“Who’s Polymnia?” Alphaios murmured, after Chara had shouted herself hoarse and the silver had faded back to silence. They were all blinking as if they’d just woken up.
Chara’s throat had already been dry and sore; now she could hardly speak at all. “She was in the first group of Athenians. Ligeia’s group. I spoke to her once, just before she was pushed inside. I was sure she’d die quickly.”
“What a beautiful godmark,” Phoibe said, almost dreamily.
“If she’s survived this long,” Alphaios said, “she knows her way around. Just like Ligeia. We have to find her.”
Melaina scowled. “Such keen insight you possess, Alphaios.”
“There is no way of knowing where the song was coming from,” said Theseus. “Its strands appeared from the rock on all sides of this cavern, from low to high. All we can do is continue on and hope she sings again.”
“And what of poor, weak Phoibe?” Melaina sneered.
Phoibe lifted her head and thrust her thin shoulders back. “I’m ready,” she said, as Theseus took her hand.
Staircase to bridge to corridor; one corridor branching to two, to three; dead ends and turnings upon turnings—and still there was no song.
They found a trickle of water on a wall carved with octopus and flying fish, and lit by a blue light that streamed down through the crystal ceiling. They’d been taking turns following the same line that had led them from the stalactite cavern—and it was Chara who cried, in her low, ragged voice, “Water!”, when her fingers passed through it, then fumbled back again. They pressed their lips and tongues to the wall, one after the other. Melaina was last; she drew back and gasped, “There’s none left!”—and, somehow, there wasn’t.
They were thirstier than ever, after that. Chara was so hungry that she felt only an empty sort of pain in her middle. She remembered how Ariadne had stopped her from eating sweets at feasts. “You mustn’t get fat,” the princess had said, holding a tray just out of Chara’s reach. “I wouldn’t be able to abide a fat slave.” Chara remembered the figs and honey cakes on the trays, and the way the sunlight had turned Ariadne’s hair to dark, burnished wood, and her skin to bronze. She remembered crouching under a table with Asterion, when everyone had gone except the other slaves, who laughed and gossiped and took no notice of them. Chara had whispered, “Honeyed cakes are in my claws,” and Asterion had hissed back, brokenly, because he was laughing, “And now I’ll put them in your jaws.” He’d crushed the honey cakes against her open mouth and she’d choked, laughing too, heedless of the way the last of the sunlight had glinted from his horns. Heedless until now, when all she could do was remember.
The heat was increasing—or maybe it just felt that way because there wasn’t any more water. They no longer slept soundly; they merely fell, when they couldn’t walk any further, and curled up while the others straggled back to lie down near them. Phoibe clung to Theseus, sitting, lying or standing. Silver light flared from her skin whenever she was afraid, which was often. Melaina mocked her, but Chara saw her own eyes dart nervously whenever a strange sound came from the passageways and chambers that pressed down around them.
“Polymnia!” Theseus shouted once, his head thrown back, his fists clenched. “Polymnia! Ligeia!” The echoes of his voice lapped and died against the stone.
Still there was no song.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t Phoibe who collapsed first. They were trudging along another corridor, this one twisting and narrow. Chara heard the dragging of Melaina’s injured foot behind her and then, suddenly, she didn’t. She turned and peered into the gloom, tinged green by glowing shells set into spiral patterns, and saw Melaina fall.
“Help!” Chara cried over her shoulder as she ran for the other girl. Chara lifted her off the ground and into her lap. Melaina’s head lolled and her limbs were limp; she was as heavy as a block of marble. Wonderful, Chara thought as the others straggled up behind her, we’re all so tired that we’ll go down in a big, heavy pile, and I’ll be on the bottom, and Asterion will never find me, even if he passes by.
“Hold her head up,” Alphaios said, and Phoibe sobbed, and Theseus’s mind-voice thrummed, ::You are good, to have returned for her::—and as Chara raised her head to command them all to be quiet, she saw a shadow shiver against the green-lit darkness.
“Look,” she said. Even though it was a whisper, Alphaios did, and Theseus, and Phoibe, who backed up against the wall and raised her hands and poured silver godlight into the corridor.
A woman was standing a few paces away from them. “Greetings, Athenians,” the woman said. “I am Polymnia. Do not be afraid.”
“Polymnia?” Chara said—though it couldn’t be: she hadn’t been a woman, and she hadn’t held herself this tall and straight. But that was years ago, Chara thought. So many years ago; just imagine what he’ll look like, now.
Polymnia angled her head slowly, until her eyes were on Chara’s. Her hair fell in glimmering red waves to her waist—far longer than it had been when she’d arrived on Crete, and far less tangled. Her hipbones jutted through her robe, which, somehow, was nearly white, and belted with a piece of torn cloth.
“Have we met?” Her voice was rough and rich. Chara tried to remember how it had sounded years ago, saying, “. . . Great Goddess’s breakfast”—but all she truly remembered was her tears, and her godmarked singing.
“Yes!” Chara said, the word cracking. “We . . . the morning you were sent in here. And Asterion with you.” A long, silent moment passed. “Is he here too?”
Her belly and chest ached. Her ears roared with the rushing of her own blood—and yet she heard Polymnia when she said, “Yes. Oh, yes. The bull-god is here.”
Theseus took a step forward and Melaina stirred in Chara’s lap, but Chara didn’t look at either of them. “And you know exactly where? You understand this place? You can take me . . . take us to him?” She was panting as if she’d been running or diving; her body was slick with fresh sweat.
Polymnia smiled. “Of course.”
“Excellent,” murmured Melaina. She tried to lift her head but it fell back against Chara’s thigh. “Then you’ll take us to him . . . Prince Theseus will kill him, as planned . . . and we’ll figure out a way to get out of here. Yes,” she went on thickly, waving a hand at Theseus, “you’re right; shouldn’t have cut that string.”
Polymnia’s smile had vanished. She shifted her gaze to Theseus. “Kill him?” she repeated, very softly.
“Yes,” he said. As Chara drew breath to speak, his mind-voice lanced through her. ::I told you I would think on this. I am still thinking.::
Polymnia was still and silent for a moment. She looks like she’s listening to something, Chara thought, and a cold prickle of dread made her feel abruptly, painfully alert.
“You will need food, then,” Polymnia said at last, smiling again. “And water. I will take you to these things.”
Melaina heaved herself out of Chara’s lap and onto the ground. She twisted and thrashed, then lay on her back, gasping with laughter and tears.
“Great Theseus,” she finally said, so weakly that they all had to lean forward to hear, “you’ll have to carry me.”
Polymnia went first, of course, and Alphaios after her. When the corridor widened, Chara moved up to walk beside him, and saw that his eyes were huge and dark, fixed on the sway of Polymnia’s thin hips. “Alphaios,” she muttered, “remember: we know nothing of her.”
He swallowed. “I know,” he muttered back, and shrugged.
Polymnia walked swiftly around corners and along passageways that branched and branched once more. In a chamber ringed with obsidian columns and only a single doorway, she pressed or pulled something set in one of the columns, and a ramp ground down at their feet. She led them up one ladder and down another. When they tired and straggled (even Alphaios, with his huge, dark, admiring eyes), she called, “Nearly the
re!” in a voice so cheerful and certain that Chara felt her steps quickening. When their way was blocked by a wall, Polymnia said, “This will move soon; the mountain tells me so”—and some bleary, blurred time later, gears ground and stone shifted and the wall did move.
There was sunlight in the vast, round chamber beyond. Chara counted six shafts of it wavering far, far up the chamber’s walls, as Alphaios and Theseus and Phoibe pushed past her. Sunlight. Water. Figs and olives and oatcakes spilled onto the steps of an altar carved with snakes.
Polymnia put a hand on her shoulder and Chara felt herself shake it away. “I’m sorry,” she said, her tongue sluggish in her mouth. “I don’t know why I did that.”
Polymnia smiled. “Come,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Chara didn’t want to sleep. No, she told herself, as she felt her clean, wet body relax against a column. No, no, no: take care; be alert. She tried to sit up taller and blink the heaviness away from her eyelids so that she could keep everyone in her sight: Melaina, spread out on her back between two of the jars; Theseus, propped against a wall with Phoibe’s head in his lap; Alphaios, sprawled so close to the waterfall that a puddle was forming beneath his cheek; and Polymnia, standing with her arms crossed, gazing at each of them in turn, slowly, her own eyes narrowed. No, Chara thought, one more time—but only faintly, because her hunger and thirst were gone, and so was she.
When she woke, the sunlight was gone too. It seemed to take a very long time for her eyes and limbs to work—but her ears worked right away. She heard the water. Deep breathing and ragged breathing. A murmur of voices.
“Believe me: there are wonderful places here.” Polymnia’s words wove and wobbled before they took shape in Chara’s head.
“Everything here frightens me.” Phoibe’s words trembled, but in a way Chara recognized. “I don’t know how you’ve endured it, all this time.”
Chara’s vision was sharpening: she saw the dark shapes of Alphaios and Melaina and Theseus, exactly where they’d been before. Phoibe and Polymnia were side-by-side on the lowest of the steps that led to the altar. Phoibe was hunched; Polymnia was sitting up very tall.
“You’ll learn,” Polymnia said. “And you’ll learn quickly; I can tell you’re clever.”
“Oh, no; I won’t have to learn! Prince Theseus is going to kill the beast: that’s why he came with us! He’ll lead us out—with your help, I’m sure.”
The water sounded very loud, in the silence that fell. Chara tried to swallow and realized that she was achingly thirsty again, but she didn’t move.
“Well,” Polymnia said after a time, “before any of that happens you’ll have to rest more, eat more. Regain your strength and . . . fill out your skin. You’re all far too thin.” She put her arm around Phoibe’s shoulders, and Chara pushed herself onto her hands and knees and gave a loud, false yawn.
“Phoibe!” she said as she got to her feet. “Come here; we should wash our robes before the others wake up”—except that they were awake now, as she’d intended. They grumbled and stirred, stretching their arms up toward the dappled light of fireflies and invisible stars.
“So, Polymnia,” Theseus said a bit later, as he chewed on a strip of salt fish. “Tell me about the beast: its habits, say, and how I will find it. For I feel nearly strong enough to face it, now.”
Polymnia’s tongue glistened between her parted lips. Alphaios’s own mouth fell open as he stared at her. Chara jabbed him in the side and he grunted.
“He is . . .” Polymnia began, and stopped. “He is never only a man. His head is always the bull’s, and his hands and feet are almost always hooves. He is strong: the muscles bunch across his shoulders and down his back, whether he is man or bull.” She rose from the step and walked slowly around the altar.
“And how will I find it?” Theseus asked. His hand was halfway to his mouth, as if he’d forgotten he was about to take another bite of fish.
Polymnia smiled at no one. “He has his own ways, and cannot be found. One day I hear the rumble of his hooves and his godmarked call, and I hide, and watch him as he feeds, or bends his great head to drink.” Her faraway gaze lighted on Chara, who held it, and watched it focus. Polymnia frowned and looked quickly away.
Theseus put the fish down. “And have you seen it kill Athenians, before it feeds on them? Because your companion Ligeia had not.”
“Ligeia,” Polymnia spat, “has been no companion of mine—nor of yours, I see, because where is she now?” She turned her back on them, shaking her hands at her sides as if they were wet. Melaina rolled her eyes, and for the first time, Chara understood why.
“I have,” Polymnia finally said, still facing away from them. “I have seen him kill.”
“You haven’t.” Chara spoke quietly, despite a buzzing that had begun in her ears, and Theseus’s mind-voice, which was pulsing in her, without words. “You’re lying, and Ligeia was just wrong—neither of you have seen him kill because he hasn’t killed. No, my Lord,” she went on, holding a hand up as Theseus said her name, inside and out, “now I will tell you of him. Of him—because he is he, not it.”
As she drew a shaking breath, Theseus said again, “Chara.”
“No! Listen! You said you’d consider my words about him, and yet I’ve spoken hardly any. So let me tell you about Asterion—the boy. The boy who was always being burned for the glory of his father, Lord Poseidon, and all his priestesses. The boy who made up rhymes about sea creatures and laughed when I made up my own, until he had to scratch ‘Stop!’ into the dirt. The boy whose sister Ariadne set him on fire when he wasn’t much more than two years old, and never stopped hurting him after that—never until now, because she’s convinced you to do it for her.”
Melaina’s gaze was as wide as Alphaios’s. Polymnia was looking over her shoulder, one of her eyes gleaming through the curtain of her hair. Phoibe was rocking a little, on her step. Theseus’s expression hadn’t changed: his broad brow was as smooth as ever, his lips as firmly set. Chara saw each of them very clearly because silver-grey light was seeping down above them. It was dawn, in the world outside the mountain.
“If he was so hurt already,” Theseus said, “and had suffered so much for the sake of gods and mortals, this place may well have made him mad.”
“Ariadne’s the mad one. Unmarked Ariadne, whose beauty never really helped her. Until she sent you that wonderful little likeness of her that Karpos made—the one that smiled and blinked. I wrapped it up in cloth to send it to you, you know. And that was enough to make you come here—that, and your need to rescue her, because that’s what you do, isn’t it? You rescue beautiful young girls.”
“Godsbled bastard,” Melaina said, as Theseus’s smooth brow furrowed. “Gods. Bled. Bastard.”
Chara’s head was spinning as it had when she’d clung to Icarus’s waist and he’d swung them both back and forth above the waterfall near Knossos. Exhilaration and fear, and an odd little sadness, because she knew these other feelings would have to end. “Does Ariadne realize you’ll likely leave her on the first island we get to, if we ever get off this one? Not that we’ll even make it out of this mountain, unless you let me find him and speak to him. I have to do this, Prince Theseus. Please.”
The water sang behind them. The wind sang, far above—and Chara remembered the black pipes that jutted from the mountain’s peak, and thought, Oh, Icarus: you tried; now so am I.
Theseus said, ::Daughter of Pherenike—:: and then he stopped, because a roar shook the stone beneath their feet.
Chara wanted to sink down on the step next to Phoibe, who’d already started to cry, but she didn’t: she stayed standing, listening to Asterion’s voice. It was deeper than it had been, the day his father had thrust him into the mountain with the first group of Athenians. It was much, much louder—though maybe that was partly because of the rock walls. She knew it didn’t mat
ter that she recognized it, or that he’d been a boy named Asterion: this was the voice of the beast Theseus had come to kill.
“Can you find it?” Theseus said breathlessly to Polymnia, when the roar and all its echoes had faded. “Can you make it come to us?”
Her red hair fell over her face as she shook her head. “I have told you, Lord: I cannot compel him. He will come if he wishes to—and now I think he does not.”
Do you really know so much about him? All of a sudden, bits of the dates and fish Chara had eaten so eagerly surged up and nearly into her mouth. She pressed her hand to her lips and swallowed desperately, over and over, until her belly stopped its clenching.
“Very well,” said Theseus. “We will just have to wait for it.”
They sat without speaking, as the sun changed its angle and colour. They all ate again, except for Chara. Polymnia sang under her breath—just a tune, which didn’t tug at Chara the same way her song had, when it had flowed through the rock to find them. Phoibe nestled in against Theseus’s side and dozed, her dark-stubbled head lolling. Alphaios used his godmark to turn the cast-off skin of a many-legged insect into a tiny yellow ball, which he bounced against each of the columns until Melaina snapped at him to stop.
It seemed as if the sunlight had barely started to warm the chamber when darkness took its place. Again Chara tried not to sleep, when her own head started to bob; again she failed. She woke this time to a yell, and more silver-grey dawn light.
“Where is she?” Theseus shouted, as Chara tried to rise. “Where is Phoibe?”
After a frozen silence, Polymnia said, “She must have wandered away. She seemed fearful, even here.”
“She’s always fearful,” Melaina said. She plucked at Theseus’s arm as he strode by; he shook her away without looking at her and kept striding. He stopped only to stare down into the corridors as if Phoibe might simply have been asleep in one of them, waiting to be seen.
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