The Flame in the Maze

by Caitlin Sweet

  She didn’t see Asterion, as she stacked the meat. She thought she heard more whimpering, but she didn’t look for him. Flayed thigh, shin, belly, chest; she piled Kosmas, remembering her father and sister and the blossoms that had waved at her from the wall across from the slaughterhouse. She didn’t see Asterion, but he was there. You’re hungry. This is for you.

  When she was done she backed into one of the corridors. Long moments passed. She hadn’t expected him to emerge right away, and yet she felt sick when he didn’t. He had to be in one of the other passages; had to be close enough to smell the gift, at least. She twisted her sticky hands together and thought that she must wash them, and her shift, in the stream that sprang from the rock—and yet she couldn’t move until he came.

  When he did, he was crawling. His arched spine was covered in fur, and his back legs were the bull’s, and his horns screamed across the floor, but the rest of him was human. He’s a patchwork god, she thought. She pressed her hands against her knees to keep herself still, because she wanted to spring forward to him, to pass him the gift herself. But she didn’t. She watched him advance, snuffling, pausing a few times to drag an arm across his sweaty brow and down over his cheeks. When he reached the pile of meat he leaned over it. His lips twisted and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  Go on, she thought.

  He leaned back on his bull’s legs and picked up a piece of meat with his boy’s hands. He stared at it, then raised his face and looked straight toward her hiding place. He saw me! He was watching; thank the gods, he knows what I’ve done for him. He looked back at the meat and threw it with a grunt that turned into a shout. The shout went on and on, echoing up against the bands of light and stone. She covered her ears but this didn’t help—and anyway, she could see him; his mottled face and distended mouth, making sounds that weren’t words.

  When the echoes had died, he reached for another piece. This one was smaller—a forearm, she guessed, spread and halved. He brought it to his lips and bit. He jerked his head back and forth, clawing and wrenching, and some came away. His throat worked as he swallowed it. Immediately after he had, he coughed and gagged. The meat came back up and landed on the stone, along with a gush of fluid. He sobbed, his head hanging as if the weight of the horns were too great—only she knew it wasn’t that. “I don’t want to hurt you but I will—I won’t be able to help it.”

  He lifted his head and took a third piece from the pile. He nibbled this one, at first, but soon he was tearing at it. He swallowed again and again. Blood branched down his hands and arms and dripped from his chin. She heard sobs, between bites, but he kept going. He’d eaten two entire pieces when he finally paused, gasping, chest heaving.

  His eyes slid back to the shadows where she was. Yes, she thought, look: here I am—but before she could be foolish enough to speak or move into the light, a great blast of hot air rushed up from behind her and into the altar chamber. She saw it hit him; saw his head go back and his hands go out, as if he’d be able to ward it off. He changed almost immediately, and much more smoothly than she’d seen him do before. Because he’s eaten. Because he’s stronger. He roared and struck at the stone with his hooves: sparks spat and swirled. He tossed his furred head and ran—not toward her, but out between two columns and down the corridor beyond. As she moved to follow, metal shrieked and the corridor’s mouth disappeared, as it had when Kosmas had first tried to carry Zenais’s body away. When the grinding stopped, different walls stretched away into blue-lit darkness.

  Polymnia screamed his name and other things she hardly understood, as if all the words she’d been too shy to say to him had been gathering in her throat, waiting for this fear to loose them. When her voice went hoarse and dry she pressed her lips together and listened to the quiet. The waterfall flowed. A bird called, very faintly, from the sky she couldn’t see. The meat that had been Kosmas sizzled on the stone at her feet.

  Patience, Polymnia, she told herself, as she tried to slow her breathing. You’re in the Goddess’s home. She’ll lead him back to you.

  Polymnia had always known how to be patient—with frightened beasts and her angry father; with dinner guests who took so long to eat that her legs ached as she stood waiting for them to finish so she could sing. Now she watched the corridors change and tried to determine whether there were reasons for their changing—but even after days and nights and months of staring and poking at the gaps between the corridors and altar room with obsidian and fingers, she still didn’t know. Sometimes they shifted after steam burst from the earth beneath the altar chamber; other times the steam burst but the corridors stayed still. Sometimes she heard rumbling that sounded like distant rockfalls and waited for walls to go up or come down, but they didn’t; other times they did, with absolutely no warning.

  There’s no pattern, she thought. I’ll never be able to know when or why or how—only the Great Daedalus and the Great Goddess know. She closed her eyes as she thought this, and felt peace and surrender wash over her. Such calm: she imagined she understood, now, what beasts felt as they listened to her godmarked voice.

  It rained as she waited. At first, drops spattered from the mouths of the pipes, but soon six thin, steady streams of water were flowing. Polymnia smiled at the way sections of them seemed to hang motionless in the air, while the rest cascaded and struck the stone and then sprayed up again. She held out her hands and stepped forward so that the spray hit her.

  Twelve days had passed since his latest flight from her, and she was still alone. Patience, Polymnia, she told herself, the silent words a new sort of song.

  He returned on the fifteenth day, part boy again. She put her hands to her mouth so she wouldn’t make any noise, though she wanted to cry out his name—joyfully, this time. His head was the bull’s. He walked to the altar steps, slumping under the weight of his muzzle and horns. At first he didn’t look at her, and she was relieved and hopeless—but then he raised his sad, round eyes to her. His thick lips twitched, and she decided it was a sort of smile. A godsmile. The fur under his chin was dark and crusted with blood.

  He knelt clumsily and she crouched behind him. She’d cooked the Kosmas-meat on the hot stone she’d found in one of the steamiest corridors, then rubbed each slab with salt from the fish: she knew how quickly meat spoiled. She’d drizzled the top piece in olive oil. It nearly slipped out of her fingers as she tugged it free and set it on the ground by his hand (also bloodstained; she’d try to lead him under the waterfall as soon as she could). He pulled his hand back convulsively. Extended it again, as the breath rasped in his enormous nostrils.

  Go on, she almost said. She shuddered with the need to touch his scarred shoulders and back—his skin, his fur; anything, everything.

  When he lifted the meat to his mouth and ate, she wrapped her arms around herself and sang a quiet, happy song that only they would ever hear.

  The marks of her days stretched almost halfway around the altar chamber: rows of them, some straight, some angled, like patterns she’d seen painted onto clay in Athens. She counted them silently every morning when she made a new mark, at first simply because she needed to remind herself that the days were passing, and then because she forgot how many there’d been. She was often surprised, as she murmured the numbers. Ninety . . . One hundred seventy-two . . . Two hundred fifty-four . . . Sometimes, after Asterion had returned from yet more wanderings, he stood at the wall beside her and stared at the marks, his gaze dipping and rising, his lips moving, as if he were counting too. He never spoke, and neither did she.

  She dreamed of people, on the five hundred sixtieth night. Her mistress, her father, her sister, the boy who’d always frightened her with his godmarked teeth, which looked like a rat’s and could chew through anything, even metal, or the leather of her belt: she dreamed that they were all falling. Some of them flailed; others held their limbs out straight and still, like starfish on a rock. As they got closer she saw their gaping mouths. They wer
e silent. All she heard was wind, filling her ears as if she were the one falling. When her sister’s blood-smeared hands were about to graze Polymnia’s face, she woke with a gasp and dragged her own hands through her tangled hair.

  I need to be ready, she thought as she scrambled to her feet in the empty chamber. I need to know exactly how to get back to the mountain’s door, because more Athenians will fall, someday soon, and we’ll need them. He needs them now—he’s weak; he chokes down dates and fish but they’re not enough; it’s been too long since Kosmas—and why why have I found no one else?

  When she closed her eyes, she remembered how they’d first approached the altar room—she, Kosmas, Zenais, Ligeia, Asterion. The corridor had been low, with a crystal roof and walls. Kosmas’s head had brushed it, as had Asterion’s horns, which had made an awful, slow, screeching sound. Polymnia had tipped her own head back and seen the blurred underside of something moist and wide, with tapered ends: a slug, perhaps, the size of her hand, oozing a dark trail along the crystal above her. They’d emerged between the two columns that were carved with bees and butterflies—a part of her had noticed them as she was running to catch up with Kosmas, who’d been shouting about food and water.

  She went to stand between these columns and laid her fingers on the butterflies’ blue-and-red painted wings. The corridor beyond wasn’t made of crystal: it was stone, with a fissure that ran through its floor and seeped golden light. So she waited. After a time, she went back to the altar and ate a fig. She sat on the top step and stared at the corridor. Asterion’s hooves clattered, and she straightened, turning to see if he’d appear—but he didn’t, and the sound faded. She remembered with a smile how the old, frightened Polymnia had thought he’d never return, after Kosmas. Asterion left the altar chamber all the time now, but this Polymnia knew to be patient. It might take him days or weeks, but the corridors always moved in a way that led him back to her—or perhaps it was his god who showed him where to go.

  The sun faded as the sound of his hooves had; the six shafts of light wavered farther and farther up the walls, until they vanished and the tiny bits of sky beyond the pipes went dark. The sun was back again when the corridor finally changed. She felt the stone beneath her thrum as invisible gears began to turn, and she returned to the columns, which vibrated beneath her palms. As the crystal corridor eased into view she wondered again how Daedalus had done it: perhaps walls and ceilings and floors spun like great wheels, one within the other, measured precisely to meet the altar chamber’s doorways? Perhaps the corridors swung on cables that loosened and tightened? It made her head hurt to think about.

  When the gears had stopped moving, she stepped into the hallway. She saw Kosmas’s obsidian scratches immediately, because they were as clear as if he’d just made them. She imagined that the old Polymnia might have thought about what his face had looked like as he’d dragged the point along their path—thought about his intent blue gaze and his half-smile. This Polymnia didn’t need memories.

  The scratches wended along the crystal walls, then painted stone ones; they led her up the ramp Ligeia had led them down, long ago. This ramp was rough stone, not polished, and, though she scuffed her palms and knees, she had no trouble crawling up it. In the chamber above, she stood for a moment and remembered the only important thing: Asterion, a boy except for the horns, stepping timidly into their midst. Ligeia had called him a monster. Not long after, he’d cried out Polymnia’s name, and she’d followed him, though she hadn’t thought she would.

  She followed the scratches into the blue corridor she knew would end in a row of jars. It seemed to take longer to walk back to them than it had to walk away—but maybe she was just tired. Maybe her fear, right after the fall, had made everything seem blurry, outside of time. Be stronger, she commanded herself. Walk faster. You’re better than that other Polymnia was.

  At last the jars were there, in their perfect row—but the sections of ledge weren’t. She wrapped her hands around the lip of the jar Zenais had held onto and gazed up the wall. The little golden lights shone on the undersides of the ledges, very far above—except that all the pieces looked like one, from here. She let go of the jar and seized one of the cables that ran up the wall. She tugged, though only half-heartedly; Master Daedalus had devised a method of getting the pieces back up, and she wouldn’t be able to get them down on her own—and maybe not even with help. No—it would be the new Athenians who’d make them move again. All those frightened, wounded Athenians.

  Polymnia didn’t notice that she was grinding her hand along the metal cable, and she didn’t notice when she started to bleed.

  She was sleeping, when the door in the mountain opened.

  She’d wondered how she’d know, or if she’d know; after all, the altar chamber was very deep within the stone. But the shuddering ran even deeper. She sat up, pressing her palms against the floor. The chamber was bright with morning light. The water glinted as it fell. She was alone; the bull-god had been gone for days. She’d heard him bellow once or twice, and another time she’d heard the drumming of his hooves. Now she stood up on trembling legs and heard only gears and stone and, threaded through these, screaming and sobbing. So close, she thought, even though she knew it wasn’t true—that the Goddess and Daedalus had seen to it that sounds were never where they seemed to be.

  The crystal corridor shone beyond the columns: the right corridor. Thank you, Great Goddess—thank you—I will sacrifice to you very soon. . . . To the air she sang, in a voice that didn’t tremble at all, “Come back, my dearest god! Come back; I’ll just be hunting.” She slipped her tattered robe on and was away before the song’s silver tendrils had dissolved.

  Chapter Ten

  Polymnia had counted on at least three Athenians, but had dreamed of four or five. Instead, though she could still hear screams and cries all around her, there was just one girl, hunkered on the ground by one of the ledges, clutching her ankle. Her cheeks were streaked with oozing cuts. Polymnia gazed at the blood as the girl gazed at her, silent and gaping. This will do for now, Polymnia thought. There will be more. I simply have to be patient.

  “Don’t be afraid.” Polymnia’s voice was raspy; it almost hurt, leaving her throat, though she’d started speaking the numbers of the days aloud, to try to remember how speaking felt.

  The girl threw herself at Polymnia, sobbing and grasping her robe with blood-smeared hands. The stubble on the girl’s skull prickled Polymnia’s skin but she didn’t shiver. She smiled.

  “Hush, my sweet,” she sang, and the girl went still and heavy in her arms. The silver of Polymnia’s voice wrapped around them both.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, when she’d finished singing.

  The girl sniffled. “Korinna,” she murmured.

  “Well, Korinna, I’m Polymnia, and I’m going to take care of you. No need to fret.”

  It was easier than she’d thought it would be. She was back in her mistress’s house, comforting her mistress’s child, making guests sigh and sit back in their cushioned chairs. Polymnia was dressed in the finest dyed linen, her belly full, the last of the sun turning her unbound hair to fire. The wind smelled like flowers.

  Korinna said, “But I broke my ankle, I think.” Her words were slurred: pain, shock, the sudden, sweet lethargy of a godmarked melody.

  “That’s fine, little one. That’s fine. I’ll take care of you. Come, now: up and lean on me. Yes: just like that. Lean on me and we’ll walk to a place I know, where you’ll forget your pain.”

  “Thank you,” Korinna whispered.

  When they came to the lake of fire, Korinna’s eyes went very wide. Polymnia had decided, after months and years of consideration, that it would have to be here: she didn’t want to soil the altar chamber, and many of the corridors were too narrow and dim. Also, this was the heart of the Goddess. Master Daedalus’s words said so—and Polymnia would have known, in any case.

 
“What is this place?”

  Polymnia could hardly hear the girl. She remembered the first time she’d seen the fire. She remembered how she’d hardly been able to breathe because of the smothering heat; how she’d hardly been able to drag herself across the bridge to the blackened island.

  “Hush,” she said—and this time Korinna looked at her with terror, not relief. She whirled away from the passage’s end and tried to push past Polymnia, but Polymnia grasped her clean, smooth robe and pulled her in close.

  “You’ll forget your pain. I promise.” Her tongue was so clumsy, so unaccustomed to making words; she just repeated ones she’d already said, as if this would be easier.

  Korinna struggled a bit, when Polymnia began to tug her toward the bridge. By the time their feet touched the hot stone, the girl had gone limp. By the time the bridge gave way to black earth, Polymnia was carrying her. She felt as strong as a priestess bearing a calf across her shoulders; she felt the Goddess and Artemis beside her, within her, making her greater than she’d ever been.

  Korinna didn’t make a sound when Polymnia laid her on the circle of cool, white stone that sat atop the soot and obsidian flakes. The girl’s head rolled back and forth near the spiral of words.

  Pray, Athenian, for you have reached the

  Great Goddess’s heart.

  Polymnia smiled. “You are my prayer,” she said to Korinna, who moaned and squirmed weakly. White bone glinted from the torn skin of her ankle. “Just like Zenais,” Polymnia said—because now her voice was as strong as the rest of her. “Like Zenais, except that you’ll suffer no more than this.”

  Korinna seemed so weak—and yet when Polymnia raised her obsidian blade she flung herself sideways, screaming a thin, piercing scream, and Polymnia had to drop the blade to grab her. “Be still, little dove,” she sang breathlessly, “be still and go to sleep; for you there’ll be no need of morning.”