Sterling
in the maze
in the maze
AND MAYBE GOD IS JUST A COP
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK
☆
Had he known, perhaps he might have entered with a little more caution; certainly he would have felt a darker jolt of apprehension at the unfamiliar noise that rustles toward them, once again, through the stalks of corn. As it is, Sterling feels his focus narrow to the sound: the thump and drag, the whisper of parting sheaves of corn.
Beside him, the golden stranger is grinning, his voice light, but Sterling doesn’t miss the current of disquiet hovering beneath his words. Sterling himself is almost vibrating with sudden energy, with the tantalizing promise of a thrill. He’s been a good boy, since he arrived in Novus; he’s kept his head down, and he hasn’t put one hoof out of line. But now, with the sky turning to indigo overhead, and the maze unfolding before them like a dark unanswered question…
“I’m hardly one to wait and be found,” he says, his voice pitched as casually as the stranger’s, but the curve of his lips admits equal parts eagerness and unease. He starts off down the path, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to see if the other stallion’s joining him. “No harm in a little excitement, right?”
Sterling follows the turns and windings of the maze, one ear cocked always toward the sound, which seems to drift now nearer, now farther away through the rows of corn. What at first feels like a game (if a mildly unnerving one) starts to fill him with impatience, and he takes each corner faster than the one before it, needing to reach the end and see—
And then he spies a familiar jack-o’-lantern, carved to look like an old nag in a witch’s hat, a long pipe wedged between the gaps in her teeth. “We’ve seen that before, haven’t we?” Sterling asks his companion. He turns slowly in place, scanning the walls of corn, listening hard for the sound. Nothing—silence. It’s been some minutes, he realizes, since he heard it last.
“Maybe this was a fool’s errand,” he says finally, with a little laugh to hide his rising frustration that they’ve just been circling around. “Shall we make our way back out, and find something to eat?”
But no sooner has he taken a few steps in the direction (or what he thinks is the direction) of the exit than he pauses, staring into the gloom. There is a large, ragged opening in the wall of corn to his left, where before he is quite certain was an uninterrupted stretch of stalks. Sterling peers cautiously through the gap: all of the corn there is brown and withered, the stalks dried and broken off.
And yet there is a path. A trail of death, he thinks with a shiver, leading into the heart of the maze.
Sterling glances back at the other man, and this time, there is a real note of uncertainty in his voice. “That… wasn’t there before, was it?”
@August !
