A doorway.
She had been so focused on not stumbling along the uneven path, she hadn’t been paying attention to the rock formation that shadowed her, reaching higher as the trail narrowed. She studied it more closely now, and what had seemed like solid granite resolved into a pattern of hundreds of individual quarried rocks, stacked tightly, each unique shape wedged perfectly along the next to form a massive man-made wall reaching two stories high, and likely once as solid as bricks and mortar.
Blooms of lichen and moss that had seemed to protect it in a curtain of white and green were actually ravaging the ancient stone, working in tandem with gravity to wear down carefully ordered slabs of masonry into crumbling ruins. The mottled colors blended into the lush, dark greenery that was visible just within the doorway, and had camouflaged the entrance when viewed from afar.
Closer now, she saw it clearly. Its presence was announced by a massive lintel bisecting the rock. A disembodied breeze rustled the leaves of whatever plant life grew within, making the gateway seem to hum with a life of its own.
She knew the sensible thing would be to turn around while she could still backtrack along her original trail, but the artist in Lily clamored to discover something beyond the ordinary. A unique subject to inspire her long-neglected creative energies. Ignoring her better judgment, she veered from the path.
The doorway was wide but low, and Lily was forced to stoop as she carefully pushed her way through the ferns that shrouded the entry. The walls were staggeringly thick, and it took two steps to walk through the entrance. Although there was no roof overhead, it took Lily’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gray filtered light that illuminated the space in a surreal haze. The walls were actually curved to form a massive circular structure, and she wondered if she hadn’t stumbled upon the remains of a great tower or ancient broch.
The greenery that had been visible through the doorway was in fact an immense hedge. It clung close to the stone, curving to echo the shape of the rounded enclosure. Towering close to seven feet overhead, it filled Lily’s line of vision.
At first glance, the plant beckoned to her. Dark berries the size of cherries bobbed gently among bushy leaves fluttering lazily in the breeze. Flowers dotted the branches and the plant appeared decorated with small purple bells. Smiling, Lily stepped closer, thinking to pluck one of the happy blooms to press in her sketchbook.
Her hand froze in midair as nasty little aspects of the plant revealed themselves. The flowers, though purple, were a dingy shade like the color of a day-old bruise. The leaves were also drab, and laced with dark veins that eerily suggested a life force beyond that of a simple plant. But for the fruit that shone a deep black, the entire hedge was dulled by short, bristly down that only furthered the sensation that an otherworldly spirit pulsed within.
Lily tried to look through the greenery, but the plant was dense with immoveable gnarled branches, ancient and woody at the base, growing into fleshy outer limbs the color of rotten eggplant .
A thin path wound its way to her right and left, matted with loamy brown moss and remarkably clear of roots or other debris. A few steps in, Lily noticed a gap in the plant. She had almost missed it, as the opening merely revealed more of the same unending green shrubbery. She leaned on one foot to look in and caught her breath. Long corridors split off to either side, off of which were more openings, which she assumed led to even more corridors, like a colossal labyrinth. She had seen pictures of gardenmazes when she ’d studied European architecture in college, but the quaint, whimsical topiaries found in
London gardens weren’t anything like this. She had the fleeting sensation that this maze had a life of its own. It had clearly been neglected for years, and she fancied it was a sort of malevolent force waiting to consume her.
She shook her head as if that could dispense with the fear that suddenly gripped her. Lily wanted to prove to herself that she wasn ’t afraid. If she were to make a fresh start in her personal life, she would need to embrace a little adventure. Besides, she figured, what better sketching opportunity than the bizarre Escher-esque maze right in front of her?
Lily passed through the opening and was thrust into a complete and shocking silence. She fought the sensation of being swallowed up, becoming one with the plant itself. She hadn’t noticed the birdsong that had ridden along the rustling breeze until its sudden absence left only the sound of her own breath echoing around her.
She was standing in a small room, with those hairy green leaves, dark fruits, and flowers forming the walls around her. Three passages offered themselves, each showing glimpses of dark green hallways forking into more green rooms offering more passageways.
Momentarily hypnotized by the effect, Lily took a tentative step through one of the passages. Alarms sounded in her head, but she gulped back the now-consistent throb of unease with the thought that she ’d go just a few feet to grab a peek around the first corner or two and then turn immediately back, retracing her steps exactly.
She took her first left and then her first left again—just enough to be completely surrounded by the massive plant. It was dizzying. Everywhere she looked there were shades of green and openings into more green and darker green shadows.
Abruptly, claustrophobia seized Lily’s chest and she decided it was time to get out immediately. She took a quick mental snapshot for the drawing that she would dash off once back outside the labyrinth , then confidently took her first right, then first right again. But instead of taking her back to where she started, that placed her in another green alcove, which opened up to three other intersecting corridors.
Fighting back a wave of panic, Lily mumbled to herself, “Okaaay. No biggie, ” her voice comforting her in the now deafening silence. “I must’ve taken the wrong first right is all. ” Lily backtracked left and left again to return to what she thought was her first stopping point.
Now she was alarmed . She thought she ’d retraced her steps exactly, but she was standing in another, larger alcove formed by the increasingly malevolent-looking shrub. She studied the space—could this have been her original starting point? Were there only three openings in the first room? She thought there had been four. She tried going left again. This time she knew she was completely lost as she peeked her head into what was to be her second left only to see a much larger rectangular space opening onto just two other passage s. She jerked her head back out of the alcove—she knew she hadn’t seen that room before. The last thing she needed was to get even deeper into this maze than she already was.
“Think, Lily, think.” Wasn’t there some sort of law of physics she could turn to in this situation? Like, a law of the universe stating that, if you keep turning left, you’ll eventually get back to where you started? Okay, she thought, so I’m no scientist, but there must be some other way to work through this.
She remembered the mazes that she loved to do as a kid. This damned maze couldn’t be any more difficult than one of those. How big could it be, anyway, when she hadn ’t even seen it from her perch on the hill? Her strategy, she decided, would be to plow bravely forward, leaving some sort of trail as she went. Surely, eventually, she would find her way back out.
Another hour passed, and Lily’s mind had cleared of everything but the single -minded focus of systematically working her way through the maze. Her pattern was: head down a corridor, taking every first right until she hit a dead end, then retrace her steps and start the pattern over again taking every second right, and so on. She scuffed her heel into the path as she went to mark her trail.
Lily came to an abrupt stop. She found herself standing in what was the only entrance to the smallest alcove yet. Directly across from her was a niche cut into the wall of shrubbery, displaying a pale gray stone carving about three feet by three feet square. Lily couldn ’t fight the artist in her and, transfixed, slowly approached for a better look. The niche itself had long since become overgrown, so Lily had to pull some branches away to get a good look at the carving, shuddering as a clump of the plant ’s heavy black berries brushed against her hand.
It had been done in very hard rock, Lily thought probably granite, which surprised her since it would ’ve taken some pretty sophisticated tools to get lines this delicate into rock that hard. Even the ancient Egyptians hadn’t figured that one out. It had a surprisingly smooth surface for something continually exposed to the elements. A geometric pattern lined the outer edge of the square, reminding Lily of the chevron motif popular in ancient Greek sculpture. Every four inches or so, though, the chevron pattern was interrupted by one of many different carved markings, which Lily thought were runic characters like the kind found on Celtic knickknacks at the Glasgow airport tourist shop.
The center, though, was what really captured her attention:lines carved in rudimentary shapes, interspersed with deeply carved points. Blurring her eyes, she imagined she could see simple human and animal shapes represented in the form of the lines. If she had to hazard a guess, she would say that she had discovered an ancient star chart, but surely something of that nature would be in some museum somewhere, not all the way out here. No, this had to have once belonged to some rich, eccentric Scot who let his garden get away from him. It was just the sort of lawn ornament that she could picture being sold side by side with those silly gargoyles that had become so big in gardening stores back home.
But she couldn ’t get over how smooth and cold the stone was. The clean quality of the lines suggested to her that this had to be more than your average garden statue. She slowly traced her finger along each line, all the while wondering in the back of her mind what kind of tools an artisan would need to carve with this kind of precision. Smooth line. Point. Smooth line. Point.
She became transfixed. Beginning in the upper left corner, Lily ran her finger slowly over the outlining edge of the carving, feeling the chevron pattern flow into a runic character then back to the chevron pattern again. A random thought popped into the back of her head and she thought with wonder how it is that the blind can learn to read Braille. She sensed that her own finger was becoming more sensitive to the rhythm of the pattern, and that if she were only to concentrate a bit more, she too would be able to close her eyes and take in the entirety of the image with her hand alone. When her finger returned to the upper left corner of the carving, she slowly and systematically began to trace each line and each point in the center of the stone. Lily was torn from her reverie when, upon dipping her finger in the last point at the end of the last line, the ground beneath her feet jolted. She bit back a shriek as her mind raced to make sense of what was happening. The earth heaved again. A crooked half smile somewhere between amusement and terror quirked her features as Lily’s last conscious thought was how ironic it was to die in an earthquake while on vacation outside San Francisco.
Chapter 4
“I’ll not understand why you’re off to treat with such a man as Monk. ”