To Best the Boys(37)
The hill soon becomes steep and my feet slide inside my shoes as the soggy gravel crunches beneath them. Crunch crunch crunch—the sound is muted by the voices and hollers of the families up ahead, who are clearly enjoying the day’s climate change. If the water was a gift to cool off tempers, the setting sun has now locked in to warm us all back up. The people we walk by greet us with bright eyes that say they are choosing to celebrate the fact that even if parliament is against us today, the weather is on our side. And so is the host of boys we’re sending into one man’s crazy maze.
Beside me, Seleni chuckles at the kids running back and forth. They keep taking off toward the river while their mums call them back. “Not too far! The basilisks will eat you if we can’t find you!”
I laugh along with her, but it’s sharper than usual as my nerves bleed through. A bead of sweat trickles down my back. I scan everyone’s faces for Lute or Will or Sam, but all I find are more parents and kids and elderly as we start up the final part of the slope.
Seleni leans over. “You’re walking like a girl, Rhen. We should practice acting like males.”
I am? I glance to see how she’s walking and try not to burst into real laughter because she looks like a cross between a swaggering monkey and a pregnant mouse. I peer around at the men and boys trekking along beside us—how do they walk?—and after a moment adjust my gait to a longer distance that doesn’t have to care whether one’s skirt floats up or if one’s hips swing too much to attract inappropriate attention. I grin and nudge her, like I’ve seen Will and Sam do to each other. “Like this?”
“Yes, that’s better.” She straightens her shoulders and dons a bored expression before she juts her chin at me like Beryll does when he walks by other guys. She keeps doing it until we both erupt into giggles. “Although I still think it might’ve been smarter if we’d just dressed at your house and come in disguise. It would’ve given us more time to practice.”
I shake my head as a group of rowdy ten-year-old hooligans from my neighborhood runs by us, their bare feet grinding over the rocks as they hoot and holler. “It’d raise the chances of people seeing through our disguises. This way there’s little time to suspect.”
“You’d better hope so, because if they do suspect and we’re caught, you know Mum would never allow me to speak to you again.” She pretends to imitate my aunt Sara. “Seleni, this is the last straw. Rhen will be the ruination of any reputation you have left. I forbid you from seeing her.”
Another laugh bubbles up my throat, partly because the reality of that is painful and partly because the look on my aunt’s pointed face might actually be worth it.
Someone bumps my bag containing our boy clothing and I instinctively yank it closer. Seleni waits until the woman hurries past before she whispers, “But seriously. If we do get recognized, what’s the plan?”
“We say we spilled something on our dresses at the festival and hadn’t any other clothes, so we borrowed from the crowd.” I check the thickening throng again. Their faces are shiny with perspiration and their pace is slowing the nearer we’ve gotten to the top of the hill where the estate’s entrance lies. “But like I said, we won’t be recognized because no one’s looking for us to be dressed like that. We’ll just seem like two boys in a host of fifty others. I think the bigger concern is remembering to use different names.”
“Renford,” she mutters.
“Sedgwick,” I say.
She nods. “That, and I hope I can remember to use a deep voice.”
“I’m more worried you’ll cuddle up to Beryll or kiss him while in disguise.”
Alarm fills her eyes. “Oh, Rhen, can you imagine? Poor Beryll would drop dead in surprise.”
“After he gets appalled.”
We both break into giggles again as we reach the cusp of the hill that is really a mountain, and the humor turns to gasps as we come face-to-face with the tall hedges and wide entrance that lead to Mr. Holm’s manor and estate grounds.
Seleni and I have made this trek for seventeen years, and each time the thrill is just the same. For as extravagant and mysterious as Mr. Holm and Holm Castle have always been, there’s a reason very few people have ever made it onto his property and come back to tell of it. Namely, it’s nigh impossible.
If the rumors of disappearances and brain-eating banshees guarding the space won’t keep a person out, the thirty-foot-tall thorn hedges surrounding the entire perimeter will. One prick from those and, best case, you’ll be vomiting for a week. Worst case, you’ll be dead. And not only do they encase the estate, but they’re arranged inside of it to guard the castle itself—as well as the Labyrinth.
“Mr. Holm likes his privacy,” I’d once said to Sam. “Wonder what he does with it.”
“I know what I’d do,” Will had said, grinning at us both. To which I’d promptly informed him no one else wanted to know.
But even now, as close as we are, the only thing visible aside from those twelve castle rooftops is the thirty-foot-wide gap where the gates stand open to usher the crowd onto the glittering driveway that’s edged with a rich green lawn.
The small girl walking beside us squeals and points up as her mum tries to keep hold of her hand. I follow her gaze to seven patchwork balloons that come into sight through the entrance, and suddenly Seleni squeals too. They float like giant bubbles of sea foam above the inner hedges and lawns, and baskets are attached beneath them with people inside.