Maze Running and other Magical Missions (16 page)

As Yann and the Master circled each other, Helen tried to work out who was bigger and heavier. There seemed to be more of Yann, because of his long horse body, his two arms and his four legs. But the centaur was slim and elegant, not heavy and muscular like the minotaur, who had a huge chest and shoulders holding up his massive head. The Master had longer, stronger arms too. If he managed to grab Yann, he could probably crush him.

Though Yann had laid down his bow and the Master’s axe was leaning against the tartan couch, they both had weapons. Yann had four heavy hooves and the Master had two long horns.

The Three watched the centaur and the minotaur walking round the space, but they were also busy with their hands. The oldest was knitting a mitten, the middle one was darning a sock, and the youngest was braiding a friendship bracelet.

Suddenly the Master lowered his head and charged at Yann, his horns aimed at the centaur’s human chest.

The centaur stepped out of the way and let the minotaur run past him. The Master skidded to a stop, so he didn’t run into the deer painting on the wall. 

Yann said, “Do you want to try that again, bull? I think you missed.”

The Master roared and charged again. Yann leapt away, his fast hooves keeping him safe.

Helen relaxed a little, wondering if Yann’s speed meant he could survive this duel.

But escaping injury wouldn’t win a fight. And Yann had to win, to keep his own healing and to deny the Master the power for which the Great Dragon would punish her friends.

Yann couldn’t spend the whole duel dancing on his hooves, he had to attack.

She needn’t have worried. The next time the minotaur rushed at him, Yann stepped sideways, then reared up and crashed both front hooves onto the Master’s back.

The Master grunted with pain and stumbled forward.

Yann reared up again to attack a second time. But the Master spun round, seized Yann’s front legs and threw the centaur to the ground.

Before the Master could lower his horns to gore him, Yann rolled and leapt up again.

The two of them stood still, staring at each other, reassessing each other’s strength and skill after those first attacks.

The Master smiled. “But your long delicate legs aren’t your real weakness, are they, colt?” He circled round, dipping his horns occasionally, slashing the sharpened tips towards Yann, laughing when the centaur jumped out of the way. 

“I know what your soft centre is, centaur!” The minotaur strode over to Yann’s friends. “It’s them, isn’t it? I could throw you down, stamp on you, stab you, and you’d bounce back up again, because you’re young and arrogant and don’t mind a bit of pain.

“But if I hurt
them
…” He grabbed for Lavender again, but she’d already dived behind Helen.

The minotaur stared at them with his glittering left eye. “I see their weaknesses. The fairy’s fear of being ripped apart. The selkie’s fear of teeth.” He opened his bull mouth and bellowed, showing his huge crushing molars.

He turned back to Yann. “I won’t hurt them
now
. I’ll hurt them once I’ve killed you. I’ll pull the fairy apart, feather by feather. I’ll give the selkie to some
long-fanged
friends of mine, so they can chew her to bits.”

Helen heard Rona gasp behind her and felt Lavender nestling deep into her hair.

The Master boomed, “I’ll hurt them once I’ve killed you. Unless you surrender right now. Unless you
bow down to me
!”

He jabbed his horns at Yann, who backed off and kicked out, almost losing his balance as he tried to watch the Master and look over to his friends at the same time.

“It’s not honourable to threaten the audience at a duel,” gasped Yann. “This is between us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, boy. I don’t care about honour. I care about
victory
! So surrender. Put down those hooves, or I will tell your friends what else their weaknesses suggest to me.” 

Yann kicked out at the bull’s left eye. The Master twisted away just in time.

“Don’t you care about them? The faery boy, I could scar his face so badly with barbed wire that he would never glamour anyone again; the blue boy, I could tie him down in a desert and let him dry out until his tattoos flake off.”

He charged at Yann again. The centaur leapt to the side and cantered over to his friends. “You have to get away! Please…”

“No,” said Lee. “We will stay here and we will watch you win. That big bully’s threats don’t scare us.”

But that wasn’t true. Lavender was shivering in Helen’s hair. Rona was sobbing behind her. Tangaroa was barely breathing in front of her. She’d even heard an unfamiliar shake in Lee’s voice.

The Master knew how to get to the heart of each of their fears.

Helen could hear him now, threatening to pull out all Sylvie’s teeth or lock Catesby in a freezer.

Helen wondered what he would suggest for her, what weaknesses he had seen in her face. But the Master had stopped talking, to concentrate on avoiding Yann’s angry flurry of kicks.

Then Helen wondered what weakness the Master would see in himself. What he would see if he looked at his own face in a mirror? Would he see his own fears, his own nightmares, his own hidden weaknesses? Would that make him shake the way her friends were shaking? 

She watched Yann, less sure on his hooves now he was worried about his friends.

She watched the minotaur, striding about the heart of his own maze.

She watched the Three, busy on the couch.

And she wondered if she could force the Master to look in a mirror.

She had seen that bedroom mirror out in the maze, but she wondered if there was anything in the heart of the maze which would show his reflection.

She stared at the walls, past the fast-moving bull’s head and horse’s legs.

Yann landed a kick on the Master’s chest, but while the centaur was close enough, the minotaur swung his horns and cut open Yann’s left arm.

Now Helen was distracted by blood on the floor, as well as her friends’ fear. She tried to concentrate on the walls again. Picture, rug, couch, table, wardrobe…

She remembered the antique wardrobe in her gran’s old house. It had a wire tie-rack, a shelf marked ‘hats’ and an oval mirror on the inside of the door.

Would there be a mirror in that old wardrobe? Could she ask Yann to open the door, without alerting the Master to her plan?

She whispered, “Lavender, can you get a message to Yann?”

“Not if I have to go near the Master’s hands!”

“He’s not going to hurt you now,” Helen murmured. “He’s just using your fears to hurt Yann. He’s only going to hurt you if Yann loses, and I have a way to stop Yann losing. Fly over there and ask him to kick 
the wardrobe door open. But don’t let the Master hear you. Pretend to be saying something else.”

“What else?”

Lee turned round and whispered, “Pretend to be begging Yann to surrender. The Master will believe that, even if Yann won’t.”

Lavender wriggled out of Helen’s hair and hovered in front of her. “The wardrobe? Kick it open?”

Helen nodded.

So Lavender fluttered round the walls to the corner nearest Yann and called out, “Yann, please. I can’t bear the Master knowing my weaknesses and threatening me with them.”

She flew closer to Yann and landed on his shoulder, as the Master backed off, listening intently. The tiny fairy said loudly, “I beg you to surrender, to put our lives above your own.”

Yann frowned at her and she moved closer to his ear, as the Master strode over to his fauns, yelling, “You see, Frass, knowing his weakness is the way to defeat any warrior! However many hooves he has!”

Helen saw Yann nod. Lavender had delivered the message, now the flower fairy had to escape the battle ground. So Helen shouted, “Lavender, how dare you! Get back here and stop undermining Yann. We don’t all feel like she does, Yann. The rest of us think you should keep fighting. Her wishes don’t reflect ours. They don’t
reflect
ours at all.”

Yann frowned again and Lavender, sobbing noisily, flew back from the centaur to Rona’s arms.

Yann looked at Helen. At Lavender. At the Master. 
And at the wardrobe.

Then he edged round the walls, ducking fresh horn attacks, flicking fast hooves back in return. When he reached the wardrobe, he kicked out with his left front hoof at the top corner of the door.

The door flew open with a crash and shards of glass clattered onto the floor.

Yann’s kick had opened the door, but he’d also broken the mirror.

Helen watched Yann limp round the room, blood dripping from his front leg. She sighed. Her stupid idea, asking a centaur to
kick
a mirror, had weakened Yann rather than the Master.

The Master was taunting Yann. “You missed that time, boy! But please, blunt your hooves on my maze as often as you like!”

Helen sighed again, but with relief this time. The minotaur hadn’t understood what Yann was trying to do. So they could try again. But with what?

Lee leant back and whispered, “What was that about?”

Helen replied, “I wondered what the Master would see in his own reflection. What weaknesses he’d see, what that would do to him.”

The faery smiled. “Clever. Sneaky. So we need another mirror. You attacked a mirror halfway through the maze. We could go and get that.”

The Master was rubbing his toes in the blood on the floor. “Your poor weak hearts are working hard to pump this blood out. Can they take the strain?”

As they circled each other, Helen saw that Yann was still managing to use his speed to keep out of reach of those sharp horns and huge hands.

She said to Lee, “But if we brought a weapon in for Yann, wouldn’t it be cheating?”

Tangaroa whispered, “Don’t worry about cheating. The Master is using us and our weaknesses as weapons against Yann, so we can take part in this fight. Do you want me to get the mirror?”

Lee nodded. “Tangaroa and I will go back for it.”

Helen said, “No, you’re both as obvious as peacocks, with your bright blue skin and bright green cloak. If you go, you’ll be missed. I’ll go. Rona, will you help me carry the mirror?”

Rona nodded.

Lavender said, “Where will we put it?”

Catesby chattered, the rest of the friends nodded and Lavender translated quickly, “That deer painting is about the same size. Catesby says we could put the mirror on the back of the painting and flip it round. Look, it’s not swung back flush to the wall, it’s hanging squint.”

Helen said, “Great idea. Lavender, you fly to the picture, nip through the gap at the corner and mark where it is on the other side of the wall, so we can find it once we’ve got the mirror.”

“Are you sure you won’t get lost?” said Lavender.

“Six left turns,” said Helen, “then six right turns on the way back. But how will we find you and the picture?”

The flower fairy smiled. “I’ll think of something.”

Helen took one more look at Yann, bleeding from his arm and his leg, and at the Master, with purple bruising on his ribs, then saw Lavender flutter casually 
over to the deer picture and slip behind it.

Sylvie flickered into a girl beside Helen. “I’ll move around behind the boys and try to look like three girls at once. But please hurry, Yann doesn’t look as strong as he did when he woke.”

Helen and Rona stepped back into the corridors of the maze.

Helen whispered to Rona, “Choose left every time and count to six.” The girls held hands, and ran through the maze.

As they sprinted round the tight corners, Rona asked, “Why do we have to fix the mirror to the picture? Why don’t we just take it in and hold it up?”

“Because if the mirror is part of the maze, the Three might not think it’s a weapon and might not think it’s cheating.”

They ran past slates and baths and curtains, running full pelt along corridors they had crept through earlier. As they ran the maze, using her bright torch beam to light the way and not slowing to check round corners, Helen hoped all the fauns were watching the duel.

They skidded round the final corner, into the wider space of the old bedroom, and Helen dashed to the mirror on the wall. Only it wasn’t really on the wall: it was part of the wall. Helen tried to pull it off, but it was tightly wedged in.

“How do we get it out?” Rona ran her fingers round the bumpy golden frame.

Helen stood back. “That’s what’s holding it in.” She pointed to a chair leg, overlapping the corner of the mirror. “That and the weight of the whole maze 
over it.”

She opened her rucksack and took out the rock.

“You’re carrying rocks now!” said Rona. “What does that cure?”

Helen smiled. “This gives uruisks headaches, rather than curing them!”

She bashed the chair leg until it splintered, then she shoved Lee’s sword behind the frame. Rona forced her spear in as well, and they tried to lever the mirror out of the wall. Rona’s spear broke after two tries, and Helen bent the sword, but eventually they levered the mirror out.

It was heavier than they’d imagined and chunks of wall crumbled into dust as they pulled it out, but when they stepped back, the mirror awkward in their arms, the wall was still standing.

“Six right turns back,” said Helen. “And watch out for Lavender on the way.”

They left the broken weapons on the floor and ran back through the maze. They weren’t as fast now, because it wasn’t easy manoeuvring a long mirror round tight corners.

They could hear hoofbeats and grunts from the middle, fading in and out as they ran round the maze.

When they got to the third junction, Helen saw something to their left. “Wait! Did you see a glow down that corridor?”

Rona shook her head.

Helen said, “I thought I saw a faint light. It might be one of Lavender’s lightballs.”

“If we turn left, we’ll get lost.” 

“No, we won’t.” Helen put her end of the mirror down, rummaged in her untidy rucksack and pulled out a scalpel.

She scraped an arrow on the wall at eye-height, pointing right, and led Rona to the left. Then she switched off the torch. In the sudden darkness, she saw a pale glimmer. A lightball, hiding behind the next corner. Helen moved fast to follow it, running round two more corners and taking left at another junction.

“The mark!” Rona called behind her. “You didn’t mark this corner!”

Helen turned round, marked their way back on the wall, then ran after the lightball. She found it floating in the middle of the corridor, and followed it round one more corner to…

Lavender, perched on the string on the back of the painting. “At last,” she murmured.

“How’s the duel going?” Helen scratched an arrow on the wall, then stood the mirror up to measure it against the picture.

“They’re both tiring, but no one has landed the winning blow.”

The mirror was slightly narrower than the picture but a similar length.

Rona whispered, “How do we fix it on? Lavender, could you stick it on with magic?”

Lavender shook her head. “Not firmly enough to hold it in place while it swings right over. Do you have glue in there?” She pointed to Helen’s green rucksack.

“Only enough for fixing mermaids’ tails, not 
enough to hold a mirror. We need nails.”

They searched the rubble and found rusty nails in the base of a wooden desk. Then Helen, listening nervously to the laughter of the Master on the other side of the wall, wrecked a pair of scissors prising nine nails out.

Rona, who’d been holding the mirror in place, held her hand out for the nails.

Lavender whispered, “What do we hammer them in with?”

“Helen has a good rock,” said Rona.

“What, the rock I left in the bedroom?”

“Oh. What else do we have?”

Helen was starting to wish that she carried a tool kit rather than a first aid kit. Lavender peeked round the picture. “Hurry up. Yann has two wounds on his flanks now and the Master is still looking confident.”

Helen wondered if her torch was heavy enough to use as a hammer, then she saw a frying pan in the wall near Rona’s knees, and tugged it out by its greasy metal handle.

“Lavender, let me know when Yann’s hoofbeats will cover a hammering noise.”

The fairy smiled. “Just start hammering now. I’m getting pretty good at silence spells.”

Rona held the mirror and picture together so they didn’t swing round, Lavender muted the noise, and Helen whacked at the nails with a frying pan.

When all nine nails were in, Rona let go, Helen stood back, Lavender fluttered away, and the mirror stayed where it was. They stared at it for a minute and 
it still stayed where it was. So they all nodded and turned in different directions.

Lavender sighed, “I’m lost, how do we get back?”

Helen pointed to the arrow she’d scratched into the wall. “That’s how to master a maze.”

They sprinted back to the last corner she’d marked, then counted right for another three and almost ran into the back of Lee’s shining cloak.

“What took you so long?” said Sylvie.

Helen replied, “We didn’t bring enough tools.” She realised she was still gripping the frying pan, so she put it down.

“Yann has been holding his own,” said Lee, “but the Master hasn’t been bedridden for days, so he’s got more energy.”

Helen looked between Lee and Tangaroa’s shoulders. Yann was now bleeding from an arm, two legs, his horse’s flank and his human chest.

The Master wasn’t bleeding at all, but was bruised all over.

The Three were still watching, chattering quietly and smiling.

The fauns were watching too, arms folded, heads to the side.

And the picture was still hanging slightly squint. No nails poking through, no mirror visible. Just a nervous deer, with unwieldy antlers, hanging upside down.

“Now Yann has to turn the mirror and force the Master to look at it.” She frowned. “How do we tell Yann without telling the Master?” 

Lavender said, “I could fly over again.”

“That would look suspicious.”

Catesby chattered an offer.

But Helen said, “Let me try from here.” She pushed between Lee and Tangaroa, and called out, “Yann, dear, why don’t you try something new? All you’re doing is dancing around, dear. What about trying something else? Dear!”

Yann frowned at her. “If you’d like to give it a go,
dear
, I’d be happy to take a break. It’s not easy out here.”

Helen said, “It’s not been easy in the corridors either,
dear
. So I suggest looking round, dear, and trying something new. More gently this time, dear.”

“Stop calling me … oh!”

Yann looked at all the walls in turn, then grinned at Helen. “Thanks, dear.” He trotted across the open space towards the picture of the deer.

As Yann stepped away, looking at the wall rather than his opponent, the minotaur ran at him and punched the centaur in the chest with both huge fists.

Punched him in both chests.

Two punches, landing hard on his human heart and his horse heart.

One heart which had been overworked for the last two days, the other heart which had been injured and only healed two hours ago.

As the two hammer-blow punches landed, Yann gasped and fell to the ground.

The Master laughed. “That was your real weakness, horse-boy. Not your legs, not your friends, but your 
weak and ailing hearts. Thank you for finally letting me near enough to attack them.”

Yann lay on the floor, legs limp, looking up at the deer picture. Unable to reach it.