“Much better,” Asterion said and smiled at her at last.
“Ariadne, please say I can come with you to the summer palace! Please! Remember how much we enjoyed your thirteenth birthday? Well, imagine how much better this year’s will be!”
“Princess, come watch Draxos and me wrestle—we always salute you before, and the winner does too—we do all this to honour you, Princess.”
“I could carve a better likeness of you now than I did last summer—I’ve learned much from Master Daedalus since then. If you’re going to take Diantha to the summer palace you must take me, too, so that you can sit for the carving.”
“Wrestling? No—Princess, you must come listen to my poem. . . .”
They’re like a flock of geese, Ariadne thought. Though of course geese couldn’t give me poems and sculptures; nor would they be able to bend metal with their minds or command new leaves to open or float just above the ground, as these ones do. No, my geese are very accomplished.
They followed her—Diantha, Alkaios, Galenos, and Karpos—along the portico that overlooked the main courtyard. Young people always followed her—sometimes these, sometimes others. So many geese, and she a swan.
She was considering which one of them to address first when she glanced down and saw Asterion. He was folded into the shadows where the grand staircase met the courtyard wall. His head was lowered; she could see the shapes of his horns protruding from his riot of golden curls. Chara was beside him, of course, leaning her head close to his. The dark and the gold, together as always.
Ariadne stopped walking and the geese stumbled into each other as they stopped, too. “Alkaios,” she said, smiling into his eyes so that he flushed and floated another foot’s breadth above the ground, “I promise to come watch you wrestle tomorrow—tell Draxos this. Diantha,”—who’d begun wearing her hair in the same ringlets and knots as Ariadne did, though it wasn’t nearly as thick and shiny as Ariadne’s—“I’ll speak to the queen about bringing you this summer, too, though I cannot promise anything. Galenos,”—he didn’t flush when she smiled at him; he went pale and clutched his hands together in front of his belly—“I look forward to hearing your poem, perhaps after dinner tonight? I’ll make sure we have some time alone. And Karpos,”—at last, someone who met her gaze and held his chin high; she deepened her voice to warm honey for him—“Daedalus has already spoken of the most recent likeness you did of me. He says the marble Ariadne breathes just as the real one does. I’ll have you show me later. But now there’s something I must do alone.”
They stared at her. She felt the smile dimming on her lips. “Which means that you should go,” she said. “That way.” They turned and went back along the sunlit walk, following the scarlet pillars this time, not her. (Karpos looked back once; she spun on her heel before he looked ahead again.)
She approached Asterion and Chara so quietly that they didn’t notice her until she was two paces from them. As soon as Asterion saw her, he straightened. Ariadne imagined how his shoulder blades would ache, pressing against the stone. The slave, she noted, didn’t move.
“Leave us.” She looked away from Chara as she spoke, though the words were meant for her.
“But—” Asterion began, and Ariadne said, “Girl. Leave us.”
There was a silence that was slightly too short to indicate insolence, and then Chara said, “As you wish, Princess,” in that ridiculously solemn tone of hers, and walked away from them on her irritatingly sun-browned bare feet.
Ariadne drew a deep breath. “Brother.” This was her voice of silk (which was quite different from her voice of honey).
“Ariadne.” The word was like a question, though not a nervous one. She took another step. In all the years since his first change, they’d almost never been alone together; perhaps he didn’t remember it at all, and that was why he wasn’t nervous. He blinked at her as she drew closer.
“Where’s Androgeus?” she said.
“At the training ground. I’m supposed to meet him there—he promised to teach me to throw a discus. I told him I probably wouldn’t be able to throw far. In fact, I’ll probably fall over.” He smiled a little. He didn’t look nervous but he did look tired—she could see this, now that she was an arm’s length away. There were bruised circles around his eyes and the streaky scars on his right cheek were a darker purple than usual. She shifted her gaze from these scars to the ones on his arms, which were like purple-brown snakes. They seemed the same—but fresh pink blisters stretched in rows across the backs of his hands, on top of all the old white ones.
“Was there another rite last night?” She tried to make her tone curious but not sharp.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes.” She must have frowned; he said quickly, “But don’t worry—it was just Mother and the two youngest priestesses, and they only let me be the Bull for a few minutes.”
“Ah,” Ariadne said, as if this information didn’t interest her. (Though it did, of course—she’d only seen one such rite; why did their mother not include her?) She stepped closer to him. “Well, if you’re supposed to be meeting Androgeus, why are you here?”
Asterion lifted one shoulder and held it like that; a shrug, but not really. He closed his eyes and opened them again, so wide that they almost looked like his bull-eyes. Somehow he didn’t seem silly, even doing these things. Ariadne clenched her hands into fists.
“I was . . . tired of everyone,” he said. “The people who follow me everywhere.”
“Like the slave’s child? Chara?” Who was even now walking around a pillar at the far end of the courtyard, drawing her hands up and down as if she were tracing the shapes of waves onto the stone. A strange, dim girl; thank the gods she was unmarked.
He shook his head quickly. “Oh, no—she’s my friend. It’s the others: the ones who make the sign of the Bull and ask me to bend my head so that they can see my horns. I wish they’d go away. I know I’m like a god to them, and I know it’s unkind, but I sometimes wish they’d all just go away.” He raised both his brows and gave a real shrug. “That’s why we were here.”
Ariadne unclenched her hands. She took another step.
“Don’t,” said Asterion. Suddenly he was afraid: she saw it in those gold-flecked eyes and in the way his tightening lips made the sides of his neck stand out.
“Don’t what?” she whispered.
“Don’t get any closer,” said Androgeus from behind her.
She shivered with surprise inside but only cocked her head at him and smiled. “I was worried about him. I wanted to see his hands—I think Naucrate has some ointment that—”
“Don’t expect to lie to me and be believed.” Androgeus was so tall that she had to squint into sunlight to look at him.
“It’s all right,” Asterion said. “She wasn’t—”
“Little brother. Go now—run ahead to the training ground. I’ll catch up with you in a little while.”
Asterion stared from Androgeus to Ariadne. He opened his mouth as if he’d say something else but instead he bobbed his head and leapt past them. Ariadne watched him go, loping clumsily across the courtyard as if he wasn’t sure how to use his legs. Chara sped after him, a blur of limbs and hair. When they’d disappeared between two pillars (leaving a trail of wide eyes and horn signs in their wake), Ariadne swallowed and glanced under her lashes at her brother. His teeth shone from his dark, close-cropped beard. It took her a few moments to realize that he was smiling their father’s smile.
“I have news that will make you happy, Sister.”
She waited. When he said nothing more, she sighed, said lazily, “Oh? And what is this news?”
“I’m going away. Father’s sending me to the Games in Athens.”
She couldn’t help it; her head snapped around and up.
“Yes—I thought you’d like that. I thought you’d welcome the opportunity to be alone with our little brother, after all these years.”
He moved so that the light was beside him, not behind, and she could see his face clearly. Minos’s bared teeth glinted at her.
“I’ll be far away, but I’ll hear news from home.” A lizard was walking headfirst down the wall behind him. It was red and black with tiny, clear claws and yellow eyes that rolled just as Asterion’s did when he was about to change. Ariadne thought that Androgeus wouldn’t notice it, since it was well above his left shoulder—but he put up a hand to it without turning away from her, and it froze, splayed on the warm stone. He tilted his head and murmured. Silver light flowed from his fingertips to the lizard’s head, and it skittered down onto his shoulder and lay there, its scaled sides heaving. Androgeus stroked it under its chin.
“I’ll be far away,” he said again, “but if I hear that Asterion’s been hurt—if anything should happen to him, accident or not, I will know. I’ll command a bull to toss you on his horns in the dancing ring or send a wild boar to gore you the next time you go to pick flowers near the peak shrine.” He scratched the lizard between its eyes and whispered a few more words, and it walked daintily from his shoulder back onto the wall. “I can do these things. I will do them, Sister, if Asterion is harmed.”
Ariadne wanted to laugh, but she knew that it would sound too shrill. She clasped her hands behind her and thought, Say something, Ari; there’s always something to say—but he was already walking away from her, bright and burnished under the cloudless sky.
Androgeus sailed from the harbour at Amnisos on a hot, still day in late summer. It was so still, in fact, that Minos summoned Deucalion and Glaucus to the cliff’s edge and said, “Use your godmarks, my sons, and send your brother out across the water!”
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder—or shoulder-to-ribs, because Glaucus was much shorter than Deucalion. Minos stood next to them, and Pasiphae next to him, and Asterion next to her. Ariadne looked at the row of their backs for a moment before she walked forward and took her place beside Asterion. She moved in so close to him that their elbows brushed against each other, but he didn’t flinch as she’d hoped he would. She could feel him trembling, though, as he gazed down at the sea and the ship that was on it.
The sea was like a length of taut blue cloth until Deucalion tipped his head toward the sky and closed his eyes. Ariadne leaned back and watched him. He parted his lips and a thread of godmarked silver slipped out from between them. She knew that if she’d been beside him, and if the crowd behind hadn’t been so noisy, she would have heard the low, wavering whistle of his breath. She looked back at the water. It foamed down by the rocks at the cliff’s base and ruffled out toward the ship, which lifted and fell gently. She remembered how the lift and fall had felt when Minos had taken her out on the king’s ship last year. It was much larger than the others she’d been on—so many more oarsmen to greet her, and a thicker mast, and a deck that seemed as wide as her dancing ground. It had been a windy day, and they hadn’t needed Deucalion or Glaucus’s help. Not that Glaucus actually helped much at all. He could barely muster a breeze on his own. Whenever he and Deucalion summoned winds together, Deucalion always began so that the weakness of Glaucus’s mark would be hidden. (Some said that the queen was the one who made the water move, but that she allowed her sons to be praised for it.)
The sea was full of waves now, all of them climbing and breaking toward the west. The ship angled westward, too, and the enormous wooden fish on its prow sliced through air and water. Ariadne could see the oars and their spray and the straining brown backs of the oarsmen. The dolphins painted on the ship’s linen-covered sides seemed to be leaping. She could see the scarlet cloth that covered the king’s seat whipping back and forth. And she could see Androgeus when he emerged from beneath the cloth and leaned out over the ship’s side. He was tiny, but she recognized the dark brown shine of his hair and the golden trim of his loincloth. He reached an arm down and stretched his hand out and very soon a rounded shape rose from the waves, and another, and a third. Silver light leapt from his hand and touched each of the real dolphins as they surfaced—five, ten; soon an uncountable blur of white and grey and godlight.
He straightened, just before he grew too small to see. He raised both his arms and swept them up into the sign of the Bull. A cheer rose from the people gathered on the cliff path and the rocky beach below. Ariadne heard Asterion suck in his breath and felt the muscles in his arm clench, and when she glanced at him she thought she saw a trail of tears on his scarred cheek—but perhaps it was just spray: there was a lot of it now, borne on the new wind.
“Come, people of Crete!” Pasiphae called to the crowd behind her. “Say that you were there to see Prince Androgeus away before he returned in triumph from Athens!”
“And you, Master Daedalus,” called Minos, “come up here beside me, so that you may have the best view of all.”
Ariadne watched Daedalus approach. Her heart pounded a bit, for he sometimes flew into rages when Minos spoke ill of his old home—but this time he just did a strange little mincing dance as he approached, and stayed silent. He’s never the same way twice, she thought; it’s as if he’s many people and you can’t ever know which will appear.
“He’s so handsome,” Diantha said. She was standing just behind Ariadne’s right shoulder, her honey-coloured eyes distant.
“Androgeus?” Ariadne shook her head and patted Diantha’s hand with mock solicitude. “Perhaps on this small island, Yantha, but not in the wider world. I’m sure of it.”
“Well, handsomer than him, anyway.” Diantha’s eyes were sharp again, turned to where the cliffside bent to form the western arm of the harbour. Icarus was there, away from the throng, perched on a boulder that looked as if it would tumble into the sea if he moved.
“An ugly bird and an ugly boy,” Ariadne said. “And I don’t think he’ll ever fly.”
“Better to have no mark at all than a blighted one.”
Now, now, Ariadne told herself as a flush swept up her neck and into her cheeks, she only meant to reassure you—but Diantha’s words were as relentless and pounding as the waves Deucalion and even Glaucus had made with their marks.
“He doesn’t care that you don’t have a mark,” Diantha said. “Just look—he can’t take his eyes off you—I can see it from here.”
Ariadne snorted and spun away from the sea and the speck of ship and the bird-boy’s unblinking eyes. “Let’s go,” she said—only there were too many people between her and the way back to the summer palace: people clustering around Minos and Pasiphae, who smiled and talked to them; people smiling at Ariadne, and whispering to each other behind their hands; that insufferable Chara, standing with her hand in Pherenike’s, grinning at Asterion when he made a funny, twisted-up face at her. I wish they’d all just make room, Ariadne thought. And then they did—but not for her.
Asterion took a step. Right away there was a change: heads turned and eyes widened and hands went up in the sign of the horns. Alkaios, who’d been bobbing about just above the ground, came suddenly and firmly back down. A girl weaving rainbow light between her fingers; a man catching spray and making it into flower shapes: they all stopped showing off their godmarks as soon as Asterion took a step toward them.
He smiled, which made the scar on his cheek pucker even more. Behind him, Pasiphae smiled, too. Diantha murmured, “Those scars should make him ugly like Icarus but they don’t. . . .”
“They do!” said Ariadne in a rush. “He’s burned and he’s a runt and if he didn’t have such a wondrous mark he’d be nothing to anyone.” The words had begun to tremble, so she stopped speaking—but it was too late: Diantha was staring at her with her mouth wide open.
“Princess! He has been god-favoured more than anyone else—how could you speak like that about him?”
Ariadne said, quickly and coolly, “I am very disappointed that you believed me. Perhaps I won’t bring you here next summer.”
Diantha said again, “Princess!”�
�but Ariadne was already walking away from her, along the path Asterion had made.
I hate my life. I hate my brothers and the people who think they’re my friends. I hate this island. I can’t sail away from it like Androgeus did, and I hate that too.
Her hatred only grew hotter as the months went on. Androgeus won every competition; Androgeus used his godmark to tame a murderous boar; Androgeus was the toast of Athens. Bull-Asterion presided over a rite and the next day it rained for the first time since Androgeus’s departure and there was rejoicing throughout the countryside. Diantha no longer fawned and followed because she had taken Karpos as her lover—her lover, when Ariadne hadn’t yet had any opportunity to take one of her own! Hatred, rushing in her veins instead of blood—until one rainy autumn evening, when another message came from Athens.
Oh no, Ariadne thought as the messenger walked around the hearth to stand before her father. Androgeus can’t have won any more competitions. Surely there aren’t any more to win.
But this messenger wasn’t smiling, as the others had. “Minos King,” he said in a low, breathless voice.
The royal household had been eating when the messenger had come. Now their spoons and knives clanked against metal plates or clattered against wood. (The long trestle tables had been carried into the throne room because the courtyard they usually used for dining was too wet.)
The king rose. “Speak, man! Tell me of my son’s latest triumph in Athens!” The king’s teeth glinted in his beard. He smiled, while everyone around him went silent and still. He smiled, even as Pasiphae stood and put her hand on his arm and pressed her fingers white.
“My lord king, Prince Androgeus is dead.”
Someone gasped—Naucrate, Ariadne guessed, though she didn’t look away from her parents. For a moment Minos and Pasiphae were statues, one smiling, the other beautiful. Pasiphae moved first. She turned and put her other hand on his arm and clutched it as if it were the only thing holding her up. Which it was—for when he drew it from her grasp, slowly and carefully, she crumpled. She pulled herself to her knees and raised a hand to him and he wrenched himself around, away from her. He seemed to be gazing at the fresco of the griffins and trees.
The Door in the Mountain Page 5