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“Terrible to meet you, Vera,” she said with a half-smile.
I raised my brows.
“It’s just what we say here. Everyone you meet is going to end up dead or mad, sooner or later.” She walked onward. “Don’t trust anyone unless they tell you their name,” she called back, already vanishing in the mist. “And if you think you’ve found a way out, just remember, the Labyrinth always lies.”
For a moment, I stared at the swirling mist, mind spinning with everything I’d already learned about the Labyrinth. When my mind snapped out of my temporary daze, I called out to her, but there was no response. The silent mist swirled and hugged my body, which only served to highlight how alone I felt in this forsaken forest.
My hands itched so badly that I was brought quickly back to the present. The sensation was so acute, so agonizing, I wanted to tear off the blistering flesh. Bleeding would be preferable to this burning itch.
Something as silly as an itch that wouldn’t go away was one of life’s most frustrating things. This place really did want to drive me mad.
“I won’t break that easy,” I said aloud.
On the breeze, I was almost certain I heard the words, But you will.
I awoke face down in the leaves. My hands were so enflamed and tender I could barely push myself off the ground. My mouth felt heavy on one side. My puffy cheek was so swollen that I could see it when I looked down. My throat burned, and my tongue clacked in my dry mouth. Despite the agonizing itch, thirst screamed louder than all other sensations.
I didn’t remember falling asleep. The last thing I remembered was kneeling in the semidarkness, still hunting for honeyleaf. As I stumbled to my feet rather clumsily, I spotted a dark green clump of the herb I’d been hunting only a few steps away. I’d been so close!
I kicked the plant lightly with my toe. My mother’s slippers were ragged and brown. They wouldn’t last long. The leaves didn’t explode with spiders or transform into a pack of wasps. They merely flopped sideways.
Tentatively, I bent down to examine it, trying to ignore my screaming thirst and my throbbing, shaking hands. I smelled the faint, sweet whiff of honeyleaf.
I tore off a handful of small pointed leaves. Relieved tears welled in my eyes as I used my elbows to crush the leaves against a nearby rock and gently smeared the pulp into my aching palms. Then, with careful fingers, I rubbed a little onto my cheek.
My sigh of relief was loud enough to startle a nearby bird.
Every muscle tensed, but for the moment, nothing else moved.
As the torturous itch soothed away, I set my gaze forward and determined not to stop until I found Silver Creek. The sun was high in the sky again, which meant I’d slept all night and part of the next day—if time obeyed any rules here.
The oak and beech trees didn’t move as long as I watched them, but before long, it seemed as if I had walked into an orchard—a gnarled and ominous orchard full of dead dogwoods. Hundreds of these lifeless trees pointed their limbs toward an indifferent sky. Movement caught my eye, and heat flashed through my arms and legs. Tall, lanky shadows with hollowed cheeks and the signature red hats of the king’s soldiers waltzed among the trees, slipping in and out of view and taking my breaths with them as they went. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry, but were all moving toward me, slithering in and out of view so that it was impossible to count them. Their vacant yet venomous stares suggested they were hunting, and I was the prey. Several of them appeared more skeleton than human.
For a moment, I was too scared to move.
My throat stuck to itself, making it hard to breathe. I contemplated stuffing a fistful of damp dirt into my mouth just to suck out the moisture, but the creeping shadows drawing ever nearer were reason enough to turn and run. I skirted the outside of the maze of brittle dogwoods and skeletal shadows. Soon, I lost sight of them, and—thank the fates—it didn’t appear that they were rushing to follow me.
My body needed water desperately, but at least the miserable itch was subsiding. I stopped to examine the blisters forming on the underside of my arms from where they rubbed against the boning in my lace dress. This was arguably the worst attire for a survival situation. My mother’s slippers were slowing me down, but it was that or walk barefoot through nettles and the occasional knife-like broken hull of old walnut shells.
The faintest sound of trickling water met my ears. My entire body responded, and I lost a little of my composure as a happy gasp burst from my lips. Even my blood, as it pumped through my veins, chanted water, water, water.
The trickling grew louder. I was crying and laughing by the time I saw the creek, gurgling along in a spot of sunshine. It looked so happy and merry, I forgot entirely that I was in a place designed to drive me mad.
I dropped the bow and quiver and dove for the water, crashing to my knees and sucking the cold liquid into my open mouth. I choked, coughed, and drank more.
That’s when the first flash of silver scales startled me.
My face was pressed down into the water before I realized something was holding me. I thrashed and grabbed, but my hands only slipped off the slimy, cold flesh. The creek was shallow, and my mouth filled with sandy water.
Bucking like a horse, I managed to pull my face out of the water in time for a single breath. I swallowed enough sediment in that one breath that I went down again choking and hacking. But I’d seen my attacker.
A silver-scaled woman less than half my size and trimmed with tiny fins wrestled me with strong hands. She had wet hair clumped with grasses and eyes like black orbs. Her grip slipped toward my neck, and I knew if she latched on, I’d be dead. I threw a punch where her small head should be but missed. Using my legs, I wrenched myself around until I was face up, preparing to land a solid punch to her jaw.
She splashed back into the water and sank partway down into the mud, like a salamander. Then she was at my throat again, shoving my head under.
I gulped in a mouthful of water. There was no way to clear my lungs. The ripples in the water reflected the sunny sky above, but I saw the outline of my killer. She was so small, yet I couldn’t overpower her. I remembered with a jolt that I had a weapon on the shore. But I couldn’t breathe, and both my hands were employed in trying to shove her off. She flashed pointed, dark teeth at me. I curled my spine and kicked my legs over my head, using a move that always worked to throw Archer off when he and I wrestled. Only this time, my heel connected with my attacker’s temple.
She sailed off me, and I rose from the water, sputtering and seeing stars.
