The Game by Diana Wynne Jones

sure who he was. “What’s your name?” she asked him.
    â€œFoss,” he said. “Cyrus Foss. Forgive me – I’ve got so much work—”
    â€œThen you’re my dad!” Hayley said. “I’m Hayley Foss.”
    The man had bent over his papers again, but now he put them down and stared. “Hayley?” he said. “We had a baby girl called Hayley.”
    â€œThat’s me!” Hayley said delightedly. They stared at one another wonderingly. “Why are you here?” Hayley asked.
    â€œBeing punished,” her father said glumly, “for marrying Merope. It was forbidden. I never understood why, but I knew there was some kind of prophecy. So you’re Hayley? You don’t look much like your mother, but you’ve grown up very pretty. Where have you been all this time? Were you being punished too?”
    â€œI’m all right,” Hayley assured him. “I had to live with Grandpa. He’s all right, but Grandma isn’t . Can’t you leave here now, so that I can live with you ?”
    â€œNo,” said her father sadly. “I’ve tried to leave overand over, but I always find myself back at this desk, whatever I do.”
    â€œBut it looks awful !” Hayley said.
    â€œIt is,” he said. “You know what it feels like? It feels as if I’m rolling a huge stone up a hill, and every time I get it nearly to the top, it rolls straight down to the bottom again.”
    Hayley thought of the man she had seen crashing down the hill under the boulder. That had been her father too. This was the way the mythosphere worked. Things got harsher and stranger the further out you were in it. “Oh!” she cried out. “Isn’t there any way I can rescue you from here?”
    Cyrus Foss smiled at her. It was a harrassed smile, but Hayley had seldom seen a nicer one. “I don’t think you can,” he said. “But maybe your mother could.”
    â€œSo where is she?” Hayley demanded.
    â€œSomewhere else in this hell,” he said. “She—”
    He was interrupted by an office lady carrying a neat pile of shiny plastic files. “These are all wrong,” this lady said. ““They all have to be done again.” She dumped the files on top of the stack already in the IN-tray. The stack was too high to take them. Every one of them slithered off sideways and fell on the floor, taking half the rest of the papers with them.
    Cyrus Foss gave a moan of despair and bent down to collect them. Hayley dived down under the desk to help. Face to face down there, her father whispered, “She’ll be in a women’s strand, somewhere much wilder than here, I think.”
    â€œRight,” Hayley whispered back. She crawled across under the desk and stuck her head out beside the office lady’s neat feet. “Can’t you help?” she said.
    â€œNot my job,” the lady said coldly.
    â€œBut you made them fall down,” Hayley pointed out.
    â€œI don’t want to ladder my tights,” the lady retorted. “And you shouldn’t be here. You’re interrupting this prisoner in his work. You’d better leave here before the manager finds you.”
    â€œCow!” Hayley’s father murmured, with his face still under the desk. He added loudly, “Yes, better leave Hayley. We don’t want you in trouble too.”
    â€œAll right,” Hayley said. “See you.” She scrambled violently out past the lady’s neat feet, hoping she wouldladder the tights as she went, and stood up among the other desks. “I’ll be back,” she told the lady. “So watch out.” But the lady simply turned and walked away.
    Hayley threaded her way between the busy desks and came to a door. She turned round there to wave to her father, but he was frantically at work again and did not look up. Hayley sighed – the kind of sigh you seem to