How could the gods ask this of me? How could they make me? Then I remember, these are the same gods who created an infant monster and turned a six-year-old into a murderess. They can make me a liar, too.
“Yes, Daddy,” I say to the door where he has gone.
TEN
The door opens and Icarus comes back into the room carefully, like someone who has barely survived a tornado. He straightens his glasses. He doesn’t ask me what happened with Daddy. He doesn’t have to. I’m sure the greenroom cameras feed directly to his phone.
“Told you,” he says, and pulls me in for a quick hug. There is so much we both leave unsaid.
A makeup artist follows him into the greenroom and quickly repairs my makeup.
When she leaves, Icarus pulls out the microphone and power pack that he’ll pin to the inside of my dress and the earpiece I’ll wear so I can get the stage directions during the drawing.
“Let’s get you wired up,” he says.
I can’t hide the hurt in my eyes, and I don’t try.
“Don’t look at me like that, Ariadne,” he says as he expertly clips the microphone to the inside of the front of my dress, hiding it in my cleavage so the cameras won’t see it. A gesture both intimate and businesslike. “You’re going to be okay.”
His walkie-talkie screeches. “Ten minutes to airtime.”
“All right,” he says, closing his black bag. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
I pull myself together. I’ve done this so many times, I’ll be on autopilot.
“Ready,” I say, grabbing the burlap bag that holds the cards the competitors will draw, the pieces of light-colored wood, thin and strong, exactly the size and shape of a credit card. Each with a number branded into the wood. The number that will determine the order in which the competitors will face the Minotaur. The order they will die in.
“Wait,” I say, looking at the silver bag that is hanging from my wrist, holding my phone and my thread. “I can’t carry this up there. It will look ridiculous.”
“Leave it in the greenroom,” Icarus says.
“You want me to leave my thread behind?” I say, my voice full of sarcasm. Because I’m never supposed to leave the thread anywhere. If Daddy and Daedalus could have figured out a way to implant it into my skin, I don’t doubt they would have done it.
“Fine,” Icarus says. “Put it in the bag with the cards.”
“I’m sure one of the competitors would love to get their hands on the key to navigating the maze.”
“So don’t give it to them,” Icarus says. “Duh.”
As we walk out of the greenroom, the chill of the air-conditioning raises goose bumps on my bare shoulders and back. I miss my chiton. I miss my pockets. I miss the mask.
I climb into the golf cart next to Icarus and let him drive me to a spot under the center of the stadium floor. The maze is farther down, below us, under our feet. We’re nowhere near where I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to be hiding in a small room, waiting for the dimming of the lights and my long, slow walk across the field. Not tonight.
Icarus brings me under the stage, into the large open area that holds the stored scaffolding and lights for events at the stadium. Right in the center of the floor, directly under the stage, there’s something new. They have placed a mechanical lift like you’d see at a construction site. On top of the lift is a circular platform barely big enough for someone to stand on. Surrounding it, they have a metal cage that runs from the floor to the ceiling, twenty feet up. For safety?
Far above, in the ceiling, there is a round hole, exactly the same size as the circular platform on the lift. I raise my eyebrow. “Who is going to be riding that?”
“You.” Icarus makes the ta-da motion with his hands. “Isn’t it cool? It was my idea. Don’t worry, we tested it, you’ll be fine!”
He opens the door to the cage and I step up and in. Before I can ask him what in the world I’m supposed to do now that I’m here, or how the thing is going to operate, or anything, really, his walkie-talkie starts squawking with panicked voices. “Icarus, Icarus, the hologram is down, we need you right away.”
Icarus spins away from me, his mind already on the next emergency. “Wait there and listen for your cue,” he says as he runs to his golf cart. “It’s automated. You don’t need to do anything but look pretty.”
Great, because I’m so good at that.
His golf cart speeds away, and I’m alone in a cage in the vast open space under the stage. Listening to the hum of the fluorescent lights. I could be the only person in the world. I try not to think about my mother. Daddy. Theseus. I load the coverage of The Labyrinth Contest on my phone.
The camera pans the stadium. The stands are full now. No more purple fabric to cover empty seats. The word must have gotten out. The mechanism on the platform clicks on with a hum. On my phone, I can see giant red numbers counting down. It’s about to start. The red numbers go to zero. My platform starts to rise, slowly. The cheering crowd is tinny coming out of the speaker in my phone, but it is a muffled roar from the stadium above me. Then the screen goes black and silent. The crowd above me stills.
I know the same velvety blackness is being projected on the Jumbotron in the stadium above. It is not the emptiness of the cameras being off. Not the blank screen of technical difficulties. This is the blackness of filmed darkness. The cameras are taking us somewhere. Somewhere dark. It is familiar to me.
The silence stretches, and I can imagine the audience fidgeting in their seats, wondering what is happening. Then we hear it. Breathing. Animal breathing. Daedalus’s voice is velvet. “From the darkness…”
The blackness shades to gray as the camera starts moving. It glides through the tunnels of the maze, down toward the center. It is not a view anyone here has seen before. The only people who walk the maze are me, the competitors, and the Minotaur. No cameraman would ever dare go down there. No cameraman would survive.
Daedalus must be using a remote-control drone camera for the shots. It travels down, down, deeper into the maze. Closer to the Minotaur’s room. Where the light is always on a little.
From his breathing, I can tell he’s sleeping. I picture him as I see him after I sing him to sleep. Curled up on his concrete bed. His knees pulled into his chest. Each of his vertebra standing out on his back. His human arm thrown over his hairy bull’s face. His blue blanket beside him. A boy. A lonely boy.
That is the last thing Icarus wants people to see. A drum sounds, thumping, echoing off the walls of the maze. The drone must be equipped with speakers.
Daedalus speaks again. “Up from the darkness rises…”
A bright red light flashes, highlighting the concrete walls, the bones on the floor. The people start to cheer. This is why they are here.
“A monster,” Daedalus says.
The Minotaur’s roar begins before the camera makes the final turn. The camera shows a giant shape looming over it, and then it is smashed.
The feed cuts to the stadium above, the people stomping, the lights flashing, the torches and smoke on the field. My cage rattles with the tremors. A small earthquake as the Minotaur rocks the foundations in his rage.
I watch the video of the people cheering, excited. Thrilled. Their own private, personal monster. I grab the bars that hold me in the lift. The bars of my cage.
On the small screen of my phone, I have the uncanny experience of seeing myself make the long walk between the rows of torches across the field. I’m wearing the long chiton. The mask. Holding the burlap bag that carries the fate of the Athenians. But of course it isn’t me. Because I’m down here, under the stage. Yet it is me, too, because it moves like me, looks like me. It’s a hologram. It’s me from last year, making the same walk I’ve always made. The same way I’ve always made it.
“Tonight,” Daedalus intones, “you will see things never seen before. Secrets will be revealed. And tomorrow, death in the dark.”
“Get ready,” Icarus says in the small s
peaker in my ear, and the contraption I’m standing on shudders awake. As my holographic image makes the long walk to the stage, my platform begins rising, slowly. At the same time, the fourteen competitors in their black leather and gold make their procession onto the stage. Looking at this silent, masked, cloaked version of me.
It is solemn and strange and mysterious. Slowly I rise, and as I rise, I watch myself above. Watch smoke swirl around my own masked and cloaked figure. The spot where the hologram of me was standing is now a cloud of smoke and light, opaque to the crowd. And to the video on my phone.
Right when my head is about to come up through the floor, I turn my phone off and drop it into the burlap bag with the competitors’ cards and my thread. I let myself be raised up through an image of myself.
When a mechanical breeze blows away the fog, I am standing there, in front of the cameras. No mask. No chiton. In a backless dress and double-sided tape. Revealed to the world. For the first time in my life.
The gasp from the crowd is audible.
The competitors gasp, too, their faces pale. It’s like they’ve seen a ghost.
Not Theseus. He lights up as soon as the fog clears.
There are millions of eyes on me—the competitors, the people in the stadium, the cameras beaming me to millions of viewers worldwide—but right now, none of them matter. The only person I care about seeing me is Theseus. It’s like we two are the only things in focus, and everything else is a blur.
The stylists have done their work, brushing his hair back and smoothing his skin. His muscular legs are bare in the warrior kilt. My hands itch to touch him.
How did this happen? I just met the guy.
Gods. Is this the mark of Eros that my parents were talking about? Did the gods do this to me? If so, I hate them even more for it. It was one thing when they made me do things I didn’t want to do—but so much worse if they are making me want things, too.
I stare at Theseus.
What is he thinking? The last time I saw him, I told him I could not help him. But he looks at me like none of it happened. Or not like that, exactly. More like it happened, but it isn’t over. Like we’re playing a game where he needs another turn. I have an involuntary shiver thinking about one more round. I want that, too.
The stadium lights drop, plunging us into darkness. The constellations are projected onto the ceiling of the dome, reminding us that the gods are watching. The amplified drums beat their slow, inexorable rhythm, like the heart of some giant subterranean creature. The stage vibrates under my feet. The ritual takes over, pushing away thoughts of Theseus.
The lights flash on, shining spotlights on me and the competitors, and the cameras track forward on their cables.
I don’t have to think anymore. I do what I’ve always done. I walk to Hippolyta. As the highest-scoring competitor, she is first. She is beautiful, in full makeup, her hair elaborately curled, like this is the final round of a beauty contest, not an execution.
I’m not wearing the mask, of course, but I have the same constriction of my vision that the mask always brings. The tight focus on each competitor. I hold out the burlap sack, and she draws her card. She doesn’t look at it yet. No one does. No one wants to risk the bad luck that would come from peeking out of turn. Then I pass to the next. Down the line I go. Finally, I get to Theseus. He stands relaxed, his feet spread wide, like he’s getting ready to run a race that he’s sure he’ll win.
I hold the burlap bag out to him. I feel lighter from being around him.
There is only one card left, next to my phone and ball of thread, heavy in the bottom of the bag.
Theseus asked me about it last night.
He puts his hand on it, and I wonder what in the world I am going to do if Theseus takes my thread. If he had my thread, he could navigate the maze. If he had my thread, it would be that much easier for him to kill the Minotaur.
I have this connection to Theseus, but I have to remember that I can’t trust him. He would kill my brother if given the chance.
His hand closes around my ball of thread, and I tell him with every ounce of me not to take it.
He drops the thread and draws out his card instead.
The trumpet sounds and I turn, and when I walk away from him, making my way back to my mark on the stage, I slip back into my role. Facing the audience, the cameras, and the millions watching, I say my lines. The same as they have always been.
“The cards have been drawn. The fates have spoken. The gods must be appeased.” My voice echoes back at me, amplified beyond recognition.
I turn back to the competitors. “Reveal your fates.”
One by one, they turn their cards over and read the number on it, starting with Hippolyta.
“Four,” Hippolyta calls out in a voice of disappointment. No doubt she was hoping to go first.
She hands her card to me, and I drop it back into my bag, ready for next season.
“Two,” the next boy calls. He is the one with the crew cut, whose fear I could see the first day.
“Twelve,” the following girl in line says, her voice full of relief. Twelve days. She has eleven chances that someone else will kill the Minotaur for her. Eleven chances that she can go home. Eleven people to die before she gets her turn.
The numbers dwindle. Three left, now two. The nervousness grows in my stomach. Two numbers left. Fourteen or one. How long does Theseus have? Vortigern flips his card. “One,” he calls out, his voice full of triumph. He will be the first to face the Minotaur.
That means Theseus has number fourteen. He will be last. Theseus stares at his card, looking mystified.
The silence stretches. The crowd is uncomfortable, not sure what to do now.
“Tell him to read his number,” Icarus says into my earpiece.
“Read your number,” I say, and I’m supposed to use that slow, priestly voice, but I don’t. Because it is Theseus, I say it like myself.
He looks up at me like everyone else is gone.
“It isn’t right,” he says, and his voice is anguished.
“What is your number?” I say, even though we all know it’s fourteen. I’m surprised when my voice echoes back at me, amplified. I, too, had forgotten we were here, in front of the crowd.
“Fourteen,” Theseus says, his voice dull.
He hands the card to me, and I hold the small wooden rectangle in my hand.
I walk back out to the spot on the floor that I rose up from.
The audience roars. They are delighted that they will have thirteen appetizers before they get to the main event. The music starts again, pounding, and the smoke rises around me. I watch as Theseus disappears from my vision as I’m swallowed by the smoke.
I remember what Theseus told me, down in his room—how he couldn’t let innocent people die when he had the chance to save them. Wasn’t this always a danger, that he would go last?
I look down at the card in my hand. A simple piece of wood.
The machine lowers me under the stage. Icarus is waiting for me at the bottom of the cage, with a golf cart. He takes the card from my hand, drops it into the burlap bag, and then fishes out my phone and ball of thread and hands them back to me along with my silver handbag.
“Let’s get you something to eat,” he says. “Your mother says you have to be ready for the party in two hours. Plus, I still need to show you your lines.”
* * *
We take the golf cart back to the stadium entrance, then ride in my SUV back to the palace.
A production assistant is waiting inside the doors with sandwiches for both of us. We eat while Icarus leads me to the area on the first level where my mother’s dance party will be hosted. It is an enormous U-shaped room, surrounding an outdoor plaza with a giant lighted stage and a swimming pool. Inside, there are bars along every wall, banquette seating, dance floors, an elevated DJ booth. Disco balls hang from the ceiling, ironically. Maybe.
The party is only an hour or so away, so right now, the room is a blur of acti
vity as everyone makes sure that the setting is exactly right.
“You’ll be starting here,” Icarus says.
“At the party?” I say. “Do I have to?”
“Yes, yes, you do,” he says. “This is the path you will need to take. That way we won’t have to make a camera crew follow you.”
“Okay,” I say.
We go to the ninetieth floor. Not a floor I’ve spent any time on.
Our feet are silent on the thick pile carpet.
“Here we are,” Icarus says as we come into a three-story-high atrium with a wall of windows. Unlike most of the palace, this space is not cream and gold. Instead, the walls are black, only the accents are in gold. A flight of floating black Lucite stairs climbs along the back wall of the atrium. We take the stairs to a black door, and when I open it, we are in another room I’ve never seen.
I can tell it’s new from the smell of fresh paint. They probably took the tags off the furniture this morning. Which isn’t surprising. I swear sometimes my mother’s decorating gets more hits on the Internet than Xenodice’s behind.
The room is strange. My mother really let some architect show off in here. The walls are sloped, twice as tall on the outside as at the entrance, and the large, eight-paned windows are set at the same cockeyed angle as the walls. They are covered in mosaic tile in an abstract design of swirls and whorls, done in black and dove gray. The only furniture is a very long, ultra-streamlined red chaise longue; a black midcentury-modern cube end table with a planter full of wheatgrass on top; and a black onyx obelisk on a pedestal in the middle of the room. The chaise longue looks like a comic-book drawing of a sofa—the place where the villain’s girlfriend would be lazing in evening wear, drinking cocktails and watching him hatch his evil plans.
Icarus stands behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I was thinking you wouldn’t feel comfortable with a cameraman in here with you and Theseus yet—”
“Yet?” I say, glancing back at him. “Icarus, this isn’t going to be a regular thing.”
Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters Page 13