In a labyrinth where time folds upon itself like origami, I first encountered the ugly whistle. It hung from a rusted nail on a wall that seemed to breathe, its misshapen brass body covered in grotesque engravings that shifted when you weren’t looking directly at them.
“Every maze holds its own music,” said the blind librarian who had become my unexpected companion. His milky eyes reflected nothing, yet seemed to see everything. “This one’s song has been waiting for centuries.”
I reached for the whistle, its surface cold and somehow alive under my fingers. “Why this one? Why now?”
He smiled, revealing teeth that looked like weathered tombstones. “The labyrinth chooses its own instruments, just as it chooses its visitors. You didn’t really think you wandered in here by accident, did you?”
The corridors around us kept rearranging themselves, bookcases sliding silently across ancient stone floors, doorways appearing and disappearing like thoughts in a dream. Each step we took seemed to echo infinitely, as if we were walking through the memory of walking.
“Blow it,” the librarian whispered, his voice carrying the weight of forgotten centuries. “Let it sing the path.”
The whistle’s sound was impossibly ugly - a screech that seemed to tear at the fabric of reality itself. But in that ugliness lay a terrible beauty, like the last gasp of a dying universe or the first cry of a newborn star.
Walls began to weep ink, forming words in languages that had never existed. The librarian traced them with his fingers, reading stories that wrote themselves as we watched.
“Ah,” he said, “it’s showing us the way out. Or perhaps the way further in. In a place like this, they’re often the same thing.”
“Who made this whistle?” I asked, though I feared I already knew the answer.
“The same person who made the labyrinth,” he replied. “The same person who’s reading about us right now, in another book, in another maze.”
The whistle grew warmer in my hand, its engravings crawling across its surface like metallic insects. Each time I blew it, reality seemed to fold in on itself, revealing new passages, new possibilities.
“We’re getting close,” the librarian announced, though to what, he wouldn’t say.
The final corridor opened into a circular room filled with mirrors, each reflecting a different version of ourselves. In some, we were younger; in others, we had never been born. The whistle’s ugly song reached a crescendo, and the mirrors began to crack.
“Choose,” said the librarian. “But remember - the reflection you pick becomes the story you live.”
I raised the whistle to my lips one last time, its surface now burning hot. The sound it made was neither beautiful nor ugly, but something else entirely - the sound of choice itself, of possibilities collapsing into certainty.
The mirror I chose showed nothing at all. Just an empty frame, waiting to be filled.
“Ah,” the librarian smiled. “The blank page. The bravest choice of all.”
As I stepped through, the whistle dissolved into golden dust, its purpose fulfilled. Behind me, I could hear the librarian’s voice growing distant: “Every maze needs its exit, just as every story needs its ending. But the truly wise know that endings are just another kind of beginning…”
I emerged into daylight, or perhaps it was the idea of daylight. In my pocket, a small weight reminded me that sometimes the ugliest things carry the most beautiful truths.