Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

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  To Russell

  ONE

  You will have seen them, I suppose. The grainy pictures, taken with a long telephoto lens. It has been fourteen years, but they still shock.

  She has a face that everyone knows. Beautiful. Determinedly blond. Curated. The tabloid writers say, “Never a hair out of place.”

  In the series of paparazzi shots, she strides across the pasture. No Photoshop. No airbrush. No filters. It is a long walk, and the photographers got her from every angle. As always, she is trim, tanned, and toned (another favorite tabloid description). If her sheet of golden hair and blue eyes are familiar, her expression is not. Usually her face in pictures is cool and composed. Icy. In these, she is ravenous.

  She never could hide how she felt about that bull.

  That face alone would have been enough to sell all the magazines in a newsstand. Enough to crash any server. Even without the wooden cow. But there is a wooden cow. A cowhide-covered box with legs and a head.

  When the white bull walked out of the sea a few months earlier, people called it a gift from the gods. They said it was a sure sign that Daddy was a good king of Crete; that he still had the favor of the gods, even after my older brother’s murder. Our tragedy. That Daddy had been right to go to war with Athens. They called it beautiful. For myself, I don’t see what’s beautiful about a bull, white or brown. They look like livestock to me. Not my type.

  It was beautiful to my mother.

  There are lots of theories about my mother and the bull—some people say Daddy should have sacrificed it instead of keeping it. Daddy thinks that’s ridiculous. The gods would not have handed him such a valuable thing only to ask him to kill it. Other people say it was because my mother was too proud and the gods wanted to take her down a notch. However, she’s still proud, even after her abasement.

  I think it’s because the gods are jerks.

  Whatever the reason, my mother fell in love with a bull and when the bull didn’t return her affection, Daedalus, Daddy’s architect, built her the wooden cow and brought it out to the pasture for her.

  The paparazzi pictures of what happened next were taken from so far away that if you didn’t know what you are looking at, you wouldn’t know what you are looking at.

  Unfortunately, I know.

  Eventually, the bull returned to munching the grass, and my mother went back to the palace.

  When she returned to the paddock later, Daddy’s people checked the trees for paparazzi, so there were no more pictures.

  No one knows why she stopped going to see the bull. Maybe her infatuation ran its course, like an infection. Maybe the gods thought it had gone on long enough. Maybe she got tired of the whole thing. Eventually, life returned to normal. More or less. Mother went back to her royal duties and her social whirl, and if people moo when her name is mentioned, they do it very quietly behind closed doors. After a while, the world’s attention moved on to the next big scandal.

  The bull was never the same afterward. It went crazy, charging around, breaking fences, tearing up pastures. Daddy got so irritated that he had Heracles capture it and take it to the mainland. Let it be Athens’s problem, Daddy said. Maybe it missed my mother. Who knows. Bulls can’t talk.

  My mother can talk, but she never talks about the bull. Daddy blocks access to the sites where the pictures are posted, but it’s like the Hydra, always popping up somewhere else.

  You’d think people would stop caring, but I guess it never gets old.

  TWO

  “Ariadne, look up from that phone,” my mother whispers from behind her smile. “The cameras are watching.”

  I don’t look up. The cameras are always watching.

  I am in the stadium VIP box with my relatives and the visiting dignitaries. My family holds the front row, of course, and the VIPs fill the three rows behind us. In the center of the stadium, a Jumbotron simulcasts the live feed.

  The stately procession of competitors, newly arrived from Athens, will begin in a moment, but right now, the only thing the live feed shows is us. There’s nothing like seeing your whole family broadcast one hundred feet tall, every feature blown up to giant size. I prefer to watch us on my phone.

  My mother waves for the cameras. She is bringing it today: a Chanel jacket, her tiara, her face so Botoxed that when she smiles, nothing but her mouth moves. The golden bracelet she always wears, with an image of my brother who died. She is ageless—icy and perfect. That is the only way I’ve ever seen her. If it wasn’t for the photographic evidence, I wouldn’t believe she could be another way.

  Daddy is next to her, with his full beard and his three-piece suit. He takes up twice as much space as my mother. The golden sash across his chest and the heavy signet ring on his finger are the only outward signs of his power.

  My parents look elegant and royal.

  Elegant royalty sells.

  Looking at them together, you can understand why their wedding still shows up on the list of the most-watched programming of the last thirty years. No episode of my older sisters’ reality show, The Cretan Paradoxes, has ever broken the top one hundred. The first season of The Labyrinth Contest is in the top slot. Not that it’s a competition.

  The cameras turn now to my older sisters, the Paradoxes themselves, sitting together.

  They have an uncanny sense of when they are being televised, and they both jump to their feet. Even that small action is greeted with rapturous shouts from the photographers and the crowd.

  Since Acalle’s best side is her left and Xenodice’s is her right, they have a limited repertoire of poses they can do together effectively. There is also the small matter that what they are the most famous for is their bottoms, encased in Spandex, and it’s really hard to get faces and backsides in the same picture. Though they do try.

  The photographers yell, “Turn around, girls, turn around!”

  Obediently, my sisters spin and wiggle. The camera zooms in, blowing up their tushes, larger than life. In the next frame, my mother glows with maternal pride.

  Tushies sell.

  Now it’s my turn. My sisters are famous for their online makeup tutorials, but I could teach lessons in invisibility. I see myself, on my phone, slouching in my chair, staring at my phone, which holds a picture of me. It’s like one of those paintings where someone looks at themselves in a mirror. An infinite loop.

  I wish I was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt to hide my face, but that is unacceptable to my mother and the fashion police. My mother would love to have her stylists make me fabulous, but I’m not interested. I don’t want to be seen. Not like that.

  So, we have compromised. I’m wearing a knee-length black dress with short sleeves and a square neckline. Pockets for my phone and the ball of silver thread I carry everywhere I go. Flats. I don’t have any makeup on, and my long hair is down. I’m like the “before” picture in a m
akeover photo shoot. I seem tasteful and conservative. Like I’m going to the funeral of someone I didn’t know particularly well.

  Tasteful and conservative don’t sell.

  This fact doesn’t keep the cameras from zooming in on me. I keep my eyes on my phone. I move my hair so they can’t see my face. I wish I had my mask.

  “Smile, Ariadne.” Daddy’s voice is a low rumble.

  I flash a quick one. Nothing enthusiastic, but enough to get credit for it. No one cheers.

  Then I get to see my face, blown up on the huge screen, one hundred feet high, broadcast to millions. I can feel all the eyes on me. I shiver.

  Finally, the live feed cuts from us to the procession of competitors coming up from the harbor. Thank the gods. Now I can do my job. The reason I’m here.

  Every year, my family holds a contest that is televised live worldwide. Fourteen Athenian teenagers, seven boys and seven girls, the bravest and most beautiful, come to Crete to face our monster, the Minotaur, in our maze. We are never short of competitors, even though it is a fight to the death.

  The winner gets more money than most people see in a lifetime, and enough in sponsorships to support an entourage, but that’s only a small part of why people enter. Killing a big-name monster is the fastest route to something even more valuable—fame, eternal glory, their name written in the stars, a way out of an ordinary life—the thing that everyone seems to be seeking.

  Except for me. I’d be more than willing to accept a boring, ordinary life, if anyone was offering.

  The Labyrinth Contest makes the path to killing the Minotaur clear, even if it isn’t easy. First, move to Athens, since the only requirement to enter is that you be a resident of Athens at sixteen. Kids go there from all over the world for their chance to become one of the thousands who will be in the televised qualification round, where the biggest risk is that your trip through the obstacle course or bathing suit competition will go straight to the blooper reel. Qualifications run for two weeks and include obstacle courses and wrestling, a half marathon, a quiz show, and competitions in bathing suits and evening wear.

  Finally, if you make it through and get chosen as one of the honored fourteen, you have two weeks of training in Athens, learning orienteering, weapons skills, and monster psychology, and end up here, in Crete, marching into the stadium in a blue-and-white tracksuit while you wave an Athenian flag. They are the bravest and most beautiful, and they know it.

  None of them are thinking about the odds.

  Which is a good thing, because the odds are terrible.

  It’s been ten years, and so far, the score is heavily weighted toward Crete—140 to zero. However, as the ads say, The Minotaur is not immortal. Any one of these competitors could hurt or kill him.

  Which is why I’m here, in the VIP box, assessing the strengths of the competitors based on my previous experience with them. I am the Keeper of the Maze, in charge of leading the competitors to the entrance gate of the maze, where they will face the Minotaur. I’m also responsible for keeping him healthy and ready for each new run. So I rate the competitors. It may seem callous to think about them this way, but they signed up for this. They have families and fans, millions of people to worry about them. The Minotaur only has me.

  On my phone screen, I watch the competitors, looking at their faces and their body language, so I can see what they are hiding.

  I choose a boy—small and compact with short curly hair—he was the acrobat, the one who flipped and twisted his way through qualifications. His kind of flexibility and explosive strength can be very useful going through the maze, but will he keep his head level enough to use them? I go in close on his eyes, ignoring his muscular torso and his smiling face. They flicker with fear. In my experience, panic is the thing that dooms competitors the quickest. If they freak out in there, the maze will get them before the Minotaur does.

  Next, I look at one of the girls. She is supermodel beautiful, taller than the boy, maybe the tallest girl I’ve ever seen. She is Hippolyta, the Amazon, the only competitor whose name I remember from qualifications. She moved to Athens so she could be on The Labyrinth Contest.

  Hard for me to imagine moving somewhere to sign your kid up for a battle that could end in death, but I don’t think the person who leads them to the maze has any right to judge.

  The Amazon is relaxed and athletic. Sure of herself as the highest-scoring competitor, but what do her eyes tell me?

  Before I can look, I have a strange tingling at the back of my neck.

  I glance up, keeping my face neutral.

  Then I spot him, in the row behind me. A boy. About my age, looking at me with undisguised interest.

  I check around me quickly, making sure he isn’t looking at one of my sisters, but they are at the edge of the box, waving at the crowd.

  His long legs are kicked out in front of him. He is broad across the chest, with curly hair and a nose that has been broken at least once. His eyebrows are dark slashes over bright eyes. He has a suit on, like the other men in the box, but he wears it differently, casually, with the tie loose at his throat, the jacket unbuttoned, his posture relaxed. Jiggling his foot like he is full of electrical energy, like he is ready to explode.

  If I had a type, he would be it.

  I wonder who he is. I have never seen him before in my life. The other VIPs are regulars, but he’s new.

  I look back at my screen, collapsing my shoulders and deploying the tricks of invisibility, but he doesn’t stop looking at me, his eyes crackling with humor and intelligence.

  Who is he?

  I’m sure my sisters know. Or if they don’t, they will soon. He’s too cute for them to ignore. I tell myself I won’t care, even a little bit, tomorrow or the next day, when a video is released of him in bed with whichever of my sisters gets her hands on him first. I almost believe myself.

  No one has ever looked at me like this before.

  He raises an eyebrow. At me. I am irritated with him for distracting me, and even more irritated with myself for the irrational impulse to lift an eyebrow in return. Gods. What is wrong with me?

  I scowl instead.

  His smile doesn’t waver. But here’s the thing—it isn’t dumb or open-faced, like someone without a thought in his head. It’s full of wry humor. Like there’s a joke he’s waiting for me to pick up on. And he’ll take his time. He’s inviting me to acknowledge the absurdity of this whole situation—the Spandex, the music from the speakers, the preening VIPs. Everything.

  Then, I do it. Across the box, looking at someone I’ve never met before, I giggle.

  When was the last time I did that?

  “Ariadne,” Daddy says, his voice breaking into my attention. “Get your head in the game. The competitors are almost out of sight.”

  I blush bright red. In the moment of looking at a boy, I’d forgotten why I’m here. Why we do this.

  The Labyrinth Contest is divine vengeance for the murder of my older brother, Androgeous, who died when I was two. He went to Athens for their annual games, and he swept them, winning every event. Which pissed some people off. Late that night, after an evening of drunken celebration, Androgeous was stabbed to death. It isn’t clear who did it. Some people say it was the other competitors, and some people say it was the king, Aegeus, himself. No one is telling.

  Athens is a no-snitch zone, apparently, but Daddy and the gods believe in collective punishment.

  So Daddy led a war against Athens, and won. Daddy demanded an enormous tribute in gold, and Athens paid it. It was still not enough to make up for the loss of my brother. They still had their games, so the gods brought us our own. They sent us the Minotaur and The Labyrinth Contest so we could keep making Athens pay.

  The gods laid out the details, and it is up to us to follow them, each of us playing our part. Including me. With the gods involved, it could get way worse. Ask my mother and her wooden cow.

  This year I am seventeen, the same age as the Athenians. I was a girl when thi
s started, proud of my robes and my mask. Proud to be doing something so important for my daddy, for the gods, but I’m not proud anymore. I hate it.

  That doesn’t mean I can change it.

  I pull my attention back to my phone, where the last of the competitors, a boy with bulky muscles and a crew cut, is parading through the crowd, smiling and waving. I don’t even have to close in tight to see his fear. It’s right there, on his face, for everyone to see.

  * * *

  Once the last of the competitors passes, we line up and leave the VIP box, my family first. My bodyguards form a circle around me, leading me out of the stadium, and I lose track of the boy. In front of the stadium, the line of long, black SUVs snakes down the hill and I wait for my car, ignoring the mingling VIPS around me and the crush of the crowd beyond the velvet ropes.

  I’m not looking for the boy. Not one tiny bit.

  It was nothing—a boy looking at a girl.

  An ordinary thing that happens to people every day.

  Just never to me.

  On my phone, I scan the taped video of the other eleven competitors, the ones I missed while I was looking at the boy. Who I am not thinking about.

  After watching and assessing everyone, two competitors stand out to me, Hippolyta and a blond boy named Vortigern.

  Finally, my SUV pulls up. One of my bodyguards opens the door and lets me in before taking his spot with the rest of them in the tail car. I’m surprised—and disappointed—to find that I’m not alone. Acalle and Xenodice sit across from me in the rear-facing seats.

  “What do you want?” I say, harsher than I mean to.

  “We need a favor,” Xenodice says in her breathy high voice, leaning forward while she flips her long hair and puts one of her French-manicured hands on my knee. I swear, Xenodice would flirt with a brick wall. She doesn’t have another setting.

  I take her hand off my knee. “You know, the word favor suggests some kind of reciprocity…”