Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  Asterion runs at full speed and smashes his massive, furry head into the wall, tearing at the tattered padding with his horns.

  He throws himself into it, battering the walls with his fists. His hands and arms are bloodied from the times he’s made contact with the concrete under the torn upholstery. His bare back is riddled with scars, both the ones he’s given himself and the ones the competitors have given him.

  “Asterion,” I say.

  He turns and looks at me, his eyes blood red with his rage. His mouth foaming.

  He is terrifying. Or he would be, if I didn’t know him so well. If he wasn’t my baby brother. I’m not afraid of him, just sad.

  “Hey, buddy,” I say, keeping my voice light, like he’s been throwing a tantrum instead of making Crete tremble. “What’s going on?”

  He shudders, like he’s waking up from a dream, and the red fades from his eyes. They return to their sweet dark brown, and I know my brother is back. He’s overcome the bull, at least for now.

  Asterion hangs his head. He doesn’t know why this happens. He doesn’t know how to stop it. I know this for sure, because if he did know, it wouldn’t happen.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I say, and I unlock the dented and beaten metal cabinet of medical supplies in the corner of his room, taking out a towel and gauze and tape, then locking it up again. I sit on the edge of his bed, a poured concrete platform in the middle of the room, and call him over to me. The edges of the bed are cracked from the times he’s kicked it. When he first moved down here, there was a mattress, but he ripped it to shreds years ago. Now there’s only his pile of blankets. Mostly the new ones I brought down in January, but I can see his soft blue blanket, the one he had when he was a baby. Somehow, he’s managed to keep it whole, even when the others have been torn to pieces in his rages.

  He sits down next to me, and I wipe the blood off him with the towel.

  He is subdued. Embarrassed. His gaze focused on the floor. He can’t talk to me with words, but we have the sign language we made when he was little.

  He signs, I’m sorry.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  He shrugs. He can’t tell me. He can never tell me.

  I put my hand on his knee. “I love you,” I say.

  He touches his heart, then points at me. It’s his way of saying he loves me, too.

  “I know,” I say. I wonder for the millionth time what he would be like if things were different. He’s thirteen. Would his voice be changing? Would he have crushes on girls?

  I stop myself. I’m chasing ghosts. I have to focus on the present. The person he is. Not the one I wish he was.

  “Let’s fix those cuts and bruises, and I’ll tell you about what’s been going on upstairs.” While I bandage him up, I keep a steady stream of talk, leaving out anything upsetting.

  I tell him about Xenodice’s request for shoes. A failed soufflé that had Mother in a state. I don’t tell him about meeting Theseus, because what is there to say, really? I met a boy from Athens and I can’t get him out of my head?

  “The contest has started,” I say, making my voice bright. “They’ll draw their numbers day after tomorrow, and then I’ll start bringing them down.”

  I say this as though it is a treat, not something I hate. It would bother Asterion if he knew how much I dread leading the competitors down, and he has enough to worry about without thinking of me.

  I spread antibiotic cream on his knuckles and wrap a bandage around each finger.

  “Maybe this will be the last year we have to do this,” I say, keeping my voice bright and hopeful. Daddy says the gods answer our prayers, but on their timescale, not ours. “Maybe by the end of next week, you’ll be in a room upstairs.”

  He does have a room on the family hallway. A baby’s nursery, with a crib and changing table that was never used. My mother won’t let anyone alter anything in the room except for cleaning it, in the same way that nothing changes in Androgeous’s room. The shrines to her two lost sons—one murdered in Athens, and one who was lost on the day he was born.

  “What color would you want it to be?”

  He signs, Blue.

  “I’m sure Mother would be happy to get it decorated however you’d want it.”

  Although I’m not actually sure about that. My room does have those stupid throw pillows. She’s very opinionated about decorating. We will figure it out.

  This has to be the year. He’s been suffering for so long.

  His head sags on his shoulders. He’s exhausted.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” I say.

  He shakes his head and makes the sign he always makes before I leave, the sign he’s made since he was a toddler. Two hands together, open in front of him. It’s the sign for book. So I go over to the shelf in the corner, the only area of the room that hasn’t been destroyed. His treasures. There’s the painted pottery bull I made for him when I took that pottery class. I was thirteen, the same age he is now. A feather. A seashell. The book of myths.

  He settles on the bed, and I tuck his blanket around him. I ask him to point at the story he wants, and he chooses the Caledonian Boar. Perfect. So I read him the story of how Atalanta and the others slaughtered the monster that the gods had sent to punish Calydon. The story I played in First Blood, the boar I slaughtered earlier tonight.

  He makes the sign for Why? at each important part of the story.

  He loves to ask this about the myths. I try to answer. But why is the hardest question. Why did the gods send the boar? Because the king was a bad king. Why did the boar have to die? Because he was destroying too much. Why, why, why? At the end of the day, the only answer I have—the only answer for either of us—is the gods.

  Because the gods wanted it that way.

  There are no more whys after that.

  When I finish reading the story, Asterion is nearly asleep, but he raises up and manages two more signs. He shakes his head, then pushes his fist out from his chest. No go. He repeats it. No go.

  “No,” I say, settling him back down. “I won’t go. I’ll wait till you’re asleep.”

  I rest my hand on his back, feeling it rise and fall with his breath. I watch him drop into an exhausted sleep, and I don’t let go until I’m sure he won’t wake up.

  When he’s asleep, I find it easier to remember how he used to be. A baby with the head of a calf.

  He wasn’t what my parents were expecting. They had the nursery decorated, and his name picked out. They were sure that he would be a boy to replace Androgeous—a prince.

  That’s not what happened. He had a baby’s body, but short horns, ears that stuck out, a pink nose, and soft brown fur on his face.

  When he was born, my mother freaked out. She wouldn’t hold him. She wouldn’t even look at him. Even though it wasn’t his fault he was born that way. If it was anyone’s fault, it was hers. Or the gods’.

  She wouldn’t leave her room for a month, seeing only my sisters and her stylist. When she came out, she never mentioned the baby. Never said his name. The only sign that she remembers him is that untouched nursery. My sisters followed her lead, pretending it had never happened. Pretending he had never been born.

  At first, they didn’t know where to put him. They tried a room on the family hallway, as far from my mother as possible. Daddy brought in people to take care of him after they’d signed extensive NDAs, but no one knew what to do with him—was he a baby or a calf?

  I knew.

  From the first time I heard him crying with no one to comfort him. He was my baby brother, and I wouldn’t let anyone tell me different. He doesn’t have a cow’s eyes. He has a boy’s eyes.

  I loved Asterion so much that I thought that I could make him be okay. When his toddler’s body changed into a man’s, much too quickly, and they moved him down here, underground, his eyes didn’t change. I knew he was still my brother, and I kept loving him.

  I kept loving Asterion, even when his rages started. I had taken him on a walk
into the fields for some fresh air. I thought he might like seeing the cows.

  I was wrong. With a bellow of rage, he ripped the leash from my hands, leapt the fence, and fell upon the herd. No matter how I screamed, he didn’t stop. He tore them to pieces with his teeth and hands and horns. He feasted on their flesh. When he was done, not one of the hundred head of cattle was left alive. When he came back to me, slick with gore, he butted me gently with the top of his furry head, carefully keeping his horns away from me. They found us in the pasture, me near catatonic in shock; him curled up next to me, asleep.

  Just like he is now.

  After that, Daddy decided it wasn’t safe for him to ever leave the maze.

  For a long time, I didn’t know about the wooden cow. It was only when I was twelve that I finally asked Icarus what the whispered moos that follow my mother meant. He pointed me toward the paparazzi footage. It didn’t change anything.

  * * *

  I wait another half hour for Asterion to be well and truly asleep, then I make my way back out of the maze, rolling up my ball of thread as I go.

  I buzz with tiredness.

  When I take my thread off the hook, a soft click tells me the obstacles have been re-engaged. The emergency track lighting drops out, and the only thing visible is the glowing red light from the retinal scanner next to the door. I lean into it and let the gliding red light cross my eye, and with a swoosh of air, the sealed door unlocks and slides open. I step through and take a deep breath of the sweet air.

  The poured concrete hallway is dim, the only light is the bluish glow of the light strip that runs along the base of the poured concrete wall, more atmospheric than illuminating. Since the overhead lights are off, it must be lights-out in the competitors’ accommodations. The block of fourteen bedrooms and a common room that we only use once a year. Cameras watching their every move, recording the drama that fourteen teenagers can generate when they are fighting for their lives.

  They’re asleep now. Or maybe not sleeping. But at least in their rooms.

  I’m almost to the elevator when something catches my foot, and I stumble.

  “What the…,” I say, falling forward, throwing my hands out to catch myself.

  A dumb idea, I think, as my legs are tangled in whatever I fell over and my hands scrape across the poured concrete floor.

  “Are you okay?” someone asks.

  Laid out on the floor, I close my eyes, because I know that voice, even though I’ve only heard it once. Even in the shadowy half-light, I can tell it’s him. Theseus. I fell over Theseus. For some reason he was sitting on the floor across from the elevator, legs stretched out in front of him, and I tripped over him. This is not how I wanted to see him again.

  “Here, let me help you,” he says, coming forward. He smells like soap, and peppermint gum, with a hint of sweaty dancing and alcohol.

  I don’t want him to see me like this. Don’t want him to catch the lingering scent that inundates anything I wear into the maze.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I say, shaking off his hand, scrambling to pull myself up and limp to the elevator.

  In trying to stand, I push my bloody knee and ragged hands against the concrete floor again, and the pain pulls me up short. It isn’t a terrible pain, only the throbbing of a bruise and the burning sting of torn skin, but it is enough.

  On top of everything else, it is too much.

  I take a breath, then lean back against the concrete wall, bringing my knees up toward my chest. In the dim half-light, the gaping hole in the knee of my pajamas is a black emptiness. I tore them. I press my fingers into my stinging, bleeding palms.

  “Are you okay?” Theseus asks again.

  “I told you, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” he says, scooting over so he’s sitting next to me, pulling his knees up to the same angle as mine.

  “You tore your pajamas.” He gently touches my leg, right above the tear. “Flannel, right? That sucks.”

  In the half-light, it is hard to see his face, but he says it like someone who appreciates good pajamas and understands why it would be upsetting to have ruined them.

  He slides his fingers into the hole and rubs the torn fabric between his fingers and thumb. “These are exactly the right kind of soft.”

  The backs of his fingers barely graze the top of my knee and my pulse pounds hard in my neck. My mouth is dry. It’s my knee. A knee. Nothing sexy about a knee, you would think. However, I’m glad that I’m sitting down, because if I was standing, I would be shaking.

  “How are your hands?” he asks.

  “It’s nothing,” I say again, repeating myself like an idiot, clutching my hands to my sides. I don’t want him to see my skinned-up hands, like I’m a kid who fell off her bike. I don’t want him to treat me like I’m a child.

  He doesn’t stop touching my knee; instead, he lightly runs his fingers across the skin. Not saying anything. Not asking anymore about my hands. I don’t move his hand away. Even though I know I should. He is touching me, gently, and I don’t know what to do about it.

  Somehow being with Theseus makes me feel different, like the edges of me are fuzzy. Like the distance that I keep between myself and other people, the distance I have to keep, is collapsed.

  I don’t understand the feeling. All I know is that I don’t want it to go away.

  I look at him more carefully, taking him in after the shock of tripping over him. Of falling.

  In the semidarkness, he is stripped of color. Just dark tousled hair, his eyes and brows shadows in his face. I want to run my fingers across the stubble on his cheeks. I want to touch his white open-collared shirt under his dark jacket.

  I don’t, of course.

  “What brings you down to the maze in the middle of the night?” he asks me.

  “The earthquake,” I say, then stop myself. What am I doing? I can’t tell him that. No one other than my family, Icarus and Daedalus, and a few of our closest staff members, all of whom have iron-clad NDAs, know that I’m the Keeper of the Maze.

  “Why would you come down here because of an earthquake?” Theseus asks.

  “Never mind,” I say.

  Everything about what I do in the maze is completely restricted information. And that is not even considering the fact that he is an Athenian, one of our enemies. I can’t tell him anything.

  Which makes me think, why is he here? Random people don’t end up on this floor. Even VIPs. In fact, there is a big RESTRICTED sign right over our heads. You can’t even get on this floor without a retinal scan. There’s no way an Athenian should be sitting out here unsupervised.

  Or asking me questions. Or touching my leg.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, moving his hand off me.

  “I didn’t mean to be, believe me,” he says. “I went to the party upstairs.” Then he cocks his head to the side. “You weren’t there…”

  “I don’t go to parties,” I say.

  “You should,” he says. “It wasn’t half bad. They had some of those little quiches, and the DJ was pretty good.”

  “I don’t…” I’m about to say I don’t like parties, they’re too loud, et cetera, but then I stop; none of this has anything to do with my questions.

  “Why are you here, Theseus?” I ask.

  “I went to the party upstairs, and then when the competitors came down here for the after-party, I came with them.”

  “Icarus let you?” I ask. The competitors have an after-party every night of the contest. It is the source of a large amount of must-see viewing. Drunken hookups and such, but it is generally a competitor-only event.

  He nods. “Yeah, he said it was fine if I came. It sounded better than watching pay-per-view in my room.”

  “So why aren’t you in the accommodations now?” I ask.

  He runs his hand through his hair. “There were complications…”

  “Complications? What kind of complications?”

  He hesitates. “It turns out that
one of the competitor’s intentions were not limited to friendship…”

  “Oh,” I say, understanding instantly. One of the competitors wanted to hook up with him. I blush, irritatingly, images of what that would be like rushing into my mind before I can push them away.

  “Who was it?” I ask, but then I answer my own question. “Hippolyta. It was Hippolyta.”

  Of course it was. She went through the guys in the qualifications in Athens like the tissues in a box. Of course she was shooting for Theseus.

  He nods.

  Then I am mad at myself. I have been letting him touch me when he was making out with Hippolyta.

  “So, how’d it go?” I ask, letting my voice drip with sarcasm. “Your first taste of Amazon—”

  “No, no,” he says, stopping me. “You don’t understand. I didn’t mess around with her.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “You’re telling me that you could have had Hippolyta, the most beautiful woman on The Labyrinth Contest, and you didn’t?”

  Hippolyta is as beautiful as my sisters are, and I’ve never seen anyone say no to my sisters when they were truly determined. Never. While I don’t like thinking about him hooking up with Hippolyta, I find that I can’t really believe that he’d had the chance to, and he didn’t.

  Or if he did, there has to be a reason. Everyone has reasons. Everyone has an agenda.

  “I wasn’t feeling it,” he says, his voice light. Like he’s saying vanilla isn’t his favorite flavor of ice cream.

  “You weren’t feeling it?” I ask. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” he says. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Because I’ve seen Hippolyta. She’s gorgeous.”

  “I know she’s gorgeous,” he says, and then he shrugs. “I don’t like being forced into things. It’s not my style.”

  Without even knowing they’re going to, the words leave my mouth, “It’s not my style, either, but it’s generally seemed that I’m the only person on the whole planet who feels that way.”

  “Ariadne, I…,” he says, and there is something about the intensity of his voice. I have goose bumps. His eyes are bright, and he’s a little nervous. Like he’s telling me the most important thing in the world.