Oddly, it was brighter on the other side of the gate. Not summer day bright, but more of a dim overcast autumn day kind of light. There was another stone wall that ran straight to the left and right along the far side of a plain dirt road. Looking either direction, it seemed that the road ran straight as far as the eye could see without any turns or breaks.
"Well that's weird," he said, looking back and forth, "what do you think?"
When he heard no reply, he turned around, only to find that he was alone. Brandy was nowhere in sight, and neither was the gate that he had just come through. There was just another blank length of wall. Thinking that the gate might be hidden on this side, he poked and pried at the stones, but to no avail. There was no gate.
"Brandy!" he yelled, hoping that she could still hear him. The only response he heard was his own desperate voice echoing down the walled lane.
Neither seeing nor hearing any clue as to where she had gone, Joshua turned to his left and began walking. And walking. And walking. After what must have been an hour, he had still not come upon any openings or turns, and none could be seen in the distance.
"Screw this," he muttered to himself.
Moving to the wall, he found that it was made of random sized stones fit together haphazardly with some kind of mortar between them. This created a lot of uneven crevices and protrusions. So he put his foot in one such cleft and boosted himself up, grabbing at whatever he could get a hold on. It was surprisingly easy to make it all the way to the top.
The wall was actually not very thick, probably less than a foot wide, but was just enough for him to pull himself up and sit and look out over the surrounding terrain. What he saw made him doubt his sanity, even more that what he had already experienced.
As far as he was able to see, the entire landscape was one expansive labyrinth, full of corners and dead ends, swirls and intersections. Even when he looked back the way he had come, it was the same gray and dreary maze. There was no sign of the village he had come through, no sign on the perfectly straight passage through which he had been walking; just the twisting corridors of ill-fitting rock like the wall upon which he was perched.
Straight ahead, as the crow flies, the terrain appeared to rise towards a high hill, and the stone walls looked to disappear in favor of hedges, though still maintaining the labyrinthine pattern. It was so far away that it was shrouded in a fog or mist that made it difficult to see farther than a mile or so, according to his reckoning. The sky was similarly veiled in grey clouds, giving no clue whatsoever as to the location of the sun, if there was such a thing here.
Joshua took a moment to study the layout of the passages just ahead of him, 'ahead' being a relative term. He had decided to head towards the distant hill, if for no other reason than that it might give him another vantage point to reevaluate his surroundings. That and he honestly had no choice but to choose a direction and go with it. So he jumped down and began the journey.
Something he noticed as he strode along, was that nothing seemed to grow here. There was packed dirt ground right up to the rock walls. No grass grew anywhere on the ground, no weeds poked up through cracks, no moss clung to the walls. No trees were evident anywhere that he had looked. It made him wonder if the hedges he had seen earlier were really just more walls.
Another hour passed as he cautiously navigated the route he had plotted from atop the wall, when he came to am intersection that he didn't remember seeing from up on high. And it wasn't a simple four-way intersection either; no fewer than seven passages lead away from the small open area in which he stood.
"What the hell?" he yelled at the labyrinth, dropping to the ground and sitting up against the wall.
He was getting very agitated at this point. His step-father would be getting home soon, and would no doubt wonder where his wife and step-son had gone. And his mother! Where had she gone, and how had she managed to get up and walk? He was worried that she might get sick or hurt herself wandering around in this insane place, wherever it was.
His first instinct was to do some scouting around a map the layout of the immediate area, but that would take a lot of time that he didn't have. On the other hand, if he just blindly wandered around in this endless damnable maze, he may get lost forever. The watchman had warned them not to get lost.
"'Ello 'here," he heard from somewhere, "wha's summon like 'ew doin' 'ere?"
Joshua looked around to see who else was trapped in this place with him, but all he saw was a brown and gray striped cat that looked just like his mother's cat Barney.
"Did you say hello?" he asked tentatively, He had often spoken to cats, but they had never talked back, at least not in English.
"Ew else wood i' be? A worm?" It was definitely the cat.
At first his mind screamed that cat's didn't talk, and certainly not with a Cockney accent. But then again, it was really no more strange than anything else he'd encountered here. So why not?
"Sorry," he said, "I'm Joshua."
"Course ye are. An I'm Barney, as if ye didn' knah."
"What are you doing here, Barney?"
"Oh ye knah, 'ryan 'o ge' ou' ov 'ere, same as 'ew."
"Have you seen Mom? I've been trying to find her for hours."
"Yeah mate, down tha' way," he pointed his nose towards one of the passages across the way.
"Really? Great!" he jumped to his feet, "do you want to come with me?"
"Uh," it cat-shrugged, "I do, bu' no' righ' nah. Here's sum righ' nasty buggers down ther'."
"Alright," he said, "well it was good to see you. I hope we meet up again soon."
"Righ' guv, la'er." and with that he ran off in another direction, tail flicking.
Picking up a small rock, Joshua made a mark on the wall of the passage from which he came, and another on the wall of the one down which he was going. Maybe it was a bit late to start marking his route, but it was better than nothing, or so he told himself.
It wasn't more than a hundred feet or so when the stone walls suddenly changed to tightly grown hedges. They seemed to be meticulously trimmed, with perfectly flat sides. The ground, too, changed slightly. The dry hard-packed dirt changed to dark soft loamy dirt, like fertile garden soil.
There were turns and openings, but he maintained a straight-ish course. It didn't take long before he stepped out from the hedges onto the bank of a wide stream. On his side, the hedges lined the waterway, but the other side looked like a 'normal' forest, no walls or hedge rows in sight. There was a narrow wooden bridge that crossed the stream a little way down from him.
Walking towards the bridge, Joshua saw a statue of a knight in full plate armor, sword tip planted in the ground in front of it. It was placed just in front of the span as if to represent a guardian of the river crossing. He wondered briefly if that was the 'nasty bugger' that Barney had referred to.
"Who goes there," the knight demanded, raising it's sword in a defensive stance.
Stopping in his tracks, he answered, "Joshua. I'm looking for my mother."
"Oh," it said and casually sheathed the sword, "my name is Sir Drogan. What does she look like, this lady whom you seek?"
"Older lady, curly white hair, in a white nightgown."
"I am afraid that I have not beheld such a lady," it bowed it's head in apology.
"Well I have to keep looking for her, if it's okay with you."
"Absolutely sir," the vaguely male voice echoed strangely inside of the helmet, "yours is a noble and worthy cause."
"Uh, okay," Joshua said, "I'll just be going then," and he started towards the bridge.
"No My Lord," the knight called, reaching out a hand to restrain him, "that way is too dangerous."
"Well that's the way I need to go."
"Very well, My Lord. I shall lead the way and clear away the Nasty Buggers for you."
Sir Drogan stepped confidently up onto the narrow bridge, sword at the ready. He strode across the span despite the wood groaning and bending under his weight. As soon as he stepped off on the far shore, several muddy shapes leapt up out of the mud towards him, They looked somewhat like frogs, but with a less defined form, almost like they were just animated piles of sludge.
The knight swung his sword around his head and sliced several of them in half as they flew towards him. Those that were hit simply fell back to the ground with a wet splat, nothing more than piles of mud. Some of the others landed on his armor and began eating through the metal. In a flurry of swinging fists and sword, the valiant paladin dispatched the remainder of them.
"I believe that's all of them," he declared, sheathing his sword once again.
"Very impressive Sir Drogan," Joshua said, "thank you."
"See? I said so di'nt I?" Barney pranced up behind them.
"Egad! A cat who speaks! It must be demon-possessed," the knight once again drew the sword.
"Crikey! A piece ov metal what walks an' judges overs," Barney sniped with a flick of his tail.
"Please don't kill him," Joshua said, not sure that he would be able to stop the knight, "he's my mother's cat, and she would be terribly upset if you did."
"Well..." the warrior considered, "be that the case, I shall reserve judgement until we locate your mother and we find out for certain."
"Thank you very much."
"Yeah, migh'y nice o' ya," the cat added.
"Right. On to the Forest of Despair," Sir Drogan announced as he began walking the narrow trail that led into the thick trees.
"The Forest of Despair? How very reassuring."
"Ain't tha' bad, guv. Jus don' eat nuffin in ther'."
They hiked for quite awhile through the dark trees, their thick boughs blocking out what little light there seemed to be in this place. Shadows danced between the boles and branches, giving the illusion that they were being surrounded. But whenever Joshua turned to look, there was nothing there.
"You're going the wrong way," croaked a deep voice, "turn around while you still can."
The tree they had just passed had a large knot that looked very much like a bearded man's face covered with bark. It's scowling face radiated disapproval and an edge of threat. Joshua actually jumped back when it's mouth opened and it spoke again.
"Go back. Go back now."
"You are on a fool's quest," another tree spoke, "doomed to fail."
"You don't really want to be here, do you?" yet another said.
"I want to find my mother," he told the tree men firmly.
"She's gone, departed long ago," the first tree said.
"Dead and gone," the second added.
Dead?" Joshua gasped, "what do you mean?"
The paladin had turned around to wait for him, "Listen not to these Treeple. They speak not the truth. They sow despair and deception, nothing more."
Try as he might, he simply could not block out the voices of the Treeple as they continued to walk through the darkened glade. They seemed to be on every other tree in the forest.
"She's gone. Turn back."
"It's useless, you know that."
"You'll be too late to do anything about it."
"Thank the gods," Joshua said when they finally left the forest behind, "that was torturous."
"Indeed. But you heart held true to your quest and you have prevailed," the paladin assured him.
"Joshy," Brandy ran up and threw her arms around his neck, "thank god I found you!"
"Where have you been?" he asked as he hugged her back tightly.
"I don't know," she exclaimed, "you disappeared when we walked through that gate, so I've just been wandering around trying to find you. Is that Barney?"
"Tha's me luv," the cat said.
"Barney can talk?" she almost screamed.
"'Course I can babe," he slunk over and began rubbing against her legs lovingly, purring loudly the whole time, "give us sum love, eh?"
"Okay..." she reached down and rubbed his back and scratched behind his ears.
"Oh yeah," he purred, "tha's it luv, righ' ther'!"
"That's just creepy," she said, pulling her hand away.
Sir Drogan stepped forward, "I am afraid that I must leave you now, Lord Joshua."
"What? Why?"
"I am a broken paladin, and as such I am doomed to never be able to complete any quest that I begin."
"That doesn't make any sense," Joshua argued, "I mean if you were doomed to fail in your quests, I could understand that. But to just abandon them because you're 'broken'? I don't buy it."
"That is the way of things," the knight replied formally, "we may not always understand why things are the way they are, but that does not prevent them from being so."
"Okay, whatever," he conceded, "thanks for you help anyway."
"It was my great honor," Sir Drogan bowed from the waist, then straightened and walked back into the Forest of Despair.
