Chapter 11 #2
“No. It likes you very much. That is why it is making such a fuss. You know you are almost at the center?” he spoke calmly to her, listening intently.
“What i…is at t…the center?” Aurora’s voice sounded closer.
“Well, you would have to find it yourself and find out. But the center is my favorite place to be at, and I do not mind sharing it with you.”
He took three careful steps forward. The path curved, and the sound of her breathing shifted nearer. She was on the other side of the bend, close but not visible to him.
“H…h…how can I g…get there?” she asked.
Hector smiled. He was proud that she did not give up and wanted to find the center on her own.
“Can you hear my voice?” he asked.
“Y-yes.”
“Good. Then you are not lost. Lost means no one can find you, and I have found you.”
She drew in another shaky breath. “But I c…c…cannot see you.”
“You will see me soon, I promise. Now listen to me carefully,” he said. “Do not run. Running makes the maze think it has won. I am going to lift my cane.” He lifted the cane above his head. “You may see it above the hedge if you look carefully. It will show you where I am.”
Aurora remained silent.
“Do you see it?” he asked.
A sniff. “I—I think so.”
“Good, now walk toward it slowly and keep one hand out on the right side of the hedge.”
He heard her small feet move just as the duchess’s voice sounded again, more distant than before and threaded through the maze.
“Aurora!”
Aurora made a small, distressed noise and began to hurry.
“Slowly,” Hector said firmly. “The duchess is looking for you too. That is good, but you are closer to me.”
He kept the cane raised though his arm had begun to ache.
The top of her head appeared first as a pale, moving blur beneath the line of hedge; then the small shape of her body emerged into the passage before him.
To Hector she was mostly motion and outline, a little figure in a dress whose details he could not catch, face lifted toward the cane as though it were a banner on a battlefield.
“There she is!” he called out to her. “You have done it!”
She crossed the last few feet at a run.
He lowered the cane just in time, bracing himself as Aurora flung both arms around his legs and held on with all the force in her small body. A sob broke out of her then, as if she had postponed it until safety made it permissible.
Hector stood very still.
He had not expected the strength of her grip. She was warm, trembling, and alive with the last remnants of terror. Slowly, he shifted the cane to one hand and lowered the other.
For an instant, his palm hovered above her head. He listened to the small sobs, judged the angle of her face, and set his hand gently upon her hair.
“There,” he said. “There, Aurora.”
She cried harder for a moment.
He patted her head, awkwardly at first, then with a steadier rhythm. Comfort was not one of the arts in which he had been schooled.
“You were very brave,” he told her.
She shook her head at him.
“Yes,” he said. “You were. The maze tried to frighten you, and you fought back. That is courage.”
Aurora tipped her face upward.
He could see the pale oval of it. Her eyes were only darkness and shine to him, and her voice, when she spoke, was clear.
“Thank you, Uncle Hector.”
She is not nervous.
The thought came bright and sudden, a private triumph he would have been embarrassed to confess.
“You are welcome,” he said, and hoped his tone gave away less than he felt.
The maze carried the duchess’s steps to him before it carried her voice. Lighter than a servant’s and quicker now with no attempt at composure in the pace.
She is close.
Hector heard the brush of skirts against the hedge, the faint catch of breath as she turned into the enclosed garden.
“Aurora!”
Aurora released him at once. He felt the loss of her arms immediately, and it felt oddly cold.
She turned from him, the small shape of her body angling toward Her Grace. “Poppy!”
The duchess came forward. Hector did not need clear sight to know the moment she reached the child; the air changed with the swift kneel, the gathered fabric, and Aurora’s eager movement into a different embrace.
“Oh, my darling,” she said, and though she kept her voice low, relief made it unsteady. “There you are. There you are.”
“I found Uncle Hector,” Aurora said, with the pride of one who had accomplished the finding entirely on her own.
“So you did.” The duchess’s answer was warm, but Hector heard what lay beneath it: the remnants of fear, carefully folded away where Aurora would not see. “You gave us quite a fright.”
Hector inclined his head. “The maze and I were discussing terms of surrender when she arrived.”
“That was very wise,” Her Grace said.
Her attention shifted to him. He felt it before she spoke, as he often felt a gaze first. He hoped she would not notice the paint and wood surrounding him.
“Your Grace.” She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“It was nothing,” he said.
Her Grace did not answer quickly, and he suspected she disliked false modesty as much as he did. At last she said, “It was not nothing to her.”
“That I can accept.” He turned his face toward her more fully.
She stood only a few paces away, close enough that the blurred impression of her gathered itself into something almost coherent: medium height, slender, the darker gold of her hair subdued by shadow, the pale shape of her face lowered toward Aurora and then raised to him.
Her eyes…
There was a cool brightness where her gaze met his, a suggestion of color just beyond reach. He could almost see it until the sun disappeared altogether and shadowed her eyes.
Almost.