Alexandre

“Lost?”

You startle, then let out a dry laugh at your own nerves. The voice is disembodied, brittle as spun sugar, and seems to vibrate the air without strictly belonging to it.

“Not yet,” you say, not bothering to mask the caution in your voice.

“Forgive me. One grows... desperate for conversation, some evenings.” The accent is aristocratic, gently wincing at the hard Rs, syllables clipped as if to spare themselves the effort of full expression.

You pivot, scanning the great green cerements for a trick of the light, a shape, a shoe, the glint of a silver watch chain; you see nothing. The hedges carry on in their indifference. “I’m not sure a hedge maze at night is the best venue for introductions,” you venture, adopting a matter-of-factness that steadies your own pulse.

“On the contrary. All true introductions occur in the dark.” The voice—decidedly male, youngish but smeared with years in the slow-burning way of the sick or the overeducated—comes from above this time, thinly filtered through the lattice of branch and leaf.

A window, then. Your eyes track the wall of green until you catch, high above, a faint tremor: a blur of color that might be the flutter of a sleeve or the bruised reflection of sunset on glass. “I’m sorry to disappoint,” you call upward, “but I didn’t bring a torch. I can barely see my own boots.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” the voice replies, and though you cannot pinpoint the mouth that forms the words, you picture a smile that does not reach its eyes. “The maze is much improved in blindness.”

The wind ducks low, curling in the tunnels of yew and stirring a sudden baptism of cold dew on the nape of your neck; for an instant, you think you hear your own name in its passage. You set your jaw and start down the leftmost avenue, letting the unseen speaker’s gaze—if they even have one—graze your back.

With every turn, the sense of observation grows, as if the air has thickened with attentiveness. You try to ignore it, focusing on the logic of the maze—left, then right, repeat until release—but the hedges shrink as you advance, the paths narrowing into corridors more suited to foxes than to people of human proportions. Once, your bag snags on a branch, and you have to wrench it free; the branch bites into your coat, leaving a scratch that feels instantly cold.

You debate the wisdom of retreat when the voice returns, closer now, as though the speaker has followed you on silent wires. “Do you believe in the supernatural?”

Your spine stiffens. You haven’t offered your name. You’re certain of that.

“I believe in poor architecture and worse navigation.”

A chuckle—papery, edged with static—floats down. “You’re not the first to come here seeking something, you know.”