Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  “Daddy said—” and she stops. For a second, I see her hurt, her knowledge that my father knows that she’s afraid of Heracles but doesn’t care. Then she tosses her hair and laughs. “Between you and me, it will be quite the ratings contest. I wonder what Xenodice will have to do to get ahead of us.”

  Xenodice perks up, hearing her name. “What?” she says.

  “Nothing,” Acalle says. “It’s nothing.”

  “It isn’t,” I say. “You don’t have to do this…”

  Acalle has a sad, empty smile. “I think I actually do,” she says. “You do, too.”

  She lifts her drink off the bar and downs it in one smooth motion, then holds her hand high in the air. “I think I need to do some dancing!”

  Xenodice shrieks.

  And like that, they are gone.

  Together, Theseus and I weave our way through the crowds of dancers.

  My mother is waiting outside the doors to the ballroom. Her sleeveless dress is long and red with a plunging neckline. Her nails are painted the same dark red, as are her lips. Her hair flows across her shoulders and down her back, a sheet of gold over her tanned skin. In the plush white and gold of the hallway, she is the only colorful thing.

  As always, there is not an ounce of extra fat on her; she is as streamlined as a sports car, and as hard.

  She looks at Theseus and me together, holding hands, and her eyes narrow.

  “If it isn’t the stars of the hour,” she says. “The viewers can’t keep their eyes off you. I told you that you were meant to be a star.”

  Yesterday, I would have argued with her. I would have told her that I wasn’t doing anything to be a star.

  Not now.

  I don’t care about arguing with her. I just want to hear the truth from my mother. I’ve never mentioned Asterion to her. Not since she barricaded herself in her room when he was born. The taboo that was placed on his name when I was a little girl has kept me from ever saying anything about him. From asking her if she even remembers him. I don’t know what she thinks about any of this.

  She is part of this. As much as anyone.

  When my father didn’t sacrifice the bull, she was the one who fell in love with it. She was the one who was humiliated. She was the one whose son is now trapped in the maze.

  Is she a victim? Or a perpetrator? I have to know.

  I ask her the same question that I asked my father. “Why didn’t we sacrifice the white bull when it came out of the sea?”

  If my question has fazed her, it doesn’t show. “Daedalus wanted to,” she says, “but your father was sure that it was a sign that he was still favored by the gods. Something too precious to be killed.”

  “And what about you?” I ask. “What did you think?”

  She walks a few steps down the hall, toward a massive mirror in a gilded frame.

  She looks at herself in the mirror, touching the blond hair at her temple, while Theseus and I stand barely out of the frame.

  “What did I think?” she says. “On the day we received word that Androgeous had been killed in Athens, I begged the gods for vengeance. Your father led our armies off to Athens and defeated them. They paid their tribute in gold. That wasn’t enough for me. Not nearly enough. Then the white bull rose from the sea. I knew it was the sign that the gods would answer my prayers for revenge.”

  Her eyes have a distant, secret look, and I’m embarrassed for her. I dare a glance at Theseus, and he looks like he would like to be anywhere but here.

  “When I felt that passion for the bull, I knew it must have come from the gods, that it must be a way to carry out my vengeance. I begged Daedalus to help me.”

  I wonder if she’s talked about this to anyone in the years since it happened.

  “When I got pregnant, I picked the name Asterion, and I hoped I would have a boy who would grow into a strong man who could avenge his brother. A man who could rule Crete and rub Athens under the heel of his boot.”

  She straightens, apparently satisfied with her appearance, and then she turns her attention back to me.

  “But he was a monster…” Her mouth twists, giving a glimpse of the howl of pain that she hides inside herself. Then she swallows it, and her face is perfect again. “I saw him, and I knew the gods would take their vengeance another way. If he keeps killing Athenians for another hundred years, it will not quench my thirst for their blood.”

  The distance between her calm, even, conversational tone and her bloodlust is chilling.

  Theseus’s anger radiates like heat off his body, and my mother must sense it.

  “Do you want to know why, Athenian?” my mother asks, speaking to Theseus for the first time.

  He doesn’t answer, but that doesn’t stop her.

  “You Athenians took something that I can never have back. My boy. My son. My hero.”

  She drops her hand to her bracelet, running her fingers over the charm with the image of Androgeous. The only charm on a bracelet that could hold many. Funny that I never noticed that until now. Icy numbness grows in my stomach. What about my sisters, Asterion, me?

  “Androgeous was worth more than the rest of you put together.” My mother’s voice is low and secret, but full of power. This is her truth.

  Theseus grips my hand, and I can feel his desire to defend me. But I squeeze his hand and give a slight shake of my head. I don’t need for him to.

  “I would give anything to have Androgeous back,” my mother says now, her voice husky. “Anything; however, it is impossible. Since I cannot have my son, I will have vengeance.”

  Her voice is loud, but it drops again. “I would give all my other children to see my vengeance over Athens, and it still would not be enough.”

  Theseus and I have stepped away from her as she has been talking, as though the venom in her words could actually spill out and burn us.

  I am shaking.

  I always knew that I wasn’t her favorite. I knew that. But I thought my sisters were. To hear that she would sacrifice any of us? It hurts more than I would have believed.

  There is a sliver of ice at the heart of my mother. Has it always been there, or was it born when Androgeous died?

  My mother comes close to us, her face proud.

  She leans toward Theseus, smiling at his outrage.

  “Now, Theseus of Athens.” She runs her manicured hand across his bare chest, her red nails like blood against his skin. He shoves her hand away, and she laughs.

  “Push me away if you like, but you are the sweetest tool of my vengeance. Because you have made my daughter want you.”

  She moves to me, touching the side of my face with her fingers, cold as ice.

  “Darling,” she says, but there is nothing affectionate in her voice. It is like a snake sliding over dry leaves. “You will make my vengeance complete. You want this boy, I can see it. You want to help him. And that will destroy Athens. Aegeus is watching: his hopes are raised. Nothing you can do will stop the Minotaur. When Theseus goes into the maze, he will be killed. Aegeus’s son will be taken from him, just as he stole mine.”

  She drops her hand from me and turns, going through the doors, back into the party.

  SIXTEEN

  Theseus and I rush together through the palace, not speaking. I’m not sure either of us knows what to say yet.

  I see everything around me with new eyes. The gilded hallways. The people who turn their backs as I walk by. The cameras mounted to the ceiling. They are all the bars of my cage.

  Together, Theseus and I go to the massive fountain in front of the new hotel. We sit together on the side of it. It is still and peaceful now, in the silence before it begins its next display.

  He wraps his arms around me.

  A jet of water shoots up, red light refracting through it. Followed by another, and another, the splashes echoing on the still water.

  “Gods, Ariadne, I don’t know what to say. That was terrible. Your mother…”

  I let him hold me close. It doesn’t fix
what I’ve heard, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help a little.

  The notes of the music start for the fountain display. In honor of The Labyrinth Contest, they are using the theme as the music this week. The first drums start their beat, the spouts of water shooting up in time, the red lights staining the water.

  “That’s not even the worst thing that has happened to me in the last hour,” I say to Theseus.

  He runs his hand over my hair. “Seriously? Because that sucked.”

  “Yeah, I know. My conversation with my father was worse.”

  He draws back from me a little, looking in my eyes. “How?”

  The strings and horns have started on the theme, filling in the melody, but it’s still slow, still building.

  “He called the Minotaur an it,” I say. “Asterion. He called Asterion an it. He said he’s not really my brother. When I finally asked him the right questions, my father”—not Daddy, never Daddy again—“said the gods want what he wants. This was always about revenge. Never about my little brother. I believed … I believed that if I kept doing what I had been doing, Asterion could change…”

  “I’m sorry, Ariadne,” Theseus says, and I’m incredibly grateful that he doesn’t say that he told me so, even though he did.

  “I should have known.” I choke out the words. The truth. “I should have guessed that it was a lie.”

  Theseus starts to say something, but I stop him.

  “They told me that I was special, and I believed them. I let it keep happening … I never asked … I never thought … I never knew.”

  Theseus holds my hands, gently. “You know now, Ariadne. So what are you going to do about it?”

  The fountain show has reached its climax, the music is blasting, and the water is waving and churning.

  I think of Asterion last night, his signing.

  All done. I’m all done.

  The fountain finishes its show, the music stopping, the jets stilling. The only sign of turbulence is the ripples on the water. And even those fade.

  I look over the still water. Past the new hotel. Up at the fields and hillsides beyond. At the trees where I imagined my brother playing. At the cattle in their pasture.

  I close my eyes. My family was supposed to sacrifice the bull, but they didn’t. They were supposed to sacrifice the Minotaur when Asterion changed, and they didn’t do that, either. So Asterion has suffered, for eleven years. My parents will let him suffer for a hundred more years if they can. My parents won’t end this. The gods won’t end this.

  “If we don’t end this, no one will,” I say.

  “How?” he asks.

  We can’t risk talking about it here. We can’t risk being overheard.

  “Trust me,” I say.

  Theseus grabs my hand. “Will you come down to my room with me?” he whispers in my ear. “I’m not sure you should be alone.”

  That is what I want to do, more than anything.

  But the word stops me—alone.

  I think of a lonely figure, curled into a ball on a concrete bed in the middle of a bare room, at the center of an empty underground maze. The person who has suffered the most.

  My brother. Asterion.

  He was injured today. His chest torn with that wooden stake. I would have been there hours ago to clean and bandage it, if things were normal. He’s down there, hurting. Waiting.

  I’m going to hurt Theseus by telling him. I can’t help it.

  “I want to come with you so much,” I say, pulling away.

  “Then come.” He presses his lips to my neck, right behind my ear.

  “I can’t,” I say, making myself sound firm. Serious. “I have to go.”

  I take a step away from him so the sweet smell of him can’t pull me back.

  “You’re going to the maze,” he says. “To the Minotaur.”

  “He needs me,” I say. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight. We’ll go talk to Icarus.”

  I give Theseus one last kiss, then leave him standing in front of the fountain.

  Back in my room, I change into jeans and rainboots. Then I make the long trip down to the maze. When I make it to Asterion’s room, he’s backed up in the corner, curled into a ball, quietly moaning. His brown eyes are full of pain and a desperate sadness. He is dripping wet from the water that Daedalus has sluiced through the maze, so any gore has washed off his body and his fur. He is shaking from the cold.

  I unlock the cabinet, taking out my supplies. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed, and I dry him off, then clean his wound and bandage his side. Neither of us speaks.

  Finally, once I have him tucked in, I say, “I love you, Asterion.” I kiss his furry head.

  He is asleep before I stand up from the edge of the bed.

  * * *

  I wake up clear-eyed in the light of day. I throw my toast in the fire and say my prayer, probably for the final time, but changed a little. Please free my brother.

  I meet Theseus in the lobby and we go together to the control room.

  The competitor who is supposed to go today is the short bulky boy with a crew cut, the one whose fear was clear on his face the first day. I don’t think he will protest if Theseus takes his place in the line. Not like Hippolyta, who would probably push Theseus out of the way.

  The hard part will be convincing Icarus to help us.

  We find Icarus staring at his monitor, dark circles under his eyes, and I tell him and Theseus my plan.

  “You know a hundred and forty-one other people have tried to fight the Minotaur, right?” Icarus says. “The odds of Theseus surviving this are not good.”

  “Theseus isn’t going to be killed in the maze,” I say.

  “You know that how?” Icarus says.

  “It’s his destiny,” I say.

  “Ariadne, we’ve just established that destiny is a manipulative pile of trash, have we not?” Icarus says, running his fingers through his hair.

  I grab his hands. “I know, Icarus, but I don’t have anything else to do. Asterion is miserable, desperately unhappy. I can’t let him go from the maze, you know what he will do…”

  Icarus shudders, thinking of the bloody consequences of that.

  “I can’t leave without him. More than that,” I say, “Asterion doesn’t want to be the Minotaur anymore. He is so tired of the killing. I hope that if Asterion is sacrificed, he can be saved.”

  Icarus stands and starts pacing, his hands pressed to his temples. “So you and Theseus go in the maze tonight, instead of the second competitor. Then let’s say you kill the Minotaur. Then what?”

  “I’m taking her to Athens with me,” Theseus says.

  “If we can manage to keep the cameras on, and keep the whole world watching,” I say, “my father will have to give Theseus the prize. He will have to let us go—”

  Icarus interrupts me, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, Ariadne, he will have to let Theseus go. You, he will lock away.”

  I shrug. “You said it yourself, Icarus. We’re already in prison. I don’t care what the bars are made of.”

  Icarus grabs my hand. “Ariadne, this is a nice jail, with gold and cushions and cameras. I’ve seen your father’s real jails, even if you haven’t, and believe me, they are not nice. He tortures people. I don’t mean like he tortures them by making them be in shows they don’t want to be in. I mean like he cuts off their fingers. And toes.”

  Everything he is saying is true. I know it is. It doesn’t matter. “Icarus, I can’t live like this. Not anymore. I don’t think you can, either.”

  He has taped the picture of himself with wings back on the inspiration board.

  “Don’t tell me that nothing has changed after seeing what we saw yesterday, knowing what we know, Icarus, because I won’t believe you.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Give me a few days to forget about it. A few days to meditate on my own potential punishment.”

  “If we do it right, he won’t catch me,” I say. “Also, he won’t kno
w you had anything to do with it.”

  “You don’t have to stay here,” Theseus says to Icarus. “If we make it through this, I’m taking Ariadne with me. You could come, too.”

  Icarus laughs. “When I make my triumphant return to Athens, it will not be on an overcrowded boat full of second-rate reality stars.” He looks at Theseus. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Also, I can’t leave my dad,” Icarus says.

  “He’s part of this, too,” I say. I’m not as angry at Daedalus as I am at my dad, but it’s pretty close. “He’s kept the whole thing going.”

  “It’s not the same,” Icarus says. “When he signed his contract, he might not have understood what he was going to have to do, but he is stuck here. So am I.”

  “Okay, okay, you won’t come with us,” I say. “Will you help us? Keep the cameras rolling, no matter what. If people are watching and the ratings are going up, my father won’t stop us. So you keep the audience engaged.”

  He nods. “Yes. That I can do.” He starts shuffling through the papers on his desk. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you get away? Do you have a phone that your dad can’t track? Do you have any identification so you can get a job or a life once you leave here?”

  I’m embarrassed. “Um, no. I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He gives Theseus a hard look. “You were going to take her to Athens, but you didn’t think of this?”

  Theseus shrugs.

  Icarus turns back to me. “Having a phone your dad can track would make for a short-lived escape,” he says, disgusted. “Thankfully, you have a friend who does think of these things.” He shows me a tiny square of plastic with embedded electronics. “Give me your phone.” He efficiently opens my phone, takes one card out, and installs the new one. “It’s paid for a year. Now you’re just Ariadne, a girl from Kydonia, nobody special.” He brings me in for a tight hug. “Except to me.”

  “Kydonia?” I say, naming a medium-sized city, farther down the coast in Crete. “Icarus, I don’t know anything about Kydonia.”

  “Neither does anyone else, sweetheart,” he says. “Better yet, nobody cares. If you start talking about Kydonia, you’ll just put the whole world to sleep.”