Minotaur

by J. A. Rock

  “Well, it looks like Miss Rollins’s hair. You know how her hair’s gray and sitting on her head in a sort of papery clump? And all those pins sticking out of it—those could be hornets buzzing around.”

  I thought it would be nice to have a mind that did that—observed the world carefully, came up with descriptions that could make someone else see things as you did. “Well. What’s Bessie Holmes look like?”

  “A sheep.”

  I snickered.

  “She has curly white hair, and her mouth is very small. And her ears stick out.”

  “And she’s always baahhh-ing about something. What’s Dr. DuMorg look like?”

  “Like a plastic person,” Alle’s reply came at once. “Like someone built a model of a person and then stuck a real person inside it. Perhaps the real DuMorg is trapped.”

  “Alle!”

  She ducked her chin, grinning. She bent to pick up a leaf, but it crumbled as she pinched it.

  “Do you like it here?” I asked.

  She shook her head, but not like she was saying no. “It’s not bad.”

  “The staff seems afraid of you.”

  She straightened and brushed bits of leaf from her hands. “Aren’t they also afraid of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps the staff here is just afraid. In general.”

  I shrugged. “Well, the owner of this bin has a head full of hornets.”

  “And the psychologist is a mannequin with a human trapped inside.”

  I threw my arms out and spun in a circle. “We are in a farce! Everyone is strange and afraid. Why, even Miss Van Narr’s mustache curls up in fear of the goings-on at Rock Point.”

  Alle threw back her head and laughed. Her teeth flashed and her eyes scrunched up, and she stuck her tongue out just a little, pressing her front teeth into it as she continued her peals of laughter.

  I’d never felt so good.

  I mean never.

  Child Wellness Report: Officer Van Narr

  I guess we’ve heard by now that F Gammel got pushed at rec time and took a stick through her foot. I am thinking some of these girls need better shoes, but I understand we are on a limited budget. These sweet dears tug at me, they really do.

  Anyway, the bloody details will be in the doctor’s report, but I just wanted to note a strange thing. I was jogging over to where the girls were gathered around the fallen Miss Gammel, and when I got there I saw T Ballard, whom we all know is not God’s finest work, crouched by the injured child. I was about to shoo her off, because I figured she could only make the situation worse, but she was talking very softly to Miss Gammel, and Miss Gammel stopped crying. I actually let T Ballard help me take Miss Gammel to the infirmary.

  I would love if we could make the doctor’s report public, because I’m curious about what was done to remove the stick from Miss Gammel’s foot. I feel awful for her, just awful—that sweet thing.

  I was once conscious for a damn painful tooth extraction. I mean, I had opiates, but the ripping sensation was terrible. Officer Grenwat knows what I mean. She got buckshot when she was a girl, and she received real primitive first aid. I’m talking brandy-and-the-tip-of-a-knife kind of doctoring. Sometimes being awake is a damn unfortunate thing.

  I once eavesdropped on a meeting about me. DuMorg was talking to Rollins and Bessie Holmes about my dead parents. DuMorg loved dead parents. I had, according to the report, been in the backseat when my parents’ car crashed into an oncoming truck. I don’t remember anything about that night. Not where we were going or what the sky looked like. I can’t even remember the color of my parents’ car.

  I was listening at the meeting room door, which was open a crack, and I glimpsed the long, scored oak table and the ugly blue china tea set. Bessie Holmes held a folder and was speaking.

  “. . . claims she does not remember her parents’ death, though she has been witnessed it. I don’t think we can rule out the possibility she had something to do with it.”

  “Something to do with it?” Denson’s voice was sharp. “Auto accidents happen all the time.”

  “The driver of the other vehicle said Mrs. Ballard was driving. Said that in the instant before they collided, Mrs. Ballard was not having been facing the road, but was looking into the backseat.”

  “And this proves . . .?” Rollins asked.

  “That perhaps the child was throwing a tantrum, or otherwise have been distracting her mother.”

  “Please,” Denson snapped. “Even if that were true, the accident was not Thera’s fault.”

  “Children’s capable of treachery,” Bessie said. “And this child has a history of violence.”

  Rollins gazed hard at Bessie. “She was only six.”

  “A history of violence?” Van Narr spoke up for the first time. “Miss Beadurinc, now that’s a history of violence. What’s Miss Ballard done but get a bit rough with the other girls?”

  I didn’t dare breathe, hoping they’d say something more about Alle’s history.

  “And she’s a junkie,” Bessie said. “Don’t you forget.”

  “Thera no longer has any drug dependencies.” DuMorg sounded forceful, eager to contribute. “She’s doing quite well.”

  Denson took a sip of tea. I felt a sweltering tenderness for her tumbling over me like a shovelful of hot coals.

  Bessie smacked the table with her folder. “She is still been a heathen, if you ask me.”

  They moved on to discussing things I already knew—that I was difficult, that I didn’t pay attention in classes, that I was a bad influence on other girls, that I spent too much time with Bitsy. I shouldn’t say “they.” Denson and Rollins said nothing negative about me. Denson said I had been doing much better since Alle came to Rock Point. I felt no gratitude toward her in that moment—just churlish disdain.

  But for days and years afterward, I thought about Bessie Holmes’s accusation. What if I had done something that made my mother crash? I had been an unhappy child, I remembered that much. Cranky and obstinate. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine I might have been demanding my mother’s attention, distracting her at the moment she’d most needed to focus.

  I grew to hate the smaller children at Rock Point. I loathed the sound of needing—complaints of hunger or thirst, tears over scraped knees. I began to worship Alle more fiercely, because she never cracked. Because Kenna could taunt her and Alle didn’t weep.

  Even now when I try to read Van Narr’s report about the day I comforted Franny Gammel, I am mystified. I comforted her mainly for Alle’s sake, so that Alle would see me doing something kind. But something about holding Franny moved me deeply. I can only think that there are moments when I pity the child I was. More often I hate her, but pity sometimes swims in the same river. And maybe on that day, with Franny quivering and clutching her mouth, I showed what I truly thought should happen to girls who cry. That they should be heard and loved and held.

  At dinner one evening, Kenna was going on about some treasure-hunting expedition she’d been on in the southern jungles. Something about a one-eyed guide and a recalcitrant donkey.

  Bitsy was working on a literature lesson across the table, next to Kenna. “Does this sound right?” she asked, without looking up. “‘The novel utilizes vivid imagery and concise sentences, but fails to display a clarity of purpose. All in all a successful work of literature, but with some notable shortcomings.’”

  “So what about you?” Kenna snapped her fingers in front of Alle. Alle jerked her head up. “You been anywhere?”

  Alle shook her head. “Nowhere of note.”

  “Well, you could at least tell us a story,” Kenna grumbled. “Who’s gonna know if it’s the truth?”

  “But I really haven’t done anything.”

  “Are you sure?” I turned to Alle. “Don’t you have any good stories? Don’t you have a history?”

  “Yes, aren’t you the long lost princess of some ice realm?” Kenna asked her.

  I put down the roll I was
about to bite into. “Knock it off, Kenna.”

  “Or you’ll what?” she asked.

  “Beat your face in, and you know it.”

  “Awf, yeah.” Kenna glanced again at Alle, quick and shrewd. “That’s Thera, a wannabe tough. But she’s all soft for our dark friend.”

  A rage came over me that was just splendid. I slammed a fist on the table and stood so fast my plate tipped and corn scattered across the table. “You shut up! God, you’re a bitch’s box. She’s hardly darker than you or I.” I felt pleased with myself for rushing to Alle’s defense.

  I didn’t realize Alle was angry until she stood. “And so what if I was?” she shouted. We all turned to stare at her. “So what if I was blacker than the devil’s asshole?”

  We froze.

  “You’re all children. All of you. You don’t know what’s important and you have never had to do anything difficult.” She strode away.

  Bitsy eventually went back to her lesson, scrawling something on her paper. “Miss Beadurinc makes use of vivid imagery. Concise sentences. Clarity of purpose. All in all, a successful retort.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “And I applaud your use of ‘box.’”

  A week later—a week during which Alle and I were cold toward each other—Alle undressed in front of me. Normally she waited until I left the room, or else stepped into the narrow closet to put on her nightgown. But that night, she began undoing the buttons of her dress, right there in the narrow aisle between our cots.

  I’d never seen a woman naked, except in paintings in the museum in town. Kenna changed beside me sometimes in the equipment shed before rec, so I’d seen her in a brassiere—a dreary gray garment with big flimsy cups her breasts couldn’t fill. Seeing Alle was different. More real than a painting, and far more captivating than Kenna. She let her dress fall, then unhooked her white bra. She was turned to the side, so all I saw was the outline of one breast, rising a little as she leaned forward to grab her nightgown. Her body curved so perfectly—her breasts were not as large as mine, but they were high and round. Her belly was rounded too, the skin smooth and soft looking. Her ass pulled her cotton underwear taut, and I could just see the under curve of the flesh as she bent over.

  “What?” she asked. I snapped my head up, surprised by how calm she sounded. I expected her to be embarrassed, angry, to find me staring like that.

  “Nothing.” I tried to focus on her face, but my gaze kept falling to her breasts, to the shadow between them, the curve of them against her ribs, the tiny peaks of her nipples. And then lower, to her wide hips and the slight ridges of muscle down each thigh. She watched me watching and made no move to cover herself.

  I kept bypassing her underwear, even though I wanted to look. I was scared. I knew on some unspecific level what I’d like to see, what I’d like to do—and yet if I pressed myself for details, my desire pushed aside shame and became something nearly unmanageable.

  She held her nightgown above her head and dropped it over her body. I rolled toward the wall and closed my eyes. As soon as I did, I saw her again—the curve of her breast, the arch of her spine, the glimpse of her ass under cotton. I listened to her cot squeak as she climbed on it. Heard the rustle of her sheet. I listened until her breathing slowed and evened. Placed my hand tentatively between my legs and didn’t move it—just left it there. There was heat, and dampness, and I felt both wicked and uncertain.

  “I don’t like Kenna,” she said eventually through the dark.

  I pulled my hand up, my heart pounding as though I’d been caught. “She’s just an idiot.” I wasn’t sure whether I should defend Kenna. I had few enough allies here that I would have liked for Alle and Kenna to get along. “She doesn’t think before she opens her gob. And me either. I didn’t mean to . . .” Apologizing didn’t come naturally to me.

  “I know.” Her voice was soft.

  I rubbed my cheek against the pillowcase to scratch an itch.

  She shifted again. I glanced at the shadow of her covered body, then went back to looking at the ceiling.

  “Do you think you’ll stay here, once you’re of age?” she asked. I could have lain there in the dark listening to her voice all night. “And teach, or take care of the babies, or anything?”

  I felt inexplicably affronted. “No. I’m going to be a warrior.”

  “Oh. Can you . . . do that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are there warriors anymore?”

  I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. “There’ll be at least one after I learn to fight. We still need them.” I paused. “I’m not going to take care of anyone. But I might make the world safer.”

  “What sorts of people are you going to fight?”

  “Villains.” She didn’t seem like she was mocking me, so I went on. “The Minotaur, maybe.”

  Alle sighed softly. “Is she still a threat? She’s trapped now.”

  “She’s a threat as long as the town has to give her tributes.”

  “I suppose so.”

  I didn’t tell Alle about my dreams of the monster, about my visions of the maze or my thoughts of taming the creature. “Do you think the beast remembers what it was like before she was a beast?”

  A pause. “I suppose, probably. You think about her a lot, don’t you?”

  “I just think the most pressing issue facing a modern warrior would be the beast’s blood-drenched legacy. It wouldn’t hurt for me to know all there is to know about her.”

  Alle didn’t answer, and eventually I heard her breathing slow even more, and I knew she was asleep. I wanted to keep talking. I wanted to tell her she could let me know what she thought about. I’d listen.

  I awoke suddenly in the night. Moonlight was spilling through the window, and I was shivering and gasping, still half-caught in a dream. Something was wrong—no deep breathing from Alle’s side of the room. She was awake. Maybe she’d heard me whimpering. I couldn’t even remember the dream.

  It was so cold that my blanket was of little use. I silenced my gasping and stared across the darkness at her. I could see the glint of her eyes just before she asked, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m cold.”

  “Me too.”

  I slipped out of my bed and knelt on the chilly tile next to hers. I folded my arms on the edge of her mattress and rested my chin on them. Tried to smile as I stared at her, shivering.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she whispered back.

  I was worried I’d have to ask, but she lifted up her blanket without another word, and I climbed in beside her. Her icy foot nudged my leg, and she giggled.

  “Shh.” I smiled. I wished I could be even closer to her, but I was afraid, and so I lay rigid on the very edge of the bed, and after a moment I rolled onto my back so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

  She placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t dare breathe. My chest ached with the effort of being silent and still. Every few seconds I felt the subtle movement of her hand—the twitch of a finger, the scrape of a nail. My heart was going too fast, and I tried clenching and releasing my thighs in an effort to take my mind off the heat that curled deep inside me like a strange smoke, unfurling in lazy tendrils.

  I rolled back toward her, keeping my eyes clenched shut, and pretended to fall asleep. Then I pretended my head had tilted forward of its own accord so that my lips were almost against hers. I prayed—prayed for maybe the first time since childhood—to be allowed to keep Alle this close to me, her hand wedged between our bellies, our chests touching. I shifted a little, pressing my legs closer together as though I could somehow protect myself from this want, this feverish hope.

  She moved her foot until I felt the gentle scratch of her toenail against my ankle. I swallowed. When the actual moment came, it required almost no thinking. I simply put my lips to hers, and after only a second’s hesitation, she kissed back, her mouth moving gently, rhythmically. I wished then that it could be more. That she would wrap my whole body in hers and run her ha
nds over my skin and drown me in her.

  I knew I was whatever Bitsy had called Riley Denson—a BD. I knew this was unnatural, but right then I wanted to care not a bit what was natural and what wasn’t. We kissed until she broke away with a soft sound. She stared at me, breathing hard, the moonlight outlining her black curls where they spread on the pillow.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered, more to reassure myself than her.

  She nodded. We slept eventually, fitful and uncertain, our bodies not quite touching, but my mind opening in a thousand places, letting in so much light I felt blind.

  We slept like that the next night too, and many nights after. Each day during lessons and chores, I told myself this would be the night I placed my hand somewhere other than her shoulder. The night I would have the courage to hold her, to touch her. And yet each night, one of us drew away in the middle of a kiss, and we both lay on our backs, staring at the ceiling. I began to whisper to myself that I was in love. That I was in love in the way of knights and poor young men who could not offer the princess riches but who had good hearts and trusty, knob-kneed horses. And suddenly I was furious with those tales, because love was not as simple as singing a song under a maid’s window or breaking her up into poetry and spitting her at empty rooms.

  Love had a current of shame running through it, and in a way it seemed lonelier than just about anything.

  “Aren’t you going to story time?” Denson asked.

  “Not today.” I lounged on my cot, my head on my arm. I’d skipped grammar that morning. Alle had promised she’d bring up a roll from the breakfast table, but she hadn’t arrived yet. “I’m ill.”

  Denson placed the back of her hand against my forehead. I felt even more irritated by the gesture. “You don’t feel feverish.”

  “Well, then maybe I’m in no mood for stories.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and was quiet until I looked at her. “What’s wrong with stories?”

  “I don’t know.” I drew one leg up and sighed heavily. “I only wish they weren’t such cow drippings. So full of lessons and people getting married.”