They asked questions; but there was no time. “Wait,” I said, and ran toward the torches.
I came up unheeded behind the crowd. High wooden stands enclosed the floor three sides; the fourth was open, but blocked with standing men. They were Cretan peasants; not many; there were few Cretans anywhere, but I had other things to think of. I had just heard the Palace doves fly up, and all the birds of day rise chattering from their roosts. The god was breathing on my neck, so near that I feared neither Cretan nor Hellene, man nor beast, but his coming only.
The Cretans let me through. They were used to being pushed aside by fair-haired men. Here and there one knew me and called out my name surprised. I reached the coping round the dancing-floor, and sprang upon it, and stared about to find her.
A thousand torches, set on high poles, were streaming sideways in a rising wind. The smells of burning pitch and dust, of flowers and perfume and warm flesh, swam through my head. I saw before me the great paved maze of Daidalos, its magic pattern inlaid with black and white stone, smooth and bright and wide between the columned stands with their glittering people dressed for the feast. The women sat with their jewelled boy-dolls in their arms. On the edge of the floor was the music, the tambours and the cytheras, the cymbals and Egyptian harps, the skirling pipes from the aulos to the little flute of ivory whose fine sound flickers like a snake’s forked tongue. The music shrilled, wounding the deathly silence in which the dark god stood waiting. And in the midst of the maze, strung along the crooked path of scoured white marble, hair and skirts and jewels swinging, arms entwined and slim waists swaying to the beat, was the wreath of women, weaving and twisting and turning on itself, like the house snake who sloughs his winter skin and is made new again. It bent about and came toward me. I saw her face, gay and flashing, touched by no dread, no shadow, leading the dance.
I saw her; and all my soul and body, scourged by the god’s anger and ridden almost to death, longed for her breast and her warm arms as a child flies to its mother from the terrors of the dark. I leaped out from the parapet upon the checkered floor; and even as I leaped, the mighty voice of the god cried to me, “I am here!”
The earth lurched beneath me, grinding and shuddering. The marble flags I ran on tilted endways, flinging me down on hands and knees. There was a mighty crashing and roaring, shrieking voices, cracking wood. My fingers grasped an edge of paving that worked to and fro like a living thing; I was rocked and tossed about as the strong-laid floor of Daidalos broke like water and surged in waves. And deep below, as he tossed the groaning land upon his great black horns, the Earth Bull boomed and bellowed, louder than the shouts of terror, louder than the thunder of falling column and floor and wall.
There was someone with me sobbing and crying like a woman as she gives birth. The sobbing shook me; it was my own. I had been with child of this great doom; now it was as if I myself had brought it forth with tearing of my body and the sweat of agony. As the broken marble settled under me I clutched it gasping and trembling. Everywhere around me the things that man had raised above the earth returned to it again, shaken back to their beginnings by the furious god. Shouts and moans came from the broken stands; from the Palace a wild howling of dogs and women, the squeals of children mad with pain and fear, men calling each other or crying for help, loosened blocks rumbling and crashing. I lay in the storm of this infernal noise; and felt flooding into me, as I lay, a strange white empty bliss. For I was delivered of my warning. The great hand of the god loosened about me, his madness cleared from my head. I was weary, bruised, and fearful, but neither more nor less than man. While flying feet stumbled over me and the greatest of all kings’ houses fell about my ears, I gave a great sigh of ease; it seemed almost that I could have slept.
I raised my head. The wind blew dust and grit into my eyes; a woman rushed past me shrieking, with her skirt on fire. At that I remembered why I was here, and got upon my feet. I was sore and aching, as after a great shaking in the ring; but the giddiness had left me, my head was clear. I looked about me.
The dancing-floor was like a sea-strand where a wreck has carried. The drunken torches leaned on their poles, or guttered on the ground; the tilted flagstones were strewn with a rubbish of garlands and trampled harps, shoes and scarves and bloodstained fans, broken dolls and the ordure of men in terror. The fallen stands were loud with cries and curses and splitting wood. One of them was on fire, where a torch had fallen. And in the middle of the maze, all cowered together as bright birds huddle in thunder, were the dancers.
I ran toward them, picking my way in the mess and rubble. Some were kneeling and beating their breasts, some swaying with covered faces as they wailed, some waving their arms and crying for their menfolk. But in the midst I saw a girl standing alone, with wild bright eyes, silent, staring about her. She was mine, looking for me; against sense and reason knowing I would come for her.
I reached her and caught her up. Her arms gripped me, her face thrust at my neck, her breast crushed upon mine panted and thudded with her beating heart. I ran with her off the floor, picking my way over prone bodies wailing, sputtering torches, trampled flowers, my feet slipping in I knew not what. We ran into the gardens, where the thorns of roses tore us as we fled. Then there was soft earth with sharp spring flowers in it. I put her down.
I had had no thought but to save her. But men are straws in a torrent, when the mighty gods move on the earth. We learned then what it means, when they say that Earth-Shaker is husband of the Mother. We lay a moment in staring stillness, clinging and gasping; then we fell on one another like leopards coupling in the spring.
This passion, being god-inspired, was healing. The earth was moist and sweet; the wrath of Poseidon had stirred its scents like the gardener’s spade, but now it was quiet, a friendly bed. There we lay, I suppose not long, drawing in strength from the Mother’s breast. Then we got stumbling to our feet. She looked at me with dazed, swimming eyes and cried, “My father!”
“He is dead,” I answered. “A good quick death.” She was too stunned to ask me how I knew. “You must mourn later, my bird. My people are waiting, let us go.”
We shook the earth from us, and I led her by the hand. As we came out of the garden-close, we almost fell over a pair lying as we had lain. They did not heed us. Then we faced the Labyrinth, and saw what the god had done.
There where the tiered and terraced roofs had marched one above the other, lifting their proud horns to the sky, was a broken line as ragged as mountain rocks. The columns of the colonnades had fallen, the windows which had been soft with lamplight were black empty caves, or blinking eyes of fire. You could see, through the broken porticoes and through arches from which balconies had crashed away, the flames from the spilled lamp oil running along the floors, leaping up curtains and canopies, eating the wood of bed and chair and fallen rafter, roaring already and crackling as the strong wind swept it on.
Women passed us flying and wailing. One of them carried the child Phaedra clinging about her neck. Ariadne called, but they rushed by unheeding. I hastened on to where I had left the dancers.
They were all there. Some were still calling on the god as I had told them to. They saw us and came running. The grove was bright with firelight now, and I saw tumbling out from under the flowering thickets those whom Mother Dia had stricken with desire. People called to each other that I was here, and ran up, and caught at me. Amyntor indeed embraced me; all this seemed natural, at the time. Not one had been harmed in the earthquake, beyond some grazes when they were flung down.