Dreams of Imahken

Ye guided by foxes promising shrine

 An intertwining wall of leaves, vines, thorns, and roses loomed before the group seeking passage. Anilee, now clean and calm, approached. She gently touched the soft petals of the roses as blue as the ocean, speckled by indigo pollen. She noticed that the vines behind the roses seemed to be shifting and slithering across each other like a wall of snakes.

She stepped away. "No, I have never seen any roses like this before. I was unaware that roses could grow so beautifully blue. However, I am worried because the bush-" Anilee stared up at the towering greenery before her, "-the hedge, seems to be shifting."

"Perhaps this is what the poem refers to as labyrinthine?" Illus paused beside Anilee. "Now to find an entrance..."

He noticed the vines shifted more quickly since he had approached, little tendrils seemed to reach out toward him.

Illus quickly backed away. "You're right, it would appear these roses are alive."

"Duh-huh! The plant is alive?!" Tyza mocked Illus with a clown voice.

Illus glared at her, failing to notice as Sator drew his machete and hacked at the bush.

"Wait-!" A vine slapped Anilee.

The wall of roses and thorny vines erupted like a ravenous maw, surrounding them, catching Sator and Tyza. The vines coiled around them, dragging them in and closing over. Illus and Anilee were both knocked backward by the burst of vines.

Illus tugged Anilee to her feet and away from the bush. "Tyza! Sator! Are you-"

A thorny vine whirled out at Illus's face. He barely ducked it, but lost balance and tumbled over. Anilee rushed to his side, too terrified to step closer to the wall.

"Ty-" Sator yelled out but was quickly silenced.

Illus and Anilee froze, waiting for a sound, but they heard nothing else from the other side of the wall.

"Sator, Tyza!" Illus called back, noticing that the wall trembled when he did.

No response.

He grabbed Anilee by the hand and held a finger to his lips to quiet her. Together, they tiptoed closer to the wall, then stood in place. The wall continued its gentle shifting, no care for the two standing before it.

Illus took off in a speedy walk, a cold sweat breaking. He pulled Anilee around the perimeter of the roses desperate to find the others. Almost a quarter of a mile down river was an opening marked by two mossy granite fox statues on either side. Illus pulled at the moss on the base of the left statue where a flat face seemed to have writing. The words, eroded by time and moss, were illegible. Illus glanced to Anilee, who worriedly met his eyes. With a firm grip on her hand, he led her forward into the maze.

The strange serenity of the silent spectacle calmed Anilee, so much that she walked beside Illus instead of behind him. She marveled at the carefully manicured hedges, the overgrown granite tiles beneath their feet, wetted by rain and slick with moss, parted from one another by grass. Specks of indigo pollen drifted in the air around them, glittering in the sunlight.

Illus half wished he had been alone with Anilee, not chasing after Tyza and Sator. The scene was private, intimate, and peaceful. A setting he wanted to take advantage of to learn Anilee's mind better, if only he could speak, if only Tyza and Sator were not in danger.

They rushed through alley after alley, forward and backward as the sun continued its descent toward evening without any sign of having made it any deeper. Anilee's initial wonder became a building anxiety for every second longer they remained, her demeanor slowly becoming more panicked and startled.