Something catches my trainer and sends me sprawling forward into the snow, knocking the air from me.
I roll over, arms up to protect myself, but there is nobody there. I rise on my elbows and look at what tripped me. There’s a half-buried welly jutting from the snow.
Immediately I know whose boot it is; she was standing here with me in them spewing bile less than an hour ago. Dread rises inside me as I clamber to my feet.
‘Fiona,’ I call softly, but there is no one there.
I scan the ground for footprints and in the beam of my torch, her tracks appear heading back towards the maze. Judging by her gait, and the fact that she didn’t stop to retrieve her boot, she must have been running. Something must have scared her so much that losing a boot seemed irrelevant. Something tells me to ignore this diversion and carry on with my own game, but if something happened to her, even though I don’t like the woman, I’m not sure I could live with that.
At the maze’s entrance, I notice a torn piece of red silk flapping, snagged on a low branch.
Oh God. Not in the maze, seriously?
If I’m going in there, I need something with a bit more heft than the paperweight in my pocket. I look around the maze’s entrance for something, anything, I can use as a weapon. I really only have one option. I squat over the wooden maze arrow sign and heave it from the frozen ground. It pops out of the earth after a few wiggles and I fall back, a sharp wooden stake in hand.
At the maze’s entrance, I raise my right hand to the wall and start to run, branches whipping across my open right palm as I go.
‘Fiona,’ I call ahead, doubting a response but eager to interrupt whatever might be going on ahead of me. Then I recall that when I was talking to Fiona earlier, she was carrying a shovel.
It’s only now that I wonder why?
It crosses my mind that she might be waiting for me in here. She has a weapon; this could all be a trick of some kind. And just as I’m thinking how unlikely it is that Fiona might want to hurt me, I remember what the baby inside me stands to inherit. Everything she would get would be taken from Fiona’s children. People have killed for much, much less.
I round the next corner and pull up short. There is a spray of blood in the snow, the ground disturbed, like in the aftermath of a struggle. Beyond the patch of scrambled mud and melted snow, I see another set of footprints in the snow. Someone was waiting in here for her. She must have run straight into them. The new set of footprints is the only one that continues on into the maze, but the red drip continues with it, a red dotted line in the whiteness.
Something about the trail of blood up ahead makes me steel myself. I finally release my right hand from the maze wall and raise my weapon in both hands. I pause again before the next corner as I take a steadying breath before propelling myself around it.
A monstrous stone fountain looms over me and I stumble back, surprised to find myself at the heart of the maze. My gaze darts around the centre of it, searching for a person, but there is no one here. I shuffle hesitantly around the fountain to make sure. Snow fills the fountain’s tiers; no water is flowing from the gaping mouths of fish and sea creatures who instead seem to scream silently up into the moonlight. I shiver. Lila was right; it is a creepy fountain.
Carefully I continue to make my way around the centre of the fountain, following the line of blood, and as I do the shovel Fiona was carrying comes into sight. The soil beneath it has recently been turned. It is a mound; there is something buried beneath. A shallow grave.
In the silence the soil gently moves and I fly back from it, letting out an animal noise as I do. Whatever is under there is still alive. I edge closer to it once more.
‘Fiona,’ I whisper gently, and from my tone it’s clear I don’t really want an answer.
The mound remains still and I step closer. It suddenly shifts and I leap back again, hand to heart, as its soil crumbs tumble and settle.