Free Axis of Aaron by Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt Page A

the more tightly ensnared he became.  
    He thought about knocking on a cottage door and asking for the way out, but that was ridiculous. He was on a small island, on a smaller island beyond a canal. Who got lost a few minutes from the paint-by-numbers town center? He couldn’t accept that he was lost. There were places you got lost and places you didn’t … and this definitely was the latter.  
    Despite being a small neighborhood, the roads in Canal River proved to be more serpentine than Ebon would’ve thought possible. He took Canal River Boulevard (which wasn’t a boulevard) to Canal River Ophelia only to find himself back on Canal River Beach, which he’d left a few turns earlier and which had no beach. He took Canal River Beach to Canal River Gorge (no gorge either). That seemed encouraging because Canal River Road, which he found next, sounded like the logical path to grant entry and exit to the labyrinth, but even that one somehow dead ended in both directions. There were five branches off of Canal River Road. One was called Canal River Entranceway, but it led to a trio of boat docks instead of an entrance.  
    Again Ebon thought of stopping at one of the cottages, but they all looked vacant and boarded. Worse, many — in this part of Canal River anyway — looked abandoned .  
    How many “parts” did Canal River have anyway? Ebon had passed its main inroad a number of times during his summers gone by and had always assumed the place was rather small. On maps, it looked like it could only hold a dozen houses, maybe twenty or thirty at the outside. But as Ebon wandered through it, the place felt sprawling. He couldn’t see the horizon enough to orient himself, and was no longer sure even of where the red-headed woman had disappeared. Cottages in that section had seemed nice, like how Aimee’s father’s home had once looked. But the shacks around him now looked like it did in the present — or even as bad he’d fooled himself into believing Richard’s place to be when he’d first laid eyes on it.  
    He looked from one cottage to the next down the row. He hadn’t thought much about it before, but now that he assessed each he found they looked ready for a wrecking ball. They would all be empty no matter the season. Besides, despite it being a sunny midmorning, he kind of didn’t want to approach the creepy things anyway.  
    He had to find the water, then follow the beach.  
    But the sound of water seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He’d got past his obedient refusal to tromp through people’s yards in finding his way, but if he were to tromp to the beach now he at least had to know which direction to go. But Ebon hadn’t a clue.  
    The sun rises in the east. Aimee’s father’s house faces west. Find the sun.  
    He could do that, but something else was bothering him. He’d seen the stark morning sunlight coming from Aimee’s room before he’d left. From the west .
    Ebon shook it away. Summer had advanced into fall; the sun was always in the southern sky and would be more so as green trees bled to autumn’s hues. It must have been coming from the south. The house wasn’t perfectly situated on a compass grid, that was all. No question it was on the island’s west side — bay side, not ocean side — and that that was the beach where he’d heard Oasis. He had to be nearer to that beach than the other; the island was a few miles wide, and he hadn’t come far. Unless Canal River had extended beyond the canal in recent years and its expanded size — perhaps now spanning half the island’s width — was what made it feel strange.  
    Find the west. Find the sun, then walk in the opposite direction.  
    Ebon could see a bright area, but it was hard to pinpoint the sun’s precise location because thin clouds had obscured it and Canal River was thick with trees. He ran up and down the streets, on display for the nobodies not occupying the rotting cottages around him, trying to get