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The Labyrinth had trapped me down here.
With trembling hands, I lowered myself back down into the soft mud. The Labyrinth tests us. The words echoed in my mind like the wingbeats of the crows above. This test would be the one to break me, if the convulsions of my terrified heart were any indication. My breaths quickened until they were sharp and loud and beyond my control.
“No!” I panted.
I couldn’t give in so easily.
My lungs didn’t agree. They kept sucking air faster and faster.
I searched my mind for the locked door where I could hide my fears. The terror rising inside me made it harder to find, but soon I was mentally staring at a freestanding door braced with iron. The door to the Labyrinth was not unlike this one, albeit less imposing.
Ash had warned me not to use it until I was trained, but I didn’t have time for that. I was drowning in panic. The only weapon I had was this place in my mind where I could shut out unwanted thoughts.
The door waited, ready to swallow away whatever I desired. The darkness, the crows, the being alone, the unknown, the aching fear that I’d never see Ash or my brothers again. I stuffed every bit of what frightened me behind that door and slammed it shut.
My knees buckled. I swayed against the ladder, barely grabbing it in time to keep from falling into the mud.
When I straightened up, I was breathing evenly.
Birds scattered somewhere above me, and my eyes adjusted fully to the darkness. Curving tunnel walls stood out on either side, and a damp path reflected just enough light for me to see the short distance until it turned right.
Merrily, and slightly aware of how foolish it was to toss all my fear away, I started forward, cold but not yet miserable. My feet ached, and I wished I’d tossed that pain inside the locked room as well. But if madness was the monster I had to defeat in this place, pain was the crutch I might have to bear.
Spiderwebs licked my skin. I pushed them lazily away, surprised by how little I cared about them now. I let out a small giggle, triumphant that my little door scheme had worked.
Something on the ground skittered deeper into the darkness, but I paid it no heed. The absence of fear left me strangely lightheaded, like too much had been taken out of my mind at once. The tunnel turned, and though I had no light, I knew I must move forward. So I walked, using my hands as guides along the tunnel walls.
After what might have been ten minutes or an hour, I finally spotted a light up ahead, around a distant corner. As I walked closer, however, the light never intensified. I turned, then turned again, always tracing the walls with my fingers, unconcerned about the myriad spiderwebs I raked through, and still the light remained dim.
I called Ash’s name again, just in case. He didn’t answer.
“You left me right when I needed you,” I said, finding comfort in hearing my voice over the sticky sounds of boots against mud-covered stone. “You were supposed to teach me how to do this.”
No one responded. The silent tunnels yawned with a frigid breeze. My toes were going numb, like a part of me was already dying.
“Not fair,” I protested, again talking to the maze. “I learn that I can see magic, and then you shut me in a place without light.”
You came down here willingly.
I leaped sideways, afraid I’d nearly run into someone in the dark, and bumped my shoulder against the tunnel wall. Shock was a form of fear, but it appeared to still be possible under my current altered mental state.
The voice had sounded distant, and yet, it had felt like my own breath, both familiar and strange. I couldn’t tell if I’d actually heard it or just thought those words. Surely, I’d thought them. But in a deep, male voice?
Despite my confusion, my heart rate remained slow and my breaths even.
I’d resorted to talking to the Labyrinth. Perhaps it was simply talking back to me. I shook my head, angry at myself for my irrational thoughts.
Madness. This place would drag it out of me. Or perhaps it would drag me out of myself. I clenched my jaw and marched forward. There would be an exit to these tunnels. There had to be. If this was a test, I was going to pass.
14
When my fingers would no longer curl into fists and my feet felt like logs attached to the bottom of my legs, I stopped. My back barely registered the chill of the wall as I leaned against it. Cold had seeped too deep into my blood.
Being this cold was dangerous, not to mention painfully uncomfortable, but my brain wasn’t concerned. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. Normally, in a pitch black, frozen tunnel with no way out, my body would respond with heightened senses, a fluttering pulse, and that innate desire to survive that accompanied bone-deep fear.
Instead, my body was at ease, sinking deeper into hypothermia and slack-jawed nonchalance.
“I need my fear back.”
