Kaoru felt herself falling forward, into the darkness. She could only manage to keep her balance by swinging her arms wildly. As one might say she learned the Hillside was very steep the hard way.

Her mouth had gone dry with fright. Carefully, Kaoru sat down. It may have felt safer, but she could not afford to sit there long, with only thirteen hours to get through the Labyrinth and find Akira.

Kaoru tried slithering down the hillside on her bottom, but that was no good either. Rocks and little shrubs struck her, but she dared not stand up to move past them. It was so dark, She might have been trying to find her way through a sea of ink. She felt tears rising, but blinked them away. She would do it. There were no limits to what

She could do, given the determination, and the ingenuity, and maybe a little luck. She would do it, yes she would, she vowed, as she sat on the black hillside with no idea how to move another foot.

High above her, where the owl had flown, she heard a bird sing. She peered up at it, and by taking her eyes off the blackness below she became aware that a hint of light was staining the rim of the dark sky. She watched the light grow brighter, changing from red to pink, and then pale blue, and when she saw the edge of the sun inch up over the horizon she shut her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt the sun warming her skin. She would do it.

hen Kaoru opened her eyes again, Enishi’s castle was shining before her, its spires and turrets rimmed with the reflected sunlight. Anxiously she scrutinized the valley, which, like a developing photograph, took longer to reveal itself.

The first thing Kaoru could see was its width. The extent of the land between her and the castle was not that great. ‘I can run that far in a couple of hours,’ she reckoned. ‘It's only a few miles. Enishi was trying to hoax me. He thought I would be so scared in the darkness that I would give up and forget about Toby. How could I? Anyway, in thirteen hours I can be there and back with time to spare.’

Kaoru wondered if thirteen hours in Enishi’s land would take the same time to pass as at home. If so, what would Kenshin and Megumi think when they returned? Well, there was nothing she could do about that.

By now the sun was above the horizon, and color and shape were seeping into the valley. ‘Wow.’ There was an awful lot of stuff down there; she could tell that much. kaoru went on watching, taking in the full nature of the valley.

At first she could not believe it. As the sun rose higher and disclosed more to her, Kaoru’s shoulders drooped and her face lost its smile. She shook her head slowly, dumbfounded.

From the foot of the hillside where she sat, to the castle reaching from horizon to horizon on each side, there stretched a vast, intricate maze of walls and hedges.

"The Labyrinth," Kaoru whispered. "So that is the Labyrinth."

Kaoru studied it, trying to decipher some pattern to it, some principle of design that might guide her through it. She could see none. Corridors doubled, and wound. Gateways led to gateways leading into gateways. ‘Did someone work all that out,’ Kaoru wondered, ‘or did it just happened?’

The impossibility of Kaoru ever finding her way through the Labyrinth hit her. She stood up, clenched her fists, set her jaw, and cleared her throat. "Well," she said, "here we go.”

In the dawning light, she could see below her a path down the hillside. She picked her way to it through the rocks and shrubs. At the foot of the path, she came to a great wall. It stretched as far as she could see to the left and right. ‘That was helpful’ she thought sarcastically.

Kaoru approached the wall; with no idea what she might do when she reached it. As she got closer, kaoru saw a movement at the base of it caught her eye. There was a boy. He was cackling as he ground something underfoot.

"Excuse me," Kaoru said.

The boy nearly jumped out of his skin. "Just go," he said, before he had even looked around to see who it was.

When he did turn, he had his face down so that he regarded her from under his messy black hair. "Well!" he exclaimed, looking cross and astonished at the same time. "Well!" It seemed that he had never before set eyes on another person. Or perhaps it was that no person like Kaoru had ever caught him unaware. Not many people have come to the labyrinth. "Well!" he said again.

‘We'll never get anywhere like this,’ Kaoru thought.

He was an odd little person. His sprouting eyebrows clearly wanted to be fierce, but his childlike face couldn't live up to that ferocity. His expression was wary now, not particularly friendly, but not hostile either. He seemed to be avoiding her eyes, and Kaoru noticed that whenever she moved her hands his gaze would follow them. Strapped to his back he had a Shinai. He wore a yellowish/green Gi, and a green Hakama. Kaoru saw his mouth moving to say "Well!" again and interrupted quickly.

"Excuse me, but I have to go through the Labyrinth. Can you show me the way in?"

His mouth frozen in the formation of a W, he blinked at her once or twice. Then his eyes darted to one side. He rushed a few steps toward a bluebell, at the same time pulling his shinai from his back. As he aimed the Shinai, Sarah saw that a diaphanous little fairy was emerging from the bluebell.

He smacked it, with a couple of quick strokes. The fairy at once wilted, like a shriveling petal.

"Fifty-seven," he said with some satisfaction.

Kaoru was shocked. "How could you?"

He answered with a grunt.

Kaoru ran to where the fairy was lying on the ground, wings quivering and shriveling. "The poor thing!" Kaoru exclaimed. She picked it up gently in her fingertips and turned to the fairy-slayer. "You monster."

Then Kaoru felt a sharp pain, as from broken glass. The fairy had bitten her finger.

"Ow!" Kaoru dropped the fairy and stuck her finger in her mouth. "It bit me," she muttered around her finger.

"Course she did," the boy chuckled. "What do you expect fairies to do?"

"I..." Kaoru was now frowning, perplexed. "I thought they did -- well, nice things. Like granting wishes."

"Ha!" His eyebrows went up. "Shows what you know then ugly, don't it?" He raised his Shinai and casually hit another bluebell with it. A second shimmering fairy fell down, turning brown like a leaf in autumn. "Fifty- eight," he said, and shook his head. "They breed as fast as I hit." Without warning the boy covered his head as a large object out of nowhere cam flying at his head. “ WHO YOU CALLING UGLY YOU LITTLE TWERP!” Kaoru yelled. “Don’t call me little!” he replied annoyed.

"Ow," Kaoru complained because her finger started to hurt more. "It hurts." She took her finger and shook it.

The boy walked to a plant nearly as tall as he was, tore off one of its grayish leaves, and handed it to her. "Here," he told her. "Rub that on it."

Kaoru gratefully did what he told her. No sooner had she started rubbing than she dropped the leaf, clasped her finger with the other hand and hopped around in pain. "Ow!" she shouted. "That makes it worse. Much worse. OWWW!"

He was holding his sides with his hands and roaring with laughter. "Course it do. That’s for calling me little. You don't know anything, do you?"

Kaoru’s face screwed up with pain, she answered indignantly, "I thought you were giving it to me to make it better. Ow! Owwww!"

"You thought that too, did you? You've got a lot of opinions ugly." He chuckled. "All of them wrong. And you've got grass all over the seat of your kimono!"

In spite of the pain in her finger, Kaoru had to glance over her shoulder, and she saw that he was right. It was from sliding down that hillside. Brushing off what she could, she realized that he was paying her back for having called him little. "You're horrible," she told him.

"No, I'm not." He sounded surprised. "I'm Yahiko. Who are you?"

"Kaoru."

He nodded. "That's what I thought." Spotting another fairy, he smacked it. To make sure, he stepped on this one and ground his foot around. The fairy squealed. "Fifty-nine," Yahiko said.

Kaoru was thinking while sucking her finger. ‘He seemed to know about me. So he must have something to do with Enishi, mustn't he? Some kind of spy, maybe. Well, maybe.’ Yet he was not her idea of a spy. Spies weren't grumpy. They didn't play mean tricks on you or call people ugly. Did they? If all her opinions were wrong, as he'd said, then this one might be wrong, too. ‘But in that case,’ Kaoru thought, ‘supposing he is a spy, then it might be his job to persuade me that all my opinions are wrong when really they are all correct. And if they are all correct, he is not a spy. But that would mean he had no motive for persuading me that I'm wrong about everything, and so probably I am wrong about this, too, and so…’ "Oh!" Kaoru exclaimed in exasperation, this was to confusing.

Yahiko tore a leaf from a different plant and offered it to her, with a scowl on his face.

Kaoru took her finger from her mouth. The pain was easing now. She shook her head, and had to smile a little at Yahiko’s funny, face.

Yahiko’s expression, in answer, went dark again. He looked at her mistrustfully. He was not used to being smiled at.

‘Well,’ Kaoru thought, ‘there's nothing else I can do. He is the only person I can ask for help.’ So Kaoru tried. "Do you know where the door to the Labyrinth is?"

Yahiko screwed up his face with a taunting grin. "Maybe."

"All right, where is it?"

Instead of replying, he dodged to one side, raising his Shinai. "Sixty."

"I said, where is it?" kaoru was now growing very annoyed.

"Where is what?"

"The door."

"What door?"

"The door into the Labyrinth."

"The door! Into the Labyrinth! Oh, that's a good one." Yahiko laughed, not kindly.

Kaoru wanted to punch him. "It's hopeless asking you anything."

"Not if you asks the right questions ugly." He was giving her a sidelong look. "You're as green as a cucumber."

"Well, what are the right questions LITTLE?"

Yahiko cringed at being called little. "It depends on what you want to know."

"That's easy. How do I get into the Labyrinth?"

Yahiko sniffed, and his eyes twinkled. "Now that's more like it."

Kaoru thought she could hear that music in the air again, the magic music that had hummed around the Goblin King.

"You get in there." Yahiko nodded, indicating behind her. "You have to ask the right questions if you want to get anywhere in the Labyrinth ugly. You can’t depend on using your looks to scare people into telling you things." Yahiko barely made it in time to doge another object at his head, from her direction.

Kaoru spun around. In the great wall, she saw a huge, gate that was not there before. She stared at it almost accusingly. Kaoru could have sworn it had not been there before.

"There is no door, see?" Yahiko was explaining. "All you got to do now is find the key."

Kaoru looked back at Yahiko and then all around her. She saw at once that it was going to be no problem to find the key. Near her she saw a small, and from each end of it an enormous key was sticking out. "Well," Kaoru said, "that's simple enough."

Kaoru went over to the key and tried to pick it up. She could just manage to get one end of it off the ground, the key was too heavy for her to lift up to the keyhole in the gate. Kaoru glared at Yahiko. A sweat drop forming on her head.

"I suppose it's too much to expect you to give me a hand?"

"Yup," Yahiko said.

Kaoru tried again, straining to lift it. It was hopeless. "Oh," she said. "This is so stupid."

"You mean you're so stupid," Yahiko correct her.

"Shut up, you rotten little pipsqueak."

"Don't call me LITTLE!" Yahiko was agitated. "I am not little!"

"Yes, you are," Kaoru said. "Yes, you are a Rotten little Pipsqueak!"

Yahiko was boiling with rage. "Don't call me Little," he said hysterically. "You! Ha! You're so stupid and ugly, you take everything for granted."

"Little! Little!"

"Am not! Am not! Ugly! Ugly!"

"Little! Little! Little! And did I forget to say LITTLE!"

Yahiko collected himself and with some dignity and told Kaoru, "If you weren't so brainless and ugly, you'd try the gate."

That stopped her short. Kaoru thought for a moment, then gave the gate a little push. It swung open.

"Nobody said it was locked ugly," Yahiko observed.

"Very clever little."

"You think you're so clever," Yahiko said. "You know why? Because you hadn’t learned anything."

Kaoru was peering cautiously inside the gate. She did not like what she saw. It was dark in there. The music humming in the air seemed to be more intense. There was a rotting smell.

Kaoru gathered her courage and took a few steps into the Labyrinth. Then she stopped short. A passageway ran across the entrance. It was very narrow, and the wall was so high, that the sky looked like mere slit over her head. In the gloom, she heard a continual drip of water, echoing. Kaoru approached the farther wall, touched it, and pulled her hand away. It was dank and slimy.

Yahiko’s head was poking through the gateway behind her. "Cozy, isn’t it?"

Kaoru shuddered.

Yahiko’s manner had altered. He was quiet, and it was almost possible to detect a hint of concern in his voice. "You really going to go in there, are you?"

Kaoru hesitated. "I ... yes," she said. "Yes, I am. Is there any reason why I shouldn't?" Kaoru replied while clenching her fists, it did seem such a dreadfully gloomy place, inside the gate.

"There's every reason why you shouldn't," Yahiko replied. "Is there any reason why you should? Any really good reason?"

"Yes, there is." Kaoru paused. "So I suppose, I must."

"All right," Yahiko said, in a tone of voice that implied, on your own head go. "Now," he asked, "which way will you go? Right or left?"

Kaoru looked one way and then the other. There was no reason to choose either one or the other. Both looked grim. The brick walls appeared to extent to infinity. Kaoru shrugged, wanting some help, but too proud to ask for it. "They both look the same," she said.

"Well," Yahiko told her, "you're not going to get very far, then, are you ugly?"

"All right little," she said crossly, "which way would you go?"

"Me?" Yahiko grinned. "I wouldn't go either way."

"Some guide you are."

"I never said I was a guide, did I? You could certainly use one though. You'll probably end up back where you started, given your record for being wrong."

"Well," Kaoru snapped at him, "if that's all the help you're going to be, you might as well let me get on with it!"

"You know your problem?" Yahiko asked.

Kaoru took no notice, but tried to look determined to set out in one direction or the other. ‘Left? Right?’ she was thinking, that was the normal order. So in this abnormal place, she might as well try going to the right.

"I told you ugly, you take too many things for granted," Yahiko went on. "This Labyrinth, for instance. Even if you get to the center, which is extremely doubtful with you, you'll never get out again."

"That's your opinion." Kaoru moved to her right.

"Well, it's a better opinion than yours."

"Thanks for nothing, Yakso."

"It’s Yahiko!" His voice came echoing from the gateway, where he remained. "And don't say I didn't warn you."

Her jaw set, Kaoru strode out, between the damp and slimy walls.

She had gone only a few strides when, the gate closed behind her. She stopped, and could not resist returning, to see if the gate would open again. It wouldn't.

Yahiko was shut outside. The only sounds in the Labyrinth now were the drip of water, and Kaoru’s quick breathing.