I was going to get myself eaten. I could tell. It was just one of those days.

The field beyond the low rise was guarded by three stone sphinxes. A sphinx, as you might be aware, is a terrifying creature with the head of a woman, the body of a lion, and a mouth full of sharp fangs it uses to rip off the limbs of slow-­witted travelers. When found in nature, sphinxes are about as large as a cow. Whoever had sculpted their likenesses here hadn’t been concerned with realism, and all three were roughly the size of a barn.

Whether made of flesh or made of stone, sphinxes adore riddles and games. The best way to avoid losing any limbs is to correctly answer whatever they ask. But in this case, I was having a difficult time figuring out what the question was in the first place. So far, I had managed to determine that one of them always lied and one of them always told the truth—­although I wasn’t entirely certain which one was which—­while the third one, for some reason, only recited nature poetry.

I remembered there was a way to solve this kind of puzzle, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall what it was.

“Will you answer this question with a lie?” I asked.

“No,” said the first sphinx, grinning to reveal its pointed stone teeth.

“No,” the second sphinx replied as well.

“A lone fallen leaf / Floats across the placid pond / Autumn has arrived,” said the third one.

I’d been hoping one of the sphinxes would say it was lying, get caught in a paradox, and . . . ​ I don’t know. Explode, maybe.