A Snap-Fiction Story
By Micah Siemens
They called it the Labyrinth of Unreasonably Aggressive Architecture, which was unfair to the architecture. The architecture, for its part, had never chased anyone. It merely rearranged itself at inconvenient moments and occasionally hummed in a minor key.
The Labyrinth lay in a shallow valley owned by Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, a man whose chief talent was being born at the correct time to the correct parents. He leased access to the grounds for a modest fee and a signature on a waiver that included phrases like “temporal inversion,” “polite haunting,” and “minotaur-adjacent entities.” Adventurers came from every corner of the map to test their mettle against its corridors. Most returned with trinkets, bruises, and a renewed appreciation for straight hallways.
Among them was Arlo Penn, an adventurer of middling renown and above-average debt. He owned a sword with an encouraging motto engraved along the fuller—TRY YOUR BEST—and a shield that had once been a serving tray in a tavern called The Splintered Pint. Arlo was brave in the way that soup is brave: mostly hot and liable to spill.
He entered the Labyrinth on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were half-price and slightly less cursed. The hedges bowed in on themselves as he passed, forming a corridor that smelled faintly of rosemary and bad decisions. He left chalk marks on the walls, which the walls politely rearranged into motivational quotes. He followed a left-hand rule, which the Labyrinth applauded by adding extra lefts.
After an hour, Arlo found a small chamber lit by a skylight that was not visible from outside. In the center stood a pedestal, and on the pedestal a wooden box, and in the box—
He lifted the lid.
There are discoveries that make a man shout, and discoveries that make a man whisper. Arlo did neither. He simply sat down.
The treasure was not gold. Gold he understood. It was not jewels, though there were jewels, but they seemed like punctuation. It was not a crown, though something in the box implied sovereignty. It was not a map, though it contained the sensation of direction.
It was, in fact, the Deed.
Not a deed to a house or a mill or a pleasant orchard with pear trees that gossip in the wind. It was the Deed to the Labyrinth itself—written in an ink that changed color depending on who held it, bearing the seal of Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, and countersigned by a notary whose signature crawled about the page like a thoughtful caterpillar.
Arlo stared. The parchment listed the boundaries of the valley in absurd detail, down to “the rock resembling a duck contemplating taxes.” It described rights of way, water access, mineral claims, and a clause about “sovereign rearrangement privileges.” It named the owner as “the bearer of this instrument, upon lawful purchase of the lands described herein.”
Upon lawful purchase.
Arlo looked around. The chamber had no obvious exit. The pedestal hummed. A polite brass plaque read: CONGRATULATIONS. TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY.
He closed the box.
“Hypothetically,” he said to the skylight, “if one were to acquire the land…”
The skylight did not respond, but the hedges outside rustled like accountants sharpening quills.
Arlo replaced the box, took a steadying breath, and left the chamber without marking it. He did not tell the other adventurers at the inn that evening what he had found. He did not boast. He did not hint. When asked how the Labyrinth had treated him, he said, “We’re in negotiations.”
That night he lay awake, staring at the ceiling beams of his rented room. He owned a sword, a shield, a bedroll, a mule with a personality like damp bread, and a collection of IOUs. He owned a future of reasonable quests and unreasonable tavern tabs.
He also owned a memory of the Deed.
By morning, Arlo had made a decision so large it required two breakfasts.
He sold the sword first. TRY YOUR BEST fetched less than expected. He sold the shield to a baker who admired its circular optimism. He sold the mule, who seemed relieved. He sold his boots and purchased less adventurous boots. He sold his place in an expedition to the Caves of Mild Inconvenience. He sold the IOUs at a discount to a woman named Mara who collected debts the way botanists collect rare ferns.
“Are you ill?” Mara asked, counting coins with clinical affection.
“I’m investing,” Arlo said.
“In what?”
“In boundaries.”
He traveled to the manor house of Lord Berrigan Thrice-Inherited, which perched above the valley like a brooch on a very nervous coat. The Lord received him in a room devoted entirely to portraits of himself at various ages of inheritance.
“You wish to purchase the valley?” Lord Berrigan repeated, as though tasting a sentence that might be poison.
“I do,” Arlo said, placing a sack of coins on a table carved with scenes of hunting things that looked like furniture.
“Why?”
“I find I have an affinity for its topography.”
Lord Berrigan sniffed. “The Labyrinth is a liability. It rearranges fences. It has opinions about irrigation.”
“I will assume those opinions,” Arlo said.
The negotiations were long, because Lord Berrigan enjoyed the sound of parchment. But coin is a persuasive dialect, and Arlo had gathered enough to speak it fluently. At last, with witnesses and wax and a notary whose signature did not crawl but did yawn, the deed was transferred. The valley, the hedges, the humming chambers—all of it belonged to Arlo Penn.
He walked down the hill a poorer man than he had ever been and the richest man in the valley.
The Labyrinth greeted him differently.
The hedges parted before he reached them. The corridor smelled not of rosemary but of fresh ink. The walls did not rearrange his chalk marks; they requested them. In the chamber with the skylight, the pedestal bowed.
Arlo opened the box.
The Deed glowed with a comfortable light, like a hearth that approves of your seating arrangement. The clause about “sovereign rearrangement privileges” unfurled into an addendum. He felt it then—not power like a shout, but authority like a well-fitted coat.
He cleared his throat.
“I would like fewer minotaur-adjacent entities,” he said.
The Labyrinth considered this. Somewhere, a hoof resigned.
“I would like corridors that lead somewhere on purpose.”
A wall shifted, sheepish.
“And I would like,” Arlo continued, “a small kiosk near the entrance selling tea and maps that do not lie.”
By afternoon, there was a kiosk. The tea was excellent. The maps were honest to a fault, labeling one section: HERE BE ADMINISTRATION.
Word spread.
Adventurers arrived to find a Labyrinth that still challenged but did not mock. Puzzles were clever without being cruel. Traps were labeled with tasteful signage. The minotaur-adjacent entities had been reassigned to a union position involving interpretive dance.
Arlo did not hoard the treasure. He charged a fair fee and reinvested it in maintenance, in scholarships for aspiring adventurers of limited means, in a fund to support furniture traumatized by hunting scenes. He walked the corridors at dusk, adjusting a corner here, a riddle there.
Sometimes he sat in the skylit chamber and read the Deed, not because he doubted it, but because it reminded him of the morning he had sold everything that did not fit inside a decision.
Mara visited once, ledger tucked beneath her arm.
“You could have told me,” she said, watching a group of novices consult an honest map.
“I didn’t know how to explain it,” Arlo replied.
“Try.”
He considered. “Imagine you find a thing so valuable that everything else becomes small around it. Not worthless—just small. Imagine realizing that the only way to hold it is to let go of what you’re holding.”
Mara nodded slowly. “And if it had been a trick?”
Arlo smiled. “Then I would have owned a very interesting valley.”
They stood together as the sun set, the hedges casting long, cooperative shadows. The Labyrinth hummed in a major key.
There are those who say Arlo was foolish to sell all he had for a piece of land that rearranged itself. There are those who say he was shrewd. The Labyrinth, when asked, offers tea and declines to comment.
But if you walk its corridors now, you may notice something peculiar. The walls do not close in. The turns, while surprising, are not malicious. And in the chamber with the skylight, a plaque has been added beneath the original:
CONGRATULATIONS. TERMS AND CONDITIONS ACCEPTED.
Arlo Penn, former owner of a sword with an encouraging motto, current steward of an unreasonable architecture, will tell you that the treasure was never the gold-that-wasn’t-gold, nor the jewels-that-were-punctuation.
It was the right to tend the thing that had first confounded him.
And that, he will add—while pouring tea, while adjusting a corridor, while watching a novice discover that courage can be purchased only by selling what you thought you were—was worth everything.
This was a new attempt at a whimsical tone and story but inspired by Matthew 13:44
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