Emma and the Minotaur (12 page)

Joel was being restrained by the elbow and he managed to swing around and kick at a giant leg. The monster twitched its wrist and Aaron heard the sound of breaking bone as Joel’s elbow shattered. Joel screamed.

Aaron struggled to his feet as the monster made his way to the tree. He saw a line of light about the height of a man split the ancient oak down the middle and open up to create a portal. The beast threw the screaming men inside the tree one by one.

Aaron turned to run. He took two steps before he slammed hard into the chest of the monster, who now barred his way. He looked up at the fury in its eyes and despair overtook him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the fear, he realized that the music in the forest was still playing behind him.

The monster picked him up with both hands and Aaron felt like a small child in the arms of a strong adult. He knew that it was pointless to fight. It would be no contest.

He resigned to his fate and the demon threw him into the tree. Just before the light of the portal enveloped him, he saw a pretty woman enter the moonlight of the clearing, but he didn’t believe that she could be real.

Rebecca Robins was running.

She had left her house at precisely eight o’clock as was her routine. It was a stringent one that she rarely deviated from. Her weekdays were spent always in the same manner: she stayed after work at Briardale Middle School to do marking and lesson preparation until five o’clock; she arrived home at five thirty and made dinner, which she ate at six o’clock at her dinner table; at six thirty, she went to her living room with a cup of tea and read a novel until seven forty-five, when she changed into her running clothes. Rebecca ran for an hour every night.

There was a jogging trail that snaked through an old quarry near Rebecca’s house. For years, she had run that trail to the point that she could probably do it with her eyes closed. She was not one to deviate from routine, but tonight she was running along a dimly lit street near the woods. Rebecca wasn’t sure where she was or how she had ended up there.

Something had been nagging at the back of her mind since she’d arrived home that afternoon. She had felt as though she had forgotten something important and it was pulling at her from somewhere, but she couldn’t remember what it was no matter how hard she tried. Something told her that it might have to do with the girl Emma and her awful behaviour. She considered the little girl to be a monster, hell-bent on causing chaos in her class. Today, she had given the girl a third strike and sent her down to the principal’s office.

A cool drop of water fell on the back of her neck and she stopped and looked up in fear that it had started to rain again. Above her head there were branches that protruded from the woods. The wind had caused some of the rainwater to fall down just as she’d passed underneath.

Somehow, looking up into the leaves made her remember why she’d gone off course. It had been a sweet kind of music that she had heard, faint but enchanting. It had felt as though it had been calling to her.

Just as she thought about the music, it began to play again from somewhere inside the darkness of the forest. She had no choice but to follow it.

Rebecca didn’t know how long she followed the music. It was a wet journey because the forest was still moist from the rain. She hardly noticed. The music was sweet and lovely and it made Rebecca happy. It filled her senses and it was all that she cared to notice. There were booms of thunder and what sounded like giant footfalls, but they were to Rebecca like irrelevant background noise to the beautiful symphony.

Even as she came within sight of the clearing, she was not taken aback by the violence within. There were three men there and a monster. There was screaming and crying out and struggling. The monster crushed the arm of one of the men at the elbow with a squeeze of its great hand. Two of the men were thrown into a hole of light in a tree.

The third man barely put up a fight. As he followed the others into into the tree, he looked directly at Rebecca, and Rebecca looked back at him. When he was gone, she raised her hand awkwardly almost as if to wave goodbye.

Then it was just Rebecca and the monster alone in the clearing.

She took a few delicate steps forward. The monster watched her. She looked it over under the light of the moon and saw raw power in its body and fire in its eyes. She began to feel afraid and, as she did so, she saw the creature’s muscles tense up as if they were readying for an assault. Before Rebecca could panic, the music became louder and it filled her senses again. She turned toward the tree and, though she could not forget that the monster was there, she became so intoxicated by the sound that its presence did not seem to matter as much as it had a moment before.

The school teacher smiled dreamily and took brisk steps toward the tree. The beautiful music was coming from inside it. In her peripheral vision she saw that the monster was watching her but that it did not make any move toward her.

She reached the tree and tried to look inside but the light was like a wall and her gaze could not penetrate it. A small voice inside her head cautioned that this was dangerous and tried to point out the strangeness of the situation but the music was so sweet that it made her heart ache. It called to her and made her want to be closer to it. She needed to know its source.

Rebecca Robins took one last look at the world around her, and at the creature standing guard near the tree, and then she walked willingly into the portal to another world.

9

The Portents of War

“There is a war coming.”

Emma was standing near the ancient oak and Domino was leaning against its trunk.

Now that Emma had a good look at the faun in the daylight she could see that his skin was tattooed everywhere except for his face. There were lines and shapes all over his body, except where there was fur, but Emma could not understand their meaning. It occurred to her that maybe they weren’t tattoos at all, but a part of the creature. The flute that the faun carried with him was longer than Emma’s and, whereas hers was plain, the one belonging to Domino was elaborate.

Emma was afraid and uneasy.

“There are two worlds, Emma, this one and the World of Light, and their fates are intertwined, as they have been for a very long time. In that other world there lives a great power. He rules there and waits for the time to strike, when he will return to this world and make it his own again, like it was once before.

“That time is here, Emma. He is coming and this is only the beginning. He means to make war with this world and rule over it. There is no one that can stop him but you.”

The faun’s voice was deep and musical. He spoke in a manner that sounded as though he was making a rehearsed speech. As she listened, Emma tried not to stare at the tattoos but she thought that they shifted about as he spoke. This did not help her unease.

“Me?” she said.

“You, Emma,” he said. “So my friend has foretold.” He motioned toward the tree. “The trees are older than all of us and they understand far more about this universe than we do. We all come from the trees. The trees all have names and purposes and will guide all of us along if we let them.”

“What is his name?” asked Emma.

“I can’t tell you. The tree may tell you his name one day.”

Emma frowned. “I’ll call him Mr Oak,” she said.

Domino smiled and it frightened her.

“I don’t think I understand anything,” she said.

“Emma,” said the faun. “All stories are true. The trees and the Lord of Light were here first, but it’s not known to anyone if he made the trees or the trees made him. He ruled over this world once and then he left, to his World of Light, but now he seeks to return to make the world his own again.

“That is the mission of the minotaur. He is the vanguard. He comes to prepare the way. The humans who have disappeared are the first prisoners of war.”

“So they’re alive?” she said. “Where are they? We have to tell everyone so they can be rescued!”

“No one can go where they have been taken, and no one can save them. No one but maybe you, Emma, and of that I’m not sure.”

“Why me? How can they not be saved?”

“They are in another world. When you are ready, maybe the trees will send you there but I don’t know. First you must stop Minotaur. This, I do know.

“You see, they are all coming back, Emma. All the creatures that once inhabited this world. Every story you’ve ever heard, they are all true. These stories did not come from nothing, and they now inhabit the World of Light. They left this world long ago but now more and more creatures, my brothers, are coming back.

“Minotaur grows ever stronger. So far, he comes only at night and he cannot leave the forest, but soon he will be strong enough to do so and to remain awake for a long, long time. Soon there will be no turning back and no one will be able to stand against him. What you must do, Emma, first and foremost, is to defeat Minotaur before he gains the power to conquer the world.”

Though, in reality, the encounter had occurred the night before, for Emma it had only taken place a few hours back, and the vision of the one called Minotaur was still vivid in her mind. She recalled the monster, and his impossible size and power, and she almost shivered.

“How? How can I fight such a thing?”

There was a long pause before Domino spoke again. “I don’t know, Emma,” he said. “I don’t think anyone does. Not in the time that we have left.”

“This is crazy.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe my dad would agree to this. He told me you’d only teach me to defend myself.”

Domino nodded. “That is what he believes and what I have led him to believe. You must let him keep believing it. We have argued for years about this in the event that you were truly meant to be the one to bear this burden. In effect, we’ve argued over the fate of the planet like a fated game of chess. We hoped this wouldn’t happen so soon but no one can predict what the Lord of Light will do, not even the trees.”

Emma sat down where she was. Her head was swimming with information and possibilities. There was a whole other world that she had been unaware of and that her father had known about all along. What other secrets had he kept from her?

“I’m sure this all seems like too much but there is little time. Come to me every day from now on and I will teach you the things that you need to know, starting with how to use the gift that you’ve been given. Go now and rest. What is to come will not be easy.”

As Emma walked back home, it felt as though none of it was real, or as though it was happening to someone else. The strangeness of it made her feel like she was in a dream. The walk home felt interminable and, when she finally made it, she felt exhausted with the weight of it all.

She had dreamed of saving the world like the heroes in her books did. She loved the stories about unlikely persons destined for greatness. But all of it seemed so far above her head, so much bigger than she was. She didn’t know if any of her heroes had ever been so plainly confused. On top of it all, when she imagined the eyes of the creature, the minotaur, she was filled with cold fear.

When Emma entered her house, her father was waiting for her just beyond the doorway. She walked up to him and hugged him tightly and closed her eyes. She felt his arms wrap around her small frame.

Emma tried to speak but she only managed two words. “Why me?” she said and then sniffed as a tear or two formed in her eyes. Her father took her in his arms and carried her to the armchair. He sat down and Emma curled up into him.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “About the day you were born.”

Emma sometimes had those days when her mood was so low that nothing could make her feel better. Whenever of those days came, she always found herself like this, snuggled up against her father, listening while he read a book to her.

“It was the sunniest of days when you were born, my little girl. A beautiful day in April.”

“April?” Emma said. “Dad, I was born in May!”

He laughed and continued. “I know, my dear. I’m just teasing you. It was a beautiful day in May. Will was just a toddler, a two-year-old hurricane of a kid, and Grandma was taking care of him at her old house.

“I was there at the hospital when mom was giving birth. It was an easy labour, she said later. They had the windows open and birds were chirping and they were welcoming you into the world. I was there in the room and you came out just like that. You were so little back then that I could almost hold you in one hand.

“It was so easy and you were so healthy that we brought you home right away. We drove back with the windows down. Mom was holding you in the car and your little eyes were opened wide and you were staring at everything in your new world and laughing sometimes at what you saw. The most beautiful sound it was when I first heard you laugh.

“We were almost home and we were driving by the forest when it happened. It was very quiet at first but then I slowed the car down and we listened carefully and it only got louder.”

“What was it, Dad?” Emma said sleepily.

“It was the forest,” he said. “All the forest was singing to you and welcoming you home. I found out that it all started with a single tree, one you’ve now met. He started singing for you and the whole forest took up his song. The song was heard all over and no one could explain it but we knew it was for you. This is how we know you’re special, Emma. The forests sang for you on the day that you were born.”