THOUGH THE AIR IS COOL AND HUMID, the very real threat of skewering myself on the passageway wall makes me sweat. Willow waves off my slick palms, chooses to place some distance between us instead. We move slowly—I’m in front, she trails behind.
As we wander, a weak light gradually begins to filter through the wood around us. It feels like dawn after a long and moonless night. But then, we’d just slept through the night—didn’t we? Willow stows her flashlight again and we carry on by the grace of an unseen sun.
When we reach the first fork in the wood, Willow calls a brief rest. One path continues on straight ahead, the other leads to the right and quickly winds out of sight.
“It’s right,” Willow says. “It’s a little more unpleasant than straight ahead, and it gets narrow in places, but we have to go right.”
“Let’s try going straight instead,” I say.
Willow scowls. “Suit yourself.” She waves me off down the corridor. “I’ll sit and wait for your inevitable return. I’m dizzy.”
I sit down beside her. “Right is fine. We’ll go right.”
The choices become more frequent after that. Very soon, we come to a crossroads with four possible paths, and Willow sets off down the leftmost one without explaining her rationale. I hesitate. When she’s left me thirty paces behind, she turns around and stamps her foot. “Seriously? Are we going to put every fork to a vote? I really don’t care to be impaled again.”
“That’s the path?”
“No, but the thorns along this corridor are particularly lovely this time of the year.” Willow rolls her eyes and continues walking. I reluctantly follow.
The ceiling of the path that she’s chosen begins sloping downward, and at one point Willow and I are forced to squirm over the root network on our bellies to avoid the thorns overhead. My right side aches as I squash my freshly bruised flesh against more jagged terrain, but Willow doesn’t say a word about her shoulder, so I bite back my complaints.
When we can at last stand back up, Willow stops to adjust her makeshift bandage. The wound has reopened. “Ah, shit,” she mutters and lifts the edge of her black dress as if to tear it.
“Wait.” I unwrap the tie from around my neck and hand it to her. “Pink isn’t really my colour,” I say, but Willow doesn’t smile at the joke.
We soon come to another four-way branch, identical to the last. “Left again,” she says.
I squint down the right and centre paths. “Why?”
“We can’t do this at every intersection!” she snaps. “I told you the path wasn’t easy. You want to take an alternate, be my guest.”
“What I mean....” I trail off. “That last fork. It curved. Isn’t this the same crossroad?”
“We had this discussion when we first met,” is the only answer I get. Did we? I don’t recall. But Willow is already stomping away down the left-hand passage, leaving me no room to argue.
I follow reluctantly, and say nothing more when she picks two more turns that make little sense to me. I only speak up again when we come to a fork that demands we choose left or right, and the right-hand side is easily the gentler of the two.
“Honestly,” she says. “My shoulder is killing me. I just want to get out of this wood and see if I can find somewhere to wash the cut. And the quickest way that I know is left.”
“I’m a little skeptical—”
“Oh, you’ve made that abundantly clear.”
I raise my voice. “What if you’ve forgotten the way? What if the path shifted since you were last here? You can’t seriously expect me to believe you memorized the path in all this shit.”
Willow hesitates and I’m elated. This is it. I’ve caught her in the lie.
“I’m a guide,” she sighs. “But you’re not exactly wrong. This place isn’t the same for any two people who walk it. I was really hoping we’d be out of this wood by now, honestly.”
Willow looks at me, a lock of blood-crusted hair obscuring her face. For a moment, her eyes reflect the pain she’s in, but then they steel as I stare back. “But I’ve been here for a hell of a lot longer than you. You could do worse than listen to my advice.”
“Advice? Christ, you’ve been spoon-feeding it to me like the gospel!” I point to the right. “Look, the trees thin over there. The floor is practically pitfall free.” I swing my hand to the left, where the thorny walls squeeze into the corridor, and the ceiling threatens to dip low once more. “And you want to go down there?”
Willow sucks her teeth again, a habit that’s quickly grating on my nerves. “Never heard of the path less travelled?” she sighs.
“You have fun with that. I’m going to try my luck.” I begin walking. Willow hesitates and I wonder if my earlier suspicion wasn’t correct. She wants my company. That’s all I am to her, a friend for a lonely denizen. Well, no more.
“Wait,” Willow says behind me.
I stop, but don’t turn around. “Why?”
Willow’s voice, annoyed. “I said, ‘do you want me to wait.’ What if it’s a dead end?”
“If it isn’t, you’ll be waiting for a while.” I keep walking.
I follow the path for another ten seconds before glancing back down the corridor. When I look back, Willow is gone.