Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

Now when he awoke from his travels through the streets of his dreams Robbie began to make a map of them so he would remember. They looked just like a maze, but they were a different maze from the one in the caverns, which he had already mapped. He knew he had secret knowlege of the future in this new maze, and almost every day he was able to add something to it. He reread Tolkien and Castaneda, and sought out books on the occult, but none of them seemed to apply. The Great Hall was displeased.

“Books will not give you the answers,” The Great Hall said. “Only I can. Why are you so impatient?”

“Because I love you,” Pardieu answered respectfully.

“Yes, I have seen that. You have purified your body, now you must purify your mind. You must seek the way to clarity.”

“How must I do that?”

“Trust me. Remember what you see.”

“I am making a map.”

“If it pleases you.”

“But does it please you? ” Pardieu asked.

The Great Hall gave him a kindly smile. “When you are truly ready you will not need maps. You will know everything.”

Everything! By day Robbie drew his map, intricately, carefully. Sometimes he looked at it and wondered how he could ever have been wise enough to draw such a marvelous maze. He never had before. He drew it on the palest blue paper, the color of the sky in his dreams, and on the edges of the paper he drew the tall white towers and the clouds below them. In the most beautiful illuminated letters that Pardieu could make he wrote THE GREAT HALL. Then he wrote THE TWO TOWERS. He surveyed his handiwork and thought that something was still missing.

Then one day he realized what it should be. It was the mark of his love and respect for The Great Hall and for Pardieu’s sacred mission. Precisely, neatly, with red ink, Robbie drew a tiny heart hidden in the center of his maze.

No one came into his monastic room anymore, so it was not necessary to hide any of this. Besides, even if someone saw all these things he had drawn, that person would have no idea what they were.

For the first time in his life Daniel felt a new and surprising emotion: he was genuinely jealous of Jay Jay’s ingenuity. Sometimes he thought it was really himself he was annoyed at, not Jay Jay, because he hadn’t thought of playing the game in the caverns even though he’d run past them and wondered about them, and because he’d never had the inspiration of using real props. A long time ago, when Daniel had bought his first beginner’s Mazes and Monsters rule book, the introduction had said this was a game where nobody ever lost. But that wasn’t true. If you got killed you lost. You could create a new character and start again, and you could even use the same character you had become attached to, but that character was a neophyte, a newborn. Having to start all over from nothing when success was so tantalizingly close was certainly losing.

He had lost control of his own game, he had lost his position of power as M.C., and now he had watched his self-respect dwindling as Jay Jay constantly amazed them all with his brilliant imagination. If only Jay Jay hadn’t been such a genius in what was supposed to be Daniel’s chosen field for life after college …

Daniel realized there was really only one way he could get his pride back. He had to outwit Jay Jay and win the treasure. He would never go into Jay Jay’s room and steal a look at his maps; the idea was repellent. But he wanted to be ahead, to know what was planned, and thus keep out of trouble and make the right decision. You never knew what the throw of the dice would determine, but if you knew where the dangers were in the caverns and what to stay away from, you had a much better chance of winning. Daniel decided what he had to do. He didn’t like it — it was dangerous and pretty dishonest — but something beyond his control kept nagging at him to do it until he felt he would never be able to concentrate on anything again, not even schoolwork, unless he did it.

He had to sneak into the caverns alone and find out what Jay Jay had planned.

First, though, he had to get rid of Jay Jay. The fanatic was in the caverns every night. Daniel couldn’t go in the daytime because he needed his bicycle to carry his equipment, and someone might see it. What could entice Jay Jay away from a night in the maze without arousing his suspicions?

Daniel went in search of Glenna, the girl Jay Jay had taken to the Fifties Prom and hadn’t seen since. Maybe this wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but on the other hand, the worst thing that could happen would be she and Jay Jay would have a date, and the best thing would be they might even have a little romance. He found her in her room studying.

“May I come in?” Daniel asked pleasantly.

“Sure,” she said.

He sat down on the edge of her bed, since she was in the desk chair. “How’ve you been?” he asked.

“Fine. How’s Jay Jay?”

“It’s funny you should ask. He was just mentioning you the other day.”

“He was?” She looked pleased. “What did he say?”

“Oh, something about you being a very interesting person and he really wanted to see you again but … Jay Jay’s very shy, you know.”

“Oh, he is not.”

“When he’s planning a party he’s not shy,” Daniel said. “But he’s much too timid to invite you to the movies, for instance.”

“Did he say that?”

“I know Jay Jay very well. He’s one of my closest friends.”

“I’d ask him to the movies,” Glenna said. “I’m not scared of him. I think he’s cute.”

Sitting duck.

Jay Jay and Glenna went off to Pequod to the movies the following Tuesday night. She rode behind him on his motorbike, screaming with fear and pleasure. “She’s too young for me,” Jay Jay had said. “But I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” He had seemed quite flattered at the thought that any girl, even Glenna, had had a secret crush on him all this time.

Two sitting ducks.

As soon as they were safely gone Daniel got his things together: his flashlight, the map of the maze, fresh graph paper and pencils, an enormous roll of twine, his knife to cut it with, chalk to mark the walls as he entered rooms, a sponge and a plastic bottle of water to wash the chalk marks off when he left the rooms on his way back to safety, and the all-important compass. He would take the large lantern Jay Jay had left in the caverns. He was a little nervous, not about being caught, but about getting lost. He reminded himself that Jay Jay had gone alone into those caverns almost every night for nearly three months now, and nothing had happened to him. Jay Jay hadn’t been afraid, and he was only sixteen.

Daniel put his paper bag of equipment into his bicycle basket and rode away into the dark evening, as if he were just going into town. But where the road branched to the east, toward the caverns, he turned off to where they beckoned him.

Kate was driving back to the dorm from town, where she’d been to the drugstore to pick up some things. She’d bought three different kinds of shampoo when she needed only one; anything for the hair was her weakness. And she’d bought a new kind of conditioner, and something she’d never tried before called a Finishing Rinse. She hoped it wasn’t a rip-off. Coming toward her, on his way to town, she saw someone on a bicycle who she could swear was Daniel. She thought of honking at him, but it was too dark to be sure, and if it wasn’t Daniel she didn’t want to scare him. She looked into her rearview mirror after she passed him and then she noticed that he turned at the turnoff that led to the caverns and disappeared.

That was odd. Why would Daniel — if it was Daniel — be going to the caverns? That road led to a lot of other places too, but they were all too far away to get to on a bike. Even if he were a commuter coming back from the library, he wouldn’t live there. He’d live in Pequod, or in the suburbs, not east of here. Besides, she was sure now that it had been Daniel. She turned her car around and went back, and drove to the caverns to find out.