Member-only story
The Labyrinth-Palace
Pure whiteness. The fog of her breath obscured all but the ivory sky whose shavings fluttered to lose their spectacular forms upon her skin. She lay still a moment, blinking the fuzzy shapes from her lashes, then turned her head. Tall hedges boxed her in.
She stood up, murmuring, “A labyrinth?” A tiny dot in her black coat, she unwittingly stood in a maze that extended for trillions of miles. She brushed the side of one of the yew trees with her glove. She was not dreaming; nor did her mind yet question her sudden awakening here.
Her boots pressed the snow with a gentle creaking, and when she reached the corner, she turned back to see her footprints, which so often give the uncanny feeling of being followed by a non-entity. She took the turn, faced another empty row of green and white, walked, and turned, and walked, and turned. Again. Green into green into white into green, turning, turning, turning, turning. The snow fell lightly.
“The man hides inside the bushes like a cuckoo in its clock, and when the hour of your walking strikes — !”
The voice came from below. She peered down, and saw forming there a little snow-hare with dark green leaf-ears folded over its back. It hopped out of her path and looked up with its small berry eyes.
“What man?” she asked.
