Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty

Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty

 1

                It wasn’t a very long trek before Alice reached the maze.  She was surprised to see it standing there so prominently before her, the tall hedges emerging so green from a land that was so obviously dead and fruitless.  She remembered this place though.  It was where she had first come before the Queen all those years ago. 

                It had once been a place of amazing beauty, radiant with endless flowerbeds, trees of all sorts, and more rose bushes than one could count.  It was here that Alice had nearly been beheaded – more than once.  And it was here that everything about Wonderland had taken a turn.

                Then again, if what everyone has told me is true, the Queen would have known I was in her land even before I met her, she reminded herself now.  She knew the exact moment when her peaceful little charade had been imposed upon by an intruder.

                Now, the garden had been cut into a menacing-looking maze that Alice could only glance into before all the bends obstructed any further view.  Darkness had fallen by now, and by the lamp posts scattered within her herbal destination, she could see a couple of guards pacing back and forth across the entrance.  No doubt, there were more throughout.  After the small war she’d just been through, she didn’t see any need to storm into the maze with loud disturbances.  Perhaps quiet stealth would be a nice change. 

                Putting the Eyestaff safely aligned with the croquet mallet on her back, she made her decision.

                Alice watched the card guards a few more moments, learning their patrolling patterns, and when they were out of her sight, she moved forward and set her back against the maze entrance.  The hedge wall behind her hardly rustled as she pressed against it, listening with all her ability until she heard the guards once again make their swap across the entrance.

                With a card in each hand, she swung around the corner, swiftly catching both guards in the back through their hearts.  They both fell without sound, and she quietly moved the bodies off into the shadows where they would not be seen.  Now that that was taken care of, there was another choice to be made, and without a guide through the vast labyrinth, she feared getting lost more than running into danger.

                Right…or left?

                Both directions looked the same, and it took her only long enough to remind herself that she had no time to tarry that she instinctually shoved off to the right.  She rounded the corner hesitantly to find that there were no guards there – and also to find that either direction she could have just chosen would have taken her to the same place.  There was only one path ahead of her, and it would take her downward beneath a hedge archway and finally into the main area of the labyrinth.

                Keeping a hand behind her to assure that the weapons strapped to her back would not rattle together, she crept into the dark, hedge corridor where the ground was now laid with a square-stoned walkway.  She moved agilely on the balls of her feet to keep the heels of her boots from clicking noisily, moving on toward the lights that lit the many ways within. 

                It was then that she saw the first inner card guard.  He was pacing a distance down the decline, and immediately her back was against the wall again, shielded by shadow.  The razor cards were slipped back into her left apron pocket while she began to dig in the right to recover the jacks.  Giving the rubber ball a firm squeeze when she’d found it, she set it bouncing at her side and released the metal jacks.  Alice watched them as they disappeared down the corridor and rounded the corner as she’d intended.  There was a small yelp as the guard was pummeled by the jacks, and then they returned to her, their job done, and she scooped up the ball and placed them inside her pocket once again.