All day long it had been cold and rainy outside. Just as I was gazing out the window into the gloomy sky, debating what to do while I was stuck indoors, Rohtas came up to me.
Uh-oh... Please don’t tell me he’s about to spring a rainy day lesson on me!
“Why don’t we try our hand at some mazes today?”
“Come again?” His proposition had taken the wind out of my sails. “Huh? Why? Because it’s raining outside?”
“Yes, Madam. Or would you prefer the usual dance lesson?”
“Nope! No thanks! I’m good!”
My rainy day lessons had been on hold ever since I’d gotten pregnant with Violet. Even now that she’d been born, I had my hands full looking after her; I hadn’t had any time to waste on etiquette classes. Now that Violet was over six months old and big enough to sit upright, however, I finally had a little room to breathe. Rohtas must have noticed as much.
“Why mazes, though?” I asked.
“Well, wouldn’t it be fun to broaden your horizons?”
“Sure!”
Up until now, all my rainy day lessons had involved something “useful” in one way or another (whether it be dancing or self-defense), so no doubt there was some hidden significance to these mazes too.
Not to mention it sounds like fun! It’d be silly to let this opportunity pass me by.
“I have a handful of challenging mazes right here. Your goal is to solve each of them within the time limit.”
“What about Lettie?”
I cast a glance Violet’s way, only to find Mimosa busy playing with her and Daisy. That was bound to keep my hands free for a while.
“Okay, let’s do it!” I decided.
Without further ado, I jumped into this unconventional new activity.
✦ ✦ ✦
“This symbol denotes that an opening is only accessible from the inside. This one means the opposite—that you can only get through from the outside.”
“Hmm...”
The maze was drawn on a huge scroll of paper. We’d unfurled it over the parlor table, and Rohtas was now in the midst of explaining the rules.
This puzzle consisted of three main stages(?), each of which was connected to the next via several paths. Though there were multiple starting points and goals to each section, everything in one section counted as part of a single stage. Seems a little unbalanced, if you ask me. Oh well—no point in thinking too hard about it, I guess!
“There’s a lot of different exits and entrances, I see. And some of them are one way only.”
“Heh heh. Delightfully peculiar, isn’t it?”
“You said it!”
The maze contained openings that could only be accessed from the outside, as well as some that could only be accessed from the inside. Rohtas was right—this certainly was a peculiar puzzle. It was a lot more challenging than your usual maze and its clear-cut rules, which made it even more exciting to tackle.
“Your first task is to make it from this starting point to this goal. Ready...begin!” Rohtas shouted, turning over an hourglass as he did.
“All right!”
There were some large open areas (rooms?) as well as some smaller ones; winding between them were all sorts of paths ranging from thick to thin. A closer look revealed a pattern to the sizes of the rooms and passages, but I didn’t have a moment to spare scrutinizing it. My primary objective was to find a way out before time was up.
“If I take this path, then go this way... Yes, I did it! Well, Rohtas? Did you see that?”
I looked back at Rohtas with a triumphant grin, and he checked the hourglass with a smile. “That was pretty quick.”
“You bet it was!”
I solved it with half the sand left in the hourglass! That was a piece of cake.
“I see the warm-up was too easy for you. Ready to take a stab at the next route?”
“Yeah!”
“This time, I want you to start from here and find your way to this exit,” he said, pointing to another entrance and end point. It was the same maze I’d just done, but now the challenge was to find a different way through it. I had a feeling this route was going to be much longer and more complicated than the last one. Heh heh! Now I’m really getting into this!
“Ready...go!”
“Okay!”
My fingers flew over the maze the moment Rohtas gave the signal. “Uhh... Let me go through here and—wait, that’s a dead end. This way, maybe...? Shoot, I can only get through there from the inside!”
Things weren’t going quite as smoothly this time, and I had to start over from square one again and again.
While I’m dragging my feet, the sand keeps trickling away! Hurry, Viola, hurry! The route I just tried to take isn’t going to work, since it opens from the wrong side... Oh, here’s a path I haven’t tried yet! I have a good feeling about this one.
“Done!”
“And that’s time!”
I reached the goal nearly the exact moment that Rohtas announced my time was up.
“Did I make it?”
“I’ll be generous and let you have that one.”
“Woohoo!”
“The next one’s going to be even trickier.”
“Bring it on! I’m starting to get the hang of this.”
I tackled the same maze again and again, switching up the starting and end points each time. Having done the puzzle so many times now, I’d begun to memorize which way the openings went (whether they were accessible from the inside or outside, in other words), so it was taking me less and less time to get to the end, even as the routes themselves were getting longer and longer.
“Man, I know this maze inside and out by now.”
I lifted the scroll off the table and studied it from top to bottom. My goal was to get to the point where I was seeing it on the back of my eyelids, like some kind of afterimage.
“Is that so? You must have a good memory, Madam.”
“Heh heh heh!”
For whatever reason, Rohtas was beaming with satisfaction.
This has been fun and all, but what’s the point of all this? I still don’t get Rohtas’s game here. Knowing him, he’d never do something without a reason. Still... I am enjoying myself, so I shouldn’t overthink it. You never know—it might come in handy one day. Plus, I got Rohtas to compliment me on my memory!
Rohtas cleared the diagram off the table.
“Are we done?”
“No. I have another maze for you.”
“There’s more? Nice! Lay it on me!”
Now that I’d mastered every start-and-end combo in the first maze, it was time to bring out the next one. I could hardly wait!