by Brandon Meyers
illustration by Graeme Maitland
Prior to her month-long trip to Europe, Elsa had never seen an actual castle. After the Laurio family had finished touring their ninth stone-walled residence, however, the bespectacled little girl felt she had seen enough of them to fill her lifetime quota.
“As you can see, a painting of Henry VIII still hangs here in the…” The lanky and balding tour guide droned on. In actuality, he was one of the better ones that Elsa had encountered thus far, but she had long since surpassed her interest in structures of antiquity.
“Mom, I’m bored,” Elsa’s little brother whined.
“Stop it, Alex. Listen to the man,” their mother scolded, “you might learn something.”
“—it is a well-known fact that he had the castle completely renovated for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.”
“It is boring,” Elsa agreed quietly. “If I have to look at one more painting of a dead guy, I’m going to hurl.”
Alex giggled and made a motion to hang himself from an invisible noose, eyes going crossed and tongue lolling.
“Ahem.” The tour guide, in his immaculate gray coat, stared with annoyance at Elsa and her seven-year-old brother. “Perhaps now would be a good time to move on to the final leg of the tour?”
Elsa’s mother blushed, grabbing both of her children by the shoulders and pulling them to attention. Elsa’s backpack slipped off her shoulder and fell to the floor. Her face reddened at drawing the attention of the rest of their large tour group.
“If you will follow this way, it will be my utmost pleasure to present to you the finest hedge maze the world has ever seen.”
Elsa and Alex were led forcefully out of the stone goliath and down the steps to the courtyard. Their mother pulled them behind the rest of the group.
“Listen up. Your father and I paid good money for this tour. So we’re going to get our money’s worth, you got it?”
“But dad’s not even he—”
“Stop it, Alex. Not another peep. Just because your dad ate some bad food doesn’t mean that the trip had to be spoiled for the rest of us. Look, they’ve got a garden maze. That’s cool, right? Now, go.”
Alex looked up at the towering spires of the Leeds Castle and groaned. He whispered to Elsa, “I don’t think it was the food that made him sick.”
“I heard that.”
Much to Elsa’s surprise, the hedge maze was almost as impressive as the guide had promised. The emerald walls were made of fourteen-hundred ornately trimmed yew trees, and stood a few inches taller than most of the men in their group.
“Can we do it, mom?” Alex asked excitedly.
“Yeah, please mom? We’re really sorry for being…um, bored.”
Her eyes said that although annoyed at their behavior, she could not bring herself to deny her children this bit of fun on what would likely be the only family vacation overseas that the Laurio’s would be able to afford in the near future.
She said finally, eyeing the security guard at the entrance, “Alright, I’m going to be waiting for you at the end. Don’t leave your little brother alone, Elsa. And Alex, be- have.”
The siblings gave each other excited looks and made their way to the front of the group.
After waiting what seemed an eternity for the guide’s explanation of the many rules of conduct for the maze, Elsa and her brother were finally allowed inside.
“Whoa, cool,” Alex said, admiring the smoothly trimmed walls. “How do they do it?”
“With clippers, dork. And it probably takes them forever, so maybe you should get your hands out of it.” Elsa pushed him playfully away from the manicured hedge and further into the gravel-floored maze. The sun was near setting, and the guide had told them that theirs would be the last group admitted, as the life-size puzzle generally took anywhere between twenty and forty minutes to complete.
That was precisely fifteen to thirty-five minutes longer than Alex’s attention span.
“Ellie, I wanna go back. Can we go back?”
Elsa looked around. She could hear the voices of their fellow tourists calling to each other across leafy barriers and caught flickers of movement between the branches every few yards.
“I don’t think we can do that, Alex.” She scanned the area again. “I mean, I don’t have a clue where we are now. I think we’d better just keep going until we get to the center.”
“But, I’m tired,” he whined.
“Well, maybe you should have th—hey, what was that?”
Elsa brought her face closer to the rounded surface of the wall. “Did you see that?”
“Don’t fool around, Ellie. I’m not stupid.” He stood with crossed arms, obviously immune to his sister’s attempt to shift attention away from him.
“Sshh…stop talking, Alex. Did you…hear that?” She leaned in closer to the wall, bending down onto her knees at the edge of the sculpted shrubbery. Bits of gravel dug into her knees uncomfortably.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Alex said. He shifted away from her uneasily. “Elsa, you’re scaring me.”
“Really, Alex, there’s something in there. I just saw it…and heard it, I think. Maybe it’s a rabbit. Here, bunny, bunny…”
The wind offered a small gust that rattled the branches enough for Alex to catch glimpse of a tiny blue eye from within the hedge. “I see it. I see it!” He bounced forward, thoughts of a family of rabbits replacing any prior reservations. “Move, I wanna see it.”
Two fish-white arms reached out from the depths of the greenery, seizing each of the children by an arm and pulling them into the bristly hedge.
Read the rest of the story in Crow Toes Quarterly's Twelfth Issue, available in both digital and print form in the Crow Toes Quarterly Online Store.
