again."
She didn't reply.
"So, um, you're probably real, right?" he asked.
"Somedays I wonder."
"Um."
Isabella didn't try to strike up any further conversation. After salvaging a few pieces of paper, she stood up and contemplated the swords again.
"You have an idea?" he asked.
Without replying to him, she carefully took each sword off the mount and then leaned it up against the wall with the blade pointing upwards.
"What good is that going to do?" he asked when she removed the fourth sword.
"Maybe nothing," she said. When the sixth sword was upright, the channel of water suddenly started to flow quickly to the right. Isabella stood on the bank and in a moment a small boat could be seen in the mists. She got ready to grab the boat, but the sudden current brought it directly to the bank and then abruptly slowed. There were two paddles in it. "That's what I thought," she said.
"What did you think?" he asked.
Without answering, she got in the boat. He quickly joined her and they paddled over to the far shore.
"Just in case," he said, and pulled the boat up on the bank.
There was blank wall on the other side, but Isabella checked her guidance spell and walked to the right until it opened into a passage.
"You act like you know where we're going," Brendon asked. "But you don't, do you?"
"No, I don't know where we're going. I'm trying to find a way out."
"Didn't work for me," he muttered, "but better than going nowhere."
The passage opened into a large space that was full of short trees and underbrush. Closer inspection revealed they were probably paper like everything else, but the foliage, such as it was, was quite dense so she was having a hard time figuring out where to go and if anything else was in the area. Then they heard a screech coming from somewhere in front of them. They immediately got their backs to the wall and ducked down behind the bushes.
"Now what?" Brendon asked in a low voice.
She concentrated on the guidance spell. It was starting to fade, but she guessed that somewhere in the room were seven swords, and that gave her an idea of how to proceed. "We be very quiet," she whispered.
Their progress was slow. The foliage rustled like real bushes and they were not practiced at stealth. They heard more of the terrible screeching but never saw what was making the noise. Isabella wondered if there was anything, but wasn't about to risk finding out. They followed along the wall until Isabella finally led them into another passage. But they were quiet until the strange room had faded into the mists.
"You're real brave, for a girl," Brendon said.
"Thanks," she said dryly.
"That noise was awful. Weren't you scared?"
"Yes."
"Do you think we're getting close to the way out?"
"Yes," she answered.
"You do? Why?"
"I have a theory."
"So do you think you know what horrible thing we'll find next is?" he asked.
"No, but I'm worried."
Eventually they came to a wide, round room that had only one way out. It was littered with what looked like tree branches, some quite long, but there was no sign of any trees.
"Well, at least this is pretty easy," Brendon said. "If this is the right way, of course."
"I don't like it," she said.
"Oh, come on, this isn't bad at all. No monsters, no forest, nothing to get us," he said, and stepped out in the room. He kicked a branch to the side. "See?"
She followed him into the room and they were half-way across when the ground started to shake. Both were pitched to the floor and the entire room seemed to collapse. Isabella shrieked as the bottom dropped out from underneath them. Luckily the fall was slow enough that neither were hurt although some the tree branches rolled into them. When the dust cleared, they were in a hole twenty feet deep. The drop only exposed more walls, which Isabella expected, and there were eight swords hanging along the wall, which she also expected. The doorway out of the room was still intact but at least twenty feet above them.
Brendon dusted himself off. "Well, that was exciting. How the hell do we get out? I mean, how do we get out? There aren't any stairs or a ramp or a rope or anything. And that's too high for you to stand on my shoulders and try to get out."
And again, Isabella sat on the ground to consider her options.
"So, are you going to tell me what you're thinking so I can help?" he asked.
"I'm just trying to think of a way out," she replied absently. "You're right; there's no immediate way out. But since time doesn't seem to matter here, I'm going to stay calm and think about this logically."
He seemed to consider her. "You're really odd, you know that?"
"So are you."
"Me? I'm not the gal who's wearing pants. Did you steal those from your brother or something? Are you a farm girl?"
She sighed. "If you're trying to make friends, insulting me isn't the way to do it."
"Hey, where I come from, gals don't wear men's clothes. That's all. Where do you come from?"
"Georgia," she answered briefly.
"Oh, you are a farm girl! Why didn't you just say so? I'm sorry about that," he said.
"Brendon, please be quiet," she said.
Now he looked insulted, but he didn't say anything. He sort of scratched at the ground, drew shapes in the dust, and sighed.
Finally she stood up. "Help me move those," she said, gesturing to the longest tree branches. "Paper is wood," she remembered. "There's probably no way I could move this on my own." She arranged the branches into two parallel rows and occasionally glanced up at the doorway.
"What are we doing?" he asked snidely.
She grabbed a sword off the wall.
"I mean, what are we doing, Isabella?" he asked much more politely.
"Making a ladder," she said, and jammed the sword through the two parallel rows. "Hopefully."
"Oh! That's really clever," he replied, and helped her out.
It took a bit of time, some leverage, and a lot of brute force, but they finished the ladder and got it up against the wall. Brendon braced the ladder for Isabella and she climbed up, then steadied it from the top so he could join her. Unfortunately, the guidance spell had faded out. Isabella tried to reactivate it, but nothing happened.
"Damn it," she snapped.
"You can talk like that?" he asked. "Huh."
She walked slowly down the passage they were in until it came to a room that had nine doorways and nine swords mounted upright on the wall between the doorways. "Damn it," she said again.
Brendon poked his head into all the doorways. "Yeah, they all look alike to me. Straight down until that fog hides the rest. I thought you knew where you were going."
"I told you I didn't. And I really don't know where to go from here. And if I figure it out, I know I'm not going to like what comes next," she said, thinking, "I really wish the others were here. Especially Maryann. She knows all about the tarot. I know most of the swords are worse reversed but some aren't and I can't remember about the nine." She glanced over at Brendon, who was still peering down the corridors. "And I still don't know what to do about him," she thought. The longer she still stood in the middle of the area, the more she doubted she'd be able to choose the right path. Brendon didn't speak to her; he just paced the area looking agitated and occasionally looked down the passages as though hoping something had changed or would suggest one path over the other. "Damn it," she said again, and shook her head.
"Yeah," he agreed.
She walked over to the swords and started to reverse them. "I don't know if up or down is better, but this isn't working," she thought. When all nine were facing downward, she suddenly felt a little better.
"So, why did you do that?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I'm being affected by the magic here," she thought, but did
n't answer. "Any passage is as good as any other if I'm right." She answered, "Figuring a way out. Come on," she said, and went down the one directly to the right of the entrance. She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and used her saliva to write out a banishment spell. "Ugh, I really wish I had something to drink," she thought, coughing a bit.
"Are you spitting on that paper?" Brendon asked.
"Something like that."
They walked down a long hallway that terminated in a round area with no visible exits. Ten swords were mounted upright on the wall.
"Oh, no," Brendon said. "And I really thought you'd figure a way out of here. We seemed to get a lot farther together than I did alone."
Isabella walked up to a sword and pulled it off the wall. "This is what I expected." She turned to him with the sword pointed at him. "So, who are you really?"
"Hey, what's this?" he asked, looking surprised.
"No games. You're the only real thing in this paper maze. We've gone through all of them and now we're up to the court cards. So who are you?"
Brendon blinked a few times. "You are clever." He pulled a sword off the wall as well.
Now Isabella recognized his stance as the most common depiction of the Page of Swords in a Rider-Waite tarot deck. "So you are the Page of Swords."
"Something like that. You're the first person to get through my maze," he answered, his accent completely disappearing. Now he had a different accent, but she couldn't place it.
"What happened to everyone else?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. They wandered around until they faded out of my paper world. But you seemed to know where you were going to begin with. And I think you know some magic, although I have no idea where you learned."
"Why try