She hardly noticed these things today. No Asterion yet, Chara thought. Where is he? When will he . . . oh, stop. Stop, and see if you can guess who the red-haired girl is, now that she has no hair. . . .
Despite the masks, the girl was easy to find. Some of the Athenians were standing straight, taking measured steps. She was weaving, stumbling sideways and back. As Chara watched, she pitched forward and fell to her knees, and a priest hauled her up by her wrist bonds.
“Wretched thing,” Ariadne said. “She discredits her country and her gods.” She chuckled.
Chara felt a wave of heat and nausea. “She’s afraid.”
The princess didn’t so much as glance at her. “The others may also be afraid, but they, at least, are being dignified about it. This is a great and wonderful destiny. She is obviously not worthy of it.”
She had a home, Chara thought, as dancers spun by. She had red hair. She has a name. I wish I knew her name.
Someone far behind them cried, “All praise to the Goddess!” and someone else with a deeper voice answered, “And the Bull-god who guides us to her mountain home!” Ariadne laughed as people cheered. Flutes and horns played a flourish of notes that echoed as another cheer went up.
“Princess,” Chara said, “you have never enjoyed the people’s worship of your brother. Why has this changed today?” Her tone was polite, as it always was now, but Chara felt a twinge of fear: Too bold?
Ariadne turned her green eyes to Chara. She arched her brows, considering. “Servant of mine,” she said at last, “I have never enjoyed it when you speak to me, yet this has also changed today. Who knows when I may regain my senses? Take care.”
“Mistress,” Chara said, and turned her head away. The road was winding its way into a cleft between two peaks; she saw cool, shadowed walls dotted with bushes and twisted trees and bright pink spills of flowers. Even though there was already music around her, she hummed: a tune she and Asterion had made up, crouching on a beach not so far from here, watching anemones and snails in a tidal pool.
The procession left the canyon at midday, when there were no more shadows. “Halt!” the queen cried then, in a voice that soared above all the other sounds. Music and voices fell silent. The crowd fanned out past the edges of the road. Beside Chara, Ariadne gave a low laugh.
“See what is waiting here for us!” Pasiphae went on, and swept her bronze-ringed arm at the road ahead—but Chara had already seen.
The palanquin that had borne Asterion away from Knossos was standing there, on its blue-and-gold legs. No priestesses or priests stood beside it: it was alone and still, though the bull’s head painted on its side was so lifelike that it might have been nodding.
“Marked blood of Zeus,” Glaucus murmured, but Chara hardly heard him. Her own blood was rising, pressing against her ears and forehead from the inside.
The queen went to the palanquin and laid both hands and her brow against it before she faced her people. “My son is here.” She wasn’t shouting now, but her words rang. “He will journey with us. Poseidon’s son will bless the Great Goddess’s sacrifices.”
Two of the Athenians dropped to their knees. The girl who’d had red hair swayed—but Chara was swaying too, just enough to blur the palanquin’s lines and colours.
“Come, Wife!” Minos called, and held out his hand to her. “The Goddess waits for us all.”
Pasiphae returned to the front of the procession. Slaves passed her—four of them, brawny and sweat-slicked. They each seized a long wooden handle. One of them grunted, and all four heaved upward. The wooden box listed, straightened, swivelled so that its front was facing the road. Palanquin and slaves lurched forward. Minos and Pasiphae followed it.
“Ah, girl.” Ariadne whispered the words into Chara’s ear, and Chara shrank away from them—the triumph in them, and their heat on her neck. “Is that not better? There he is. Your beloved Asterion: there he is.”
Don’t look at her. Don’t even look at the box. Not now, when there’s nothing to be done.
“Ah, girl . . . you poor, poor girl: he’s so close, but you cannot get to him. . . .”
Hours passed. Chara’s bare feet were red with dust and her hair clung to her neck. She tried not to look up, but had to, when people jostled her from behind. She saw priestesses tipping waterskins to the Athenians’ mouths as they walked; the formerly red-haired girl choked and wrenched her head away and water spattered the dust. Pasiphae put her hand on the palanquin’s side and kept it there.
She’s holding his hand, Chara thought, and shook her head. So dizzy—so hot and sticky with sweat that she wished she, too, could shave all her hair off. Leave her curls in the dust, like footprints.
The sun was slanting west when the procession halted. “Gods,” Ariadne said, “look at that.” Chara stumbled a little as she lifted her gaze from her feet. She looked up and up some more, to where the peak met the sky. Golden clouds wreathed its sides and ragged top—but no: not clouds. Smoke. The Goddess’s breath, curling lazily up as she slept, inside the mountain.
“No tree anymore,” the princess whispered. “No owl . . .”
There was a double door in the stone, covering the place where the opening to the cave had been. The door was taller than all three storeys of the palace at Knossos. It was made of black metal, and its halves were closed with a gigantic lock—surely far too big for any key. But this was Daedalus’s work, after all—and he stood before it, bouncing on his heels like an eager child as everyone else pointed and gasped. Icarus was beside him, hunched, poking at the ground with his boot toe.
“Bird-boy,” Ariadne said. She was still many paces away from him, but Icarus’s head came up anyway, as if he’d heard her. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, then darted to Chara. She smiled at him, and he at her. His eyes leapt again, this time to the palanquin. She saw him swallow and blink.
As soon as the palanquin bearers set it down, two priests and four priestesses arranged themselves around it, facing out. “I’m sorry,” Ariadne said to Chara. “You were probably intending to steal over there in the middle of the night. Maybe you and he had a secret whistle, when you were children? Ah, well. That was long ago. He’s probably forgotten—and in any case, you obviously won’t get close.”
Chara imagined herself whirling and clawing at Ariadne’s cheeks and breasts and perfect, pinned-up hair. She’d never imagined anything quite so vividly—and the vividness of it was what made her squeeze her eyes shut and wrap her fists up in the folds of her infernal skirt, sucking in air like an oyster diver returned to land.
She smiled as she opened her eyes on the princess’s sneer. “He hasn’t forgotten,” she said quietly.
“Now,” Minos cried, “here, outside the Great Goddess’s temple, hewn in her name by our own Master Daedalus, we shall eat!” Servants were setting braziers around the gathering; the king walked from one to the next, lighting them with his fingertips. Chara thought she could already smell the fat of the hares that were being spitted above them. “Yes, we shall eat and dance and sing, all in praise of our Mother—and tomorrow, just after dawn, we shall give her our greatest gifts: these fourteen youths of Athens, as strong and lovely as Androgeus’s majestic stags.”
Pasiphae stepped past her husband, into the sudden silence. “Yes,” she said, in a rich, ringing voice that reminded Chara of the way she’d sounded years ago, “we praise the Mother and her sons—our sons, absent and present. Now dance and eat. Rejoice!” Minos blinked sparks at her, brushing them absently away from his beard.
Night fell slowly in ribbons of crimson and pink. Chara slipped away from Ariadne and her brothers and hunkered down in the shadows beyond the braziers’ glow. Icarus found her there. “Chara,” he said as he crouched awkwardly beside her.
“Icarus.” She set her palm lightly on his finger talons, which seemed sharper than they had before. “It’s good to see you.”
He waved his other hand at
the palanquin. “That’s the same palanquin they took him away from Knossos in. He’s in there again, isn’t he?”
A dancer spun past them. His feet weren’t touching the ground. They made silver trails in the air that lingered, thinned, vanished.
Chara said, “Yes.”
“Where was he?”
“I don’t know. The litter was just there on the path, when we came out of a mountain pass. But it doesn’t matter anymore where he was.”
“Have you seen him yet?”
She shook her head. They watched the priestesses arrange the sacrifices in two rows before the door—short ones at the ends, tallest ones in the middle—and then ease them to the ground, where they sat still. The girl who’d had red hair was in the middle, at the front. Her chin was touching her chest; her bull mask rose and fell a little with her breath.
“How was it here, all this time?” Chara asked, still watching the girl. She felt him shrug.
“Strange. Dusty. Amazing. But I missed home.”
They were silent, as the sky deepened to starry black. At last Icarus gave a ragged sigh and murmured, “The princess . . .”
Chara turned, about to say, “Where?”—but Ariadne was already above them, hands on hips.
“What are you doing, girl?” she demanded. “Come with me. I have a tent all to myself, thank the gods—Deucalion and Glaucus are sharing one, and Phaidra’s in Mother and Father’s—won’t that be charming for everyone. . . .” She paused and eyed Icarus, who’d lurched to his feet and was standing, swaying a little. Chara watched feathers sprout from his ankles to his knees, unfurling like tiny, downy blossoms.
“Bird-boy,” Ariadne said.
“Ari,” he said, and quickly, when she frowned, “Princess Ariadne.” His voice was as scratchy as ever but also deeper.
She waved her hand in the space between them as if she were dispersing smoke, or an unpleasant smell. “Girl. Come with me, now.”
Chara rose. Her knees and ankles ached. She rolled her eyes at Icarus, who grimaced and bobbed his head.
She undid all of the tiny knots in Ariadne’s hair as firelight swam over the dark blue cloth of the tent. After she finished this, she unfolded the princess’s quilted pallet. Ariadne lay down on it and rolled onto her side, away from Chara.
“Sing to me,” she said.
“Princess?”
“Sing, I said. I heard you and Asterion singing together once. You have a passable voice. I wish you to use it now.”
Sometimes he’d asked her to sing after a rite, when he was quiet and far away, nursing fresh burns. Chara would hold a damp sponge to the burns and croon something that was also quiet—and after a few moments he’d stir and smile at her and she’d sing nonsense verses they’d made up together.
The hermit crab’s got pretty clothes
Alas, he hasn’t got a nose . . .
Once, Asterion had laughed so hard that he’d made no noise at all. Once, after they’d sung a chorus about a man trying to wrestle a giant clam, the prince had fallen off the edge of the basin they were sitting on and lain on his back, squinting into the sunlight, grinning up at her.
She sat down by the tent opening and stared past the guttering braziers at the palanquin. I’d go to you right now, she thought, but they’d stop me and I’d never get close again. No. I’ve been patient for an entire year; I can wait one more day.
She sang, softly, gently, until she and the mountain were the only things awake.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The red-haired girl was lying on her side when Chara emerged from the tent in the morning. The air was thick with steam and mist, except for a clear, bright, silver path that wound from the girl’s upturned mouth. Chara drew closer—past the palanquin that was still flanked by priests and priestesses—and heard what was making the path: singing, godmarked and pure. Her own voice in the darkness, the night before, had been nothing.
She picked her way around the other Athenians and stood above the red-haired girl. Her voice spun a coil of silver around Chara. She felt it against her skin, beneath it, tugging like longing or loss.
The melody stopped. “Who are you?” said the girl in her mortal voice, which was thin and trembling.
Chara shook her head to clear it of godmarked mist. “I’m . . .”
The girl rolled her head. She was looking up, though Chara couldn’t see eyes: just two blank, dark holes in the bull mask.
“I’m Chara. Your godmark is beautiful. Is it Apollo’s?”
“Yes.” The girl’s lips curved. “And it will save me, won’t it, when I’m inside this mountain prison.”
Her voice was stronger now, though the words sounded strange—Chara’s language but not quite; edges rounded or bitten off.
“And who are you?” Chara said.
The girl hummed. Two wisps of silver puffed from her mouth and disappeared. “The Great Goddess’s breakfast, I expect.” Her laugh turned into a sob.
“No,” Chara said—whispering, because other Athenians were stirring, and priestesses too, “please tell me your real name—I’ve wanted to know ever since you tried to run away, at the cliff—I don’t know why, but it seems important. Please: please tell—”
“Polymnia,” the girl sang, in four gleaming, descending notes. Then she said, “I’ve told you. Now leave. Unless you intend to rescue me, leave.”
She rolled her cheek back against the ground. Chara stared down at the smooth glint of her head, and at the livid red line where the mask had dug into it.
“Goddess protect you, Polymnia,” she said at last, and whirled away so quickly that she nearly tripped on the Athenian lying beside her.
A few hours later, sunlight had burned most of the mist away—though the smoke remained, clinging to the mountain’s slopes and smudging the sky. Chara was squinting at the crowd, looking for Icarus, when the king strode to the double doors.
“It is time!” he cried, and his people—rested, fed, eager—pressed in toward him. “Time to offer up the first of our gifts to the Goddess!”
Glaucus, Deucalion, and Ariadne were standing in front of Chara. She saw Glaucus lean in toward Deucalion and heard him mutter something. Deucalion growled a response. Ariadne elbowed Glaucus in the ribs and smiled at him.
Chara thought, as she had on the road, She smiles that way because she knows everything that’s going to happen—and again she felt clammy with dread.
“Come to my side, Wife. Ariadne, Deucalion, Glaucus, Phaidra . . .”
Ariadne and her brothers and sister walked over to Minos. Pasiphae followed them slowly, holding the long pleats of her skirt above the fuzz of grass and tiny, opening flowers. Chara was alone, now, at the front of the gathering. She glanced over her shoulder at the palanquin, then at Polymnia, who was standing with the others, her head hanging limply. No one was looking at Chara. She edged her way back and sidled over to the palanquin. Not even the priests and priestesses around it paid her any attention.
The return of Chara the invisible slave, she thought, which made her remember a verse she and Asterion had made up, about a lobster with invisible claws. She slipped even closer to the palanquin, as she was remembering this. She was an arm’s length away. She could see the gleam of the paint and the grain of the naked wood, as whorled and wispy as the mist that parted before Polymnia’s godmarked voice.
“Daedalus!” the king called. “Great Daedalus, come here by me!”
Chara had to watch Daedalus walk to the door. He frightened her, as he had the one time he’d spoken to her, after she’d reeled into him, trying to escape Asterion. “Careful,” he’d said, “the world is hot and spinning.” He’d smiled down at her and placed his large, cool hand briefly on her head, but his eyes hadn’t truly seen her. His eyes were seeing things she couldn’t: she knew this, as his hand dropped away.
Now he was standing utterly still beside Minos. Chara didn’t think she�
�d ever seen him be so still before. His dark gaze was fixed and so were his feet—he didn’t bob or weave or pace. His hands dangled by his sides and didn’t seek out the close-cropped black and white of his hair. Something caught at Chara’s vision; she turned and saw Icarus perched on a jagged boulder halfway up the mountainside. Even from so far below, she could see that he was looking only at Ariadne.
“The Great Daedalus made the wondrous, sacred place that lies beyond these doors,” the king said. “The place that will soon welcome sacrifices and gods.” Pasiphae frowned. She was holding her chin high—haughty, but also, perhaps, unsure. Ariadne’s hands twitched, at her sides.
Chara inched closer to the palanquin. She’d be able to touch it soon.
“Because we who must live outside it will never see its riches, I have asked one who helped to build it to show them to us. Step forward, Amon.”
Amon was just a youth—maybe fifteen, bulge-eyed, tripping his way to the king. He inclined his head awkwardly to Daedalus, who didn’t seem to notice him. He inclined his head to the king, who beamed and set an orange-veined hand on his shoulder. Amon flinched. His smile trembled like water.
“Guide us with your godmark, boy. Show us the altar of the Goddess, blessed Mother of Zeus.”
Amon nodded and swallowed. Chara saw Ariadne smile that thin-lipped smile that was actually a sneer. The princess’s gaze was fastened on Amon, though. Everyone was gazing at him now, except for Chara and Icarus.
Just as she was reaching her hand past one of the priests to the palanquin door’s handle, the air went black and silver.
Her gasp was lost in the wave of sighs and shouts that rose around her. Silver images were stitching themselves into an impossible night sky: images of corridors and staircases; pillars and friezes and urns; bridges over empty spaces of deeper darkness—and, finally, above and beneath everything else, an enormous altar stone engraved with writhing, lashing lines: snakes, carved and living.
Blessed Mother, Chara cried inside her own head, while others cried it aloud.
“Look at what Daedalus has wrought!” Minos called. The king was invisible except for his rippling, firelit outline, which seemed very far away. “See what we have made for these fine Athenian youths, and all those who will follow them! The most beautiful, most majestic temple in the world—and only its designer knows all its turnings and corners, all its steps and pits and scalding, steaming fissures!”
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