He stops, and there’s silence. A long silence. Has he turned around and gone back to the hotel? However much I crane my neck, I can’t see. The light is starting to fade just a little too fast, and the shadows of the maze pathways are thickening. If he’s not careful, he’ll be in there all night.
“Hal?”
“What?” His answer comes from deep in the hedges.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting lost, apparently.”
“Hal!”
“What now?” He sounds more frustrated than he did a minute ago. “Oh, you’re kidding. How can this be another dead end?”
I cup my hands around my mouth to make my voice carry better. “HAL!”
“WHAT?”
“Pick up a lantern.”
“Unless it’s got a map on the bottom, I don’t see how that’ll help!”
“Just do it, will you?”
A corner of the maze brightens as a glow that wasn’t there a moment ago flickers into life.
“Flora? Are you still there? I can’t figure out which way to go…”
“Hang on.” I can’t quite see where he is – I’m not high enough.
I look along the wall to the right of me.
The torches on the roof of the tower are always here – they don’t get lit very often, but they’re a permanent fixture bolted to the wall and the floor.
They’re sturdy.
I peer down over the wall. It’s not so very high…
Okay, so it’s quite high.
But you know what? I’ll be fine.
I kick off my shoes and wrap one hand around the metal torch post closest to me, pulling the loose skirt of my dress aside with the other.
One.
Two.
Three.
I climb up onto the top of the wall…and there he is, down in the bottom corner of the maze. Going entirely the wrong way. Again.
“Hal!” I let the hem of my skirt drop back down, holding onto the pole with both hands. The ground actually looks a lot further away than I thought. “I see you!”
“Which way?” The glow of his lantern moves right…then doubles back on itself to the left.
“Keep going – straight ahead, past the next two turns.” The light stops moving. I can just about see the top of his head from here, looking left, right, straight ahead. “Okay?”
I picture myself down in the maze, following the path to the heart of it. “Left. Turn left.” The candle moves again, following my directions to the next set of possible turns.
“Hal?”
“Yep.”
“Why are you coming after me?”
“Because…” He tails off. Or at least, I don’t hear him say anything. After a pause, he says it. “Because I had to.”
“I don’t need you to rescue me,” I shout.
“That’s not what I meant. And anyway, I was kind of hoping you’d rescue me?” he calls back. His face shines in the lantern light.
“Turn right. Then right again.” I watch the candle moving, watch the light of it glittering off his hair, watch the blue of his suited shoulders lightening and darkening as he moves through the maze until he’s only a few turns away.
“Straight on, then right.”
I loosen my grip on the post and jump down from the wall to the roof, just as he emerges from the last turn of the hedge into the clearing at the heart of it. He looks up at me, standing on the tower, and I look down at him, and I can feel where our gazes meet. It pushes the breath out of my body, steals a beat from my heart. It makes my hands tremble.
And none of that is bad – not this time, not like it has been before.
He sets the lantern on the bench in front of the tower and puts both his hands in his pockets…and he doesn’t once look away from me.
He’s in my head.
He’s in my head and I can feel his voice brushing against the inside of my mind and it feels warm and welcome…and safe.
He’s in my head and he is real – and he’s waiting for me to come down from the tower.
Carrying my shoes, I walk out of the tower doorway and into the little square at the heart of the maze. The lanterns at the edges cast little golden pools of light all around us. “You heard what they were saying, didn’t you?”
“It’s none of my business what they were saying.”
“You still heard it though, right?”
He looks uncomfortable for a second. “Look, if you want to talk about it…”
“No. Maybe. No. It’ll sound crazy.” It is crazy. “Maybe later. I just needed to get out for a minute – seeing them, it brought back…stuff I’d rather not deal with right now. That’s all.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m okay. Really. You don’t have to, you know…wait with me, or whatever.” I wave an arm in the general direction of the hotel.
He doesn’t move. “The way you ran…” He stops abruptly, swallows the words that were already on his tongue, and then half-smiles. “People only run like that when they know they’re never going to get away from something. Like they know it’s tied to them. I know a bit about running away. I mean, I know what it’s like to feel like you have to, like it’s the only thing you can do, even if in the end it doesn’t make any difference,” he says, his eyes on the ground between us. “Can I tell you a secret?” He takes half a step towards me, closing the distance between us to almost nothing. I can smell the scent of him and feel the warmth of his face almost against mine as he leans closer; feel his breath move my hair as he lowers his voice and whispers into my ear, “I’m kind of afraid of the dark.”
He leans away again, scanning my face as though he’s waiting for me to laugh or to tell him he must be kidding, right…? But he wasn’t kidding. He meant it. Whatever memories of his are hiding in the darkness, they frighten him.
He’s afraid of the dark, but he followed me out into it.
He walked me all the way home through the deer park.
With one hand I pick up the lantern from the bench, and with the other I take his hand, weaving my fingers through his – and I look into the future with my eyes wide open.
“Me too. But I guess if we stick together, we’ll be okay.”
He smiles at me, closes his hand around mine.
And together we walk into the darkness of the maze.
He doesn’t pull his hand away when we come back out onto the lawns. If anything, he knits his fingers more tightly through mine. Ahead of us, light streams from the ground-floor windows of the hotel, from the library, the bar, the restaurant. The terrace shines with candles and torches. Faint voices and piano music drift from the marquee.
“Your boss knows how to throw a party.” Hal swings our hands back and forth as we walk.
“He does.”
The evening has got cooler, and quickly. And while my dress is extremely pretty and extremely half-price, it’s also extremely not warm. It doesn’t help that there are large damp patches in the middle of the back where I panic-sweated through it. Goosebumps parade up and down my bare arms…and Hal spots them.
“You’re cold?”
“No.” I try to suppress a shiver. “Hang on, wait – no…” Because he’s started to take off his suit jacket. “Don’t do that.”