10. Rainy Day Mazes

All day long it had been cold and rainy outside. Just as I was gazing out the window into the gloomy sky, debating what to do while I was stuck indoors, Rohtas came up to me.

Uh-oh... Please don’t tell me he’s about to spring a rainy day lesson on me!

“Why don’t we try our hand at some mazes today?”

“Come again?” His proposition had taken the wind out of my sails. “Huh? Why? Because it’s raining outside?”

“Yes, Madam. Or would you prefer the usual dance lesson?”

“Nope! No thanks! I’m good!”

My rainy day lessons had been on hold ever since I’d gotten pregnant with Violet. Even now that she’d been born, I had my hands full looking after her; I hadn’t had any time to waste on etiquette classes. Now that Violet was over six months old and big enough to sit upright, however, I finally had a little room to breathe. Rohtas must have noticed as much.

“Why mazes, though?” I asked.

“Well, wouldn’t it be fun to broaden your horizons?”

“Sure!”

Up until now, all my rainy day lessons had involved something “useful” in one way or another (whether it be dancing or self-defense), so no doubt there was some hidden significance to these mazes too.

Not to mention it sounds like fun! It’d be silly to let this opportunity pass me by.

“I have a handful of challenging mazes right here. Your goal is to solve each of them within the time limit.”

“What about Lettie?”

I cast a glance Violet’s way, only to find Mimosa busy playing with her and Daisy. That was bound to keep my hands free for a while.

“Okay, let’s do it!” I decided.

Without further ado, I jumped into this unconventional new activity.

* * *

“This symbol denotes that an opening is only accessible from the inside. This one means the opposite—that you can only get through from the outside.”

“Hmm...”

The maze was drawn on a huge scroll of paper. We’d unfurled it over the parlor table, and Rohtas was now in the midst of explaining the rules.

This puzzle consisted of three main stages(?), each of which was connected to the next via several paths. Though there were multiple starting points and goals to each section, everything in one section counted as part of a single stage. Seems a little unbalanced, if you ask me. Oh well—no point in thinking too hard about it, I guess!

“There’s a lot of different exits and entrances, I see. And some of them are one way only.”

“Heh heh. Delightfully peculiar, isn’t it?”

“You said it!”

The maze contained openings that could only be accessed from the outside, as well as some that could only be accessed from the inside. Rohtas was right—this certainly was a peculiar puzzle. It was a lot more challenging than your usual maze and its clear-cut rules, which made it even more exciting to tackle.

“Your first task is to make it from this starting point to this goal. Ready...begin!” Rohtas shouted, turning over an hourglass as he did.

“All right!”

There were some large open areas (rooms?) as well as some smaller ones; winding between them were all sorts of paths ranging from thick to thin. A closer look revealed a pattern to the sizes of the rooms and passages, but I didn’t have a moment to spare scrutinizing it. My primary objective was to find a way out before time was up.

“If I take this path, then go this way... Yes, I did it! Well, Rohtas? Did you see that?”

I looked back at Rohtas with a triumphant grin, and he checked the hourglass with a smile. “That was pretty quick.”

“You bet it was!”

I solved it with half the sand left in the hourglass! That was a piece of cake.

“I see the warm-up was too easy for you. Ready to take a stab at the next route?”

“Yeah!”

“This time, I want you to start from here and find your way to this exit,” he said, pointing to another entrance and end point. It was the same maze I’d just done, but now the challenge was to find a different way through it. I had a feeling this route was going to be much longer and more complicated than the last one. Heh heh! Now I’m really getting into this!

“Ready...go!”

“Okay!”

My fingers flew over the maze the moment Rohtas gave the signal. “Uhh... Let me go through here and—wait, that’s a dead end. This way, maybe...? Shoot, I can only get through there from the inside!”

Things weren’t going quite as smoothly this time, and I had to start over from square one again and again.

While I’m dragging my feet, the sand keeps trickling away! Hurry, Viola, hurry! The route I just tried to take isn’t going to work, since it opens from the wrong side... Oh, here’s a path I haven’t tried yet! I have a good feeling about this one.

“Done!”

“And that’s time!”

I reached the goal nearly the exact moment that Rohtas announced my time was up.

“Did I make it?”

“I’ll be generous and let you have that one.”

“Woohoo!”

“The next one’s going to be even trickier.”

“Bring it on! I’m starting to get the hang of this.”

I tackled the same maze again and again, switching up the starting and end points each time. Having done the puzzle so many times now, I’d begun to memorize which way the openings went (whether they were accessible from the inside or outside, in other words), so it was taking me less and less time to get to the end, even as the routes themselves were getting longer and longer.

“Man, I know this maze inside and out by now.”

I lifted the scroll off the table and studied it from top to bottom. My goal was to get to the point where I was seeing it on the back of my eyelids, like some kind of afterimage.

“Is that so? You must have a good memory, Madam.”

“Heh heh heh!”

For whatever reason, Rohtas was beaming with satisfaction.

This has been fun and all, but what’s the point of all this? I still don’t get Rohtas’s game here. Knowing him, he’d never do something without a reason. Still... I am enjoying myself, so I shouldn’t overthink it. You never know—it might come in handy one day. Plus, I got Rohtas to compliment me on my memory!

Rohtas cleared the diagram off the table.

“Are we done?”

“No. I have another maze for you.”

“There’s more? Nice! Lay it on me!”

Now that I’d mastered every start-and-end combo in the first maze, it was time to bring out the next one. I could hardly wait!

I took the next puzzle Rohtas handed to me and laid it out over the table. It was yet another maze with three main stages.

“Each stage on the last one was rectangular, but these are all shaped like a backwards ‘C.’”

“Indeed, Madam.”

Before I got started, I checked to see if the “open-in” and “open-out” restrictions were still in place. “Are the rules the same as last time?”

“Yes, ma’am. The same rules apply, so pay close attention to which doors open inward and which open out.”

“Got it!” Thanks to the previous maze, I had the symbols down pat now.

“Let’s start with an easy one. I want you to start from here and come out through there.”

“Okie-dokie!”

“Ready...go!”

As soon as Rohtas turned the hourglass over, my eyes and fingers began to race across the page.

* * *

I tried my hand at the second maze just as many times as I had the first one, changing up the route on each go. Once again, I had totally committed the maze (or map?) to memory!

“I can still see that second maze every time I close my eyes... What am I going to do if I start dreaming about it?”

It was only after Dahlia suggested I break for lunch that I learned what time it was. I’d spent the entire morning solving puzzles! If my eyes had been glued to the paper for that long, it was no wonder the second maze was stuck in my head.

It was just a maze, but this clearly wasn’t just a maze. Rohtas was definitely up to something.

“I daresay it’s a good thing to know that sketch like the back of your hand,” he said.

“What? Why?”

Something about the way Rohtas had phrased that was bugging me. I shot him a blank look, but he only responded with a mysterious smile.

What, is there some benefit to memorizing that puzzle?

“You still haven’t realized?”

“Huh?”

I have no idea what I’m supposed to be realizing here, I thought, cocking my head to one side.

When he saw I wasn’t getting it, Rohtas tapped a spot on the second maze, still spread over the table, and said, “Here’s a hint: consider the shape of the second maze and the positioning of its biggest enclosure.”

“Its shape? The biggest enclosure?”

As I said before, the maze was made up of empty spaces both small and large, strung together by doors and passages of varying sizes.

“I mean, it’s shaped like a backwards ‘C.’ And the enclosure’s...positioning...hmmm? Huh? What are you getting at? I dunno. I’m stumped!”

“Come now, don’t give up—take a closer look.” Just as I was ready to snap and yell, What am I supposed to be looking at? It’s just a dumb maze!, Rohtas gave me yet another hint. “The layout should be very familiar to you.”

The layout should be familiar?

“It’s a backwards ‘C,’ and there’s a big path right down the middle...leading to a huge room...hrm?”

Something with a suspiciously similar structure was floating around in the back of my mind.

“The room has a door that leads to the outside, as well as one that goes to the adjacent room. That big room next-door doesn’t have a way to get outside, but it does connect to a wide passageway...”

The parlor has a door that leads to the neighboring dining room. There’s a door from the parlor to the garden, but there’s no way to get to the garden from the dining room!

Once one piece fell into place, the rest of the rooms and passages started to take shape in my head.

This is totally a blueprint of the Fisalis manor!

“Rohtas! Is this a blueprint—?”

“So you finally figured it out.”

“So I’m right? We’ve been living in a maze this whole time?!”

Our very own mansion is one of those “labyrinths” you always see in adventure novels!

I looked up at Rohtas with stars in my eyes. His smile turning into a withering one, he replied, “Well, not quite.”

* * *

Now that I’d taken the time to examine the maze more carefully, I found that it was indeed the spitting image of our mansion.

“Jeez... I can’t believe I was staring at it for so long and I never even noticed.”

“It’s because you approached it as a puzzle. If you’d started from the assumption that it was a blueprint, I’m sure you would have seen it differently.”

He had a point—I hadn’t gone in expecting this diagram to be anything but a maze. But honestly, the backwards “C” shape ought to have been enough to tip me off...

My first instinct as I stared down at the drawing was to roast myself, but there was something off about it—enough to keep me from realizing what it was at a first glance. Do we have these narrow little passageways? And what’s this mini-sized room over here supposed to be? Stuff like that.

I’d cleaned and run(!) my way through every nook and cranny of the manor; I ought to have known the place inside and out. Why, I was confident I knew the lay of the land even better than Mr. Fisalis himself!

“I guess so. But still...”

“What is it, Madam?”

“It looks like there are some corridors and rooms I’ve never seen. Like that one, or this one here. That’s probably why I didn’t recognize it.”

When I pointed to a couple spots on the map, Rohtas broke into a grin. The look on his face screamed, You’ve hit the nail on the head. “I’m glad you noticed. Those are our hidden passages and secret chamber, respectively.”

Hidden passages and secret chamber? Was that the whole point of this lesson?

“What hidden passages? We have a secret chamber?!” I sounded two steps away from hysterical—that’s how shocked I was to learn this outrageous secret.

“Yes, ma’am. The chamber is where you, Master Fisalis—and depending on the situation, the rest of us—are to hide during an emergency. Alternatively, you can use our hidden passages to escape the manor.”

“I don’t wanna imagine what kind of emergency would call for all that... Oh, wait! You guys must have used a hidden passage that one time!”

“Precisely.”

A while back, a band of thieves had broken into the Fisalis manor. During the incident, Rohtas must have used this hidden passage to move around behind the scenes!

Now I see! This must be the secret he alluded to at the time.

“I’m glad we had it back then, but I hope we won’t have to use it ever again. I wish I could erase its existence from my memory, but I know I shouldn’t... It’s a real dilemma.”

The last thing I wanted was a repeat of that situation. Peace be on earth!

Reminded of that absolute nightmare of an event, I furrowed my brow, but good old Rohtas stepped in to lift the mood. “Now that you know all the ins and outs of this manor, you’re truly living up to your title as a duchess.”

“Oh?”

All of a sudden, I was feeling a whole lot better about this new discovery. Talk about easy, Viola!

“It’d be a good idea for you to see these hidden areas in person at some point, however.”

“Good thinking!”

Here I thought I’d known everything there was to know about this place, but that had been naive of me. The Fisalis manor held all sorts of secrets!

While I was caught up in my weird little moment, I heard the sound of something tearing.

“What are you ripping up?”

“The blueprint.”

“What?!”

And indeed, it seemed Rohtas had ripped up the blueprint to our mansion so that not a trace of it remained. The smile on his face was enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.

Once he’d gathered up all the scraps of paper, he dumped them right into the unlit fireplace and set it ablaze.

“The blueprint to our manor ought to be kept in memory alone. That’s the only way to ensure it never leaves the premises.”

“Uh-huh...”

So that’s how they’ve guarded the Fisalis manor’s secrets so well!

* * * Bonus Scene * * *

“By the way, what was the first maze?”

“The royal palace.”

“What?”

“The royal palace.”

“...You’re not going to rip up and burn that one?”

“No need. We keep it under tight lock and key.”

“Huh?! We’re allowed to keep a copy?!”

“Whatever are you referring to?”

“The royal palace bluepri—”

“Hm?”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

I’m not supposed to comment.