“Ari. Ari, please. Your father listens to you. Don’t let him do this.”
She crouched beside him and reached for him slowly with her pale, steady hands. They found the ball of string where it always had been: wrapped up under his belt. He flinched when she put her fingers on the cloth, and again when she drew the hook out of the end of the ball and pulled it free. She sat back on her heels and tossed it up and down as if it were a child’s plaything.
“Ari—no—leave me something.” He felt himself shrink with every weak and pleading word.
She laughed. “Oh, Icarus: why would we leave you with this, when it might help you escape this cave? No—you have no more need of it. Not ever.”
As she rose, Minos said, “You will find that the walls, deeper in, run with fresh water. Do not imagine you will be able to follow it out; it comes from rock and returns to rock. One of my men will come, once a month, with food and wine. Take care not to eat and drink too much.”
Icarus looked away from Ariadne at last. “My King,” he said, “why not kill us and be done with it?”
Minos walked toward the exit. His feet left black impressions in the dirt. “I may yet have need of you,” he said over his shoulder. “And also, gods enjoy the suffering of mortals. That is simply the way of things. Daughter: cut him free.”
Minos tossed a knife to the ground next to her. She picked it up and set it to the rope around Icarus’s ankles. They took a while to part, but the ones around his wrists were quicker. He shifted and writhed, watching her stand and tuck the knife into the hem of her open bodice. She threaded the ball’s hook next to it. Minos walked back toward the passageway, and she followed him.
Daedalus made a sharp, agonized sound, and Icarus yelled. He scrabbled for the tunnel on hands and feet that were nerveless—but then the blood rushed back into them, and the pain of this made him falter. He brushed the sole of her foot; she kicked out and crawled faster, whimpering. Minos was leaning in from the outside; he pulled her free and she cried out, and he slammed the rusted metal door home with a clang that echoed over the sound of Icarus’s scream.
Chapter Nineteen
Daedalus’s keening sounded like wind trapped in stone. Because that’s what it is, Icarus thought as he stroked his father’s head and gritted his teeth. It had been days, surely. Days and days sunk within this stone place, listening to broken bones and heart and voice.
His father’s hair had grown, at least a little. Maybe it had been weeks, then. Everything stank enough for it to have been weeks. Icarus had tried to wash both of them, after he’d groped to the passageway and found the water Minos had spoken of (though it was not truly a passageway: more of a cleft, so narrow that he had to squeeze his way in). Thankfully, he’d found the water almost immediately, trickling down the wall. He’d licked some off the rock; it was cool and fresh. He’d taken off his loincloth and soaked it; he’d groped his way back to his father and pressed it against one of his cheeks.
“Drink,” Icarus said. “Drink, and then I’ll get more and wash you, then myself.”
Daedalus sucked at the wet, filthy cloth for a moment, then gagged and moaned and turned his face away.
“Father.” Icarus’s voice was quiet and hard and helpless. “I know it must hurt—your . . . where your tongue was. But you have to drink. You have to.”
Daedalus shifted away from him and lay down in the darkness. When Icarus untied his father’s loincloth, Daedalus didn’t move. Icarus soaked it in the tiny, silent fall of water and fumbled his way back to his father with it. Daedalus didn’t move when Icarus pressed the cloth gently against his forehead and nose and chin, and on his curled-in shoulders.
Icarus leaned down close to his father’s damp, stinking skin. “Don’t leave me here alone,” he whispered. One of Daedalus’s shoulders lifted and fell—and that was all, for a time that might have been days.
Thirst was constant; hunger was slow. At first, when it finally twisted in Icarus’s belly, he didn’t recognize it. The moment he did, he imagined fresh bread and fresh fish, plump dates and olives drizzled in their own oil, and he writhed on the ground, clutching at the pain and longing at his centre. Icarus felt his father’s hand on his back and thrust it away.
Thirst and hunger and darkness. The rise and fall of Daedalus’s keening, or silence—until Icarus woke from another dark, muddled sleep to the door screeching open.
“Father!” he said, reaching for him, wondering whether he were dreaming. “A month—it must have been a month.”
Theron’s lamplight arrived before he did. This time it wasn’t just lamplight, though, not just the orange-gold: there was blue, too, pulsing to a deeper gold and back. At first Icarus had to close his eyes and cover them—but even then the light seeped in like a glorious mist.
“Thank the gods,” Icarus rasped, when Theron was standing above him. He was holding onto the long rope handle of one of the crab shell lamps from Daedalus’s Amnisos workroom. Daedalus’s keening had stopped. He gazed at his own creation, which threw lurid, moving shadows on his filthy face.
Theron stared at them, his eyes cold and almost unblinking in his scarred face. “Do not think the king was mercifully minded, when he ordered me to bring this to you from Master Karpos’s workroom,” he said. “No—it is just that he wishes you to be able to see the sad wreckage of your lives from this moment on, all the time. And he wishes you to eat, now, so that you will continue to live these sad, wrecked lives.”
Theron set the crab shell lamp on the flat rock where Minos had shattered Daedalus’s hands. The guard smiled and held up a bag. Linen, Icarus thought. So clean. The cloth bulged, and as it swayed he smelled things—so many impossibly wonderful things: bread, dates, fish, both fresh and salted.
Icarus stood up slowly. The space around him felt vast and strange; he was wobbly, erupting with tiny, soft, seeking feathers. “We might not eat,” he said. His own voice sounded very far away. “We might deprive the king of the pleasure of our continued torture.”
Theron’s laughter bounced from walls and invisible ceiling for far too long. When he was finally finished, he let the bag fall. It thumped against the dirt.
“Oh—and there’s one more thing,” he said. He drew a spade from his belt and tossed it down next to the bag. “You’ll want to dig a hole. For your shit. You see? The king is a thoughtful man.”
Icarus took a step toward him and raised his hands. I’ll strangle him; I’ll thrust my knee against his throat and press him into the dirt, never mind that I’m as weak as a newborn. Theron drew a knife from his belt. He spun it lazily; its silver reflection swam across his skin and the stone behind him. He laughed again, quietly, and Icarus crumpled. He sat on the dirt and swayed, because his bones so badly wanted him to run and fly.
“Until next month,” Theron said, and left the chamber.
After the door had clanged shut, Icarus didn’t move—not his legs or arms, and not his eyes. They were on the bag. Its rope tie had come undone; an end of bread was protruding from its neck. The bread shone—with honey, he knew. His mother had made this, of course; she’d made everything, from the meltingly sweet to the richly spiced. She’d sung in her bird voice as she did. He’d hunkered between the columns of the kitchen, listening, watching, barely able to keep from springing up to dig his hands into the flour. And yet he’d stayed still, watching sunlight slant, catching the red in her dark hair and the jewelled gold within the honey.
He crawled to the bag because he found he couldn’t walk. He pawed at it until it fell fully open, and he pulled out the bread. His hands shook; he dug his fingers into it and smelled a surge of sweetness.
“Father,” he said, and crawled to where Daedalus was crouching. Icarus tore a piece free and swallowed a sudden rush of saliva. He tugged the soft flesh of the bread away from the crust and rolled it between his fingertips.
“Here, Father,” he said. “Eat.
If you can’t manage this, I’ll soak it in water.”
Daedalus swallowed once and turned away from the bread. His face was gaunt and stark in the soft light. He gazed at the lamp, almost without blinking, until Icarus almost wished that Theron hadn’t brought it at all.
Icarus stopped himself from overindulging: he had some bread, two dates, two olives, and a sip of the wine he found in a little stoppered jug at the bottom of the bag. And yet he was giddy and nauseous and, when he finished, shakier than when he’d been starving. Because he couldn’t bear to be still, he grasped his father’s lamp in one hand and crawled some more, this time along the passageway to the door.
It locked inside as well as out. Icarus stared intently at the mechanism, which was set just beneath a ring handle. He touched the lock; rust flaked beneath his fingers, but the bolts were firmly embedded in the metal of the door. There was a tiny space between the lock and the rest of the door, but, though he tried for a long time, he couldn’t wiggle his talon-nails very far down into it. He slid their pointed tips into the keyhole, but the talons were too short to reach the mechanism within. Father could have fashioned something, he thought, sitting back on his heels. If he still had his hands. If they still turned silver when he touched things.
When he returned to the chamber, he set a rolled-up bit of bread between his father’s lips. Daedalus’s throat worked, and the bread fell deep into it, and he choked and gasped. “Good,” Icarus said. “Have more. And listen: there’s a lock on the door—on the inside. It’s strange that it’s there at all, obviously.” Daedalus was digging at the earth with his toes. Icarus wondered whether he could urge his father to try using his toes instead of his hands; surely his godmark wouldn’t know the difference? Daedalus’s toes scrabbled clumsily at pebbles and dirt, and no silver came—but he kept scrabbling anyway, then and later, as if he might dig his way to the sea.
“I think this must have been a pirate cave. They’d have kept their spoils in here, and would’ve needed a door that locked from the inside. For when they were in here with the spoils, wanting to keep people away.” He stopped tearing at the bread. “So they’d have made sure there was another way to the outside.”
He set the loaf down and rose. He paced the length of the cave twice—stronger, steadier—then knelt again before his father. “I followed the other tunnel before, but only a little, because it was so narrow and there was no light at all. It’s time for me to go there again. There must be a way out.”
Daedalus’s toes stilled. His gaze wandered over Icarus’s face. His lips parted but he made no sound.
“I’ll feed you some more, now. I’ll make sure you’re comfortable.” Icarus lifted the glowing crab shell from the ground and looped its rope around his neck. The light flared blue, then eased back to gold. “I hope I won’t be gone long, but it might take a while to find out what’s down there. You’ll be without light again while I’m gone.” Icarus touched his father’s brow. Daedalus closed his eyes and nodded.
When Icarus had been in the passageway before, in the absolute dark, he hadn’t been afraid—just nervous about getting stuck. Now, when he squeezed inside and past the trickle of water, his little light flickered, and his breath came faster and shallower. Be calm. Think only of the way out. Of coming up into open sky. Of leaping off boulders, even if you still can’t fly. Open sky. That’s all. Open sky; the king’s chest, also open. A sword? Glaucus’s walking stick? Won’t matter. Ariadne’s face crumpling as her bones do, beneath my fists.
He stopped walking and pressed his forehead against the wall that was right there, at his shoulder. His breathing had turned into a sobbing that ground at his throat and ears. Stop. Be calm. Think of Chara—already he was quieter—and the time you both got lost in that cave, looking for Asterion. Remember the way the dawn light looked, when you finally found the entrance. Remember how you laughed.
The ceiling was so low that he had to crouch, and the walls were so tight around him that they held him up. He eased his way forward, the light no longer swinging at all. No time and all time passed. His mind was empty of words—until, at last, a thread of fresh air touched his cheek, and he thought Yes yes yes, oh, all you gods and goddesses, yes.
There was a fissure, where the top of the wall met the ceiling. Even if he hadn’t felt the air, he would have noticed it. He forced his body straight and ran his hands along its lip. It was barely wide enough for him, but he squirmed and thrust his way up and inside it. He had to remember to keep breathing as rock pressed and plucked at him. The shaft angled gently upward. He scuttled like a lizard, pausing sometimes to taste the air. It made him want to cry again, because it was sweet and close and not enough.
His groping hands hit stone. For a moment he was dizzy—Which way am I pointing—up or down? He wriggled until the light from his lamp fell on the stone. It was a different colour than the rest: black instead of red-brown. It had been placed in the shaft, its edges measured and set with care, so that only the thinnest thread of air could twine between it and the wall. And it was scored with marks. Icarus lifted a trembling finger to trace them.
King Minos was here before you.
Icarus laughed until his voice and tears were gone.
When Icarus returned to the cave, Daedalus wasn’t there.
“Father?” The word cracked. “Father?”
They came for him while I was away. The king decided to have him killed after all, and next time they’ll come back for me—or maybe they won’t—maybe they’ll just stop coming and wait for me to die.
As he crumpled to his sore, scraped knees, Daedalus crawled out of the tunnel that led to the door. He didn’t look at Icarus. He rose, shuffled over to a wall, and laid one of his broken hands against it. Icarus went to stand beside him. The light breathed scarlet over them both.
“Father. What is it? What were you doing?” But he knew. He could almost see Daedalus crouching in the darkness, lifting his fingers to the lock. His fingers that could make nothing, but that could feel. The rust; the tiny crack between lock and wall. The keyhole. All this Icarus could imagine—the actions, but not the thoughts. “What?”
Daedalus leaned forward so that his nose was nearly touching a spray of translucent threads that clung to the stone. The threads were alive, somehow, without sunlight or wind: Icarus could see this. They’d put out buds that looked like minuscule mushrooms—and maybe that was what they were. Cave mushrooms. Daedalus ran his nose and forehead across the web, then lurched a few paces, until he was standing beneath one of the stalactites that hung from the ceiling. He tipped his face up to it. Raised his right arm.
He’s thought of something, Icarus thought. He’s still godmarked, even if he has no hands and no mouth. But his father stood there for so long, motionless and staring, that at last Icarus thought, Maybe not; maybe he’s just confused, and took a step toward him.
Something dripped from the stalactite’s point and landed on one of Daedalus’s bulbous knuckles. It was a swift, tiny movement, but Icarus saw his father’s body begin to tremble. His wide, shining eyes found Icarus’s.
“What?” Icarus said eagerly. “What have you thought of?”
Daedalus pointed his chin at the moisture that gleamed on his finger, then at the strange plant webbing on the wall.
“Yes, yes: I see these things. What of them?”
Daedalus held both his hands up beneath the stalactite. He waved them, mimed something urgent and sweeping. Icarus shook his head.
“I’m sorry—I don’t understand. But you do. I see that you do. That’s enough.”
It wasn’t, though. There was no other way out, and no silver flowed, any more, from Daedalus’s fingers, and Icarus didn’t understand. He sat down and watched his father holding his hands toward the invisible sky as the air breathed blue and gold.
It took Icarus far too long to understand. He stared as, hour after hour, his father raised one arm and t
hen another beneath the stalactite. He stared from the knob of drippings that had grown beneath the stalactite to his father’s twisted hands and still didn’t understand—not until, one day or night, the pulsing light caught the wet glint on Daedalus’s skin.
Icarus leapt to his feet, dropping the bread he’d been tearing into bits. “New fingers,” he gasped as he strode the four steps to where his father was standing. He seized one of Daedalus’s wrists, turned it more gently so that he could see his hands. The broken, lumpy fingers were coated in dampness—but beneath that were other layers that shone more dully, as if they’d already dried.
“Do you think . . .” Will Great Creator Zeus take pity on you and give your godmark back to remade hands? There were so many things Icarus didn’t dare say out loud.
“Ech,” Daedalus said. He waggled the fingers of his right hand. His lips curled, and Icarus thought for a moment that his father was going to cry—but then he realized that he was smiling.
For a long while, Icarus watched Daedalus every time he stood beneath the stalactite. This very quickly made him insane with impatience: the dripping was so slow, and his father so motionless, except for the shifting of his arms—it was unbearable. There was a measure of relief whenever Daedalus shuffled over to the section of wall that was covered with splayed, translucent plants—because he was moving, at last, and because when he wound the sticky plant threads around the hardened drippings it seemed as if he was making sudden, swift progress. But he wasn’t. The fingers hardly seemed to grow. They thickened a bit, but even after Theron’s fourth visit to the cave they hardly extended past Daedalus’s actual fingers.
Around this fourth month, though, Icarus’s impatience smoothed away. Time didn’t matter, after all. Better to grow the false bone carefully, to be sure of its strength, so that it wouldn’t snap the moment Daedalus touched the lock. Ariadne and Minos will still be there, above, whenever we get out. Imagine their surprise. Imagine her eyes as you hurt her.
The Flame in the Maze Page 20