The Freedom Maze (4 page)

Luminescent amber eyes opened above her, narrowed a little, then winked.

Sophie gave a startled yelp. The eyes disappeared. There was a faint scrabbling, a shower of soot, and the chimney was clear.

Sophie ducked out of the fireplace, blundered out the door, and scanned the roof. Yes, something was definitely moving among the leaves, something splotched black and white and reddish-brown like a calico cat. It leaped down from the roof to her feet, grinned at her, and took off across the field at a leisurely lope.

Sophie hesitated a moment, then took off after it, slipping on the wet grass and banging her toes on loose rocks. About a stone’s throw from the maze, she ran out of breath and had to stand with her hands on her thighs, panting.

When she stood up again, the strange animal was squatting between the two stone urns, for all the world like it was waiting for her. Sophie could have sworn it waved at her before it turned and disappeared.

She ran through the gap, tripped over something hidden in the tall grass, and fell flat on her face, gulping like a fish.

“You is a
fine
specimen, you is.”

Sophie sat up and pushed her glasses up her sweaty nose. A corridor walled with dusty leaves curved gently away from her in both directions.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“Come find me and see.”

The voice was high and light, like a little child’s — a colored child. Sophie got to her feet.

“That animal I saw in the garden shed — is that your pet?”

A giggle. “You might could say that.”

“It sure is strange-looking.” She peered up and down the leafy corridor. “Where are you, anyway?”

“Here and there! In and out! Come on and find me.”

Sophie saw gaps in the leafy wall — two to the right, one to the left. She remembered reading about mazes, how you should always turn right on the way in and left on the way out. Or was it the other way around?

She shrugged and turned right.

“You fixing to stay a spell?” the voice inquired.

Sophie kept walking.

“Stubborn as a mule,” the voice remarked. “Don’t listen, don’t look, don’t mind what she’s told. You never going find me, you don’t mind what you told. What them things over you eyes, girl? Blinders?”

“That’s rude!” Sophie said indignantly. “I can’t help having to wear glasses! And you haven’t told me anything.”

“Have.” The voice was smug. “Study on it.”

“You asked whether I was intending to stay a spell,” Sophie pointed out. “That could mean anything.”

“It mean you fixing to get right lost.”

Sophie rolled her eyes and turned around. At the end of the path, she went left, then left again, which led her into a dead end furnished with a cracked marble bench.

By this time, she was ready to give up. She didn’t like being teased, especially by some sassy little colored child who didn’t have any business being in her family maze in the first place. She began to retrace her steps.

“That’s right,” the voice said. “Go back. Save youself a passel of time and trouble. Ain’t nothing in the middle anyways.”

Which made Sophie bound and determined to find the middle of the maze — and the sassy child — if only to give it a piece of her mind.

Three turns later, she was in another dead end, this one sporting a sad-looking marble dog.

“You should have drunk that there lemonade you auntie made you,” the voice said. “No telling when you see lemonade again.”

“That doesn’t help,” Sophie said.

“See if going right instead of left help better.”

For the next few minutes, the voice insulted her, teased her, led her, she was sure, around in circles. Finally, she saw a pair of stone urns just like the ones at the entrance and stepped between them into a miniature wilderness of bushes and weeds.

“What I tell you?” the voice crowed. “Nothing here.”

“You’re here, somewhere.”

“Somewheres.”

Sophie looked around for a hiding place, spotted a building-shaped mound of leaves across the garden, fought her way to it and peered into a fly-haunted interior. Two wicker chairs, half-rotten and furred with mold. No child. No multicolored animal.

Grimly, Sophie set in to search every inch of the tiny garden. She found a broken stone bench, an empty stand that may have held a sundial, and more roses run wild than you could shake a stick at, and that was all.

By now, she was hungry as well as thirsty, and her feet were bruised. The lengthening shadows told her she’d been in the maze a lot longer than she’d thought. If she didn’t hurry back, she’d be late to supper and Aunt Enid would be put out with her.

“You win!” she called out. “Can you lead me out of here? Please?”

Her only answer was the hysterical shrilling of cicadas. Sophie fought down a rising panic and told herself she wasn’t really lost. All she had to do was go back the way she’d come. She looked out the entrance and sure enough, a line of trodden grass led to the right, clear as print.

Piece of cake.

And it might have been, if the voice had led her directly to the center. As it was, Sophie was soon as lost as Mama’s Cousin Nick. At first, she was too mad to be frightened. But as she got more and more lost, fear overcame anger. The shrilling cicadas started to sound more and more like voices — frightened, unhappy, whispering voices. Sometimes they went silent, and that was worse, because then she could hear rustling in the hedges and in the grass. Then she thought she heard a little girl laughing, and a man’s voice — or was it a bullfrog? — and a dog’s excited barking. She wasn’t sure if they were real, or she was imagining them, but she was too spooked to think. Before long, she was sobbing and plunging through gap after gap, blinded by tears and panic. When she finally ran out of breath, she was standing in a green square furnished with a bench and one of those statues Great-Grandmama had wanted to get rid of.

Sophie sank onto the bench, gasping, took off her glasses, and scrubbed her hands over her wet face. This was not, she reminded herself, how the children in books behaved when they had adventures. She had to pull herself together and think.

“Sophie!” Aunt Enid sounded as if she’d been calling for some time. “Sophie, where on earth are you? It’s supper time!”

Sophie jumped up. “Aunt Enid! I’m here, Aunt Enid.”

There was a startled silence, then, “My land! Are you in the maze?”

“Yes,” Sophie wailed. “And I can’t get out!”

“No need to take on, child! I’ll have you out in no time. It would be too much to ask, I suppose, for you to be in a dead end?”

“There’s a statue,” Sophie said.

“Lady or gentleman?”

“Lady. No arms. There’s a sheet around her hips.”

“Got it.” Aunt Enid’s voice now came from over to the right. “Dratted grass. I have to get Henry to mow the paths.”

Time dragged. Leaves rattled. Aunt Enid’s voice came and went, muttering. “I could have sworn there was one here,” and “Drat the child.” Sophie wondered nervously what Aunt Enid was like when she was seriously put out.

“Ah. There you are.”

Aunt Enid’s face was red and shiny with heat. To Sophie’s relief, she seemed more excited than irked. “My land,” she panted. “Haven’t done that in fifteen years. No, twenty.”

She plumped down on the bench and squinted up at the statue. “Gracious. To think of good old Belle Watling, still here after all these years. Although I guess she’s not likely to wander off, is she? Makes me feel a girl again.”

“Who’s Belle Watling?” Sophie asked.

Aunt Enid’s eyes crinkled. “Belle Watling is a character in
Gone With the Wind.
”

Sophie wondered if the title referred to Belle Watling’s clothes. “I don’t understand.”

“And I don’t propose to explain it to you. You can read the book and work it out for yourself.”

After supper, Sophie found a copy of
Gone With the Wind
and started to read it. She could have done without Scarlett O’Hara, who she thought selfish, vain, and mean as a cross-eyed mule. Still, she was more fun to read about than the saintly Miss Melanie, who was what Mama would call a Perfect Lady. Sophie privately considered Miss Melanie a perfect wet blanket and couldn’t see what either lady saw in Ashley Wilkes. Rhett Butler alarmed her. She never did figure out why Belle Watling was a good name for an armless statue. But she loved the descriptions of clothes and parties and the funny things the slaves said, and the plot picked up when the war started, so she kept at it until her eyes closed by themselves.

Aunt Enid laughed when Sophie brought the book down to breakfast and propped it up to read over her cornflakes. “I don’t suppose it’ll do you any harm, even if you can make head or tail of it.”

“I’m skipping some,” Sophie admitted. “Aunt Enid, was Oak River like Tara?”

Aunt Enid poured herself a cup of chicory coffee. “Well, Tara was a cotton plantation, but I expect you mean the slaves and balls and so on. Yes, I suppose it must have been.”

“Did they have balls at Oak Cottage?”

“Not after the Big House was built. Mr. Charles surely loved company. The dining room could seat forty for dinner and there was a ballroom with mirrors and crystal chandeliers, brought all the way from France.”

Sophie’s eyes rounded. “What happened to them?”

“Sold, along with the best part of the furnishings, round about the time of the First World War. Just as well. They wouldn’t have fit into Oak Cottage anyway.”

“So is there anything left of the Big House?”

“Some. Used to be, you could see it from your room, right past the maze, until the oak grove grew up around it.” Aunt Enid gave Sophie a hard look. “Now look here, Sophie. I don’t want you going anywhere near the Big House. You’d likely go inside, just to take a look, and have a wall fall on you or some such. We’ve got plenty of ghosts in the family as it is — we don’t need another.”

She was, to Sophie’s astonishment, perfectly serious. “Mama says there aren’t any such things as ghosts,” Sophie said.

“I’m pleased to say that your Mama isn’t the sole judge of what is and isn’t so. World would be a pretty dull place if she was. I don’t suppose she’s seen fit to tell you about Old One-Eye or the Girl in Yellow or the Swamp-Weeper?”

Sophie closed
Gone With the Wind.
“No, ma’am.”

“They’re part of your heritage, child. Way back before he built the Big House, your five-times-great grandpa Fairchild owned a slave called Old One-Eye. He was a conjure man — that’s a kind of heathen witch doctor — and he could conjure up spirits and haints and rain during the sugar harvest. He was nothing but trouble, and when he ran away, Grandpa Fairchild wasn’t as upset about it as he might have been. Still, property was property, and it didn’t do to have it running away. So Grandpa Fairchild sent out the slave hunters to find Old One-Eye and bring him home.”

“Did they find him?” Sophie asked.

Aunt Enid looked grim. “They did that, child. It took them nigh on a year, but they found him, back in the swamp among the cypress and the swamp maple. The slave hunters trussed him up and carried him back to Oak River hanging from a branch like a wild hog. By this time, Grandpa Fairchild was mighty irked, and as I said, Old One-Eye was a heap of trouble. So he had him whipped until the skin fell off his back, and then burned him to a crisp and threw his bones into the bayou. Daddy used to swear he’d heard him when he was a boy, hollering and crackling in the old stable-yard.”

Sophie shuddered. “That’s horrible!”

“Most ghost stories are horrible,” said Aunt Enid. “They wouldn’t be scary otherwise.”

“Are there ghosts in the maze?” asked Sophie, remembering the whispers.

“Well, there is the Girl in Yellow. I disremember the details, but it’s said she walks there just before dawn.”

“Does she whisper?”

“I never heard anything about whispering. Why?”

Sophie shrugged.

Aunt Enid studied her for a moment. “You just remember, child: ghosts are only shadows. You say your prayers, they can’t hurt you.”

“Aunt Enid, have you ever seen a ghost?”

“If I haven’t, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” Aunt Enid said. “After all, I’ve never seen Jesus. There’s no question that there’s strange things around Oak River, and if they’re not ghosts, then they’re something mighty like.”

Later that day, Sophie went back to the maze and stood at the
entrance, listening for the voices she’d heard the day before. The cicadas sounded like cicadas. The leaves and grass rustled only when there was a breeze. No strange animals appeared or childish voices teased her.

Maybe Sophie read too much, like Mama said, but she did know what was real and what wasn’t. She knew the animal she’d chased into the maze wasn’t just a cat or a rabbit or a muskrat. The more she thought about it, the less she believed that the voice she’d heard belonged to a real child. Which meant she must have been talking to a ghost.

Sophie had been wishing for a magic adventure ever since Papa had read her
Peter Pan
when she was little. What she’d had in mind was a trip to the past or a world like Narnia, filled with magic and talking animals, not being led in circles by a ghost with a taste for practical jokes. Probably she’d be better off reading her way through Aunt Enid’s office and learning how to garden, maybe even exploring the bayou, like a normal kid on summer vacation. And she’d start right now.