'The labyrinth is a place of meditation, initiation and inspiration, particularly when one desires to be in harmony with the earth and the feminine. It should be remembered that ancient and powerful forces are invoked through the use of a labyrinth, which should be approached with reverence and respect. Labyrinths should always be made and placed with beneficial intent.'

- Susan Granquist,"The Magic of the Labyrinth",
Sage Woman Magazine, Winter 1992

'Build it and they will come.'

- Field of Dreams





"There is only one way to walk the labyrinth, my boy," said Dr. Savercool, as he handed the penciled diagram to Peter. "One way in and one way out."

Peter took the crumpled slip of paper and studied what at first appeared to be a series of concentric circles; as his eyes followed their curves, the maze within slowly made itself apparent. He ran a finger along the path and found that the man was right, one entered the labyrinth and after tracing and retracing, first one direction and then the other, one ended up at its center. Reversing the path brought the traveler to the beginning again.

"So, can you build such a thing for me?" Dr. Savercool asked. "A path that would follow this shape?"

"Well, it would depend on the materials you wanted me to use, sir." Peter looked into the man's cold gray eyes. "Depends on how much you want to spend."

Peter's customer sniffed. "Money is no object. I only insist that you use natural materials. Nothing man-made. It doesn't even have to be permanent, but if you can trace the shape, the path will be worn into the ground, in time. That is what I want."

"How about pebbles? Or maybe wood chips?"

Dr. Savercool folded his arms and put his slender chin in his hand. "Interesting. Wood chips, yes. That would be perfect. She would like that." He walked away, nodding, his voice growing softer and even more pensive than usual. "Oh, yes, I think she would find that to be just the thing."

* * *


Peter thought about the doctor's last remark as he drove into town for the wood chips and other materials. Who was this she? Dr. Savercool had no wife, no children. He was the town oddity, a psychiatrist who had retired in Vermont after becoming embroiled in a lengthy court case on the west coast, a case with hazy circumstances that no one could quite explain. Now he lived alone in a farmhouse on several hundred acres, all that prime field and forest just sitting fallow, unused. The damn fool wouldn't even rent land to the local dairy farmers. Instead, he lived a hermit's life, never seen at the annual town meeting or in any of the local churches or stores.

So when Dr. Savercool called Peter to discuss some landscaping work, the young gardener hesitated at first, thinking it might even be a prank. Those Rinker brothers, over in Danbury, that was just the sort of practical joke they would pull. But it turned out to be real business, hedges to be trimmed, flower beds to be weeded and reconditioned—and this peculiar project, to build a labyrinth. Dr. Savercool wanted that done first, didn't even want an estimate beforehand.

While he discussed the work with his customer, Peter noticed that the doctor's farmhouse had no evidence of a woman's touch, no lace curtains, no pretty flowers in fragile vases, just dirty dishes piled high in the sink and gossamer cobwebs floating lazily in the corners. And books—oh, yes! Books everywhere. As the doctor studied Peter's final list of services, the gardener decided not to ask his new customer the usual question, if he might need to confer with anyone else in the family before the work began. It was quite obvious that there would be no one else involved.

After a visit to the hardware store for a rake and a few odds and ends, Peter dropped in on a friend who ran a sawmill, and left with a truckload of sweet-smelling wood chips, bright yellow bits of pine and maple. By the time the sun touched the treetops in the western sky, Peter had traced the labyrinth on the ground Dr. Savercool had chosen, a flat area atop a hill, overlooking a ravine where a narrow brook meandered around well-worn rocks and clumps of purple loosestrife. Dr. Savercool strolled up from his house, a meditative half-smile on his lined face, just in time to see Peter brushing the sawdust off his hands and admiring the finished product.

"I still have some clean-up to do," Peter told him.

The doctor looked at the labyrinth for a long time without speaking, then at last, he nodded his approval.

"Yes, it's perfect," he said softly. He looked over at Peter and his smile widened to a grin. "I have a hunger for ritual, you know? Oh, yes, a tremendous desire. . . I suppose we all do." Then he turned away and walked back to the farmhouse, with his hands clasped behind his stooped back.


* * *


There were other tasks to be done on the Savercool estate, and Peter's price for them was accepted without question or argument. The young gardener soon found himself spending three or four days a week there, because there was just so much to do. It was pleasant work; that summer had been a particularly lovely one, long days of cool temperatures, brilliant blue skies, wide puffy clouds casting shadows on the fertile ground. Peter never wanted the project to end, and often found reasons to work overtime, extras that Dr. Savercool gladly paid for. Unlike many of Peter's other customers, apparently the man had no limit to his finances.

One day, one warmer than most, Peter waited until late afternoon to prune the shrubbery on the upper lawn, the same piece of ground where he built the labyrinth. He filled a wheelbarrow with clippers of various sizes and pushed it through the ravine to the row of shaggy boxwoods, and he planned to work until the sun went down. Birds chattered at him as he approached the hill, and he whistled back at them, attempting conversation. Sometimes they would reply.

But when he got to the top of the hill, he stopped, sucking back his breath with an abrupt gasp.

He was not alone.

She was only a wisp of a woman, but yes, she was definitely a woman, not a little girl. In a white dress that seemed more like a slip or a nightgown, she stepped lightly around the labyrinth, her bare feet easily navigating the narrow turns of the maze. She wore only the dress and a necklace, a triple strand of small purple stones. As she changed direction, Peter noticed how her brown hair swept down her back, how her backside was shaped so perfectly, like a little upside-down heart. She hummed to herself, an endless, wandering tune, and when she reached the center of the labyrinth, she stopped, joined her hands in a position of prayer, and closed her eyes. For a moment, she stood very, very still, as if she had been suddenly turned to marble.

Then, she disappeared.

Peter took off his sunglasses, rubbed his eyes, wiped the glasses on his T-shirt before he put them back on. He was still alone, just the birds for company as before, although now their antiphony seemed fraught with a new energy. Perhaps they had seen the vision too.

He looked over his shoulder at the farmhouse. Dr. Savercool was walking up the driveway, sorting through a handful of mail. Should I tell him? Peter thought. He'll think I'm crazy.

Yet, something had to be done. Someone had to be told.

"Excuse me? Dr. Savercool, sir?" Peter ran to the doctor, barely able to speak around the pounding of his heart. "Listen—sir—I have to ask you—"

The doctor raised his head. "Yes?"

"Do you—have you—there was a woman—"

"A woman?" the doctor said, one eyebrow raising like a flag.

"In a white dress—smallish, but not a little girl—definitely not a
little girl. . ."

"Long hair? Three strings of purple stones around her neck?"

Peter nodded.

"The goddess," Dr. Savercool whispered hoarsely. "She is here." The mail fell from the doctor's hands and fluttered to the ground like swan's feathers. He took off at a gallop, his long legs carrying him swiftly to the labyrinth. Peter stumbled after him, his shorter stride no match for the doctor's.

The doctor stopped at the entrance to the labyrinth and cocked his head, apparently listening for something. When Peter tried to speak, he held up one hand to silence him.

"Quiet! She is here! I know it!"

But Peter saw nothing, not even the movement of a branch that might indicate the presence of a third being. Even the birds had fallen silent. Only the distant drone of a lawnmower intruded upon the silence, one last reminder that they still stood in the world of the mundane. The doctor stood there, absolutely still, a pillar of granite.

Then, without warning, he turned and pressed a handful of house keys into Peter's hands. "Go, my son," he said, in a grave tone of voice, one Peter had never heard from him before. "Bring back some food, and a jug of water. There is some fruit salad in my refrigerator, and I have a tin of crackers on the table. Grab whatever appeals to you. Oh, and a bottle of wine from the rack. You'll see it. Go, my boy, hurry! We're going to be here for a while."

"But sir, I have some phone calls to make this evening, I have to—"

"Go!" He waved him off, pointing in the direction of the house, and as Peter headed away, he heard the doctor shout after him, "Don't forget a corkscrew!"

Peter looked over his shoulder, prepared to reply, but decided against it. The doctor had dropped to his knees at the entrance to the labyrinth, and now appeared to be isolated from the world, in a position of intense prayer.


* * *


The doctor had been right, they were there for a while, for the entire night and into the next morning. The temperature plunged, as it often does in Vermont, and without a sleeping bag or even an extra sweater, Peter found himself shivering against the cold. Dr. Savercool, on the other hand, seemed hardly affected by it. He sat in a cross-legged position, perfectly still with his long hands on his knees, a Buddha made of twigs and stones.

Finally Peter suggested a fire, and Dr. Savercool agreed. "She will like that," he said in a dreamer's voice, the first words he had uttered in hours.

"She? Who is this woman anyway? Do you know her?"

The doctor smiled at Peter, meeting his eyes, and Peter was surprised by a peacefulness in Dr. Savercool's face that he had never seen before. "Build the fire for us, my boy, and I will tell you."


* * *


With a small pile of branches crackling before them at last, Dr. Savercool cleared his throat and began to speak. "Last winter, during that blizzard, do you remember? When no one could go anywhere?"

Peter nodded and twisted a leaf between his fingers. "Yeah, I remember, we were socked in for a good three days."

"Yes, it was quite a time. The power went out here for a while, so I lived in candlelight. Everything looks quite different in candlelight, you know?" The doctor stared into the fire. "Anyway, I was meditating, as I always do at sunset, when I sensed a presence in the room with me. Needless to say, I was quite surprised, at first I thought a rabbit or something had gotten in the house. I opened my eyes, and saw this woman kneeling before me. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen, long dark hair, the palest skin, slender arms and tiny, supple hands. And she looked at me, right up at me, and spoke in the softest voice I've ever heard. My god, it sounded like bells, like the way the birds could speak, if they could talk like humans. Oh my. . ." The doctor's voice faded away and they sat in silence for a moment.

"So what did she say?" Peter asked, itching with curiosity.

"She looked up at me, and she said, 'Sir? I am here to worship you.'"

"Worship you?"

The doctor nodded. "And I shook my head, I told her that I was no one she should be worshiping, believe me. But she reached out and touched my fly—" He glanced down at himself, then stared into the fire again. "She touched me there and she said it again. 'I am here to worship you. I am here to worship the center of your life force.' And then she pulled down my zipper, so slowly—ah!" The doctor shivered visibly. "She came a little closer, on her knees, and her mouth was open, and she slipped my cock between her lips. Ooh, it felt so good, so real. I couldn't believe it, she had to be as real as you or I. And she began to lick, so carefully, to devour me with such—such love!" The doctor looked at Peter with his eyes wide. "I orgasmed like I never had before—or since. It was a convulsion, an earthquake. When I finally finished, she stood up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand—such a tiny hand, so sweet, I wanted to kiss it, but she stepped out of my reach. She wouldn't let me touch her, and I wanted to so badly!" The doctor sighed heavily and was quiet for several minutes.

Finally Dr. Savercool coughed; his words were barely audible, and spoken so slowly that he almost sounded drugged. "She said to me, 'Sir? If you wish to know me, you must welcome me. You must build a place where I can live, a place where I can dance. A labyrinth.' Well, I'd heard of such things, read about them in mythology, but I had no idea what she wanted, and I asked her. She laughed—oh, you have never heard such a laugh!—and then she skipped, like a child, into my bathroom. Naturally, I followed her, but when I got there, she was gone. And here's the weird thing. The bathroom was all steamy, as if someone had just taken a shower there, even though I hadn't been able to use the room for days because of the power being out. It was like a rain forest in there. And on the mirror, traced with a tiny finger, I saw the shape of the labyrinth, the same shape I gave you. I ran to get a piece of paper so I could copy it down, which I barely managed to do. I've worried ever since that I might have done it wrong. . ."

Peter leaned back against the tree behind him, a sudden wave of exhaustion making his arms and legs feel like they had been carved from hardwood. He closed his eyes, promising himself he would do this just for a moment—but broke his own promise almost immediately. When he opened his eyes again, dawn would be clinging to the treetops, the fire would be reduced to coals—and Dr. Savercool would be gone.


* * *


"Hello?" Peter sat up and rubbed his eyes, allowing them to get used to the odd rosy light of early morning. "Dr. Savercool? Where are you?"

No answer, except for a chorus of birds above his head. Heaven only knew what they were trying to tell him. Peter rubbed his lower back, giving special attention to a place that must have been pressed against a tree root all night. He peered over the shrubbery, down into the ravine, but saw no sign of the doctor.

"Sir?"

The voice was gentle, musical. Peter swung around, perhaps a bit too quickly for the sore place in his back, but he ignored the corresponding ping of pain. The beautiful woman before him, the shy eyes and long hair caught in the morning's breeze, they were too distracting for him to notice anything else. She wore a dress the color of drifted snow; a triple strand of dainty lavender stones lay across her equally delicate throat.

"What—who are you?"

She stepped forward and took his hand. "Come with me," she said. "Come and walk the labyrinth." The tiny tug on his fingers sent a clear message. He had no choice but to follow her.

They entered the labyrinth, the woman before him, her hand still around his. Peter followed so closely that he feared he might step on her heels with his heavy gardener's boots, but she seemed so agile, it never happened. He could smell the hint of freesia from the cloud of her hair.

"So have you ever done this before?" she asked him.

"No, I haven't."

"But you built my labyrinth!" She glanced over her shoulder at him. "You weren't tempted to walk it, even once?"

"Guess I just didn't think about it." Peter laughed nervously. "Too busy worrying about getting the lines right, I guess."

"Well, it is much appreciated," she said, and Peter saw a peaceful smile on the other side of the curtain of hair. Then she turned away, to negotiate a turn, and he caught the sight of her pretty backside as it moved under the white dress. Obviously she wore no underwear, but then—do visions ever have visible panty lines? He suppressed a tense giggle as she led him around another change in direction.

"You are looking at me," she said suddenly.

"Well, yes—yes, I am."

"And you are thinking about me, aren't you? In a certain way?"

Peter swallowed. "Yes. That's true."

They stood a few feet from the center of the labyrinth now; Peter could see where he had marked its terminus with a small pile of rocks. The woman turned and faced him, brought up her hands to cup his chin.

"You are so different from all the others," she said. "You speak to my heart, when none of the others even know how to get there."

"But how do you—" Peter felt the warmth of her tiny fingers, almost burning into his skin. "You don't even know me."

"You built the labyrinth. The other man, he commissioned it, but you're the one who laid the stones, traced the path with the wood chips. You have made my home, and now I wish for you to come and live with me."

With that, she stood on her toes and pressed her hungry mouth to his. Peter felt the immediate attachment, felt the moist warmth enclose his, and remembered what the doctor had said about how that same mouth felt around his cock. "I want you," Peter managed to mumble as she placed kisses along his chin and down his neck.

"I know you do, sir, and I want you. I will surrender to you, if you will come and live with me, here in the labyrinth."

Tiny hands ripped open his flannel shirt, tiny fingers danced through his chest hair, pinching his nipples on the way down. Peter groaned as she pulled open his jeans with surprising strength and yanked them to the ground. She pressed her fingers against his shorts, where his cock pleaded for release.

"Oh, yes," she whispered. "You want this as much as I do."

The shorts followed the jeans in one swift motion, and within seconds, the ravenous lips that had kissed Peter so feverishly were now wrapped around his cock. They slipped up and down the shaft like oiled velvet, so warm, so needy—how could he refuse her? He tilted his pelvis forward a bit, and she countered by enclosing him in her mouth until her nose touched his pubic hair; Peter had never known a woman who could consume him so completely, but this one seemed able to do so with ease. Her fingertips were poised under his testicles, cupping them like fine crystal vessels. She made little half-moans as she allowed her tongue to explore his entire length, which now seemed greater than he had ever thought himself able to achieve.

"Come for me," she whispered around his cock. "You will not regret it."

With one great, shattering convulsion, bearing a force similar to the collision of two stars, Peter felt his sperm race upward and out of him in a torrent, directly into her waiting mouth. He could hear her swallowing, see the muscles of her small throat draw him up and receive him at last. Her hands came around and squeezed his rear cheeks, as if this might pull out the last drops. Peter could not believe her capacity, how he could keep pumping and she would willingly swallow it all. "Is this how you love a man?" he heard himself saying to her, in a voice he barely recognized.

"Welcome," she said, and rose to her feet, touching the purple stones around her neck. "Welcome to the end of the labyrinth."

A brightness surrounded Peter, pressed hard against him. At first he thought it might be the sun, up over the horizon at last, but the light grew too quickly, and held an intensity that eventually blurred his surroundings—the trees, the labyrinth, even the beautiful creature before him, who smiled reassuringly and still held onto one hand. Behind her, Dr. Savercool's angular face briefly appeared, overtaken by a wildly uncharacteristic grin.

"Come on, my boy!" the doctor shouted, in a voice that sounded like it came through a vat of electrified water. "This is like no other place you'll ever know."

Impossibly, the light grew brighter, burning, as devoid of landscape as darkness can be—but nowhere near as sad.


* * *


The old Savercool estate was finally disposed of, after many months of slow travel through the miserable labyrinth of bureaucracy. The doctor had no heirs, no will, no relatives could be located, so the property was turned over to the state and the farmhouse torn down, to make way for a foster home for orphaned children. The gardens, once so carefully tended, became overgrown, a burden to the taxpayers, and were eventually mowed and paved so the staff would have a place to park.

When the contractors began their site preparation, they noticed an odd patch of grass where someone had carved a weird pattern, almost like those crop circles in the National Enquirer. The construction workers enjoyed a day of UFO jokes as the grass was plowed under and forgotten.

As for Peter, his sudden disappearance was as curious as the doctor's, he had seemed like such a steady young man. Surely there was no connection between the two, they had hardly anything in common. Maybe there were some bad debts, easily incurred when one goes into business for oneself. Maybe Peter had grown tired of the isolated life in a small Vermont town, and gone to begin a new one elsewhere.

Maybe there was a woman involved.

No one ever knew for sure. But sometimes, on one of those uncharacteristically hot days in the summer, one can still go to the parking lot at the Youth Center and see an odd series of cracks, right there in the brand new asphalt, a series of concentric circles like a maze. The spot was even resurfaced, yet the cracks always reappear. Like more things in this life than we would care to admit, this phenomenon cannot be explained.

About the Authoress:

J.Z. Sharpe writes erotica and science fiction, and is happiest when she can find a way to combine them. Cleverly disguised during the day as a computer trainer and backyard gardener, she performs much of her literary wizardry in the wee hours of the morning. Her work appears from time to time in various Internet venues. Visit her site her wesite The Sharpe Tongue for more of her writings.