Minotaur

by J. A. Rock

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  “That depends.” She moved toward the bed. “Will you try to take my treasure? What have you really come here for?”

  I thought about all the reasons I had supposedly come here. The treasure. Because I didn’t know where else to go. Because I wanted to be the one who slayed the beast. Because I needed to know why she and I dreamed together.

  None of those worked as an explanation, and so I said nothing.

  “Did you truly come here to kill me? Many have tried, you know.” She reached the far end of the room and set her hand on one of the wall’s stones. It flared for a moment with an orange glow. “Tall men and brave men and men who have been waiting for the praise, for the banner.” She extended an arm slowly, then snapped her fingers. The fire died almost to embers and then rose again. “And girls. Such pretty girls, some with notes taped to them: virgin and ripe and We’ve never cut her hair. What could her hair possibly mean to me?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I’m not subtle,” she said after a while, approaching me. “My magic is very . . .” She glanced at a painting of a carousel horse. Nodded, and the horse’s mane grew and spilled out of the frame and down the wall—a pile of sturdy, coarse silver.

  “It was you, though.” I didn’t back away, even though she was close enough to touch. “When I was in that place by the sea? You made the storm.”

  She glanced at me and smiled. “You were so beautiful. More so even than you were in your armor.” She tapped just below my collarbone, where the edge of my chest plate ought to have been. “Perhaps you know that. Or why would you come to me without your armor?”

  “You took it from me.”

  “You lost it.” She licked her lips. Across the room, the horse in the painting shifted. Its mane spiraled upward in a rope and was sucked back into the frame.

  “Stop. Stop this performance. No more magic. Just talk to me.”

  She dipped her head. “What would you like to say?”

  “I . . . I will help you get free.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll help you find the entrance. If you can take me back to where we were when you made the armor, I can find the thread again. We can follow it back to Alle, to the door.” A journey to the labyrinth’s entrance would buy me time. I could make her promise to find or fix Kenna. And once she had done that, once she had led me back to the thread, I could kill her and go to the entrance on my own.

  Asteria looked longingly at me, and for a moment I thought I had her. That I was offering her what she truly wanted. Then she pursed her lips and gave a hum of laughter. “I’m afraid I’ve done something you won’t like.” She leaned close and whispered. “I’ve set her chasing a phantom.”

  “Who? Alle?”

  “Hmm-hm-hm. I sent her somebody.”

  “Aaron McInroe?” I demanded.

  “I don’t remember names. But I know who she wants. And he will lead her on a chase that has no end.”

  I tried to keep breathing. Be fearless. Love is a weakness.

  She continued walking past the white bull. “Why would I leave this place?” She stood before the bed and raised her arms, and her long white sleeves let just enough light pass through that I could see the shadows within the fabric—thin, slowly moving serpents that gathered to form a bull’s head in profile. “I have such wonderful friends here—captives and heroes and pretty girls.”

  “I want to know how it felt. To terrorize Rock Hill.”

  Her body lifted off the ground, and she twisted in the air as though she were immersed in water, her mouth hanging open in a dull smile. “Why. Why why whyyyyyy? Everybody full of whys.” She rolled again, slowly, and faced me. “Does it come as any surprise that cast-off daughters are angry, that destruction is art, that a person might do a thing simply because it is within her power to do it?”

  “You’re not listening.” The last word echoed. “I didn’t ask for an explanation. I asked how it felt.”

  She paused and turned. Set her feet back on the ground. “What if I don’t remember how it felt?”

  “You do.”

  She flung herself backward onto the pile of treasure and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor by the bed, limp like a doll, her legs splayed. She grabbed a handful of coins and let them fall one by one from her fist onto the stones. The gold flickered in the firelight, then vanished. She stared at the spot where it had been. “Good thing you didn’t come here for that.”

  “Tell me,” I said firmly.

  She stood again and came toward me, stopping inches away. “I remember only this.” She began to slap the left side of her chest, just under her collarbone, in a steady rhythm. “The heart beats want-now, want-now, want, want, want, waaaaaant . . .” From somewhere came a harmony, joining her on the last three wants. “You must know something of that.”

  “Tell me,” I said again.

  “The darkness in each of us—it is simply want. And there is nothing inherently evil about wanting. We want and it makes us eat and it keeps us warm.” She spun in the air again. “The evil, perhaps, is in the what-would-you-to-do-others? What would you do, Thera, to get what you want? Who would you hurt? Who would get a ragged skirt made of their belly, so that you might”—her tone turned mocking and singsong—“get a bit of food, buy yourself some time, live your pretty life?” She jabbed a finger at me. “Yes, you want a pretty life. Don’t deny it. Even if it’s pretty with oddities and with chaos, you want it pretty. You’re a hound for that kind of beauty, you are.”

  “And what did you want?”

  The corners of her mouth slunk upward. “The usual. A mommy who loved me. Friends, and to be extraordinary.”

  “You made yourself a prisoner. You hurt people. You ruined their homes. You broke families. And why? Because you didn’t have a mommy?”

  She flew past me, dress fluttering behind her like a kite tail. It was all I could do not to run.

  “You had a father,” I called to her. “He loved you.”

  She stopped and turned. “There is no one in this world who can love—truly love—a child whose blood is a stranger.” Her voice was raw with fury.

  “Did you know I was coming here?”

  She nodded. “The doooorrrrr.” She let the word out on a breath. “I can feel it open, but I can never find it. I know every inch of this maze except. That. Doooorrrr.”

  She panted and arched her back. Kicked her legs and thrust her hips, her eyes falling closed, her hair slung across her face and neck in damp tendrils.

  “Enough!” I had spotted the sword above the fireplace, camouflaged in the stone. Sweat crept down my sides.

  “I know this place,” she said, resting in the air. “It was empty and I filled it. My playground; not my prison.” She opened her eyes and gazed up at the ceiling. “I tell them to take me to the door. The heroes, the toys. I tell them I’ll set them free, let them live, if they show me. But they cannot find it again.” She glanced at my wrist. “You might have, with your clever thread. But you snapped that, didn’t you?”

  I ignored the sharp pain in my chest and stepped forward. “All that power”—I was unable to keep the mockery from my tone—“and you can’t break out of here?”

  Her grin broadened. “I suppose I waste my magic.” She drifted toward the bull. “I left you gifts. Did you like what I made of the prisoner who stole your beauty’s heart? Did you like my little dolly?”

  “Tell me what happened to her. Where’s Kenna?”

  She circled behind me, her back to the door. She planted her feet and clasped her hands behind her back. “I could let them go. The dolly. Your pretty girl.” She paused and seemed, for an instant, childishly uncertain. “And if you are looking for a place to belong, I can offer you that.” She looked back at the spot where the treasure had been and shrugged. “It is a prison, but so are most places.”

  “I am here to stop you from ever hurting anyone again. And when I have done that, I will le
ave.”

  “Oh.” She scrunched her brows together and clutched her chest dramatically. “No. We were something to each other. Didn’t you trust me, Thera?”

  “I would not have felt a moment’s passion for you”—I inched toward the fireplace—“had I known what you are.”

  Her face grew red, and folds of skin rucked up around her mouth and eyes. She hissed, a long, slow sound. “You knew.” She snapped her fingers, and the sword clattered to the floor near my feet. “You think you’re ready? Pick it up. You think you’re anything compared to me? You infant. The only thing fully grown is your sluttish mind.”

  “Me? An infant? Your war was a temper tantrum. And right now, you are doing nothing but playing with your toys.”

  She hopped onto the white bull and reclined on its broad back. Raised her legs so that her dress slid to her hips, then put a hand between her thighs and spread herself open. There was fire inside her; a roaring bellows of red and orange. The tips of the flames flicked out, licking her fingers and singeing hair, leaving black scorch marks on her inner thighs.

  “You’re not subtle,” I agreed, picking up the sword. It was heavy. The closer I got to her, the less I could imagine plunging a blade into any living body. Even a beast’s.

  She drew her legs together and laughed, sitting up. “You’re not impressed?”

  “I’d prefer a lover, not a circus.”

  Her expression was, for a moment, genuinely poignant. No matter how much practice you have had, I would doubt even a sorceress’s ability to re-create that blend of nerves, uncertainty, and readiness to be advised. “I do not know how to be any other thing.”

  Perhaps I should have pitied her in that moment. But she gave me no chance. She grabbed my wrist with such force and pulled me up beside her. Threw me onto my back and straddled me, her gown sweeping against me, coarse like mosquito netting. The sword fell. Across the room, the carousel animals stumbled out of their paintings. They bobbed in the air, their poles attached to nothing. Their mouths were twisted open and their eyes were wide, their limbs grossly contorted.

  The carnival music grew louder, and musical notes appeared in the air, black as keyholes, large as my half my body. They stretched and sagged as figures climbed out of them. The figures gripped the edges of each note like half-drowned survivors at sea clinging to pieces of their dashed ship. I slid off the bull, and Asteria let me go.

  I grabbed for the people I recognized—Denson’s brother, Rocky Bottom—but when I tried to catch their hands they were swallowed back into the notes, which careened around the room, buzzing in the carousel animals’ ears like flies and then vanishing, until the last note disappeared into the horse’s hollow ear and the chamber was once again silent.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Let them go!”

  “They are echoes and memories.” Her voice seemed to come from all around me. “They are nothing.”

  I picked up the sword. Whirled again and caught hold of her arm. Dragged her off the bull, surprised by my own strength. The carousel animals bobbed out into the hall and vanished from sight, leaving behind empty frames on the walls. “A memory is not nothing.”

  She was still smiling. I pointed the sword at her.

  “I am asking you to remember something good from your life.” I was reaching, stealing words from Dark Tales. “Because all lives have good things, and if you can just—remember—”

  She laughed. “Do you wish to hear that you are my one good thing? That I rejoice in the courage of a fool? That it shook me to the teeth to see you tug that thread, and see it move as she tugged back?”

  “I don’t care what your good thing is. I know my own. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Your pretty girl.” Asteria patted the white bull. “Do you ever have trouble thinking of her as a person, not a prize? Is she a treasure because you can make her what you want? What if you peeled back the skin?” She lifted the bull’s tattered hide, as though it really were flesh and not wood. She stuck her arm in the hole in its side and rummaged around. I heard slick, marshy sounds. “Can her beauty survive such an . . . interrogation?” She pulled out something dark red and slimy. A liver. She tossed it on the floor, where it slid a few inches and then lay there dripping slime.

  “I don’t give a shit about beauty.” I spat on the organ, which faded quickly, leaving just a small wet spot on the stone.

  “Or are you afraid if you dig deep, you’ll find she’s really quite dull? Or do you resent her, because you’ll never know?” She tapped her head with one finger. “Because everything up here is a secret, no matter how you try to let someone else in. Ah, always, even as you tell the story, you are rewriting it.”

  I pointed the sword at her once more. “I am giving you one chance. Find Alle. If you find her—alive—and if you take me to her, I will not kill you.”

  She stepped forward. I didn’t think. There was none of the deliberateness with which Alle had killed the weasel, or with which I had once slain trees with my sticks. I plunged the blade clumsily into the center of her breast. It was heavy; I misjudged—I was nowhere near her heart.

  She looked down, annoyed, as if I’d broken a glass or had some other trivial accident. I pulled the blade from her with an odd feeling of embarrassment, a sense that I’d been merely impolite rather than murderous. Blood spilled from the gash in thick, dark trails.

  She grabbed the edges of her wound and yanked them together like the lapels of a jacket, watching as they sealed. Then she knocked me to the floor with a sweep of her arm. The sword clanged away from me.

  She knelt by my side. She put her hands on my chest and belly, pressing until I felt sure my ribs would cave. My breath came out in crystals—diamond fountains spouting from my lungs, rattling across the floor. I choked on the sharp pieces, tried to scream but couldn’t.

  She stroked my cheek with fingers swollen and blistered from flames.

  She is trying to impress me. Hurt me, yes. But impress me.

  “Do you think I’m going to tell you how rough the world is?” she asked. “That the rich have their boots on the throats of the poor? That the wrong people die and the worst people live?” The fountains of diamonds stopped, and I breathed shallowly. She yanked my hair and shoved her mouth close enough to my ear that I could feel flecks of spit. “I don’t need to tell you about injustice or revenge. But I’d like to tell you about mystery. For mystery, I have come to learn, is simply anything older than we are. Anything we did not discover, because we were born with it.”

  She pulled her head up slowly and gazed down at me.

  “What we call mysteries—strange, wondrous—are often very common. Breath, the heartbeat, the slimy journey our food goes on.” She traced from my throat down to my stomach. My throat clenched shut, and I flopped like a fish, trying to draw breath. “Have you ever played with a toy car, and made it stop and go? Imagine stopping a heartbeat. Imagine . . .” She passed a hand over my thigh, and she gave me a dangerous smile. She seemed to command the spirals of heat inside me the same way she commanded a storm. “Making it go faster.”

  I choked and pressed my legs together.

  “Imagine we are all very simple beings, and that our greatest mysteries lie in the words we choose. Rendered speechless, like your dolly friend, all we will do is gasp and eat and fuck and sleep.”

  I heaved against the pressure of her touch. My eyes felt as if they were bulging out of my head. And then the invisible clamp eased, and I could breathe again. “We . . . do more than that. We m . . . make choices.”

  She waved her hand. “Predictable choices. You came here for the treasure, and yet I knew at once you’d end up in the center of the labyrinth. And didn’t you know your pretty friend would go to town with you that night if you called her a coward?”

  I gulped, not wanting to remember.

  “People’s words are often as trite as their actions, but there is no knowing precisely what someone is going to say. And I have spent many years thinking about words I long
to hear, only to reach the conclusion that the words I long to hear are boring. That true joy will come from being surprised.”

  She made the frames of the paintings unwind and soften. They slithered down the walls and across the floor, their gilt catching the firelight, and they wrapped around my neck and waist. They didn’t go tight. Instead they pulsed against my skin, as though awaiting a command. I swallowed. She tightened her hand into a fist, but the frames barely increased their pressure at all. It was if she wanted to crush the life out of me but could not. “So what will you say to me, Thera? Surprise me.”

  “Please,” I whispered. “Please, if you want me, you can . . .”

  “You are no seductress and never have been,” she snapped. “If you are a warrior, be brave. If you are a whore, be skilled. And if you are something beyond either of those things—if you are difficult to describe, hard to win, and if your beauty comes not from symmetry and tits but from every strange, aching thing you are—” her eyes flashed and she leaned until her lips brushed my cheek— “then show me.”

  She grazed my stomach with her cold fingertips. I held my breath and then pushed it out bit by bit.

  Her voice grew as soft as her touch. “You will always hide something from me. That’s fair. I like mysteries and puzzles; I like liars. But the truth is a dance I want to see on command.”

  “You will never command me.”

  She smiled. “I will. But will you obey?”

  I noticed a movement behind her. Alle had entered the room. My lungs froze, trapping my breath in ice. I felt sure I looked at a phantom. That Asteria had conjured Alle to torment me. I forced my gaze back to Asteria’s. I could see by the slightest jerk of her shoulders that she knew—must know. Yet I couldn’t take the chance. If Alle really had managed to sneak in unnoticed, I would not be the one to expose her.

  “Try and see,” I offered, trying to sound confident.

  Behind her, Alle had crept over to the discarded sword. She picked it up and started toward Asteria, lifting the weapon.