With such journeys, it was always best to orient oneself with a glance in the mirror, if only as a warning of what kind of behavior to expect from others. Chance crossed the threshold and stood still for a second before looking to his left and his right. There were mirrors everywhere. Each wall was a wide, glass-paneled window showing several aspects of the same scene. Then he blinked, and the otherworldly strangeness became merely human. It was only a dance studio.

“They told me that mirrors would confuse you.”

“They?” he inquired politely, turning with slow calm to face the person behind him.

She was seated on the wooden floor, back against a mirrored wall, legs stretched straight in front of her. Her right hand held a pair of dancing shoes by their knotted ribbons. He did not have to look twice to realize she had no feet.

“They warned me not to come,” she said.

“I made it a compulsion, not a coercion,” Chance said, explaining, not excusing, “but either way, mirrors wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Oh yes, they did. You didn’t see me.” She sounded bitterly triumphant, as if not being seen was no new miracle in her experience.

“That wasn’t the mirrors. That was you.” The best labyrinths were all about choice, and he had kept to tradition when making this one.

“They also said you’d be a monster. That you’d kill me just by looking at me.”

He glanced once more at his reflection. Monsters were also part of the labyrinth tradition, but he doubted his powers in that regard. The mirror showed a small, old man, white-haired, dark and weathered as aged wood, wiry from hard work and meager nourishment, and still dressed in peasant cotton—clear evidence of the Trickster gift in action. His brother had been known to disguise himself as an old man, particularly when on the road where he might be taken for a beggar or an itinerant craftsman.

“I do not look very dangerous, no,” he admitted. “I am sorry to disappoint you.”

She sighed with impatience. “You’ll have to carry me.”

He crouched beside her, drew her arms around his neck, and pulled her up. She was heavier than she looked. When he put her on his back, she gripped his waist desperately with strong knees. “I will not drop you,” he protested.

She did not seem reassured. The ballet shoes whipped into his ribs as she clutched his shoulders. He was about to suggest that she leave them behind, but he looked a little more closely and saw how they appeared empty one moment, and the next moment . . . they filled out, pointed and flexed.

The ribbons pressed flat against his throat, more warning than threat. “I suppose I can’t kill you?”

“Why, then I might drop you after all,” Chance replied gently. “But no, I think you cannot kill me. Now, which way do you wish to go?”