Page 11 of Alexis

A wild idea occurred to her.

“Is there anythingguardingthe labyrinth?” she asked.

“Not currently,” Oberon assured her. “Would you like me to add something?”

Not currently?

“No thank you,” she told him.

“What made you ask about that?” Tiago asked.

She scanned the hill again, but still didn’t see any more movement. Maybe it had just been a trick of the fading light.

“Nothing, really,” she told him. “It’s just that in the old stories, sometimes there’s a minotaur.”

“What’s a minotaur?”

“A big, strong guy with horns,” she explained.

Tiago cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I heard it as soon as I said it.”

He chuckled, and she was surprised at how easily her own laugh joined his.

“Are you ready to begin,” Oberon asked.

“Let’s do this,” Tiago said, a pleased and slightly aggressive note in his deep voice.

She smiled, recognizing the tone of a fellow fierce competitor, and took his hand as they marched into the corn.

The air was redolent with the scent of fallen apples, sweet hay, and molding leaves. With Tiago’s big, warm hand around hers, Alexis felt a sense of coziness descend over her, even as they strode quickly down the first corridor.

But when they reached the end, an odd sight awaited.

“We could see this part from the grass, right?” Tiago asked, confirming her suspicions.

“Yes,” she said. “It branched into two parts, not three.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, frowning.

“Should we go back and look?” she asked.

“Let’s go right,” he suggested. “There should be a single option to turn left.”

“I’ll wait here,” she told him.

His eyebrows went up, but he didn’t argue.

She watched him stride down to the righthand path and disappear into the corn stalks.

A raven cried out overhead as it flew for the orchard and a little shiver went down her spine.

“Now there are two possible ways to turn,” Tiago said, returning to her. “I think the whole maze is changing around us.”

That explained the movement she’d spotted before.

“Let’s go out and watch,” she suggested. “Maybe there’s a pattern to the way it shifts.”

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