The maze grew tighter the deeper they went, canopy pressing lower until even Jian had to duck beneath vines the color of old bruises, and the silver tripwires came more frequently now, strung so densely in places that Maya's Farsight Loom was the only thing keeping all nine of them from walking straight into a wall of them at once.
"It's not natural growth," Maya said, tracing the pattern of threads overhead with her raised hand. "It's woven. Deliberately. Every wire connects back to something."
"Back to what?" Noah asked.
"I still can't get a clean look at her," Maya admitted. "But it's a her. I'm certain of that much now."
They found the heart of the maze an hour later, a wide, silent clearing where every silver thread in the whole labyrinth seemed to converge at once, climbing the surrounding trunks in dense, glittering sheets until the canopy itself looked woven from something closer to spider silk than living wood.
