However, it didn’t feel like Dhandi was falling. It was more like she was being passed down, her body being grabbed and handed to another unseen force. Halim was screaming and quaking in her arms. Her head pounded both from her being out of balance and the infant’s frightened squeals. Disoriented, she almost didn’t look up when hands reached out and yanked Halim right from her arms.
“Halim!” she yelled as the child’s white swaddle disappeared in the massing darkness. Forcibly, Dhandi jerked from the grip and reached out. However, green hands reached out and grabbed her, wrapping around her like a grotesque olive-colored blanket. Within her ghastly constraint, Dhandi shrieked.
I’m dreaming! She thought, feverishly. I am home with Eden and Genie! I’m in Agrabah w-with Sadira, Aladdin, Babkak, and Wahid!
Suddenly, the arms and hands released and Dhandi plopped down on a stone floor. She rubbed her knees gingerly as she rose, looking around frantically. The hands had disappeared and a stone ceiling hung above her. A silver of light from cracks in the walls and ceiling barely illuminated the cavern.
Of course the last time I thought something was a dream, she added to herself, I got possessed.
“Halim?” She spotted something shivering and wrapped in a white cloth at the far end of the cavern. She hurried over to it and knelt down.
“Halim, we’re gonna get out of here and we’re gonna be alright,” she said to the bundle, picking up it. “You’ll see-”
Horror replaced relief as she found Xerxes the eel, snickering at her in her arms.
“Boy. Heeheeheehee”
Horrified, Dhandi threw him to the floor and backed away. Xerxes writhed out of the swaddling and swam closer to the alarmed girl. Dhandi backed into a wall, stammering as the familiar drew closer and licked her cheek. The girl recoiled fearfully.
“Now, is that any way to greet an old...acquaintance?” Dhandi’s spine took a plunge into a river of ice as that familiar slick voice oozed into her ear. Her fears were confirmed as Mozenrath sauntered casually into the sparse light. He didn’t appear too much older, save for his firmer jaw line, but the shadows cast upon his face aged him about ten more years.
“You!” Dhandi gasped.
“Me,” the sorcerer replied, scanning the fifteen-year old’s body with interest. He took a step closer. Dhandi responded by sliding away against the wall, but then was stopped by several pairs of the green hands which latched on to her body and held her in place like gruesome manacles.
“I don’t like it when people squirm away,” Mozenrath said, now only an inch separates them. He pushed aside strands of her hair and grabbed her chin, prodding Dhandi’s skin with his slender fingers.
“Not a lot of baby fat,” one of his many observations during his inspection of the girl. He pushed up her lips, running his fingers over her off-white teeth and pink gums. “Got all of your teeth in, big surprise.”
Dhandi replied by snapping at his fingers, but the sorcerer retaliated by striking her across the face. A pale red imprint of his hand glowed on her cheek.
“Never snap at a man,” Mozenrath shook his finger at her, condescendingly. “I swear, Xerxes, you’d think that genie of hers would teach her manners.”
Xerxes sniggered as Mozenrath continued his inspection, forming a disappointed frown as he felt her chest. “Hmm, a late-bloomer, Xerxes.”
Dhandi grew maroon in face, growing furious. Mozenrath removed his hand, smirking.
“Oh, look, she’s blushing.”
“You’re one to talk about manners!” Dhandi yelled. “Kidnapping us, scaring us, and prodding me like a cow at market!” Suddenly, she had that sinking feeling in her gut as the sorcerer continued smiling at her amused. Maybe she got him angry and he was planning something really bad. She had seen him angry and had felt the brunt of his fury that she had tried to hide in her head for the past couple of years.
“Where is Halim?” Dhandi asked, calming down but enmity for the sorcerer still evident in her tone.
“Who?” The sorcerer replied, mockingly.
“Halim, the baby. You took him.”
“Oh, him.” He waved his hand indifferently and the cadaverous hands released Dhandi. “Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to want him, so I’m taking him off your hands.”
“Give him back.” Dhandi glared at him. Mozenrath shook his head.
“Now, why would I do that? Are you gonna hit me if I don’t?” Dhandi frowned, offended as Mozenrath chuckled cruelly. “What’s done is done. Now if you ask nicely, I can make your stay here a bit more bearable.” He began walking toward a wall behind him and took out from his belt pouch a black doorknob.
“And where is here, exactly?” Dhandi asked. Mozenrath smirked, pressing the knob into the wall. She watched as he knocked on the wall three times before turning the knob and pulled open the door of stone. Light spilled into cavern, blinding her somewhat.
“You can come with,” Mozenrath said, as he and Xerxes filed out the door, “or you can stay here with the helping hands.” Turning away from the hands that reached out to grasp, Dhandi followed them, but keeping a few feet distance behind the sorcerer and his familiar. Passing through the door, the girl looked in awe. Instead of the familiar sands of Agrabah or even The Land of the Black Sand, she was staring at the terrain, mixed of gnarly green and blue forests, deserts of crimson rock and sand, savannas of pink and golden grass and rivers of changing color. But what imprinted into her head immediately was the giant, twisting maze of blood red rock that contained that terrain.
“Welcome to the Chaotic Plains,” Mozenrath announced, arms out spread dramatically, “Or at least, a part of it.”
“That-that,” Dhandi began, but then cleared her throat, “that’s a maze.”
“Labyrinth,” Mozenrath pointed out, almost gloating. “From ‘laburinthos’, ‘axe-house’. An inventor created one to hide a man-eating beast for a half-crazed king over in Crete years ago. An inspiration for me for these past three years. Fourteen people come in and none leave it, a sacrifice for the monster that lay in the heart of it. Pretty much the same thing here, except you want to go to the center. It’s the only way to win.”
Dhandi looked up at him, curious. “Win?”
“You want to leave with the kid,” the sorcerer said. “Well, just consider this a challenge.”
He grabbed her shoulder and pointed to the center of the maze. “Halim is being held in there. You find him in time, you both go free.”
Dhandi shrugged his gloved hand off. “What if I don’t?”
“You get to stay here with me.” Mozenrath smiled very slimily. “I heard misery loves company and I practically breed it.”
Dhandi shuddered slightly. “How much time do I have?”
Suddenly, something dropped into her hands. As Xerxes swam back to his master’s shoulder, Dhandi held up an hourglass on a chain in view. Black sand filled the very brim, but not a single grain was moving.
“Once I leave,” Mozenrath explained, “the sand will start flowing.”
“It doesn’t look like I got a lot time,” Dhandi pointed out.
“All the more reason for YOU not to dilly-dally,” Mozenrath leered as he and Xerxes began to vanish in black and blue smoke. “You have until the sand runs out. See you at finish line, Rabbit.”
Hearing the last chuckle of the eel, Dhandi looked at the hourglass. Indeed, the sand was flowing, but at three to four grains at a time. Putting the chain around her neck and letting the hourglass hang there, she looked up at the labyrinth. The story didn’t exactly put her mind at ease. What monster might he be hiding in there for her to find? She bit her lip as she slid down the blood red hill, feet bare and unaware of what might lurk there in the Labyrinth or even in the Chaotic Plains.