A Ferry Tale - Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Maze or Maize? Or Maze of Maize?




	Sherry had been going up the hills, quite a straightforward and linear path, despite the bell shaped curves that sometimes appeared in front of him. Everything had seemed normal. He could feel himself wanting to yawn, wanting to take a break, stop on this journey, but he was afraid of the possibility of giant fleas or some other monstrosity attacking him in his sleep. After all, he didn't feel safe simply sleeping in a quite unfamiliar land.
	He remembered what his sister had said, or, seemed to remember what he thought his sister had said. Something about how the stuffed animal in the backpack would keep him safe. He wanted to believe that, but he was still saving having to bring it out in case of an emergency. On the bright side, it wasn't nightfall yet, and after much contemplation, decided it would be better to keep walking until nightfall.
	Soon, the hills began to change. It wasn't the same trail that he had taken before. They started randomly and viciously changing shape, moving up and down, throwing poor Sherry off balance. He fell over, but above all, he vowed that he would reach the end of the trail, even if he had to crawl the rest of the way.
	Magic was not something new in the three ferries, and although he had not reached even the first of the three yet, the world he had entered worked in mysterious and often deadly ways. Sometimes didactic, sometimes simply cruel and without reason. And then there were sometimes, just sometimes, where there wasn't a reason, no explanation, but no cruelty either. Those things are what we often refer to as “miracles”. And that day, a miracle occurred.
	Miracles are rare, just as magic would seem to be. But miracles, especially those amongst the dangers and magics that exist, those, are much more rare. On that day, as Sherry was on his knees, down on the ground, trying to keep moving forward as the land itself tried stopping him, a great dust sprinkled down from overhead. At first glance, this blood-orange dust would have seemed toxic, even just as dangerous as the terrain had been. But at this point, it was a life saver.
	The ground below the quite short Sherry settled, but not for long. The ground moved again, but the texture changed. It still appeared hilly and full of dirt and grass, but the paved path that Sherry had been on felt more...rubbery. No, not just rubbery. Like some other material altogether. He couldn't describe it if he wanted to, and he didn't even stop to think of how to describe it, as in that moment, each time the hills bounced up and down, so did Sherry.
	It was like being on a trampoline, something that the young boy had never had the chance to experience before in his life until that fateful day. At first he was scared. He was up in the air, even when he hadn't wanted to be. He thought this was truly how his journey would end, how his death would be upon him. But then, something inside of him told him “this could be fun, try standing up and jumping along with it”, and that's exactly what he did.
	Sherry got to his feet and jumped along with the hills, jumping as the low parts of the hills became the high parts, the high parts becoming the low parts. He continued jumping until he was launched much higher in the air than anticipated and once he landed he fell back to his feet, but a mere second later, realized that the bouncing hills had stopped.
	He had reached, what he thought, at least, was the end of the hilly trail. In actuality, he was a little less than halfway through. The other half was what he, upon getting up to his feet, was standing before: A tall, steep hill, no, that would have done it injustice. A miniature mountain, to be more precise.
	He noticed that standing in front of him, before he even dared to attempt to climb this miniature mountain, was a wobbly sign post, moving its way ever forward and backward. Sherry knew how important signs could be in giving valuable information to people, so he took the time to actually read what the sign said, to which it said:

	Warning!
	Steep climb to Scholl's Ferry
	Corn maze at summit of mountain
	Do not attempt to enter Scholl's Ferry
	Crossing into Scholl's Ferry is a crime punishable by death
	You have been warned.

	Sherry felt the saliva in his mouth dry up as his nerves tensed up. Why didn't his grandmother tell him that he would have to enter a place that he wasn't supposed to? Doesn't that mean that he was breaking a law? He felt bad about this, but at the same time, he didn't want to disobey his grandmother. He wanted to get this quest done as soon as possible so he could beg forgiveness as soon as he returned home.
	In fact, the whole way through the climb up the mountain he was thinking in his head how sorry he was for what he was doing and hoping that whoever was in charge of carrying out such a punishment would see it in their heart to forgive him.
	Inching ever forward, at times he even recalled slipping along the steep slope and wishing that such a steep slope wasn't such a steep slope. But all he could do is wish and dream. Wish and dream for another miracle to come on by, maybe sprinkle some of its dust his way. But none of that came, and he had to rely on the sheer determination he had, despite the quite short height he also had.
	His height proved to be the saving grace as it was what brought him closer and closer to the summit. Railings started showing up and he thought not to look down, else he might notice how high up he really was, and that would certainly frighten him more. But due to his height, he could grab onto the railing and climb his way up the rails, eventually getting closer and closer to the top.
	With each huff and puff he thought of the backpack he was carrying. The backpack upon his shoulders. The elephant milk in a bottle that was in the backpack. The stuffed animal, whatever it happened to be of (he never looked inside to even see if there even was a stuffed animal, all this time he was going off of assumptions). He thought of the quest, and however wrong it may have been, he also thought of what a sweet act he was doing by helping his old relative out, and as she said herself, the post office wasn't going to deliver to the kings of the ferries, so it was clearly up to him.
	He thought of the sheer thought of not giving up, sometimes thinking of giving up and maybe how it would be okay to give up. But he didn't. Because he was so close and he could taste the higher altitude on the tip of his tongue. It was like a snowflake in the middle of November, melting away on his taste buds to reveal rain. Rain, this whole time, when he thought it was a snowflake.
	Finally, with one quite large gasp from his quite small body, he reached his hand up and as if he was on the edge of a cliff his heart raced and he grabbed to the top as hard as he could and pulled his body up. With his body raised up, up to the summit, he looked ahead of him and saw the biggest challenge yet: a corn maze.
	He was standing at the entrance of what would be a labyrinth of grainy horrors. A macabre of cobs. Everywhere he looked he could see ears of corn, just staring at him. He rubbed his eyes, because no, that wasn't right. Corn doesn't stare. Corn doesn't have eyes. Corn may have ears, but they never, ever, have eyes.
	Another word for corn is maize. Which bares the question, which came first: The maize or the maze? It was truly and most frighteningly, hard to say. Maize had been around for quite some time. Since the prehistoric days, and even some days dating back before then. History was a fickle mistress, one who was quite coy and quite shy. She did not like to decide or even give a straight answer.
	That wasn't important. What was important was that corn, or maize, was a grain. Or a vegetable. It was clear that it was a plant, but quite the versatile one. Not a force to be reckoned with, although often was. It could be used to make popcorn, to make starch, to make breakfast cereals, and even, more importantly, to make alcohol based drinks.
	Sherry didn't know many of those facts. He must have seen corn before at least a few times in his lifetime, but never so much at once, and never to serve such a sinister purpose as to entrap someone within the confines of a labyrinth. Fear was still holding onto Sherry, but not only that, he was short on breath after the climb, so he decided to sit down on a nearby bench and pull out the elephant milk from the backpack his sister gave him.
	Sure enough, there was also a stuffed animal, one of a purple squid with a quite small smile and googly eyes that seemed to say, wordlessly, “come on, cuddle up with me!”  Sherry would otherwise object, but he found it fair to rest, even if just for an hour or so, before heading into the maze of maize.
	So that was exactly what he did. He drank a little bit of the elephant milk, which was a little fatty and chunky, but otherwise refreshing, and still surprisingly cold. After sealing the lid back up and putting the bottle back into the backpack, he curled up on the bench and slept, holding the squid toy in his arms.

	What seemed like what would be a short nap, perhaps an hour at the most, lasted a full eight hours, and he noticed that by the time he woke up, it was already dawn. Throughout the whole night, his hoodie and the stuffed animal kept him warm and protected, serving as spirits to aid him in his journey. He kissed the purple, googly eyed squid on the forehead, then placed it back into his backpack.
	Then he walked into the entrance of the maze of corn, the maze of maize, took a deep breath, and smiled, hoping for the best.
	Nothing out of the ordinary, it turned out, aside from the fact that he was getting lost at every angle. That and he could smell the faint stench of...starch? No matter, there was no death sentence it seemed to reaching a dead end and he smiled, thinking to himself, “I just need to keep moving forward!” and that's exactly what he did.
	Something strange happened soon, or suddenly, as he made his way further through the maze. Taking lefts, taking rights, going straights. Either way, once he got a little further in, things started getting weird. He swore, well, he swore that he could hear voices. And they certainly didn't sound like his own voices.
	“Hey Earl,” said one voice, or so he thought he heard one voice say.
	“Yes, Cobb?” Asked the other voice.
	“What did the farmer with ears of corn in his ears say?”
	“I don't know, Cobb, what did he say?”
	“Aw, shucks!” called the voice, and as soon as the voice had apparently said that, giggles could be heard all throughout the maze.
	“You know, Cobb, that was kind of, well, lame.”
	“Oh, I'm sorry you find my jokes to be too corny for ya's!” The voice once again laughed.
	This time the laughter in the maze grew louder and Sherry felt that he had been going insane.
	He called out. “Who's there!? Who's talking?!”
	“Kernel, this is Sgt. Kettle, reporting for duty, sir!” A new voice chimed in.
	“What is it, Sgt. Kettle?”
	“It seems we have someone trying to infiltrate our base. Deploy the corny artillery?”
	“Affirmative. Have at it!”
	And then, from the corner of his eyes, Sherry could see the corn turn sideways and little bits of kernels were flying and the target? Well, if it wasn't already clear, the target was him.
	He ran for it, knowing that he was the target, knowing that the corn was coming closer, knowing that it would only be a matter of time. But no, where he ran to, it wasn't good. Another fork in the road. Left or right, left or right, oh my...
	It was getting closer and closer, so he chose right. And right proved to be the right path. He sighed, felt relieved, and wiped sweat from the very top of his forehead. He was in the clear, or so it seemed. Then, more voices showed up.
	“Sir, the intruder evaded our kernel turrets!”
	“Aw, shucks!”
	“Permission to send in the corn tank, sir?”
	“Permission granted. Hopefully this does the trick.”
	Hopefully it doesn't do the trick, well, hopefully for Sherry. All he could do was hope at this point. Hope that he didn't meet his end from some vegetable. Or grain. Whatever it happened to be. He didn't want to, he wasn't prepared to find out, but he could hear the rolling upon the ground, he could hear it and it was driving him off the walls.
	The corn tank must have been getting closer and he could hear the rolling get louder, the mechanisms start to pull up. How does a corn tank form? What kind of mechanisms does it operate on? Such questions may never have gotten answered as he thought more of how he absolutely needed to find a way out of this forsaken maze. It had caused him enough trouble as it was.
	But trouble wasn't done with him, not when he still had to witness the corn tank itself. Its wheels were the tip tops of corn, the circular bits. The bulk, the body, was eight corn cobs stacked on top of each other in rows. And the cannon? An entire, long, corn cob, with aiming power and all.
	Then he realized...why the need to be afraid of such a thing? He thought, it's a silly food, how much could it possibly hurt?
	So he stood there, to see. To see how much it really did hurt. And as an earful of corn was deployed from the corn tank cannon and hit right at Sherry's right arm, it had become bruised and he yelped out a quick “ow!”
	Okay. That answered that question. It can possibly hurt, so, so much. He knew, without a doubt, that now his best interest would be to find this exit as soon as possible without getting attacked by...attacked by...corn. It felt so weird to think about. Getting attacked by anything else would have been truly horrifying, but this? He would have laughed, if he had the time to laugh. There were things much more important.
	Running once again, he seemed to have found the exit, it was in clear sight, a blinding light. The light at the end of the tunnel, only this tunnel was a tunnel of corn. Corn that all wanted to attack him. For what purpose he had not known. He supposed this was the 'punishment by death' that would befall anyone and this is how countless others have died trying to get into Scholl's Ferry. Oh, what a cruel way to die.
	Of course Sherry had seen corn before that day, never so much, but he had seen corn. He even grew a bit of a corn plant on the farm with elephants back in the village. Sometimes he had to shoo away the elephants because they would think that the corn was for them. Silly elephants, don't they know that they only eat grass?
	But yes, corn. It was edible, as grains tended to be. Now that he thought of it, why weren't the elephants allowed to eat corn? Maybe they could. Maybe he was just being selfish. Maybe it was some unwritten law that could easily be broken and such laws scared him because he didn't know whether or not it was okay to break them. All that he knew at that moment was that corn was edible and in that moment, in that final moment, he drew a breath, took a deep breath, and grabbed an ear of corn off of the bale.
	He held the corn up to his face and yelled out “Nobody move or this fella gets it!”
	Just then, the corn tank stopped. The whole maze was silenced.
	The corn in Sherry's hand shivered, quivered in fear. Such a grain had never known such trauma until that day. There was a great chance that, yes, the fella would get it. The fella would get eaten.
	“Please!” The corn in Sherry's hand sobbed and shrieked. “He's serious! I can tell by the way he's holding me! He's gonna eat me!”
	Sherry was still shaking in fear, himself, but felt a burst of confidence. “That's right! If you let me pass out of this maze, I'll let this fella go! If not...” He opened his mouth and started rubbing his teeth against some of the kernels.
	There was a disembodied gasp.
	“Wait. Do you mean maze or maize?” One voice shouted out and started chuckling.
	“M-A-Z-E!” Sherry spelled out in a yell.
	“Oh. Thanks for clarifying. We've got lousy ears.”
	The whole field burst into laughter and he threw the corn that he was holding into the air and ran out of the maze. He was done with this maze of maize. Purely and simply done. As he exited the corn maze and entered the light, he was soon to find himself within an entirely new world, an even more unfamiliar land. His quest was to continue after all...

	Far away from the quite short Sherry, but now not too far away, lay a great monument that stood on the other end of a great bridge. The monument, entitled “Cinnatopia” held a wonderful aroma of cinnamon, and inside lay many a treats, many a spectacle for the masses to see. But above all else, it was inside Cinnatopia that King Scholl resided, for Cinnatopia was his castle.
	Within the walls the great stench of cinnamon grew stronger and the throne room wasn't far away from the bedroom. The bedroom hadn't been used for much. Getting dressed, storing clothes, sleeping. It had a bed. That was all the bedroom really had, to be honest. A bed and a dresser. It was King Scholl's philosophy that he need not concern himself with too many trifle things in the bedroom.
	King Scholl was a prestigious man, all things considered. Even if it was true how neglectful of a king he was, he truly adored aesthetics. Architecture was his big thing and as much as he disregarded laws, disregarded his people, disregarded the economy, public safety, labor, all of those boring things, he truly regarded the construction of oddly shaped buildings within his ferry.
	The royal squire, Billy, walked in the throne room, stroking his palms together, and announced to King Scholl.
	“Hear ye, hear ye! I hereby decree that Scholl's husband, first man of Scholl's ferry, Sir Charles Brattleby, has filed for divorce on the grounds that he claims Scholl is not in the bedroom when he wants him to be in the bedroom,” he yelled out in a saxophone-like manner.
	“Oh dear...this isn't serious, is it? Is it April fool's day already? I could have sworn it was November...”
	Just then, King Scholl's husband marched into the room with his clean shaven face and chiseled body, wearing an unbuttoned robe and slacks that said “I am proud of my heritage!” as well as a fancy hat that only aristocrats were allowed to wear. He had no hair, but it did not matter as his fanciful hat covered up any signs of baldness.
	“Yes, it be true,” Charles, Scholl's ex-husband sighed.
	King Bradley Scholl was a man with unkempt brown hair, scraggly facial hair planted all over, broad shoulders with a bit of a gut, but heavyset muscles and a shirt that fit more for a commoner than a king. He was wearing slacks as well, and boots that made it seem like he would have done much better in a small village than in a castle. For all the perceived strength that he had, he felt weakened that day. Utterly devastated and crushed.
	“But why?”
	“You know I will always find you beautiful, but we simply don't share the same interests, it seems.”
	“But I thought you loved it when we made arts and crafts together!” He protested lazily.
	“Oh, I do. But I also had hoped that after all these years that you would be interested in some exercise in the bedroom.”
	“Come on, Charlie! You know that I only like going to bed to sleep, with you or without you, but I do not fancy sleeping with someone for any other purpose than to get a good rest!”
	He shrugged and stroked his bald head from underneath his hat, imagining that he still had hair to stroke. “That's your problem. I just can't be with someone who doesn't share such a passion for bedroom exercises as I do.”
	Charles walked out of the throne room, walked out of Cinnatopia, and went across the street to a fancy restaurant to collect unlimited breadsticks and create his own kingdom where breadsticks could be the currency. He thought about it. Breadsticks! Running the economy! Oh, those long, hard sticks just falling from the sky! What a life! Who could ask for more?
	Scholl himself sighed, wishing today wasn't so awful. He tried to think of someone to blame because he didn't consider it a problem of his, either. He just had different interests. Charles thought about all the things that could be done in the bedroom, and, well, Scholl thought of all the model sailboats that could be made in the arts and crafts room.
	He thought of Boone. Yes, that woman must have been to blame. All she did was have her subjects exercise. Perhaps she wooed away his love. It wasn't too sound of logic, but he was grieving and needed someone to take his such painful emotions out on. And that was why he went to war with Boone.
	He was, of course, already at war with Taylor's Ferry because Taylor's Ferry went to war with the other two ferries first.

	Sherry was entering Scholl's Ferry and soon he would do his best to find the king and deliver one of these three letters to him. He never thought to check to see if any of the letters had a name attached to them. He sure hope that they did, otherwise it would be awfully confusing to tell what letter went to whom.
	Looking around was strange, like he was in an amusement park. There were shops every which way, but not in the way that he would have thought there to have been. It was like some of the shops were in the shape of noodles. “How could you even fit merchandise in ravioli?” He thought.
	This place was filled with life, but also, as he would find out, filled with confusion and wrought misery. He would have to tread lightly, even within the confines of Scholl's Ferry.