“Not everything that happens in the world hinges on you, Helen,” Penelope said with sudden anger.
Just then the ship made a deep turn, and they emerged back out into the light. They could see they’d just travelled through a narrow cave that opened into a small bay. Ahead the shoreline was studded with jagged rocks rearing up like monstrous fangs. Thrusting from the midst of the fangs, like a giant tongue, was a stone jetty.
“Not the Underworld, then,” Penelope said dryly.
“Not yet,” Odysseus said.
The ship showed no sign of slowing down, and they were heading so fast towards the rocks that none of them doubted that the ship would be dashed to pieces. Wordlessly, they each grabbed on to the ship’s sides, ready for the fatal impact.
At the last possible moment, the oars snapped down, back-paddling, the flat of the blades set firmly against the wave. A huge spume cast up on either side, filling the ship with spray. In an instant, the momentum of the ship was stopped so suddenly that the four passengers were thrown forward.
Penelope’s head cracked painfully on the deck, and Helen became so tangled in her skirts, she looked bound. Odysseus did a rolling flip. Mentor was flung into the air, landing on the boards like a fresh-caught fish.
For a long moment none of them moved.
Then Helen moaned.
Raising his head, Odysseus was the first to realise that the ship had stopped. He pulled himself up and looked over the side. They were only a few yards from the rock pier.
Glancing up at the sky, he said aloud, “I hope you gods are enjoying the joke.” He gave Penelope a hand, then Helen. At last he started over to Mentor.
“I’m all right,” Mentor said, though a large bruise was already purpling the side of his knee. He stood without help.
“Can you walk?” Odysseus asked.
“If I have to, I can even run,” Mentor answered.
“I suggest running, then,” Penelope said. “Before the boat changes its mind and carries us back out to sea.”
Odysseus went first, dropping over the side into thigh-high water. He held his arms out, and Mentor helped first Penelope, then Helen down, and Odysseus caught them.
At last Mentor jumped too, a grimace on his face when he landed on his bruised leg.
They waded to the stone pier and looked back at the ship, still riding high in the water.
“I wish …” Odysseus began. For a moment he was silent.
“What do you wish?” Penelope asked.
“I wish …” He couldn’t say it aloud for fear that Penelope would laugh, but what he wished for was more time on the ship, to learn its controls. Such a ship might carry him tirelessly to the ends of the earth. Instead, he turned to Penelope and said, “I wish we could get somewhere dry and warm.”
“Yes, Prince Odysseus! Yes!” Helen cried. “What about that tunnel over there?” She waved dramatically at a sea cave to their left.
“There’s water in that,” Mentor pointed out. “Hardly dry and probably not warm either.”
Penelope stared at Odysseus oddly, head cocked to one side, as if able to read the real wish on his face. Then she turned away, stared up at the cliff, and suddenly shouted, “Look! Up there.”
A door of polished bronze with great incised pictures across the lintel was set right into the cliff face.
Odysseus wasted no time in wonder. He scrambled up a narrow pebble path towards the doorway, the others following right behind.
Closer up, the door was even stranger. The picture over the lintel showed a monster—half bull and half man—standing over a dozen dead children.
“The Minotaur,” Mentor said.
Odysseus controlled a shudder. Some of the children in the picture looked to be his age.
“There’s no keyhole,” Penelope said.
Odysseus placed his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his might, but the door didn’t budge. Mentor came over to help, but still the door didn’t move.
“I don’t think this door’s meant to be broken through,” Mentor said. “At least not by us.”
“Maybe we should go back to the ship,” Helen suggested. “We have food there and water and—”
“Wait!” Penelope had found a small hole in the rock next to the door and poked her little finger in. “Do you think the key goes here?”
Odysseus pulled the key and spearhead from his tunic. He touched the script on the key with his fingers. “Dae-da-lus,” he whispered, as if reading it. Then he inserted the long nose of the key into the hole.
It fit exactly.
“Turn it!” Helen shouted, clapping her hands. “Turn it!”
Odysseus turned the key. Something shifted noisily inside the rock, like the sound in the hold when the oars first began working.
“Daedalus,” he said aloud. “Old toy maker. What kind of toy is this?”
The door sprang inward, and Mentor, who was still leaning against it, fell backwards into the rock.
Odysseus picked him up and, going first, walked into the shadowy passageway. Twenty steps along, where the light from the doorway did not penetrate, he came to a stop.
The others caught up.
“What is it?” Mentor asked.
“Door. Wooden by the feel of it,” said Odysseus.
“Will it open?” Helen asked.
“Should we open it?” Penelope asked.
Odysseus felt along the door until his hands came to a metal ring. He twisted it to the left, then to the right. At the second twist, the door made a noise somewhere between a click and a sigh, and opened forward, flooding the tunnel with light.
None of them stepped through. They just gathered at the door’s edge and stared in.
There was an enormous room spread out before them. Oil lamps atop tripods in each corner flickered with warm light.
Odysseus was impressed. “This room’s as large as my father’s banqueting hall.”
“A banqueting hall without couches or chairs?” Helen’s voice was full of disdain.
The room contained a dozen long benches and wooden tables on which rested an assortment of hammers, hasps, pincers and other instruments, as if the user had just stepped away for a moment.
Helen gasped. “Magic!”
“Don’t be silly,” Penelope told her. “It’s a workshop.”
But Mentor was the only one looking beyond the implements. “There’s the master,” he whispered, pointing to a white-robed man in an alcove to the right side of the room.
“And is that his wife?” Penelope asked, equally softly.
A few feet farther was another alcove, occupied by a beautiful young woman. More beautiful, in a way, Odysseus thought, than Helen.
He wondered what Mentor would think of that!
Or Helen.
When the master didn’t immediately summon them into the workshop, Odysseus went forward, followed quickly by the others, holding his hands out, palms upward, in a gesture of friendship.
“We’re shipwrecked and far from home,” he told the white-robed man. “May we have your help?”
Neither the master nor his lovely wife made any response.
“They’re not moving,” Penelope whispered.
“I don’t think they’re even breathing,” Odysseus said. He walked up to the man and touched his face. The cheek was marble.
Astonished, Odysseus said, “Statues!” He examined the young master closely, marvelling at the details. “Look how lifelike they are.”
The four of them crowded around the statue of the young man, then they turned to look at the young woman.
“Who but Daedalus could have made them?” Penelope said. “This has to be his workshop.”
Odysseus turned around to look over the workshop more carefully. Built into one wall was a kiln with a forge close by. Small jointed figurines of people and animals fashioned from wood and plaster were arranged on many of the shelves. Whoever Daedalus was, he was a master at his work.