Labyrinth by A. C. H. Smith

monster, and likely to prove much more trustworthy than that runty, cowardly pipsqueak, but she could have done with a guide. Well, if no one was going to help her, she would find out what she could do on her own.
    She stood up. Ludo stood with her, massively towering over her. He may be no guide, she thought, but it’s nice to have him on my side.

Chapter Nine - Another Door Opens
    Sarah walked past the hanging tree. Ludo, wincing with the soreness of his nipped body, followed.
    Behind the tree, two high doorways had appeared, set into a stone wall that seemed to be part of a rough forest hedge. On each door was an iron knocker.
    “Well, look at these,” she remarked, glad to have a companion again. It was more fun than talking to herself.
    They approached the doorways and looked more closely at the knockers. Each had the form of a repulsive face, with a ring set in it. The knocker to her left had the ring coming out of its ears. The one on the right held the ring in its mouth.
    She looked from one to the other. Which to choose? She always found choices hard to make; if there were two kinds of cake at a birthday party, she would contrive to have a bit of each, at a decent interval, naturally, and hoping that no one noticed. Now she looked around the glade, to see if there was some other way past this wall. There wasn’t, so she examined the knockers. “Well, Ludo,” she asked, “which one of these two ugly characters shall we choose?”
    “It’s very rude to stare,” said the first knocker, the one with the ring set in its ears.
    Sarah jumped, still not accustomed to the habit that normally inarticulate things had, in the Labyrinth, of speaking their minds.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, though she felt that she was scarcely to blame for assuming that a door knocker would have no mind to speak, let alone blunt opinions on acceptable social behavior. “I was just wondering which door to choose, that’s all.”
    “What?” the first knocker asked.
    Sarah was about to reply that, where she came from, to say “What?” was thought just as rude as staring. But before she could open her mouth, she heard a mumbling noise from behind her.
    It was the second knocker, with the ring in its mouth. It said something like “Mmm gli m g any.”
    “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” the first knocker said primly.
    “Ker glimpfwrt mble mble mble …”
    Sarah addressed the second knocker: “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Then she realized what the problem was. “Ah,” she said, “wait a moment.
    “What was that?” the first knocker inquired.
    Sarah took hold of the ring in the second knocker’s mouth and pulled. It came away easily. The face looked tremendously relieved. It exercised the muscles around its jaw and chin with evident pleasure.
    “It’s so good to get that thing out,” it sighed.
    “What were you saying?” Sarah asked.
    The first knocker, behind her, said, “Huh?”
    The second knocker nodded at the first. “I said it’s no good talking to him. Oh, dear me, no. He’s deaf as a post, that one, I can tell you.”
    The first knocker said, “Mumble, mumble, mumble, that’s you. You’re a wonderful conversational companion, I must say.”
    “YOU SHOULD TALK!” the second knocker yelled back. “ALL YOU CAN DO IS MOAN!”
    “It’s no good,” the first knocker said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “I can’t hear you.”
    Sarah looked at the second knocker. “Where do these doors lead?” she asked it.
    “What?” asked the first knocker.
    “Search me,” the second one answered her. “We’re just the knockers.”
    “Oh,” Sarah said, reflecting that she ought to have known better than to expect a simple answer.
    Well, she had to try either one door or the other. She chose the second one. Having engaged in discourse with it, however slightly, she felt it would somehow have been discourteous to turn her back and choose its neighbor. On the other hand, it could be that the