WILLOW AND I WALK THROUGH THE NIGHT, eager to escape the cold. Thankfully, though the trail we follow is soon buried, the storm seems to have passed and we’re not caught in the open by anything worse than a light snow.
I’m still trudging along, my toes and fingers frozen, when dawn’s weak light oozes across the snowscape. That’s when Willow plants herself in front of me and holds out an expectant hand.
“All right, tough guy. Let’s have it.”
I sigh, but decide fair’s fair. I begin to pull the sweater she’d leant me up over my head.
“Not that. The book.” She reaches a hand into my bulky pocket and pulls out the Gideon New Testament. She begins to tear pages out.
“That’s a Bible,” I hiss.
Willow stops for a moment, quirks an eyebrow at me, and then continues to rip out the pages. “Yeah, well, you’re no good to God if you’re popsicle.” She stops for a moment and frowns. “You’ve scribbled in here.”
“Not me, remember? I can’t read Italian.”
“Oh, right.” Willow continues frowning down the page. “I wonder what this means?”
The page with neat red ink in the bottom margin reads:
rupp’ io per un che dentro v’annegava
e questo sia suggel ch’ogn’ omo sganni
Willow tears out this page more carefully. Then she pulls out the bundle of weeds she’s carried since the riverside and gently wraps them in the paper.
Now, clutching a macabre bouquet, Willow thrusts the other loose pages into my arms. “For your shoes,” she says. “May be a little warmer.”
I do as she commands, but I mutter under my breath, “This still feels wrong.”
“Oh, shut up,” Willow says. She sticks out her tongue. “Maybe Jesus will save your toes.”
We walk for some time before I notice a forest creeping up on us. At first, it’s just a patch of black against the distant grey. But as we draw nearer, I see dark boughs, outlined skeletal-white with frost. Their leaves didn’t manage to fall before the snow set in—they still cling like frozen fingertips to the branches.
The place has a haunted feel, but Willow enters the wood so I reluctantly follow.
I hunt for signs of the hoofprints, but the snow is clean and clear as far as the eye can see. It sets my mind at ease, even if the trees look like they’re in pain.
We stop for a rest beneath a twisted oak tree, its back bent beneath a thick mound of snow. I look at the flash-frozen acorns and wish, for only a moment, that I was a squirrel. “We should have brought some food and water along, back when we had the chance,” I say.
Willow looks up. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
“No.” It’s strange. Surely it’s been at least a week since I’ve eaten. “I just feel ... wrong. Like food would help make this normal. Maybe I can scoop some snow into the water bottle, and pretend that I have real cravings.”
“I found a recycling bin,” Willow smiles. “Back when you were running from your photocopier.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Willow. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“Definitely not,” Willow says. “Chin up, boy-o. I’ll get you out, yet.”
“Is there a Minotaur hunting me?”
Willow doesn’t answer immediately, so I steal a peek at her. She stares out into the forest and sucks her teeth for a moment, before she says, “I’ve led a bunch of people through before you. I’ve seen everything from talking cats to talking trees. I’ve never seen a Minotaur.”
“Talking trees?” I look up at the boughs of the oak I’m resting against.
“Yeah, but they were really very nice. Just don’t ask them for directions—turns out they don’t know how to get anywhere.”
I laugh, because I feel like she’s joking. Then again, maybe she’s not.
So I try not to worry about Minotaurs as Willow and I walk into the virginal wonderland. Soon boughs laden with fresh snow form a cross-thatch ceiling. The powder falling from overhead eases up, until only a fine net of sparkling flakes still fall. The scene would be serene, were it not for my cold arms and wet feet.
But Willow is humming. I watch her, a few steps ahead of me, skipping trunk to trunk. Our earlier argument seems forgotten, so I’m content to let it lie.
I think back to the landmarks Willow listed, on the edge of the boatman’s river. “So this is the wood?” I ask. “The train passed beneath us on the bridge, and the boatman ferried us across the river. You said this is the hardest part—but this isn’t so bad. And then we’re home free?”
Willow doesn’t answer. She’s standing stock-still, staring deeper into the wood.
At first I hear nothing. Then I hear Nothing. There is no crunch of footprints in the snow, no squirrels or rabbits skittering in the trees, no birdsongs from one branch to another. The forest is silent, save for whatever sounds Willow and I carry with us.
“This isn’t the wood I meant,” Willow mutters. “I’m not sure where we are.”
Cold panic runs down the back of my neck that has nothing to do with the weather. “You’re kidding,” I whisper, now afraid to shatter the stifling silence. “You’re my fucking guide!”
Willow sighs and begins moving through the woods again, but her stance is more cautious now. “We’re not out yet.”
“Maybe we are!” I latch onto the thought like a lifeline. “The hoofprints belong to a moose, the prairies are boring enough to be Canadian, and this flash-frozen forest is caused by—I don’t know. A chinook or something.”
“Yeah, and Canada’s renowned for its ghosts and glass bridges.” Willow rolls her eyes. “Trust me, an unending ice field is just as labyrinthine as the hallways I found you in. And if you spend long enough in these woods, you’re going to swear every tree starts to look the same. You could walk forever and never find your way out.
“Though I think I know what the boatman meant now. ‘Go in and out the window, as you have done before,’ he said. We’re ‘out’ now. Time to find our way back in. I’d guess we’re looking for another bridge.”
I shake my head, “I guess. Sounds like bullshit to me—like you can interpret those stupid rhymes however you please and still derive vague meaning from them.”
Willow isn’t listening. She’s squinting at something through the trees, and she’s already begun trudging towards it by the time I’m done talking. I follow her trajectory and then see what distracted her.
Standing in a small clearing is a snowman, as tall as I am, with two pebbles for eyes, a red string for a mouth, a frozen cucumber for a nose, and a scarf wrapped around its neck. It’s suffered through a melt at some point—its facial features droop sadly. Even its stick-arms sag, twiggy fingertips brushing against the snowy ground.
“Look,” Willow says. “Beneath the scarf—there’s a sign around its neck.”
I brush the sign off, and read aloud, “‘Here there be monsters.’ Well that’s fucking awesome.”
“Ignore it,” Willow says. “I’m more interested in the snowman. I’ve never seen this in the maze before. Did you build it?”
“Yes, I snuck out into the creepy snow-covered forest and built a snowman while you weren’t looking. That’s what I do for shits and giggles when I’m trapped in an endless maze.”
Willow lifts the scarf and points at the red string forming the snowman’s mouth. “Well those are yours, aren’t they?”
“Of course they’re not—” Oh god. They are. The snowman’s droopy mouth looks like the woolen mitten I’d dragged through the maze. The scarf has a long rip down one end, where it had gotten caught on the copper pipe. My prodigal clothing’s come back to me.
“How did you know they were mine?” I whisper. “I lost them before I met you.”
Willow looks up, surprised. “Oh. I don’t know. They suit you?”
“They suit me....” I look down at my inflatable life raft-yellow Reeboks. My coffee stained t-shirt. My baby blue windbreaker, which doesn’t help at all against the cold.
“Enough about you,” Willow interrupts. I look up to see that she’s wrapped the scarf around her neck. “Whaddya think? Good look on me?”
“I think we should leave.”
Willow sticks out her tongue, but I’m in no mood to banter. “Fine,” she says. “Party pooper. But it’s cold, so I’m taking your ugly scarf.”
We set out through the trees once more and trudge along in silence, but it’s not long before we find another clearing—and another snowman. “Here there be monsters,” Willow reads.
“We’ve gone in a circle.”
Willow shrugs again and points out that maybe we haven’t, because our footprints aren’t here. There are also no hoofprints, thank god. However, when I see the snowman for a third time, I know that the maze is messing with us.
Willow was right—it’s the goddamn corridors all over again.
“Cheer up,” Willow says. “Could be worse. Could be an abominable snowman instead of Frosty over here. Or are you only afraid of Minotaurs?”
“This isn’t a joke. I want out.”
“Maybe man’s the real monster,” Willow giggles.
“Yes,” a voice says.
Willow whirls around and says, “Who said that?” at the same moment I scream, “The snowman can talk!”
But the voice is coming from behind us. “Man’s the real monster,” it hoots. “Stay back, monster! Stay back!”
Willow points and says softly, “In the trees.”
An owl is perched on a snowy branch, peering at us from between the frozen leaves. It opens its beak, and says, “Monster! Monster!”
“One of your talking animals?” I whisper back.
Willow ignores me and addresses the owl instead. “Please, how do we get out of these woods?”
The owl gives a surprised flap of its wings. It starts to preen itself.
I quirk an eyebrow at Willow, who shrugs. “Maybe it’s just parroting us?”
The owl looks angry, if that’s possible. It stretches its right wing out and glares at us from the treetop.
“I think it’s pointing us on?” Willow says, but she doesn’t sound sure. “Talking owls are new for me—not sure if we can trust them.”
The direction pointed out looks identical to every other we’ve traveled, but Willow grabs my hand and begins walking into the woods. Suddenly suspicious, I dig in my heels into the snow and crane my neck to look at the owl. “Why are you helping us?”
The owl looks up, annoyed that we’ve cut our exit short. “To get you away,” it says.
Now Willow looks up at the owl, frustration etched on her face. “So that’s not the way on? Why did you point us in that direction?”
The owl ruffles its breast feathers, cocks its head to the other side. “You idiot. Just said, didn’t I?”
An idea seems to dawn on Willow. Her voice takes on a cooing tone, as if speaking to a child, and she says, “Ah, you’re right. But, see, that’s the trouble—every time we leave, we keep coming back.”
“I know.” The owl glowers. “Been watching you. Here be monsters.”
“Right,” Willow says, “Here be monsters. But if we’re not here, we can’t very well be monsters, now can we?”
“Man is the real monster,” the owl quips.
“He’s not so bad, really,” Willow says, “Besides, I’m a ghost.”
The owl bobs its head and shuffles a little on its branch. “Ghost should take the monster away.”
“That’s the plan,” Willow says, “but I need directions. If I had your wings, I’d just fly him out of here.”
“If you climb my tree, I’ll fly up higher. Or peck at your eyes.” The owl looks down coolly, but it bobs its head towards the snowman. “That way,” it coos. “The nose knows. Put the monster on the train.”
I look back at the snowman, run my gaze down its crooked green nose. I see nothing but identical trees in that direction.
“That’s the way?” Willow confirms. The owl turns its head 180 degrees in agreement.
“On the train,” the owl hoots. “On the train.”
“I was talking to an owl,” I mutter as we walk away. “An owl. That’s some Narnia shit.”
Willow pats me on the shoulder. “Hold on to your pigtails, Susan. We’re not out of the Wardrobe yet.”