Prompt #3: Garden, Teeth, Bright
"Is there a difference between a maze and a labyrinth?"
"Mazes have a separate entrance and exit. Labyrinths don't," I said. The old landscape garden matched the old manor house it belonged to for levels if shabbiness and neglect, and the fact that the manor was settled in the midst of wild moors made it look all the smaller and more haunted.
And it was even more haunted than it looked.
"Is this a maze or a labyrinth?" Julie asked, peering into the passage between two massive rosemary hedges.
"Maze, probably. They're more common in England, I think." Julie raised an eyebrow at me.
"You say that like they just grow of their own accord."
"Are we sure they don't?"
Julie frowned at me. "I'm going in."
"Have fun."
"Coward."
"Oh absolutely," I agreed. She stuck her tongue out at me and went into the maze.
And I waited outside. Alone. While rain threatened the moorlands around me. "Julie?" I called after a moment. I peered into the maze. Nothing but shadows and silence and the overwhelming perfume of rosemary.
"Shit," I said, and followed after her. I'd never hear the end of it if I lost her in a hedge maze. I was still hearing about losing her at a horse race, and that was ten years ago.
It took me a while to realize anything was off about the maze. I'm half in the Gray at the best of times, right? And it came on slow. Just a whisper, a feeling, a color that wasn't right. There was a breeze that didn't rustle the hedges so cold it bit into my bones. The sky overhead slipped from slate clouds to an inky black night studded with stars.
"This is...weird," the Grim murmured, following me with a solidness he rarely had out of the Gray.
"What the fuck happened here to make a place like this?"
He shrugged.
"Julie!" I called, and my voice felt thin and wispy, like a cloud torn apart by the wind. I swallowed and called again, imagining my voice carrying through the rosemary. "Julie! Julianna Knockwood!"
"Devin?" she called back.
I found her frowning at the ground, hands on her hips. She shimmered, sometimes a girl in black overalls and big boots, sometimes shrouded in a mantle of crow feathers and a crow skull mask. I wondered if I did the same when she looked at me, and what form Nettle took. Rabbit skull? Betta fins? Jay feathers?
"Thought you were a coward," she said.
"I am," I said. "What the entire fuck is this place?"
"I don't know."
"It was a rhetorical question."
"You know I'm bad at those."
"I know, you goddamned encyclopedia." I joined her and looked down too.
"What are we—ah. I see."
The earth was full of bones.
Some were human. Some were only mostly human. The teeth gave them away.
"We should go," I said.
"They aren't doing anything."
"Yet."
I didn't have to tell her that the dead didn't always stay quiet. She knew as well as I did.
Julie looked at me, dark eyes bright behind her skull mask. "What's the point of being a shadowcatcher if you run away from a pile of bones?"
"I'm not worried about the bones. I'm worried about the things they turned into."
Cowards live longer, and I'm still working on my self-preservation skills.
"Devin," the Grim whispered anxiously.
There were so many goddamned teeth.
A skull with an elongated mouth like a wolf near my foot rattled.
“Of course,” I said.
Julie drew her sword.
“Oh, come on.”
It wasn’t the bones that came for us, but the things they turned into. I hate being right sometimes. It was a massive thing, a mess of darkness and gaping mouths and glinting teeth.
“You had to go in the fucking maze,” I said, and pulled my bow from my back.
“Shut up,” Julie said, and dove right in.
“Doesn’t she know it’s a bad idea to get in front of you?” the Grim asked.
“Yes. Does she care? No.” I aimed over her and shot, catching one of the wide mouths. The thing whined and shook, and lashed out at us with its many many mouths.
“Get it off the bones!” I called. I couldn’t tell if Julie heard me or not, but she pressed into the creature anyway, and I kept firing arrows that vanished into the murk of the thing. Julie drove her sword up and into it, where its heart could have been, and it screamed, stumbling back.
My big old officer’s coat had many, many pockets, and I reached into one and pulled out a bottle of salt. It smelled like the lagoon when I unstoppered it, like the kitchen had when Armand had made it for me, wide and dark and deep. I spread it over the bones and then replaced it and reached into another pocket.
How do you kill a spirit? With salt and fire and spirits of your own.
The thing turned several mouths on me to hiss and squeal when I dumped vodka over the bones over the salt.
“I know,” I said, lighting a match. “I’m a big ol’ bastard.”
Its voice was very, very human when it screamed, going up in flames. Julie stood next to me by the bones as they turned into a pyre.
“Maybe we should get out of the maze before we burn it down?” Julie suggested after a moment of silence.
“This is why you’re the smart one,” I said.
