It was my hours with Hermes that helped me to an answer, all the news that he had brought me of the world. When Pasiphaë had married Minos, Crete was the richest and most famous of our kingdoms. Yet since then, every day, more mighty kingdoms were rising up, in Mycenae and Troy, Anatolia and Babylon. Since then too, one of her brothers had learned to raise the dead, the other to tame dragons, and her sister had transformed Scylla. No one spoke of Pasiphaë anymore. Now, at a stroke, she made her fading star shine again. All the world would tell the story of the queen of Crete, maker and mother of the great flesh-eating bull.
And the gods would do nothing. Think of all the prayers they would get.
“It’s just so funny,” Pasiphaë was saying. “It took you so long to understand! Did you think they were dying from the pleasure of your exertions? From the sheer transported bliss? Believe me—”
I turned to Ariadne, standing beside me silent as air.
“Come,” I said. “We are finished here.”
We walked back to her dancing circle. Over us, the laurels and oaks spread their green leaves. “When your spell is cast,” she said, “my brother will not be so monstrous anymore.”
“That is my hope,” I said.
A moment passed. She looked up at me, hands clasped to her chest as if she kept a secret there. “Will you stay a little?”
I watched her dance, arms curving like wings, her strong young legs in love with their own motion. This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.
Ariadne’s light feet crossed and recrossed the circle. Every step was perfect, like a gift she gave herself, and she smiled, receiving it. I wanted to seize her by the shoulders. Whatever you do, I wanted to say, do not be too happy. It will bring down fire on your head.
I said nothing, and let her dance.
Chapter Eleven
WHEN THE SUN TOUCHED the distant fields, guards arrived to collect Ariadne. The princess is wanted by her parents. They marched her off, and I was shown to my room. It was small and near the servants’ quarters. This was meant, of course, to be an insult, but I liked the respite of the unpainted walls, the narrow window that showed only a sliver of the relentless sun. It was quiet as well, for all the servants crept past, knowing who lay within. The sister witch. They left food for me while I was gone and took the tray only when I was out again.
I slept, and the next morning Daedalus came for me. He smiled when I opened my door, and I found myself smiling in return. One thing I could thank the creature for: the ease between us had returned. I followed him down a staircase to the twisting corridors that ran beneath the palace. We passed grain cellars, storage rooms lined with rows of pithoi, the great ceramic jars that held the palace’s largesse of oil and wine and barley.
“Whatever became of the white bull, do you know?”
“No. It vanished when Pasiphaë began to swell. The priests said it was the bull’s final blessing. Today I heard someone say that the monster is a gift from the gods to help us prosper.” He shook his head. “They are not naturally fools, it is only that they are caught between two scorpions.”
“Ariadne is different,” I said.
He nodded. “I have hopes of her. Have you heard what they’ve decided to name the thing? The Minotaur. Ten ships go out with the announcement at noon, and ten more will go out tomorrow.”
“Clever,” I said. “Minos claims it, and instead of being a cuckold he shares in my sister’s glory. He becomes the great king who begets monsters and names them after himself.”
Daedalus made a noise in his throat. “Exactly.”
We had come to the large cellar room that held the creature’s new cage. It was wide as a ship’s deck and half as long, forged of a silver-gray metal. I put my hands to its bars, smooth and thick as saplings. I could smell the iron in it, but what more I could not tell.
“It is a new substance,” Daedalus said. “Harder to work, but more durable. Even so, it will not hold the creature forever. He is already freakishly strong, and only just born. But it will give me time to devise something more permanent.”
The soldiers followed behind, carrying the old cage on poles to keep their distance. They set it clanging down inside the new and were gone before the echoes had faded.
I went and knelt beside it. The Minotaur was larger than it had been, its flesh plump, pressing at the metal lattice. Clean of birth fluids now and dry, the line between bull and baby was starker than ever, as if some madman had lopped a steer’s head and sewed it to a toddler. It stank of old meat, and the cage-bottom rattled with long bones. I felt a wash of nausea. One of Crete’s prisoners.
The creature was watching me with huge eyes. It rose and snuffled forward, nose working. A moan came from it, sharp and excited. It remembered me. My smell and the taste of my flesh. It opened its squat mouth, like a baby bird begging. More.
I took my moment: spoke the words of power and poured the draught through the cage, down its open throat. The creature choked and lunged against the bars, but even as it did its eyes were changing, the fury in them ebbing away. I held its gaze and put out my hand. I heard Daedalus draw in a breath. But the creature did not leap for me. Its rigid limbs had loosened. Another moment I waited, then undid the lock and opened the cage.
It shuffled a little, the bones clattering under its feet. “It is all right,” I murmured, whether to myself or Daedalus or the creature, I could not say. Slowly, I moved my hand towards it. Its nostrils flared. I touched its arm, and it made a huff of surprise, but nothing more.
“Come,” I whispered, and it did, crouching and stumbling a little as it passed through the cage’s small opening. It looked up at me, expectantly, almost sweetly.
My brother, Ariadne had called it. But this creature had not been made for any family. It was my sister’s triumph, her ambition made flesh, her whip to use against Minos. In thanks, it would know no comrade, no lover. It would never see the sun, never take a free step. There was nothing it might ever have in the world but hatred and darkness and its teeth.
I picked up the old cage and stepped back. It watched me as I moved away, its head tilted with curiosity. I shut the cage door, and its ear flicked at the metallic sound. When harvest came, it would scream with rage. It would tear at the bars, trying to rip them apart.
Daedalus let out a low breath. “How did you do that?”
“It is half beast,” I said. “All the animals on Aiaia are tame.”
“Can the spell be undone?”
“Not by another.”
We locked the cage. All the while the creature watched us. It made a low noise and rubbed at a hairy cheek with one of its hands. Then we swung the wooden door of the room closed and saw no more.
“And the key?”
“I plan to throw it away. When we have to move it, I will cut the bars.”
We walked back through the twisting under-passages and up to the corridors above. In the painted hall, the breeze was blowing, and the air bright. Pretty nobles passed on every side, murmuring their secrets. Did they know what lived beneath them? They would.