It was very hot in the cave, she thought. And it’s very hot in here. She pressed a stray curl flat against her forehead, wound it tighter with her fingertip until it was like a whorl of seashell. What would happen to him if it got hotter?
Getting the lamp was easy. There were only a few slaves about between the family’s quarters and the underground storerooms, and all they did was raise their hands to her in the sign of the Bull and continue about their business. She paused in the grain room, which was dark except for the flickering of oil lamps. The rows of jars soared above her head. Their shadows were taller yet. She drew in gulps of cool air, but just for a moment—soon people would be stirring.
The lamp’s base was metal and she had to shift it from hand to hand as she walked so that her skin wouldn’t burn. She set it down quickly on the floor beside Asterion’s bed; it clanged against the stone and he grunted and thrashed, but his rolling eyes didn’t open. Chara didn’t move at all.
Ariadne stared at his walls for a bit while she thought. The paint on them was all blues and whites: water, sky, the god-bull forming out of a foaming wave. The god-bull on the wall and the god-boy on the bed—she scowled and turned back to the lamp.
The hem of Asterion’s sheet caught fire almost as soon as she touched it to the lamp. The cloth melted black behind the flame, which widened as it climbed. When it reached the bed frame it was nearly as long as Asterion was, from glowing horns to scuffing feet.
No, she thought as she stumbled backward, I was wrong; I shouldn’t have. . . .The fire was flowing under the arm and leg closest to the edge; it was around them, over them, in the space of a single heartbeat. He woke with a cry and lurched up on the bed, and the fire was eating at his loincloth. He cried out again; his voice sounded too low, as if he were a man, not a two-year-old boy. He threw himself off the bed, straight at Ariadne. She leapt back and he fell at her feet. Sparks caught in her skirt and she smacked at them with her hands until they died.
He gazed up at her, and in the space of one more heartbeat his eyes widened and rounded until there was no more boy in them. He heaved himself onto his hands and knees. His loincloth fell away in gobbets of black and embers and his spine arched. Blisters unfurled on his skin and turned almost immediately to coarse brown hair that bloomed along his back and sides in patches that joined. His golden head had gone dark and matted too, and his horns were longer, curving out and up above folded-over ears. He scrabbled at the ground with fingers and toes that fused as Ariadne watched, their nails spreading and yellowing into cloven halves.
He turned his head—sideways, because his neck was so thick that he couldn’t lift it up. The fire was only sparks now, spinning and settling on his furred body and on the lashes clustered around his eyes. His eyes were rolling again, white and brown and black. She lowered herself slowly into a crouch, too fascinated to be afraid anymore.
She thought, He can’t see me. “Look at you, Brother,” she said, loudly enough to be heard above the whuffing of his breath. “Look at what you are—and I’m the one who found out. I’m the only one who knows. So if you change back now—if you can just do that, no one else will—”
The beast that had been Asterion bellowed. This wasn’t the low cry of before but a full-throated roar that startled Ariadne back onto her heels. The roar didn’t stop. She heard another sound—a scream, behind her—and began to scream herself because she knew she should, and because she was afraid again. The children’s slave ran past her. She flapped her skirt against the sheet until the flames died and then hovered a few paces away from the bull-thing. She raised her hands to her mouth but they muffled nothing. Her scream trailed into a sort of whine, while Ariadne’s continued. Footsteps pounded along the hallway, closer and closer (Ariadne heard them when she paused to breathe). She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Quiet—quiet, Ari!” Deucalion, shaking her by the shoulders but not looking at her. Glaucus was clinging to the doorframe. He was already crying, Ariadne saw. Androgeus strode past Glaucus. He stood above the bull, who was on his side, kicking as he roared. Androgeus knelt. He placed one hand on the creature’s flank and one on his head, between the horns. He leaned close and spoke his godmarked words again, which Ariadne could never understand. The coarse hair beneath his hands turned to silver.
The bellowing and kicking stopped. The rolling eyes went still and changed shape—everything did, from hoofs to legs to flanks to barrel chest to damp, flaring nostrils. It happened in the time it took Ariadne to blink three times (she tried not to blink at all, but there’d been tears with her screaming), and when it was done, Asterion the boy lay on his belly on the stone. His slender arms and legs trembled. They were covered with blistered welts, but his back was the worst: red and raw like the insides of a flayed animal. Androgeus drew Asterion’s head gently onto his lap. He stroked his damp golden hair and murmured more words as Asterion gasped and sobbed. He’s in such pain, Ariadne thought, and felt a rush of horror and pleasure that sent blood dizzily to her head.
Someone was laughing. Ariadne turned and saw Pasiphae standing in the doorway. She was laughing and maybe crying—it was hard to tell whether the moisture on her cheeks was sweat or godmarked water or tears. She walked slowly to her sons and knelt by Asterion. “My little god,” she said. “Poseidon’s little bull—I saw him in you, just now, and I heard him in your voice.” She held her palms above his back. Water dripped from them and fell on his raw skin like a mist. All his muscles bunched when it touched him, but as it seeped and spread he went limp.
“I look on you now, and I rejoice in your godhead, and yet,” she went on, each word harsher than the one before it, “I hate your pain. I hate it, and I wonder what caused it. Who caused it.”
The slave gasped, “My Queen, it—” and Ariadne leapt to her feet.
“It was her!” she cried, pointing at the slave. “I came because I heard him shouting and she was already here with the lamp!”
The queen’s green eyes shifted. The brows above them arched.
“No!” The slave’s hands were still over her mouth. “No, that’s not true! Why would I bring a lamp on such a hot day? My Queen, I came when I heard the prince shouting, and it was she . . .”
The slave was fat. She was fat and her hair was lank and her eyes were small and darting, like a sow’s—and yet Pasiphae was gazing at Ariadne now, looking her up and down as if she might actually believe the woman.
“Daughter,” she said. “Tell me once more what happened.”
Ariadne swallowed. She drew herself up tall. One of her hairpins was slipping out; she felt its metal tines and a wayward curl tickling her neck but she didn’t fidget at all.
“I heard Asterion. I was too hot to sleep; I heard him and got here very quickly. He was on the floor and she was kneeling by him. The sheet was still on fire so I put it out with my skirt—look!—there are holes in it, and my hands are all pink and burned! I screamed so that someone else would come.”
Asterion coughed, and froth came out of his mouth. He was staring at her. He can hardly speak, she thought. He’s only two. So there’s no way he can understand me, either. And yet he stared at her. Chara was staring, too—how long had she been awake? She was crouched with her arms wrapped around her knees, a thumb in her mouth. Her sea-mist eyes were almost as round as his had been.
Before Ariadne could say anything else, hands came down on her shoulders. They were large and blunt-nailed and covered with black hair. She knew they were her father’s even before she craned up at him.
“I have only just come, and yet I think I understand this much: a slave is telling the royal family that the Princess Ariadne lies.”
The slave bent her head. Her hair fell in sweat-clumped strands around her face. “I am,” she whispered.
Fool! thought Ariadne, but as she did, a sick shudder rose from her belly to her throat. (Had she really been dancing in front of everyone, just this morning? Had everyone really just b
een cheering for her?)
“Leave this room,” Minos said to the slave. His voice rumbled through Ariadne and she felt heat—flame stirring beneath the skin of his fingertips. The sickness had already gone. “Leave this city. And tell everyone who asks that Minos King was merciful enough to let you live.”
The woman shuffled toward the doorway. She paused and moved her hair aside with one fat-fingered hand when she reached Ariadne. Her beady brown eyes found the princess’s and held them.
“Now,” said the king. The slave shuffled on, and out.
Pasiphae was looking down at Asterion, drawing her weeping palms gently along his burns. Deucalion was standing with his head against the painted bull-god’s flank, facing his mother. The only eyes Ariadne could see were Androgeus’s and Asterion’s, and they were on her, steady and knowing. Androgeus can talk to animals, she thought, and the sickness was in her throat again.
“He is monstrous,” Minos said.
Pasiphae smiled and smoothed a lock of hair behind Asterion’s ear. “He is my god’s, and he frightens you. Shames you, too—for your own family came to kingship with marks far weaker than his. Conjurors of light and thunder; the gods were hardly even trying when they marked your line.”
Minos gripped Ariadne’s shoulders even more tightly. The heat in his fingers made her want to wriggle, but she didn’t. She waited for him to growl a curse or shoot bolts of fire at her mother, but he only stood and stood, breathing heavily—and then his hands were gone and he was walking swiftly down the hall, in and out of the light that fell between the pillars. “No!” Ariadne wanted to cry after him. “Come back; do something!”
“My son,” Pasiphae crooned. “My little lord.”
Ariadne felt blood surging up into her head again. There were voices, too, her own and ones she didn’t know: You should’ve been the only one to know about him no one’s looking at you no one’s paying you any attention at all not the gods and not men even though you danced for them only this morning run away run away and they may notice. . . .
She ran, but no one called after her and no one followed. All of her hairpins fell out; by the time she came to a panting halt in Naucrate’s outer chamber, her curls were hanging against her neck and back in a tangled mess.
“Princess! What is it now? Come here and sit by me. . . .”
Naucrate smelled like lemons, as always, and her hands were as firm and gentle as ever, tracing long lines on Ariadne’s back, but the voices and blood didn’t stop their pounding. Ariadne pulled herself free of Naucrate’s arms and ran to the table. She swept everything off it—all the tiny jars and vials and boxes. Kohl, perfume, figs, and glass rained down onto the stone.
“Ariadne,” Naucrate said, into the silence that followed. “Oh, Minnow, what’s wrong?”
Chara waited for the voices to stop. The screaming and shouting frightened her—and she’d already been afraid because of the fire. She crouched down as close to the floor as she could and put her hands over her ears. But she couldn’t leave because he was in the fire, he was screaming, he was growing fur and horns and falling down, and she just couldn’t get up and run, even though her feet wanted her to.
So she waited on the floor at the end of his bed. The fire went out and the first people left and others came. One of these others spread oil over his body and then wound him in long strips of white, which made him look like the doll her mother had given her to sleep with: a hard, fat thing with arms that always stuck out, and no eyes. She could still see his eyes, though. They shone in the light of the lantern the other people brought—more fire, but this time it stayed where it should, and he didn’t seem afraid. The sky got darker. The room grew shadows—but she knew that he could see her, too, squeezed into the space between a pillar and a wall. He blinked at her, over the shoulders of the people who knelt to help him and talk to him. Talking, talking; Chara wanted it to be quiet.
At last only Chara and one old person were in the room. The old person was always here, and hardly ever spoke, and never tried to make Chara go away like other people sometimes did. So Chara crawled to his bed, around the old person who was slowly washing the floor. She put her hands on the edge of his bed and stood up on her toes. He was crying; she hadn’t seen that from the space between the pillar and the wall. His cheeks were wet and he was making little noises. She patted his arm, which was hard and fat with all the white strips. She wiped at his cheeks with her own sleeve, the way her mother did with her.
He smiled at her.
CHAPTER FIVE
No one in the altar-room was paying any attention to Chara. People hardly ever did, except when they wanted her to fetch something: sealing wax or cleaning sponges, or amphorae of wine that were very heavy, but that she carried without shaking. She was nearly eight, unmarked by the gods, and the daughter of a slave; no one except Asterion really saw her, even when they looked right at her, and she didn’t mind this at all. Being invisible had its uses. She could go almost anywhere she wanted in the palace; she knew all its corridors and corners, and the deepest and highest of its rooms. She could run in the dark without stumbling because her hands recognized each column and wall by its carvings, and even the texture of its paint. (The scarlet parts of the olive storage-room walls were pebbly, and the white parts felt like sand ripples. Daedalus’s bulls were lumpy, and the gold of their tiny horns was cool and smooth.) She could press herself into the shadows and watch things—as she was doing now, in the altar-room of the Great Mother.
Asterion was standing before the double-axe pillar. He was naked and glistening with oil; he looked like a golden creature that had just pulled itself out of the sea. A priestess was kneeling before him, holding up a lamp. He lifted his hands. Chara bit her lower lip; she always did at this point in the rite because the first time she’d seen it she’d gasped, and the queen had glanced over at her. Yet maybe it hadn’t been the first time? Because whenever she watched Asterion change, Chara felt something like a memory, tugging at her—but she couldn’t ever see it clearly enough to understand it.
He passed his hands slowly through the shuddering tip of the flame. He didn’t flinch. Just this one pass was enough: he fell forward onto his hands and knees and changed, swiftly and silently, as the priestesses poured libations on the stone around him. He stamped his hoofs and his heavy head swung back and forth on his neck. The shadow he cast on the walls and floor seemed even bigger than a real bull.
The stamping was the only sound the bull-prince made until a few moments later when Pasiphae called the boy-prince back. She raised her hands above the animal, and water rained down on his woolly back and tossing head, and he snorted and then roared, as if the water hurt him more than the fire had. When he heaved his human body upright, he whimpered; when Pasiphae put her silver, weeping hands on him, he hissed.
The queen cried, “Thank you, Lord Poseidon, for the mark you placed upon this child—and see how we honour you, by calling it forth.”
Chara could see the spaces between Asterion’s ribs hollowing and filling and hollowing again. His eyes swivelled and found her beneath the offering table. She stopped biting her lip and smiled at him. She wasn’t worried when he didn’t smile back; he never did this soon after a change.
Pasiphae kissed his forehead and ran her hands over what remained of his horns. “Anthousa,” she said as she turned away from him, toward the youngest priestess, “please remember not to pour the wine too quickly, next time; it’s a most unpleasant sound and it spatters everywhere—now come, all of you; Asterion needs his quiet. . . .”
Chara held her breath as they left, but none of them looked back. She waited until their footsteps had faded before she crawled out from her hiding place.
Asterion was sitting with his legs crossed, staring at the floor. His shoulders were slumped; when she touched one of them he started, as if he hadn’t remembered she was there.
“Freckles.” He’d called her this since they were six
. His voice leapt from low to high as he spoke, and he cleared his throat roughly.
“Asterion.” She had no nickname for him. Just using his real name would get her flogged, if an important palace adult heard her, even though Asterion himself didn’t care. “How do you feel?”
The same words every time, like a poem or a prayer—except not, because sometimes they were funny.
“It hurts.”
“Baby.”
He pinched her ear and she laughed, and he said, “What’ve you brought me this time?”
She reached into the leather pouch that hung from her belt. (Her mother had tried to make her use an embroidered one, and also to lengthen her loincloth into a skirt, but Chara had refused: things were very comfortable the way they were.) “Something from the sea,” she said. “Well, from the kitchens, really, but before that from the sea.”
He turned his hand up and she dropped a crab shell into it. The shell was purply-blue, but it looked black in the flickering lamplight.
“It’s tiny,” he said, poking it with a forefinger. “I wonder why they didn’t throw it back to grow some more.”
“Maybe someone thought it was pretty.” She didn’t really think this was possible—but the shell was pretty. “So,” she continued, “now how do you feel?”
The Door in the Mountain Page 4