Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  Before Theseus can respond, Hippolyta pushes backward, spinning away from him. Her hips sway as she walks away from us. She turns back for a parting shot. “You are welcome in my room anytime. I will be waiting for you.”

  We both watch her walk away.

  Theseus looks stunned for an instant, but then his attention turns to me, and I can tell he’s not thinking about Hippolyta anymore. He’s thinking about me. “Why are you dressed like this?” he asks. “One of the first things you ever told me was that you don’t come to parties. Your sister said that, too. Why are you here?”

  The cameras are rolling. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Icarus looking nervous.

  I could say anything right now. I know what my sisters would say. Xenodice would say—I did it for you, do you like it?—Acalle would say—Don’t you wish you knew?

  What do I say? I’m going to have to lie to him later tonight. I’m going to have to tell him that I will help him in the maze. That I will help him kill the Minotaur. I don’t want to start lying now. I’m not ready.

  Because the reality is that I would never, by choice, wear something that made it impossible for me to breathe, and these shoes are for sure not my idea of appropriate footwear, but being with Theseus? That is something I would do, no matter what.

  It doesn’t matter that my interests and the thing that I’ve been ordered to do happen to be aligned at this moment. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

  So I tell him the truth. “My mother,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “Most mothers are trying to keep their daughters out of these kinds of dresses,” he says. “Away from this kind of party.”

  He waves at a couple behind us who are dancing in the most suggestive way imaginable.

  I laugh. “My mother is not like most mothers.”

  “Fair enough,” he says.

  “Are you enjoying the party?” I ask.

  He jams his hands deeper in his pockets. “It’s not my kind of thing.”

  “Would you like to get out of here?” I say. “Go somewhere we can talk?”

  He brightens. “I would like that better than anything.”

  He trusts me.

  Theseus takes my hand, and I hate the twisting feeling inside me, knowing that I’m lying to him. “Lead the way,” he says.

  As we leave the party, we pass Daddy in his banquette. He raises his glass to me. I’m doing what I was told.

  TWELVE

  When we leave the party, Icarus and my bodyguards don’t follow.

  I’m carrying my six-inch stripper heels in one of my hands, since I can’t walk in them. Exactly like Icarus showed in his storyboard. My other hand holds the silver evening bag with my thread and my phone.

  “Where are we going?” Theseus asks, pulling me to a stop.

  Oh gods, everything about this is new to me. If I were one of my sisters, this would be the chance to steal another kiss from him, but when I slow down and look at his face, Theseus isn’t flirting. His face is troubled, serious. Clouded.

  “I want to talk to you,” I say, “and there’s a room I want to show you.”

  “Will it be private?” he asks. I wonder if he means, Will we be unmonitored, off the cameras?

  “We’ll be alone,” I say, answering a different question.

  I take him on the elevator, up to the ninetieth floor. I lead him to the atrium. Up the floating stairs. I open the door to the crooked room.

  He gasps in surprise at the room. “This is…”

  “Amazing?” I say.

  He nods. “Amazing.”

  I set my shoes and my bag down on the cube end table next to the red chaise longue.

  Ambient music is piped in through hidden speakers. An unadorned man’s voice, electronically manipulated, singing about a girl. Guitars over a droning hum. It is an intimate, surprisingly beautiful room, made for secrets.

  We cross over to the tall, angled windows.

  “It’s a great view,” he says, looking out at the harbor.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, it is.”

  Now is where I’m supposed to lead him over to the chaise longue. I’m supposed to say my lines—I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stand the thought of you dying. I’ll help you …

  I glance back into the room, back at the huge red piece of furniture. I’m fluttering inside, asking myself if I can really do this, and I find that I can’t do anything. It’s like my feet are stuck to the ground, my body encased in marble.

  Theseus takes my hand in his.

  “Thank you for bringing me up here,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”

  “What is it?” I ask, my voice small, waiting for when he will ask again for help with the Minotaur.

  “Is it possible that the drawing was rigged?”

  “Rigged?” I say, confused.

  “Manipulated.”

  I think of the wooden cards with the numbers branded into their surfaces. “That’s impossible.”

  “Yet somehow it has happened,” he says. His jaw is set, his eyes stormy. “It’s my destiny to stop the murder of the Athenians. I’m sure of it. I can’t do that if they are killed before me.”

  “You can’t rig the drawing,” I say. “They are pieces of wood. I’ve held them in my hands. There’s no way to alter them.”

  “Well, there must be,” he says stubbornly. “I’m supposed to go first. It’s what the gods want.”

  “What if the gods don’t want what you think they want?” I ask.

  “They want me to end this. My whole life has led to now. I can’t wait for thirteen more people to die…”

  “You know this has been going on for ten years, right?” I say. “Your dad has been king this whole time—”

  He cuts me off. “This isn’t about my dad. This is about what it means to lead. I have to prove that I’m worthy of being their prince.”

  “No, you don’t,” I say, exasperated. “That’s the whole thing with hereditary monarchy. You don’t have to keep proving yourself. You already got those pirates. You killed the Cromwellian Sow—”

  “The Crommyonian Sow,” he interrupts.

  “Whatever. The thing about being royalty is that you don’t have to do anything to deserve it. You’re born—and then you can do what you want. You’re the king’s son. You’ll still be the prince even if you don’t do this, right?”

  He starts laughing, and it hurts right to my core, because it is a bitter, empty laugh with no joy in it. Not a sound I’ve ever heard from Theseus before.

  “You don’t understand anything,” he says. His voice sounds infinitely sad.

  I grab his hands. “Then explain it to me.”

  “I can’t,” he says, looking away.

  I put my hand up to his cheek, turning his face back toward mine, and a wash of emotions passes over his face—anger, fear, sadness.

  “Tell me,” I whisper.

  “Okay, fine,” he says. “Until six months ago, I never had the slightest clue that my real father was Aegeus. I knew he was the king of Athens, but I had no idea that he had a connection to me. I believed my father was the god Poseidon. That’s what my mom said, and she’s the greatest. I never thought that she could be lying to me, even though everyone in town said that was a crock. As far as they were concerned I was a kid without a dad. It didn’t matter how well I did in school, or at sports—there was always that word, bastard.”

  As he’s talking, his face reveals his empty despair and I think of the cameras that are rolling now, waiting to expose our naked bodies. But now, they are exposing Theseus’s truth.

  “Wait,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me this…” I drop my voice. “We’re being watched.”

  “I want you to know,” he says, looking up at the walls, and I know the cameras were never hiding from him. “I don’t care who else does. I’ve held this for so long—like it was my fault. My shame. My secret. Not telling only protects the people who are at fault. I need to tel
l the truth, Ariadne.”

  So I grab his hand, and I don’t let go.

  “My mom and I, we live with my grandfather, and Grandfather, he says…”

  He stops. He’s probably never said this out loud to anyone.

  “What does he say?” I whisper.

  He spits out the words. “He says that he lets us stay there because of his charity. She works constantly, making sure everything is exactly how he likes it. And he never thanks her. My grandfather says it’s what she deserves. Because of me. That if she doesn’t do what he says, he’ll send us away. ‘Let Poseidon support his bastard.’ Even though, as I found out, he knew the whole time that Aegeus was really my father.”

  On his face, I see a flash of the little boy he must have been and then it is replaced by grim anger, and I see the engine that drives Theseus. All that he has to prove.

  “When did you find out?” I ask.

  “Yeah, that’s a funny story.” Nothing about his manner suggests something funny. “When I turned seventeen, my mom took me out to a beach near the house. The beach where she always said she had met Poseidon. She told me I was going to find out about my future and my past. She asked me to move a large rock along a cliff face. It was heavy, but I did it. There was a cave back there. Guess what was in it?”

  The way his voice sounds, I’m imagining something terrible, and I don’t want to guess. “What was in the cave?” I ask.

  “A pair of sandals and a knife.”

  “Why? I’m confused,” I say.

  “I was, too, until my mother explained. They belonged to my father, Aegeus, the gods-be-cursed king of Athens. He had hidden them for me to find. He spent a weekend in Troezen and hooked up with my mom. Later, when she found out she was pregnant, she wrote him letters, emails, texts. He never answered. Then after I was born, she wrote to tell him that he had a son. That’s when he came back to Troezen to hide the sandals and the knife. He told her that if I could move the stone and get them, he would claim me as his son, but only if I was strong enough to do it myself. He wasn’t interested in a weak son. He was worried that if I was weak, it would be easy for the Pallantides to take over.”

  “That’s messed up,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Says the girl who leads kids to their deaths because her parents make her do it.”

  “My parents make me do it because the gods told them to,” I say.

  “Sure they do,” he says, his voice full of sarcasm. “Haven’t you noticed that the gods mostly tell people to do stuff they already want to do?” He runs his hands through his hair. “You want to know the most screwed-up thing? My mom told me that she didn’t even like Aegeus. She was only sixteen. He was over forty. Aegeus was staying at my grandfather’s house, and Grandfather made my mom take Aegeus out on the beach and get him drunk and seduce him. Even though it was her first time. My grandfather sold my mother’s innocence for the chance to have a prince in the family.” The way he says the word prince makes it sound dirty, like a curse.

  His voice breaks, and his anger and self-hatred are there on his face. Not packed away or hidden.

  “That’s where Poseidon came in,” he continues. “After Aegeus left my mom on the beach, she felt like she was the one who was dirty. Even though she was still a kid. She went out into the sea to wash, and she could feel it supporting her, wanting her to be okay. So later, when Aegeus wouldn’t answer her emails or letters or texts, she decided that Poseidon was my real father, since the sea had been there for her when no one else was. That way she never had to tell me the truth, that she’d been forced. That I’d been abandoned. Her whole life, it’s been ruined … because of me … All she wanted to do was protect me. When no one ever protected her.” He spits out the last of his story. “Now my grandfather is so happy. He’s convinced that me being a prince makes up for everything. Right before I left for Athens, he told me he was proud of me. Can you believe that?”

  I am glad for the years with my brother, because there is no comfort that can cover Theseus’s rage. Nothing I can say to make it better. I can just be with him. I wrap my hands around his clenched fists. I don’t say anything and we sit together for a long minute.

  Finally, I say, “I’m sorry your dad and grandfather are jerks.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  He looks back at me. “Now do you see why I have to do this? My dad didn’t protect me, and he hasn’t protected these competitors, either. I can’t leave them to it. Not when I can do something about it. From the first moment I knew who my father was, I knew that I would be the one to stop this.”

  It’s so sad. So incredibly sad. I wish there was another way.

  “It’s my destiny to kill the Minotaur,” Theseus says. “To end it. That’s why I have to win. Come on, Ariadne, please, help me. I don’t know why you don’t want the Minotaur to die. I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t tell you,” I say. “I have to do this. It’s my destiny.”

  I shiver in the cold.

  “Here, take my jacket,” he says, stripping it off, then draping it over my shoulders. Then he takes my hands in his. “Ariadne, how does destiny work?”

  I think about this for a long moment. “We do what the gods want us to. That’s our destiny.”

  He pulls me in closer. “I don’t agree. Our destiny, it’s like a giant wave—we can let it beat us down. We can let it drown us. Or, we can try to get on top of it. We can make our own destinies. We can ride the wave.

  “In the stories, people try and try to run away from their destinies, and they can’t escape them. Then other people think they are fated to one thing, and an entirely different thing happens to them. The gods don’t control us, Ariadne. They can’t force us into a box unless we let them. We make our choices, and our destinies come to meet us.” He reaches out and touches my cheek. “What would happen if you got on top of the wave?”

  My whole life has been me getting beat up by the surf. And every time I stand up, another wave knocks me down.

  “What do you want, Ariadne?” he asks.

  “For this to be over,” I say aloud. For my brother to be healed, I say to myself.

  “No, what do you want for yourself?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know.”

  “You have to want something,” he says. He leans in close to me, his voice a whisper. “Isn’t there anything you want for yourself?”

  He rests his forehead against mine, so calm and still.

  My heart beats in my chest like a bird trying to break free of its cage. These aren’t questions that I’m allowed to ask. What would I want if I didn’t have any duties? If the gods didn’t control everything I do?

  I want Theseus. I want to be free. I want to set my brother free. I want to tear down the whole world. Knock it to the ground. Burn it and scatter the wreckage.

  There is a force in me that is so scary and powerful that I don’t know what to do with it. It feels like naming it would destroy everything I love.

  “I can’t…,” I choke out, twisting my hands.

  “Too big?” he says as he takes my hands in his and keeps breathing slowly, resting his forehead against mine.

  “Here’s an easier one,” he says. “If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”

  I’m still frozen.

  “Imagine a vacation,” he says. “That’s not hard.”

  “Alone?” I say.

  “If you want to. Although I’d be happy to go with you.”

  I breathe in. I imagine it. Where would I go? “To a beach, maybe? A beach with no helicopters. No cameras. Or bandage dresses.”

  He pulls back from me and places his hands on my shoulders. He looks into my eyes. “Let me take you,” he says. “This is no kind of life. You hate it. Help me, then let me take you away.”

  Far below us the streetlights show my proscribed routes, the buildings I can go into, in the city my daddy rules. Talos’s giant head watching the entrance to the harbor. And beyond that, the darknes
s of the sea.

  The lights of our city are so bright they keep you from seeing the stars.

  Theseus turns toward me. His pupils dilate, and his look lights a fire in me. I’m blushing, and my pulse is racing.

  I let him lean into me and kiss me again, longer this time. His lips are soft and dry, exactly like I remembered. The electrical energy that has surged between us is inside me now. His hands unbind my hair and take his jacket off my shoulders, and I’m unbuttoning his shirt. His hand slips under the shoulder strap of my dress and starts to pull it down, finding the line where the fabric meets my skin.

  He nuzzles my neck, his hand dipping lower. “Help me in the maze, Ariadne, please.”

  This is it. This is the moment.

  Yes, I just have to say yes.

  It’s one word. If I say it, I can find that red chaise longue and fall onto it with Theseus. I can do what my body is begging me to do. This is what Acalle and my mother meant by Eros. I don’t care about the cameras. I don’t care about the plotline. I don’t care about the very special episode.

  He’ll never know it’s a lie. Daddy will be happy. The gods will be happy. But.

  Theseus will figure out that I lied to him, eventually. He’ll go into the maze, thinking I’m going to help him. Then I won’t. He’ll know I betrayed him. His crumpled body would be in one of the turnings in the maze, waiting for me to stumble upon it.

  What if I did help him? If I gave him my thread? If I told him the secrets of the maze?

  Then I would be responsible for the death of my brother.

  “I can’t,” I say, pulling away from Theseus and fixing my dress. “I can’t help you.”

  This is absolutely, 100 percent, not what I’m supposed to say. This is not what I’m supposed to do. Even though I’m going to be in so much trouble, right here, in this moment, I find that I can’t lie to Theseus. I can’t pretend I’m going to hurt my brother. There’s no way my destiny leads in that direction.

  When the room starts trembling, for a moment I believe that it’s coming from inside of me.

  The planter of wheatgrass falls off the black cube end table with a crash. The mosaic tiles fall out of the walls. This earthquake is as bad as it has ever been. The whole building might be coming down around us, no matter how earthquake-safe the design.