Soil and Ceremony by Byrd Julia

Author:Byrd, Julia [Byrd, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing
Published: 2019-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17: Rite of Communion

The bird’s death at Juno’s hands should have shocked me. I had become too accustomed to death, perhaps. Call it flaw or strength, I was not appalled by the dull crack of an injured bird’s neck.

Gently Juno placed the feathered corpse back under the hedge. I offered her my hand to help her arise and my handkerchief to dust off her fingers. Juno held my glance for an extra fraction of a second as if assessing my reaction. Had I passed or failed some test? If she played some dense game, I was far behind in understanding the rules, let alone the scoring.

We walked in silence around a few turns. Beyond one last corner, the center of the maze opened before us.

“Oh!” Juno said. She stopped at the sight of the gazebo occupying the absolute middle of the garden. Despite their overgrown branches, the surrounding hedgerows still allowed plenty of space for the lacy metal. The arcing roof was topped with a pointed spire. The whole thing had once been coated in white paint, but the lacquer was peeling in many sections, revealing rusting iron beneath. “It’s lovely. I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Do you like it?” I eyed the structure critically. “It doesn’t give any shade. The whole top is just useless tracery. There’s no purpose to any of it, not even a bench.”

She laughed. “I can find purpose in it. This confection alerts the maze-runner to her achievement and rewards us for our efforts.”

“Ah, a common fallacy,” I said, then wandered into the avian folly. I picked at a loose flake of paint on the rail and perched my hip on it. “The real achievement of a hedge maze lies not in getting in but in getting out.”

“Like love,” Juno said softly.

“Love?” I echoed. “You believe the achievement in love is not falling into it but rather falling out of it?”

“No.” She strolled closer, inspecting the fine metalwork on the columns. The rusting arbor concealed nothing, provided neither shade nor shelter, but Juno’s lowered eyelashes shielded a whole universe from me. “That’s not what you said. Not falling out of love but getting out of it.”

“As in getting out…intact,” I ventured. “You say that love is dangerous.”

“Don’t you?” She raised her eyes and caught me staring.

“I have no experience and thus no opinion. Did you love Mr. Stephens?”

“Mmm. No. Not him. My parents selected him for me. He was dull and wanted to control my every thought and action. We maintained a bitter coexistence after he found total authority to be impossible.”

I had no sympathy for the man. Upon meeting Juno, anyone should have been able to recognize that she would not be mastered. But then what experience had led to her dark opinion of love? Experience with whom? I shouldn’t ask, but I could not stop myself. I pressed my lips together to restrain the query for another second, then stepped closer. “Then whose love left you with such a wariness—”

“Ben.” Juno gripped

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