The Tangle Box

Three days into their journey through the Labyrinth, the Knight, the Lady, and the Gargoyle came upon a town.

It was late afternoon, the light’s wane barely perceptible, a darkening of a gloom that they now knew never brightened beyond twilight. They had walked steadily through a changeless forest world until suddenly, unexpectedly, the town came into view as they crested a small rise. A cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings and worn dirty streets, it hunkered down in a hollow where the trees had been cleared away so that it looked as if the forest had swept around it like the waters of a river around an island. No roads led into it and none away. There were people; the Knight could see them moving on the streets. There were animals, though they were a shabby lot and had the look of creatures beaten down by life. Lights burned in a few of the windows, and as the three stared down more were lit. They gave off a weak and singularly desperate glow, as if they had fought their battle against the coming night too many times and were tired of the struggle.

Overhead, where the trees opened to the skies, there was nothing to be seen of moon or stars, only an endless layer of impenetrable mist.

“People,” the Gargoyle said, and there was both surprise and distaste in his voice.

The Knight said nothing. He was thinking that he was weary of his trek through this dismal world where everything looked the same and nothing ever changed. The past three days had dragged away in a mind-numbing crawl, filled with silence and darkness and an implacable sense of hopelessness. Twice the Lady had tried to kill him, once with poison in his drink, once with a sharpened stick when she thought he was sleeping. Her efforts had been wasted, for he sensed everything she was about. She seemed to accept this. She went through the motions as if already resigned to her failure, as if the attempt must be made even when the conclusion was foregone. Yet he was damaged nevertheless. It was what he saw in her eyes that wore at him. He was a warrior and could withstand her physical attacks. But the looks of rage and loathing and sadness were less easily dealt with, and he was made sick at heart by their constancy.

Of course, she hated the Gargoyle as well, but her hatred of him was inbred and impersonal and somehow more acceptable.

“Why is there a town here?” he asked them quietly.

For a moment, no one answered. Why, indeed? A town, come out of nowhere, materialized as if from a vision, having no purpose or excuse, existing in a vacuum. Where was the trade that would support it, since there were no roads? Where were the crops that would feed it, since there were no fields? Was this a town of hunters and trappers? If so, to where did they carry their goods and from where did their supplies come? The Knight in three days had seen almost no forest creatures, and what few he had seen had been small and furtive and somehow natural to the gloom, existing because and not in spite of it.

“What difference why it is here?” the Lady demanded irritably. “It is here, and that is all that matters. We have a chance to find our way again. What purpose is there in questioning that?”

The Gargoyle edged forward a step, stooped and hunched within his dark cloak, keeping as always to shadow. “I mistrust this,” he said. “There is something wrong here.”

The Knight nodded. He felt it, too. Something was not right. Still, the town was here, and they could not simply pass it by. Someone living there must know of a way to leave the Labyrinth; someone must know of a way back out into the real world.

“We will go down to see what we can learn. We will not stay beyond that.” The Knight looked over at the other two.

“If they discover me, they will kill me,” the Gargoyle said.

“Remain behind, then,” the Lady snapped, unmoved.

“Ah, but I hunger for their words,” the Gargoyle murmured, as if ashamed. “That is the puzzle of me. I am loathed by those I would come to know.”

“You would be them, you pathetic creature,” she sneered. “Admit it.”

But the Gargoyle shook his head. “I would not be them. Oh, no, Lady—not for all the gold and silver in the world. They are such uncertain, indecisive beings, all wrapped up in the small measure of their lives. I, on the other hand, am certain, and have the gift of immortality. I am not burdened by the smallness of their existence.”

“Nor do you have their beauty. Easy to belittle those whose lives are finite when death for you is so distant you barely need consider what it means.” The Lady fixed him with her cold eyes. “I have life beyond that of humans, Gargoyle, but I treasure beauty as well. I would not be ugly like you even if I could live forever.”

“Your ugliness is within,” the Gargoyle whispered.

“And yours, always and forever, is plainly stamped so that no one can mistake what you are!”