“You mean to tell me we have been going in a s-straight line for the last twenty minutes?” I snap with a bit more edge to my voice than intended. “How the hell does that work? This hedge maze isn’t big enough for that.”

  “I know, that is why I asked you if you knew that we were going the right way.” Angus says with a sigh, not reacting to my irritation.

  “Okay, lets approach this logically.” I say, rubbing my forehead to try a stave off a headache that has started to grow. “Have you looked behind us or have you just been b-blindly wandering ahead on the path?”

  “Um, no?” He says sheepishly.

  At that, I turn around and start walking the way we came. I almost reach the edge of the flames lining the path before I realize Angus isn’t following. I turn back around and motion for him to come, tapping my foot impatiently. He rushes over to my side and I take his hand, dragging him behind me for a moment before he speeds up to match my pace beside me.

  “Are you mad at me?” He asks in concern.

  “No, Angus.” I reply quickly. “I just want to figure this out.”

  We follow the path back the way we came when I notice something odd after a few minutes. It feels like the path has shifted slightly to the left, but the subtle difference isn’t anything I can see in the small flames. I don’t think I noticed the shift before for the simple fact that I wasn’t really paying attention and just relying on Angus. I continue on and the feeling continues. I stop and look back seeing the path behind, still straight.

  “Angus?”

  “Yes, Beira?”

  “Do me a favor, please. Go back down the path, the way we were originally going, and keep walking until I tell you to s-stop.” I say to him.

  I can tell by the angle of his head he is looking at me with incredulity.

  “Beira,” he starts but I hold up a hand, cutting him off.

  “And take your guiding flames with you so that I can keep track of how far you go.”

  “But,” He protests and I again cut him off.

  “Angus, just do it. I want to check s-something. Oh, and stay as close to the center of the path as you can, I’ll be doing the same here.”

  He turns and starts to walk away from me, thankfully not questioning me again.

  By the time he gets far enough away to where the flames no longer surround me, he pauses and I loudly tell him to continue. Soon, the edge of his visual aid is far beyond me, maybe by a hundred feet or more. I shout for him to stop and can see him pause in the distance. With the flames so far away and extending past him, I can see that there is indeed a slight curve to the path. It is so subtle that it isn’t noticeable at a closer distance and it is likely that the leaves on the hedges only aid the illusion of a straight path if someone isn’t paying close attention.

  I yell at Angus to stay put and I start to make my way toward him, moving to the edge of the path on my left side. I put out my hand, trailing it along the side of the foliage as I make my way towards him.

  Right before I hit the edge of where his flames line the path, I feel a difference in the leaves and branches beneath my fingertips. They feel less firm, like they are much younger grown than the rest of the foliage around them. Gently I lean into it, pressing my hand into the hedge and feel it give way, causing me to stumble and fall forward through the hedge. I hit the ground hard, my palms feeling like they were scraped up as I caught myself on the ground.

  “Beira!” I hear Angus calling.

  Looking around, I notice that I can no longer see his guiding flames lining the path.

  “I’m o-ok.” I reply loudly and a minute later I hear him on the other side of the hedge. I stand up and brush myself off. I reach back through the hedge and am rewarded by feeling a void on the other side of the hedge.

  “I see you.” I hear Angus say from the other side of the hedge. “You’re hurt.”

  “’It’s just a flesh wound!’” I reply, giggling, unable to help myself again.

  I pull my hand out of the hedge and hear it rustling as Angus steps through, joining me on the other side and the path around us lights up in tiny flames.

  “Yes, but it still needs to be tended to.” He says seriously, again not getting the joke, not that I expect him to.

  My stomach choses this moment to growl loudly, causing me to flush with embarrassment.

  This headache I feel coming is likely because I’m hungry.

  “Let’s get out of here first, Angus.” I say, annoyed at my vocal tummy.

  I look at the path around us and see that where we emerged appears to be where a path dead ends. Looking forward, the path resumes the normal appearance of straight paths with ninety degree turns and intersections, just like the first half of the maze. Following the logic of the first half, I lead us toward the first branch and turn left, which should take us in the general direction of the Keep’s mansion. Within minutes, we hit a dead end so I back track and try again but we just end up at another dead end. Eventually I lead us back to the initial first turn we made.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Hmm.” I say thoughtfully as I pause to examine the path again.

  Angus, thankfully, says nothing and lets me think. From what I can see, if we hadn’t turned to the left and went straight ahead, we would have immediately hit another blocked path, leaving the right turn that is across from where I turned left as the only logical path left. I start down the new path and decide to keep turning right when available, going against my instinct because I know that I am only taking us deeper into the maze.

  Time and patience eventually reward us by leading to a Y intersection. My instinct tells me that taking the left path will lead us to the exit, but my curiosity demands that I see where the right path leads, despite my hunger. I tell Angus this and he encourages me to take the right path if I want to see where it leads. We start down the right which gently curves to the right before seemingly ending. Turning around I see the clever optical illusion that was set up by my father. Behind us, I see two paths. The one on the left seems to stretch on as far as Angus’s flames allow me to see, and he confirms that it appears to keep going and going, like the long path that we were on after leaving the Rose Gazebo. The path to the right was the one we had just come from. The way the hedges were positioned made it appear as if whichever path you are on just ends until you turn around and see that there is another path.

  We head back to the Y intersection and I notice that the way it is set up, you would naturally be inclined to continue straight instead of turning back around to face the intersection again to take the left branch. Once we are on the left branch, the path continues on to a hard left turn which leads to another long straight path with no deviations off of it.

  After several minutes of walking we emerge from the maze, back into the courtyard where the fountain sits. I giggle to myself now that I can see the second half of the maze in my head, having mostly mentally mapped it on the way out.

  “I’m going to have to congratulate Daddy on that one, it was clever. “

  “Oh?” Angus says, looking at me.

  I explain to him how, if you knew to look, you could be out of the second half pretty quickly, but the two turns you have to take are designed to mislead you into going the wrong way, the first by making you second guess the distance you have traveled using slight curvature to make the path seem to stretch further than it does, and the second just playing to human nature and taking the obvious path of least resistance. If it hadn’t of been for me falling through a thinner section of the hedge, into that other section of maze, we may have ended up lost even longer than we were.

  “I see,” Angus replied, a cheerful note in his voice. “I shall have to congratulate the duke as well.”

  We made our way inside to find Mary waiting for us.

  “I thought we were going to have to send out a search party.” She says with a tsk.

  I laugh softly and explain that we got a little lost in the hedge maze thanks to some trickery pulled by my father and she then tells us that lunch is ready but that my mother won’t be joining us. Apparently, she had eaten an early lunch in her office because she was behind on some paperwork and was trying to catch up on it. I didn’t even know my mother had an office, and for that matter, I didn’t even know she had a job besides being my mother.

  I should probably find out more about what my parents actually do because I am woefully ignorant on that topic and I’m supposed to be their child. You would think that I would at least have an inkling, “amnesia” or not.

  After a little bit of discussion, we decide to take our lunch in the drawing room since the dining room is so formal and lunch was to be a light affair consisting of tea and sandwiches. Light or not, I found the meal filling, though I ate a bit more than I thought I would. I guess I was hungrier than I thought.

  After our lunch Angus asks if I would like to go into the city since I haven’t been there since my “accident” and I agree, eager for any excuse to learn more about my new home. He sends one of the servants off to make sure that the carriage is prepared and while we wait explains that he won’t be able to use the flames he has been providing to help me navigate in the city since it could cause a panic.

  “Why would it cause a panic?” I ask as we make our way to the front entryway. “Everyone here has been ok with it when you have used them t-to help me.”

  “Put yourself in the shoes of the average citizen of Lochavria. Imagine you are going about your day and suddenly, your body and the area around you is swathed in fire, regardless of if it is hot or not, it’ll cause a panic. Granted the flames are barely visible, but if any of the citizenry has the ability to see magic, it could cause a stir.” He answers matter of factly.

  “I d-didn’t think about that.” I say making a thoughtful expression.

  When we step out of the doors into the porte-cochère, the carriage is already there waiting on us. As we approach, the coachman opens the door and Angus offers his hand, helping me in. Once inside, I move to the seat at the rear of the carriage and wait for Angus who climbs in behind me, his weight causing the carriage to rock slightly as he moves to settle in next to me. After confirming that we were settled in for the ride, the coachman closes the door and soon the carriage starts to move forward with a jolt. I have never ridden in a carriage before so I was a bit surprised at just how bumpy the ride was. Angus, being helpful as ever, describes the world outside of the carriage windows since to my eyes it is nothing but a mass of moving colors blurring by.

  Moving from the keep, we entered a small, quiet, wooded section that stretched from the front of the keep to the large wooden gates and portcullis, that were set in the inner wall that separated the entire Duke’s estate from the rest of Lochavria. The carriage rumbles as we travel down the cobblestone road, accompanied by the clip clop of the horse’s hooves that are pulling it, which attributes to the bounciness of the ride. Once we clear the gates, it is as if the world comes alive with the sound of people, even over the rumble of the carriage. Angus confirms that as we leave the gates, the section of the city we have entered is one of the larger and busier business districts, which accounts for the amount of people I can hear outside of the carriage.

  It isn’t long after we enter the business district that Angus taps on the ceiling of the carriage and it draws to a halt. Soon the door is opened and Angus gets out, before offering me his hand to help me down from the carriage, making sure I know how far to step down in order to descend safely. He says something to the coachman that I don’t quite hear and the coachman closes the carriage door before climbing and leaving.

  “How are we s-supposed to get back if he has left?” I ask Angus as the carriage is driven off.

  “He isn’t leaving, he is just moving the carriage to somewhere out of the way so that it isn’t blocking the street,” Angus explains before reassuring me. “He won’t go far.”

  We move to the side of the road, toward one of the shops that Angus tells me appears to be a hat shop that also carries hair accessories, describing the display they have in the large window facing the street. I ask him if we can go in to look around, noting of course, that he will have to describe the items in the shop for me. He agrees and we make our way to the shop doors. As he is reaching out to pull the door open, a familiar voice booms behind us.

  “Beira!”

  We both turn and I can see a large shape that had approached us from behind.

  “Right in front of you about 5 feet away.” Angus whispers in my ear.

  “Daddy!” I say brightly, smiling as I move quickly forward, embracing the person there. My movements feel familiar somehow as if I have done this my whole life and briefly, I see flashes of times I, or rather Beira, has greeted her father this exact way.

  He embraces me in his thick arms and hugs me tightly as he says, “Aye, lass, I’m home.”