, always somewhat gray, had taken on a sickly greenish cast that made Elizabeth think of mold and spoilage.

Elizabeth called his name, softly. He did not speak, but his breaths lengthened into raspy, wet sounds that could have been an attempt at a response. She reached out to the pile of blankets, found something that was solid enough to possibly be a leg, and gave it a reassuring pat, the way her parents had done when she was young and home sick.

A dread and a pity rose within her, and she realized this was not for the man who lay sick before her, but for herself. Here was her only contact in this new and strange world, and he was at death's door. She had been almost constantly wary and fearful since stepping into Edge, but had on some level assumed that Grim would be here to guide her, whether it be in a quest to return home or, if she chose to help him, to stop Silas. How would she do either of these things alone?

Elizabeth turned to Priest. "Is he...?" she said, unable to finish her sentence.

Priest had sat down in a chair that stood in one corner of the alcove, a pile of books stacked haphazardly next to it. He had bent forward and started to rearrange the blankets around Grim, removing some of the more sweat-heavy ones and replacing them with others from a neatly folded pile at the foot of the makeshift bed. As he leaned over, a necklace slid from the collar of his shirt, an oval locket-picture weighing it down. He reached to stuff it back but not before Elizabeth saw a photograph of a young woman's face with a crooked grin, laughing at something out of view.

"Though it may be difficult to believe, the Shade is somewhat improved. When I found him in the garden a few weeks ago, he was unconscious and shaking and coughing up blood. I thought for sure he would be dead within a day. But he's held on. Tough as the Lion, this one, and stubborn as the Stallion. He's taken some broth already today and kept it down. Still feverish, though. And I've not any medicine to give him for that. The passage can be quite rough." He looked her up and down. "Though you appear to be well enough."

Elizabeth was unsure if he was being sarcastic. She glanced down at her clothes, looking for traces of mess, but they appeared to have escaped her vomiting unscathed. "I was a bit sick when I first woke up. But I feel fine, now." She paused, realizing the time course Priest had described for Grim's arrival. "I'm sorry...did you say you found him a few weeks ago? You mean, before he came to Central?"

The man shook his head. "No, Grim first came to me some years ago. He went through the migration after two winters, when the conditions became right for a door to be opened, and was gone for a number of seasons. He returned two or three weeks ago." His eyes narrowed, examining her suspiciously. "And when was it when you came through? How long were you in the garden before I found you?"

"We both came through at the same time. From home. Central, I mean." Priest nodded, and she realized he was waiting for her to answer the rest of his question. "I was outside for...well, no longer than an hour, before you found me."

"An hour, you say?" Priest reached in a pocket and removed a cloth-bound book the size of a diary. He rummaged with his other hand until he produced a cigar-shaped root, still dusted with soil and tapered at one end to reveal a dark center within a periphery of lighter flesh, looking not unlike a sharpened pencil. He opened the book, and Elizabeth saw that the pages within were not lined or gridded like notebook or graph paper, but instead had a lightly printed spiral conch-shape extending from a point off-center on the page.

It was at this center that Priest applied the tip of the root and started to write. His scribbling contained no letters that Elizabeth had ever seen, a combination of squiggles and hashmarks and dots that he jotted with alarming speed. The writing surface looked more like fabric than true paper, with edges frayed and a distinct lack of paper's crinkling noise when he flipped pages, seemingly checking his recent marks against those written earlier in the journal. He would periodically stop and gaze upwards, his lips and fingers moving as though he was doing a difficult math problem in his head, then return to the frantic scrawling.

"Time," he spoke as his hand continued its jumps across the pages. "Time is not as...solid...in this place as you might be used to. Worse with the migration. If the two of you didn't stay in constant contact during the passage, your momentum can hurl you apart."

"We were holding hands, but we got separated. The shadow that was chasing us, it pulled Grim's hand away from mine." His face remained undistracted, nonplussed at this mention of the shadow creature. "That thing didn't follow us through, did it? It's not in the garden, or waiting for us?"

"No,” he made his mental arithmetic motions again, "I doubt it is still pursuing you."

"How do you know? Do you watch the garden from that tower?"

He stopped writing. Elizabeth could see the pressure on the point of his writing root increase, and the tendons within his thin hand sprouted into ridges beneath his skin. His sleeve had slipped an inch or two up his forearm, revealing a pink, hairless patch of skin that appeared to be a long-healed burn wound.

"No." He lifted the tip of the root from the writing surface, then replaced it with enough pressure to make his hand tremble. "The tower is not something we can enter. It's not for monitoring the garden. It's more of a..." He seemed to be considering a few different words to complete his sentence. "...A prison."

"A prison? In an orchard? Are you its warden?"

The muscles beneath the skin of his cheeks clenched and unclenched. "Maybe 'prison' isn't the right word. I don't know how to describe it otherwise. There are things in there that should not get out. Am I its warden?" He pondered this job description. "Perhaps by default. This part of the land is a good one to facilitate the migration. But not everything that comes through is something we want to attract. The tower doesn't require much from me in terms of upkeep. I am more an interested neighbor than a keeper at this point."

He fixed her with a direct glare, his eyes deep within the sockets of his emaciated face peering out like animals from twin burrows. "What you need to know is this: do not attempt to get in there or to let anything out. That would be...bad. It may be better if you just stay away from it altogether."

"But you're sure about that shadow creature? That it's not lying in wait for us?"

"As sure as I can be. It has most likely gone back where it came from."

"And where is that, exactly?"

He grimaced. "Well, you'd have to ask the person who sent it."

"Silas?"

"The Pretender has many weapons at his disposal, and he has used worse against those he sees as threats." With a soft clap, he snapped the journal shut and spun away from her, walking swiftly back the way they had come. She hadn't realized the conversation was over, wasn't clear if she was meant to follow. She looked at Grim's sleeping figure, and then at Priest, who was disappearing around a corner. She turned and followed him back into the maze.

This path was not the one they had taken from the door to Grim's alcove; the maps were unfamiliar and the strings marking them a different color. Priest had stopped in front of a rendering of an archipelago, and he held his journal open against the map, placing a pin into one of the islands while consulting his recent writings.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "That," she nodded towards the map, "that island is not where we came from."

Priest glared at her, inhaling sharply through his nose. "Girls who don't know what they're talking about should not interrupt adults in the middle of important business." He held her gaze for another beat, then went back to the map, drawing a black string out of a pocket and winding it around the pin.

A hotness rose from her neck to her cheeks, stinging from the rebuke. She had been trying to be helpful. Elizabeth backed up, examining nearby maps to distract her from her embarrassment. She waited for some acknowledgment from Priest, some word telling her to stay or to go back to Grim. None came.

She cleared her throat. Priest turned his head to look at her, his lids drawn halfway down in a look of annoyance, an ‘are you still here?’ in the batter's circle of his mouth. "Look," she said, "I've got some questions. I'm new here. And you're clearly busy. Is there something I should be doing right now? Ummm..." She trailed off, unsure how to continue. "Earning my keep? Working off my debt? Anything?"

"Eliza--", he waited for the briefest of beats before continuing, "--Beth, I will be done in just a few minutes. I will then be free for more questions and we can breakfast together. If you wish to sit, my work desk is that way," he gestured with a vague nod of his head. "I will be along shortly."

He had indicated the path down a hallway that stretched almost to the distant wall of the barn. She padded down its length, stopping where it ended in a map of somewhere called The Hiveland, unadorned by pins or string and stained with a stiff brown substance she suspected was dried blood. There were passages to the left and right, but each shot deeper into the labyrinth, neither to a visible desk. Elizabeth turned back to see if Priest could give her further instructions, but he was no longer where he had been. She cocked her head to listen if he was close by then called his name quietly, without any response.

She arbitrarily chose the left path, whose walls were broken up by patches of vertically strung beads interspersed between maps of forests so detailed they could have been paintings. The only text on these was a title written across the top of each--"The Barely Charted Wilds"--followed by a number.

After her third pass by the tapestry from the Candyland game, Elizabeth had to admit she was lost. Like the garden outside, this maze was incredibly effective at preventing her from getting where she wanted to go. She wondered if she would have more luck just dropping to the floor and crawling around army-style.

She turned down a passageway so narrow that she fit through only by sidestepping. It stretched for ten or twelve feet bordered by three identical maps of County Wicklow on one side, all sewn together and with a loose string attached on each at a town called Enniskerry. Opposite hung a map of something called the Wheatsea, with only a few words scattered across it, written in both English and symbols that she was coming to think of as Priest-speak. She wished she had something to write with and on, so she could start teaching herself what some of these symbols meant.

She emerged from the narrow walkway into an open area about the size of her bedroom at home. This appeared to be the end of the blanket-fort: in front of her was the lower aspect of the tower. Its wide black stones were smooth and gleamed like plates of armor. The round border of the structure extended into the room, and she could see a squareish base that extended below ground level, even below the dug-out floor of the room.

The center of the tower had a larger plate twice the size of the others and inset a few inches from the wide curve of the structure. This gave it the look of a door, though even if the floor of the house had not been dug down, this plate would not be flush with the ground. It sat at the midpoint of the square base, and Elizabeth thought she would be able to use that base as a step to get high enough to examine it closer. Priest had not specifically forbidden her from examining the tower; he had only said that nothing should get in or out.

The reflecting flicker of the light from the hurricane lamps shone differently on this larger plate. She swung one leg up to hook her foot on the base-stone and hauled her body onto its narrow ledge. The rocks of the tower had a subtle vibration to them; they felt like the floor of a house that had a washing machine running in the basement below. This low hum was more pronounced in her left hand; it trembled visibly, a back-and-forth rotation of the wrist, making her open hand looked as though it was jiggling an invisible doorknob.

Elizabeth balanced on the thin ledge on her tiptoes, her chest and belly against the adjacent stone for balance. The large stone’s lower edge was at about the height of her thighs, and its inset was indeed slight: just about an inch or so. There was no gap around it to suggest that it was something that would open either outward or inward, and no handle or other ornamentation. She hadn't seen any ground-level opening in the tower when she traversed it from the outside, though she could have missed it in the dark of the orchard. But if there wasn't a door outside, and this one didn't open, then this prison meant permanent confinement.

As she shuffled to the side of the stone, something about its face changed, something about the perspective, and she found she could see something moving within. Unlike the other stones, this one wasn't opaque and black...it was transparent, and filled with blackness. Not just darkness, but a swirling blackness. She tapped her sharp metal finger against the tower.

As though called by this tapping, something rushed up at her out of the darkness. She had a moment of deja vu, flashing back to the chaffinches attacking the window in her father's house.

But this was not several birds. This was a horror. A woman's face, twisted and pale and with too many teeth crammed into its mouth, lining it like stalactites. Where eyes should have been there were only sockets, eyelids closing and opening over empty spaces as the woman undulated in and out of Elizabeth's view. She moved as if the roiling and churning darkness had buoyancy, her pale palms widening as they slapped and flattened against the inside of the barrier.

Elizabeth made these observations as she careened backwards, the startle of the sudden appearance of this woman loosing her already tenuous balance on the thin ledge. Her center of gravity shifted and she fell through the air awkwardly, striking one knee on the base of the tower and landing hard on her backside, sending a rattling message up her spine.

The feral creature pressed her face close to the window, frantically scraping her fingers across the surface with a savage fury, so hard that Elizabeth saw bright red blood erupt from her fingernails, swept away into the blackness as the fingers raced across the material. The creature started tearing at the edges of the portal, pulling and scratching, and then gave up and began beating against it with her fists, a rhythmic pounding that echoed forth from the tower.

Far across the length of the barn, Priest shouted something unintelligible, something angry and worried. Elizabeth could hear him running toward her, his footfalls in stops and starts as he navigated the narrow passageways. This was soon drowned out as the woman threw her head back and opened her mouth, releasing a scream that penetrated the rocks of the tower, a raging cry that shook the walls and extinguished half the lights.

The howling ended as Priest emerged from the maps, eschewing the designated hallways and tearing through the last few hangings. He looked at the woman as she swam back into the blackness, then grabbed Elizabeth by the front of her sweatshirt, shaking a pointing finger of the other hand in her face. "What did you do to her?!?"

Elizabeth was too stunned to respond. She had just realized that she had seen the woman before. With less teeth, and with eyes still in place, and before a thousand other insults and injuries had been visited upon her.

It was the woman from the picture on Priest's necklace.