Emma and the Minotaur (4 page)

Will had filled a plate with yesterday’s ham and asparagus and he’d taken it to his room.

Emma hadn’t felt much like eating or doing anything at all.

It had started to rain just after they'd arrived at their house. It was now six o’clock and the rain hadn’t relented. The clouds only looked angrier as darkness and night approached.

Emma was sitting on her window sill watching the falling raindrops as they splashed into potholes. Now and then, there was lightning, and it illuminated the street and cast flitting shadows across the faces of the houses across the street.

Emma was holding the note from Miss Robins in her hand as she watched the rain. During the best times, the rain made her sad. All that had happened that day only made things worse. She wanted to talk to her father because he was always comforting when one of Emma’s moods snuck up on her, but she didn’t want to give him the note from Miss Robins or tell him about her two strikes.

Emma checked the clock on the wall and made a decision. She went to the closet beside the front door and put on a yellow raincoat and a pair of red boots. There was a flashlight hanging on the wall and she grabbed it and put it into one of the coat’s oversized pockets.

She opened the front door and went out on the street in the rain. For a moment, she stood there and looked up to the sky and felt the cool raindrops as they fell on her face. She decided that being in the rain was nowhere near as bad as sitting inside watching it.

There were many puddles and potholes on Belle Street and Emma jumped into most of them as she made her way down the street and onto Lockhart Road.

To get to the University of Saint Martin, Emma could walk down Lockhart to Glendale Avenue and then turn right, straight up The Hill, but the journey would be shorter if she cut through the forest. She wasn’t allowed in the woods after dark, but she figured that having the flashlight with her meant that it wouldn’t be all that dark in there. Not really.

When she reached the edge of the forest, she took the flashlight out of her pocket, pushed the switch, and peered into the darkness of the trees. She stood for a moment and listened to the whisper of the wind among the leaves and the dripping of the rain.

When she was satisfied that it was perfectly safe, Emma went in under the trees. The wet leaves underneath her feet made squishing noises as she walked.

Emma found that she wasn’t getting nearly as wet in there as she had been outside the cover of the trees. A clear indication that cutting through the forest had been a good idea.

Some moments later, her flashlight started to fail.

The flashlight blinked off and on twice before its light became dim. Without knowing why they did it, Emma tapped the back end of it with her palm like she had seen grown-ups do. It didn’t work. She didn’t want to be stuck in the forest if the light went out, so she tried to judge if it would be faster to go on or to turn around and go back.

Before Emma could make up her mind, there was movement ahead that gave her pause. It had only been a shadowy blur among the trees but it had startled her.

“Deer?” she said and shone her light toward where the motion had been, but she saw nothing.

She took another step forward and the shadow moved again. It didn’t look like a deer.

“Mr Milligan?” she said and backed away. There was no response. She kept her eye on the shadow and continued to back away slowly, now and then turning her head to look behind.

Lightning flashed and she saw a man with horns.

Emma turned and ran as thunder struck.

She was afraid to look back in case the horned man was chasing her. She ran into a branch and its leaves slapped at her face. There was a rotten tree trunk in her way that she saw at the last moment. She managed to jump over it, though she almost slipped and fell when she landed on the other side of it.

Emma's mad dash soon brought her out of the forest. She saw the light of a street lamp as she slipped on wet leaves and tumbled forward. Her momentum carried her out onto the road where she landed hard on hands and knees. The flashlight broke into three pieces and the batteries flew away.

“Okay,” Emma said, “that was dumb. It probably was a stupid deer.”

She crawled to the side of the road and sat down. Her jeans were torn. Her hands and knees were bleeding. On top of how she was already feeling, she now felt silly. The bright side of it was, she thought, that if she showed up to see her father looking like that then he might take it easy on her.

She stood up and turned down the road toward The Hill. The wind and the rain beat at her face and pulled at her coat. She walked along the forest for a couple of minutes until it gave way to houses. Emma thought it was interesting that the people who lived in these houses had Glenridge Forest right in their backyard.

She arrived at Glendale Avenue and, to her right, there rose The Hill, the steep incline over which the road had been built.

The way up The Hill was a walk of fifteen minutes, but in the bad weather it took Emma twenty-five. There weren’t many cars on the road but some still passed her in both directions. Next to each sidewalk, on either side of the road, there were railings that separated them from the clumps of trees that grew beyond.

At the top of The Hill, the ground levelled off, and the property that belonged to the University of Saint Martin began. The buildings that made up the school stood on the right side of the street. Across, to the left, there was a residence building for students, as well as a plaza full of fast food restaurants.

Emma turned into the school grounds and entered the mathematics building. She left a trail of water as she made her way to the second floor and into the physics department. When she reached the office of Dr William Wilkins, she found that his door was closed. She tried to open it but it was locked. She knocked and there was no answer.

Around the corner there was a clock on the wall and it showed that the time was close to seven.

“Class time,” Emma said. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor, sitting in her own puddle.

Two hours later, Emma woke up when she felt someone pick her up off the floor. She opened her eyes, blinked at her father, and then she put her arms around him. He carried her into his office where he sat down on his chair and held her there for a long while.

“Dad,” Emma said eventually.

“Yes, dear?” he said.

“I caught the wizard boy.”

“Oh? And what happened?”

“He didn’t want to be my friend,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Emma.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I know why. I realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“The boy’s name is Jake Milligan,” she said. “Same last name as Andrew Milligan.”

Her father nodded. “I see,” he said.

When they were ready to leave, he locked his office and they walked out of the school together.

The rain had stopped and, as they walked down The Hill, Emma told him all about the day’s events, including how she had left class early and how she had waited for Jake outside the school. She told him about how she had tried to get to the university by taking the shortcut through the forest and the fright that she had received, along with some scrapes and bruises.

When she showed him the teacher’s note, he shook his head.

“I guess you already paid enough for it,” he said. “But we’ll still have to have a chat on another day.”

They were almost home when he asked her what she planned to do about the boy. “Are you going to leave him alone?” he said. “What did you call that place where he goes?”

“Wizard Falls,” Emma said. “Because he’s a wizard and there are waterfalls there. I think I know how I’m going to become his friend, Dad.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“I’m going to buy his friendship.”

The following day, Emma stayed home from school.

She woke up after Will and her father had already left. The bandages that had been on her knees during the night had fallen off and her sheets had little stains of blood on them.

She showered and put on new bandages before she got dressed and went into the kitchen to make herself toast with peanut butter. There was a note on the table and it had one word on it.

“Rest!” said the note. Emma took it and put it in her pocket.

After her small breakfast, she went back to her room and pulled out an old yellow lunchbox from under her bed. The paint was chipped and the metal was rusty in places. It had belonged to her father. Inside, among other odds and ends, there was a small fortune in bills and coins. She took some of the money and put it in her empty pocket.

Emma left the house and she was greeted by birds that were singing their morning songs. It was a sunny day. She walked to the end of the street and then to the bus stop on the other side of Glendale Avenue. There was a girl standing inside the bus shelter. She looked older than Emma and she was wearing pink headphones on her head.

Emma went inside the shelter and sat down on the bench. The older girl watched her from the moment she arrived until she sat down. Emma waved.

The girl lowered the headphones to her neck. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? My name is Lucy. What’s yours?”

“Emma,” Emma said.

“Emma,” the girl said. “You really do seem familiar, Emma. Emma what?”

“Emma who,” said Emma.

“What?”

“Never mind. My name is Emma Wilkins.”

“You’re Professor Wilkins’s daughter. That’s where I’ve seen you. Must’ve been at his office.”

“Yeah, that’s my dad.”

“I’m in his physics class,” Lucy said. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”

Emma stood up and walked over to the girl. “Nice to meet you, Lucy,” she said and stuck her hand out toward her. Lucy shook it and Emma winced. When she took her hand back, the older girl noticed her scrapes.

“What happened to your hand?” she said.

“I was attacked by a deer.”

Emma’s bus arrived then and she got on it. Lucy followed and they sat down together. They continued to talk and Emma found out that Lucy was seventeen years old and that she was in her first year studying biology. It turned out that she was also going to the mall.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Nope,” Emma said. “Are you?”

“No,” Lucy said. “I don’t have class until later. Physics class, actually, with your dad.”

“What a coincidence,” Emma said.

When they arrived at the Penhurst Mall, Emma walked with Lucy from store to store. There weren’t many people there and the girls wandered around without any real purpose at first. Emma was surprised to find that for Lucy the fun of going to the mall was all in walking around and looking.

“Well,” Lucy explained. “I like the mall. Gets me out of my house and away from school.”

“You don’t like your house?”

“Not all the time,” she said. “Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for bait,” Emma said. She paused to have a look around. There was a store directory nearby. She went to it and read through the listings to find the store that she was looking for.

“Here,” she said, pointing at it on the map.

“Luggage?”

Emma nodded. She led the way to the store and they went inside. When she had completed her purchase, they left the mall and walked to the bus stop out in front of it. Lucy had to take a bus to the university but Emma had somewhere else to go. They waited together on a bench until Lucy’s bus pulled up.

When the older girl had gone, Emma sat alone and swung her feet back and forth in the air, enjoying the sun on her face. She clutched the bait to her chest and smiled as she waited for her own bus to arrive.

Wizard Falls was bright with sunshine. The light glinted off the slick, wet rocks that were scattered about inside the creek. There were faint rainbows floating in the air where a trickle of water hit a protruding rock on its way down and became a spray.

Now that she’d had more time to look around, Emma saw that the “falls” were in reality no more than a few trickles of water that came out of the rocks above. She decided that she liked the name “Wizard Falls” much better than “Wizard Trickles,” despite its inaccuracy.

Emma was hiding behind a tree. She was on the bank across the water from the rock that Jake had been sitting on the day before. She had placed the bait on the rock and was lying in wait, ready to spring her trap.

It wasn’t long before she spied Jake coming over the hill. She slunk down and made herself even smaller so that he wouldn’t see her.

She watched the boy walk down the hill and approach the rock. When he saw the bait, he stopped where he was and looked around. It took a few moments for him to appear satisfied that he was alone. Emma was sure that he hadn’t seen her.

The boy moved on and stood in front of the rock. A brand new backpack rested upon it. It was black and blue and just about the right size for a boy of eleven.

Jake stared at the backpack for a moment before he picked up the envelope that Emma had placed on top of it. On the envelope she had written the words, “For Jake.” He turned it this way and that and looked around once again before he opened it and took out the card that was inside it.