The Freedom Maze Read Online Free PDF Page A

might could say that.”
    “It sure is strange-looking.” She peered up and down the leafy corridor. “Where are you, anyway?”
    “Here and there! In and out! Come on and find me.”
    Sophie saw gaps in the leafy wall — two to the right, one to the left. She remembered reading about mazes, how you should always turn right on the way in and left on the way out. Or was it the other way around?
    She shrugged and turned right.
    “You fixing to stay a spell?” the voice inquired.
    Sophie kept walking.
    “Stubborn as a mule,” the voice remarked. “Don’t listen, don’t look, don’t mind what she’s told. You never going find me, you don’t mind what you told. What them things over you eyes, girl? Blinders?”
    “That’s rude!” Sophie said indignantly. “I can’t help having to wear glasses! And you haven’t told me anything.”
    “Have.” The voice was smug. “Study on it.”
    “You asked whether I was intending to stay a spell,” Sophie pointed out. “That could mean anything.”
    “It mean you fixing to get right lost.”
    Sophie rolled her eyes and turned around. At the end of the path, she went left, then left again, which led her into a dead end furnished with a cracked marble bench.
    By this time, she was ready to give up. She didn’t like being teased, especially by some sassy little colored child who didn’t have any business being in her family maze in the first place. She began to retrace her steps.
    “That’s right,” the voice said. “Go back. Save youself a passel of time and trouble. Ain’t nothing in the middle anyways.”
    Which made Sophie bound and determined to find the middle of the maze — and the sassy child — if only to give it a piece of her mind.
    Three turns later, she was in another dead end, this one sporting a sad-looking marble dog.
    “You should have drunk that there lemonade you auntie made you,” the voice said. “No telling when you see lemonade again.”
    “That doesn’t help,” Sophie said.
    “See if going right instead of left help better.”
    For the next few minutes, the voice insulted her, teased her, led her, she was sure, around in circles. Finally, she saw a pair of stone urns just like the ones at the entrance and stepped between them into a miniature wilderness of bushes and weeds.
    “What I tell you?” the voice crowed. “Nothing here.”
    “You’re here, somewhere.”
    “Somewheres.”
    Sophie looked around for a hiding place, spotted a building-shaped mound of leaves across the garden, fought her way to it and peered into a fly-haunted interior. Two wicker chairs, half-rotten and furred with mold. No child. No multicolored animal.
    Grimly, Sophie set in to search every inch of the tiny garden. She found a broken stone bench, an empty stand that may have held a sundial, and more roses run wild than you could shake a stick at, and that was all.
    By now, she was hungry as well as thirsty, and her feet were bruised. The lengthening shadows told her she’d been in the maze a lot longer than she’d thought. If she didn’t hurry back, she’d be late to supper and Aunt Enid would be put out with her.
    “You win!” she called out. “Can you lead me out of here? Please?”
    Her only answer was the hysterical shrilling of cicadas. Sophie fought down a rising panic and told herself she wasn’t really lost. All she had to do was go back the way she’d come. She looked out the entrance and sure enough, a line of trodden grass led to the right, clear as print.
    Piece of cake.
    And it might have been, if the voice had led her directly to the center. As it was, Sophie was soon as lost as Mama’s Cousin Nick. At first, she was too mad to be frightened. But as she got more and more lost, fear overcame anger. The shrilling cicadas started to sound more and more like voices — frightened, unhappy, whispering voices. Sometimes they went silent, and that was worse, because then she could hear rustling in the hedges and in the grass. Then she