The Flame in the Maze

by Caitlin Sweet

  “Because you knew . . . we’d both die in here.”

  She kept shaking her head, until her vision swam with crystal and light. “I don’t believe that.”

  “And even if we did get out, and . . . escape . . . where would we go? How . . . would we live?”

  “I don’t know.” She could barely speak over the lump that had risen into her throat. We, she thought. She wound her fingers together and squeezed, tight.

  “You used to bring me things,” he said, some time later. “After a rite. After I’d changed back.”

  “I did. So here—look: it’s a fig!”

  He made a snuffling noise that was almost a laugh and took it from her. He turned it over and over in his palm. “I can’t eat yet,” he said. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

  They didn’t speak again that day. At night, as they lay against opposite walls, he said, “Prince Theseus was going to kill me.”

  She propped her cheek on her hand. “He was.”

  “He shouted . . . into my head. Into it. As he was . . . about to strike me with his sword. He called me . . . monster.”

  “Ariadne told him that’s what you were. She lured him here to kill you, then take her back to Athens with her.”

  He snorted. “Ariadne, Queen of Athens.”

  “Yes. But that won’t happen, now. He’s seen what you really are.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked.

  A man, she wanted to say, but couldn’t.

  “I wrote to you,” she said, on another, later day.

  He turned to her. He was lying down; she was sitting beside him, close, not touching. “Really?” he said.

  “While your sister was sleeping. I wrote and wrote—on paper, not clay. I hid it in that place we found—that loose spot behind the olive oil jars.”

  He squinted at her, as if the light were too bright. His cheeks were hollow and fuzzed with golden hair. He was all sharp edges and empty space; all scars upon scars upon flesh thin as Ariadne’s Egyptian paper. “Why?”

  “Because I missed you so much. And it helped to think that I’d read them to you, someday—that I’d read to you about how I’d planned to save you. Then I was afraid someone would find them and stop me.”

  “What did you do?” One of his hands came out and found her knee. She didn’t move.

  “I burned all of it. Took a lamp out to the waterfall—and then I worried that Ariadne would be waiting for me when I got back, just like she was that time we came back from there with Icarus and Glau.”

  “And was she?”

  “No. It was the middle of the night, and you remember how she used to sleep.”

  “Tell me what they said? If you remember.”

  “I remember.” She paused, then told him. Ariadne begging Karpos to marry her. Karpos and Deucalion laughing, their bare shoulders touching. Glaucus, with his painted stick that would never be a sword. Minos burning up the countryside while his subjects gossiped and cowered, or craned to watch.

  Asterion’s eyes closed, as she spoke—but when she stopped his hand pressed her knee, and he said, “What about my mother? And my sister Phaidra?”

  “The Queen continues as ever: beautiful and hard. Though she is always gentle with Phaidra. Phaidra, who is very, very beautiful, herself. As bright as Ariadne is dark. And very strong, though no one would’ve believed it of her, when she was the child you remember.”

  “I knew she was strong,” he said. “I watched her rescue a toad from a snake, once. She was magnificent.”

  You’re speaking normally, she thought, but didn’t dare say. You’re coming back.

  He sat up and opened his eyes. “So have you eaten all the figs?” he said, and smiled, just a little.

  “Theseus was right.” The same night; perhaps the next. “Ariadne, too. I am a monster.”

  She sat up so that her knees were touching his. The blue glow was beating out the rhythm of her blood, far above them in the dark. “We’re all monsters.”

  “You don’t know. You can’t understand.” He sounded tired, not angry.

  “You’re also a man.” She could say this now, to the Asterion who was back with her.

  “I don’t remember becoming one. I was a boy, the last time I was with you.”

  “I don’t care what you are.” A sort-of lie, but her voice didn’t betray her. “You could be part lobster, for all I care. Though,” she added, “that would make things—”

  “Pinchy,” he said. They laughed. She leaned toward him and put her forehead against his. He laid his hands on her head and dragged his fingers back and forth over the stubble there. She put her own hands over his and pressed them down, hard.

  “At least you won’t get tangled in my curls.”

  “I always loved your curls,” he said, and slid his hands down to her cheeks and pulled her in and kissed her.

  At first her head was full of words that kept her from feeling much: He’ll end this; he’ll walk away again. But he didn’t. She was the one who pulled back—but just to see him, in the dimness. To trace his smile as she’d traced the marks of their names.

  He lay down and she slid on top of him, holding him with her arms and legs; holding him as he slid inside her with a groan. He dug his fingers into her hips and moved her up and down against his, and she threw back her head and saw the crystal and the air that looked like sky. He pulled her back to him, and she eased her fingers and tongue along all the scars she could feel. When he shuddered and went still, she lay listening to the slowing of his heart.

  She was nearly asleep, still sprawled on him, when he said, “Have you done that before?”

  “Once,” she murmured, “with a bull dancer who imagined himself quite wonderful.”

  “And was he?”

  “Once, I said. That’s all.”

  “I did it once too,” he said slowly. “Or almost, anyway.”

  She was fully, abruptly awake. She eased herself off him and rolled over, and he fitted himself into the curve of her back and legs. “Polymnia?” she said. Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth.

  “Yes. But I couldn’t . . . I ran from her. I think I was almost always the bull, after that. Chara,” he went on, and one of his horns poked at her neck as he nuzzled her, “I feel as if my skin needs yours, now, so it can stay like this.”

  She swallowed. Forget Polymnia. He’s here; he’s with you. “You don’t want to change again at all?”

  After a long silence, he said, “I don’t think so. I don’t know. And it’s not as if I have a choice, anyway. As long as there’s heat, it’ll happen.”

  She squeezed his arms, which were crossed over her breasts. “Icarus was jealous of you. We had a fight, at the top of the mountain, when I was sure there’d be a way in. He said he envied you, in here.”

  Asterion’s breath was warm against her stubbly skull. “And I’m sure he hated himself for it.”

  “He did.”

  “Poor Icarus. Poor all of us.”

  His arms loosened and his breathing grew deep and slow. The sweat between their bodies dried.

  ::Chara?:: she heard, just as she, too, was falling asleep. ::Where are you? It’s been two weeks; come back to us.::

  She woke to the whine and snap of cracking crystal. Asterion was already on his feet.

  “What is it?” she said groggily, rubbing a hand across her face as she sat up.

  “Maybe the start of an earthquake. There’ve been a few, while I’ve been in here, but small ones. This feels different.”

  She stood up and reached for her robe, long-forgotten on the moss. “We should get back to the others,” she said. Just then, Theseus’s mind-voice filled her, much louder than the night before. ::Chara! The Great Goddess may be opening a way for us. I have summoned the ship; it will be waiting.::

  The ground lifted and fell
beneath them and they sprawled into each other, fumbling to stay upright. Behind them, metal shrieked. “The bridge!” Asterion cried, and they stumbled toward it through shards of falling crystal.

  The bridge had pulled farther away from the ledge; its slenderest section was listing down toward the abyss, an arm’s length away.

  “We’ll have to jump,” he said. “Now, before it moves any more.”

  She crouched and rocked, rubbing her fingers into her sweaty palms. “Just like the waterfall,” she said. “Right?”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Just like that,” he said, and she jumped before she could think, and falter.

  She’d thrown herself down—too far down, because the filigree was running out, just beyond her reaching hands. She gave a cry and strained, her bare feet running in mid-air, and the rock behind and ahead of her grumbled and shifted in puffs of tiny pebbles, and then her hands found metal, and clung. She swayed at the end of the lowest, thinnest part of the bridge, the weight of her body pulling it down still more. Hot wind belched from the chasm; when she glanced down, the fire seemed closer than it had before, as if it, too, were reaching.

  “Climb, Chara!” Asterion sounded very far away. She couldn’t turn to look at him, because she had to concentrate on her hands. Move, she told one of them—and it did, in a quick, lurching dart. The other ended up above it; the first above that. She climbed until she reached the wider portion of the bridge, which was still in its original position. She hauled herself onto its relatively flat expanse and lay on her stomach, panting.

  “Don’t stop!” Asterion called. She got to her hands and knees and crawled, no longer looking at the glow of the fire or the crumbling stone. All she saw was the ledge where the bridge ended. It seemed to get no closer, and she whimpered in frustration—but at last her hands were on solid ground and her arms collapsed and she lay for a moment with her face in the dirt.

  She sat up when Asterion shouted, and turned just in time to see him hurl himself from the opposite ledge. He landed on the drooping section of bridge with a clang. As he did, the earth gave another shudder, and the metal shrieked and twisted, and more hot air came gusting up from the chasm. Even she felt it, up on her ledge, but Asterion took the full force of it. She watched him writhe against the bridge. He lifted his face to hers, and she saw the terror on it. He yelled again, and the yell became a roar, and his lengthening horns flared silver-bronze.

  One of his hands slipped as its fingers began to fuse.

  “No!” she cried, leaning out into the space beside the bridge, digging her own fingers into the ledge. “Asterion: keep climbing! You’re so close—don’t stop . . . .” His head was pressed against the bridge; she couldn’t see his face any more. “Asterion: think of the falls. You told me to—do it yourself, now. The water, so cool on your skin. Your skin, Asterion. The water. The air—the cool wind that throws spray against your cheeks—you have goosebumps—”

  His fingers weren’t yet hoof. He lifted his head; she still saw terror, but his eyes, seeking hers, were steady when they found her. She called out more words she hardly heard, though she knew that “cool” and “chilly” and “water” repeated, repeated—until he pulled himself up. The scars on his shoulders and back darkened and contorted as he moved. He glowed with sweat, and fresh blood from his shoulder, and his hands lost their grip a few more times before he dragged himself onto the broader section of bridge. He stood up, as she hadn’t, and ran.

  When he reached her, he kissed her brow and lips and neck. Between each kiss was a word: “Thank . . . you . . . Freckles. . . .” She gasped, this time with laughter.

  “Lead us back, my Prince,” she said, and felt him pull away.

  “Not ‘my Prince,’” he said, in a cold voice that reminded her of his mother, Queen Pasiphae’s. “Not that, or ‘my Lord’ or ‘Bull-god.’ None of that. Ever.”

  She put her hands on his cheeks, which were grimed with rust from the bridge, and ash blown up from the abyss. “Very well, Asterion,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  He shivered and blinked, as if he’d been far away, and smiled at her, and looked eight years old, not eighteen.

  Thunder rolled beneath their feet. The bridge screeched and warped and tore free of the rock. Chara watched it fall toward the fire that was not so distant any more, and then she turned back to Asterion, and they ran together.

  The tunnels were like living things around them: roiling with rock or plaster dust, tipping, bending. A row of columns cracked and crashed behind them; an ocean frieze exploded in painted fragments that tore at Chara’s skin; a doorway collapsed just as they threw themselves beneath it. Her breath tore at her too, in hot, stinging jabs, and her muscles—almost unused, in the crystal chamber—felt white with pain. But she kept up with Asterion, who darted and leapt as if he’d always been only a man. He finally paused when they reached the entrance to the altar chamber. When she came to stand beside him she could see the chamber, between the pillars: its jars, some toppled; the steps and waterfall and the shadows of people who were rising, stumbling, to meet them.

  “Thank the gods,” Asterion said, between heaving breaths, “it’s the right door.”

  She took his hand, and they passed through it.

  The earthquake didn’t seem to end. Even when the wo-rst of the shaking and heaving had passed—churning up the stones of the floor, sending the obsidian on the walls falling like needle-sharp rain—new gouts of steam and flame still leapt out from the corridors that remained, and from fissures in the ground. The heat was almost unbearable. Asterion’s feet and one of his hands were hooves, and his horns were long, and the golden fuzz on his cheeks turned brown and thick. He was still mostly Asterion, because the trickle of water remained (though it was warm, now, even before it hit the fractured stone), and because Chara gazed at him, and made him gaze at her, and whispered old and new rhymes against his human lips.

  “Oh, please,” Melaina snapped, days after their return. “It’s bad enough that the Goddess is trying to consume us—must we put up with your love, as we prepare to die?”

  “We will not die,” Theseus said, before Chara could reply. He was standing with one leg on a block of stone. Polymnia was propped against the same stone, sideways, bound and silent. The only sound Chara had heard her utter was a broken, trailing cry, when she and Asterion had come back. He hadn’t even glanced at Polymnia, then or since—or not that Chara had seen, anyway.

  “Remember: I have called for the ship,” Theseus went on. “The mountain could yet shift enough for some of us, at least, to escape it; if the gods are good, we will reach the sea and the ship will be waiting to return us to Athens.” As he spoke, a section of the wall above him disintegrated in a streaming shower of rock; he ducked and ran a few steps, over the buckling ground. Polymnia hardly flinched as the rocks struck her.

  “Escape,” Melaina scoffed, shaking her head. “Oh, my Prince: the mountain will keep shifting, yes, and we’ll all be crushed. This is where the gods will have us end—not Athens.”

  “No,” Alphaios said, “he might be right: if the ground keeps moving like this, and if we can stack more rocks on top of each other, we might be able to—”

  Flame spewed from one of the corridors, and Alphaios had to leap out of its way.

  “Yes,” Melaina said loudly, over a hiss of steam, “we obviously have so much time to build this rock ladder of yours.”

  “Is it wrong to hope?” he demanded. Melaina made some retort, but Chara didn’t hear it; she was looking up at a strange, flickering shadow. One of ours, she thought, all twisted and stretched by the firelight—but as soon as she thought this, she knew it wasn’t.

  “Quiet, all of you; look!” she cried, and pointed. All of them looked, except Polymnia.

  “It’s from outside!” Alphaios said, as the shadow grew on the crumbling stone at the top of the chamber. “It’s coming in! Down! What
. . . ?”

  Chara clutched Asterion’s slippery hand with her own and waited.

  Book

  Four

  ICARUS

  First Athenian Sacrifice

  Chapter Eighteen

  Icarus had never known such darkness. He’d always been able to find the sky, when he’d been too long indoors and his flesh prickled with longing and feathers. And the sky had never been this dark: there were always stars and sometimes moon, sometimes lightning, and drifts of silver cloud that taunted him because he couldn’t reach them.

  When he and his parents had been seized during the attack on the ship that was supposed to bear them away from Crete, they’d been thrown into the hold of a different ship. It had been dark there, but some sunlight had crept between the timbers; Icarus had been able to see his father’s teeth, bared in the smile he wore whenever he was puzzled, and his mother’s slender fingers, wrapped around his own downy arm.

  “If they’re pirates,” she murmured, “they’ll soon find out that none of us have anything to take.”

  “Not pirates,” Daedalus murmured back. “Not sure what, but not pirates.”

  The sunlight was gone by the time the ship docked. Shadowy figures blindfolded them and bound their wrists. “Icarus?” Naucrate called as someone tugged her away from him. “Don’t be afraid . . .” He wanted to call back, “Mother, I’m not a child—I’m not afraid!”—except that he was. His legs shook so badly, when he was finally pushed out onto solid ground, that he thought he might fall. His calfskin boots had come unlaced, and they slipped off his feet as he shuffled to stay upright.

  What do they want with us? I don’t even have my boots, any more—though Mother might have brought a few of her alabaster jars?

  Even with the blindfold, he could see things: tiny orange blurs that must have been lamp- or torchlight; darker smudges that might have been people, shifting in and out of what passed for his vision. He stumbled where he was driven, by hands and harder things, maybe the wooden ends of spears. The first place was part slippery sand, part knobbly stones—probably a beach. The next was a staircase up a cliff; he knew this because, when he listed, someone growled, “Straighten up, man, or you’ll end up in the sea,” and because he could hear this sea, pounding and hissing to his left, spattering him with spray. Just as his lungs and legs started to burn, the steps turned into a path that was flat and hard-packed. “No stopping,” the same voice growled, as whoever owned it thrust at him again, sharply, between his shoulder blades. Pirates would have killed us as soon as they found out we had nothing to steal, Icarus thought, his chest tightening even further.