فصل 10

Chapter Ten FOR THREE DAYS I stood at that prow. We did not stay over on an island again. The oarsmen worked in shifts, sleeping on the deck. Daedalus repaired the rail, then took his turn among them. He was unfailingly polite, offering food and wine, a bedroll, but he did not linger. What did I expect? I had loosed my wrath on him as if I were my father. One more thing that I had ruined. We reached the island of Crete just before noon on the seventh day. The sun threw off great sheets of light from the water, turning the sail incandescent. Around us ships crowded the bay: Mycenaean barges, Phoenician traders, Egyptian galleys, Hittites and Aethiopians and Hesperians. All the merchants who passed through these waters wanted the rich city of Knossos as their customer, and Minos knew it. He welcomed them with wide, safe moorings and agents to collect for the privilege of using them. The inns and brothels belonged to Minos also, and the gold and jewels flowed like a great river to his hands. The captain aimed us squarely at the first mooring, kept open for royal ships. The noise and motion of the docks clattered around me: men running, shouting, heaving boxes onto decks. Polydamas spoke a word to the harbormaster, then turned to us. “You are to come at once. You and the craftsman both.” Daedalus gestured that I should go first. We followed Polydamas up the docks. Before us, the huge limestone stairs wavered in the heat. Men streamed past us, servants and nobles alike, their shoulders sun-darkened and bare. Above, the palace of mighty Knossos glowed on its hill like a hive. We climbed. I heard Daedalus’ breaths behind me and Polydamas’ in front. The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet. At last we reached the top and crossed the threshold into the palace. The blinding light vanished. Cool darkness flowed over my skin. Daedalus and Polydamas hesitated, blinking. My eyes were not mortal and needed no time to adjust. I saw at once the beauty of that place, even greater than the last time I had come. The palace was like a hive indeed, each hall leading to an ornate chamber, and each chamber to another hall. Windows were cut in the walls to let in thick squares of golden sun. Intricate murals unrolled themselves on every side: dolphins and laughing women, boys gathering flowers, and deep-chested bulls tossing their horns. Outside in tiled pavilions silver fountains ran, and servants hurried among columns reddened with hematite. Over every doorway hung a labrys, the double-axe of Minos. I remembered that he had given Pasiphaë a necklace with a labrys pendant at their wedding. She had held it as if it were a worm, and when the ceremony came her neck bore only her own onyx and amber. Polydamas guided us through the twisting passages towards the queen’s quarters. There it was more lavish still, the paintings rich with ochre and blue copper, but the windows had been covered over. Instead there were golden torches and leaping braziers. Cunningly recessed skylights let in light but no glimpse of sky; Daedalus’ work, I supposed. Pasiphaë had never liked our father’s prying gaze. Polydamas stopped before a door scrolled with flowers and waves. “The queen is within,” he said, and knocked. We stood in the still and shadowed air. I could hear nothing beyond that heavy wood, but I became aware of Daedalus’ ragged breath beside me. His voice was low. “Lady,” he said, “I have offended you and I am sorry. But I am sorrier still for what you will find inside. I wish—” The door opened. A handmaid stood breathless before us, her hair pinned in the Cretan style at the top of her head. “The queen is in her labors—” she began, but my sister’s voice cut across her. “Is it them?” At the room’s center, Pasiphaë lay upon a purple couch. Her skin gleamed with sweat, and her belly was shockingly distended, swollen out like a tumor from her slender frame. I had forgotten how vivid she was, how beautiful. Even in her pain, she commanded the room, drawing all the light to herself, leeching the world around her pale as mushrooms. She had always been the most like our father. I stepped through the door. “Twelve dead,” I said. “Twelve men for a joke and your vanity.” She smirked, rising up to meet me. “It seemed only fair to let Scylla have her chance at you, don’t you think? Let me guess: you tried to change her back.” She laughed at what she saw in my face. “Oh, I knew you would! You made a monster and all you can think of is how sorry you are. Alas, poor mortals, I have put them in danger!” She was as quicksilver cruel as ever. It was a relief of sorts. “It was you who put them in danger,” I said. “But you are the one who failed to save them. Tell me, did you weep as you watched them die?” I forced my voice to stay even. “You are in error,” I said. “I saw no men die. The twelve were lost on the way out.” She did not even pause. “No matter. More will die on every ship that passes.” She tapped a finger to her chin. “How many do you think it will be, in a year? A hundred? A thousand?” She was showing her mink teeth, trying to get me to melt like all those naiads in Oceanos’ halls. But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself. “This is not the way to get my help, Pasiphaë.” “Your help! Please. I am the one who got you off that sand-spit of an island. I hear you sleep with lions and boars for company. But that’s an improvement for you, isn’t it? After Glaucos the squid.” “If you don’t need me,” I said, “I will happily go back to my sand-spit.” “Oh, come, sister, don’t be so sour, it’s only a jest. And look how grown you are, slipping past Scylla! I knew I was right to call you instead of that braggart Aeëtes. You can stop making that face. I’ve already set aside gold for the families of the men who were lost.” “Gold does not give back a life.” “I can tell you are not a queen. Believe me, most of the families would rather have the gold. Now, are there any other—” But she did not finish. She grunted and dug her nails into the arm of a handmaiden kneeling at her feet. I had not noticed the girl before, but I saw now that the skin of her arm was purple and smeared with blood. “Out,” I said to her. “Out, all. This is no place for you.”

I felt a spurt of satisfaction at how fast the attendants fled. I faced my sister. “Well?” Her face was still contorted with pain. “What do you think? It’s been days and it hasn’t even moved. It needs to be cut out.” She threw back her robes, revealing the swollen skin. A ripple passed across the surface of her belly, from left to right, then back again. I knew little of childbirth. I had never attended my mother, nor any of my cousins. A few things I remembered hearing. “Have you tried pushing from your knees?” “Of course I’ve tried it!” She screamed as the spasm came again. “I’ve had eight children! Just cut the fucking thing out of me!” From my bag I drew out a pain draught. “Are you stupid? I’m not going to be put to sleep like some infant. Give me the willow bark.” “Willow is for headaches, not surgery.” “Give it to me!” I gave it, and she drained the bottle. “Daedalus,” she said, “take up the knife.” I had forgotten he was there. He stood in the doorway, very still. “Pasiphaë,” I said, “do not be perverse. You sent for me, now use me.” She laughed, a savage sound. “You think I trust you with that? You are for after. Anyway, it is fitting that Daedalus should do it, he knows why. Don’t you, craftsman? Will you tell my sister now, or shall we let it be a surprise?” “I will do it,” Daedalus said to me. “It is my task.” He stepped to the table and took up the knife. The blade was honed to a hair’s edge. She seized his wrist. “Just remember,” she said. “Remember what I will do if you think to go astray.” He nodded mildly, though for the first time I saw something like anger in his eyes. She drew her nail across the lower portion of her belly, leaving a red slice. “There,” she said. The room was hot and close. I felt my hands slicked with sweat. How Daedalus held that knife steady I do not know. The tip bit into my sister’s skin, and blood welled, red and gold mixed. His arms were taut with effort, his jaw set. It took a long time, for my sister’s immortal flesh fought back, but Daedalus cut on with utmost concentration, and at last the glistening muscles parted, and the flesh beneath gave way. The path lay bare to my sister’s womb. “Now you,” she said, looking at me. Her voice was hoarse and torn. “Get it out.” The couch beneath her was sopping. The room was filled with the overripe stink of her ambrosial blood. Her belly had stopped rippling when Daedalus began to cut. It was tensed now. As if it were waiting, I thought. I looked at my sister. “What is in there?” Her golden hair was matted. “What do you think? A baby.” I put my hands to that gap in her flesh. The blood pulsed hot against me. Slowly, I pressed through the muscles and the wet. My sister made a strangled croak. I searched in that slickness, and at last there it was: the soft mass of an arm. A relief. I could not even say what I had feared. Just a baby. “I have it,” I said. My fingers inched upwards for purchase. I remember telling myself that I must be careful to find its head. I did not want it twisted when I began to pull. Pain burst in my fingers, so shocking I could not cry out. I thought some scrambled thing: that Daedalus must have dropped the scalpel inside of her, that a bone had broken in her labor and stabbed me. But the pain clamped harder, driving deep into my hand, grinding. Teeth. It was teeth. I did scream then. I tried to jerk my hand away, but it had me fast in its jaws. In a panic, I yanked. The lips of my sister’s wound parted and the thing slid forth. It thrashed like a fish on a hook, and muck flew across our faces. My sister was shrieking. The thing was like an anchor dragging on my arm, and I felt my finger joints tearing. I screamed again, the agony white-hot, and fell on top of the creature, scrabbling for its throat with my hand. When I found it, I bore down, pinning its body beneath me. Its heels beat on the stone, its head twisted, side to side. At last I saw it clear: the nose broad and flat, shining wetly with birth fluid. The shaggy, thick face crowned with two sharp horns. Below, the froggy baby body bucked with unnatural strength. Its eyes were black and fixed on mine.

Dear gods, I thought, what is it? The creature made a choking sound and opened its mouth. I snatched my hand away, bloody and mangled. I had lost my last two fingers and part of a third. The thing’s jaw worked, swallowing what it had taken. Its chin wrenched in my grip, trying to bite me again. A shadow beside me. Daedalus, pale and blood-spattered. “I am here.” “The knife,” I said. “What are you doing? Do not hurt him, he must live!” My sister was struggling on her couch, but she could not rise with her muscles cut. “The cord,” I said. It still ran gristle-thick between the creature and my sister’s womb. He sawed at it. My knees were wet where I knelt. My hands were a mass of broken pain and blood. “Now a blanket,” I said. “A sack.” He brought a thick wool coverlet, laid it on the floor beside me. With my torn fingers, I dragged the thing into its center. It fought still, moaning angrily, and twice I nearly lost it, for it seemed to have grown stronger even in those moments. But Daedalus gathered up the corners, and when he had them, I jerked my hands away. The creature thrashed in the blanket folds, unable to find purchase. I took the ends from him, lifting it off the floor. I could hear the rasp of Daedalus’ breath. “A cage,” he said. “We need a cage.” “Get one,” I said. “I will hold it.” He ran. Inside its sack, the creature twisted like a snake. I saw its limbs lined against the fabric, that thick head, the points of horns. Daedalus returned with a birdcage, the finches still fluttering inside. But it was stout, and large enough. I stuffed the blanket in, and he clanged shut the door. He threw another blanket over it, and the creature was hidden. I looked at my sister. She was covered in blood, her belly a slaughter-yard. The drips fell wetly to the sodden rug beneath. Her eyes were wild. “You did not hurt it?” I stared at her. “Are you mad? It tried to eat my hand! Tell me how such an abomination came to be.” “Stitch me up.” “No,” I said. “You will tell me, or I will let you bleed yourself dry.” “Bitch,” she said. But she was wheezing. The pain was wearing her away. Even my sister had an end in her, a place she could not go. We stared at each other, yellow eyes to yellow. “Well, Daedalus?” she said at last. “It is your moment. Tell my sister whose fault this creature is.” He looked at me, face weary and streaked with blood. “Mine,” he said. “It is mine. I am the reason this beast lives.” From the cage, a wet chewing sound. The finches had gone silent. “The gods sent a bull, pure white, to bless the kingdom of Minos. The queen admired the creature and desired to see it more closely, yet it ran from any who came near. So I built the hollow likeness of a cow, with a place inside for her to sit. I gave it wheels, so we might roll it to the beach while the creature slept. I thought it would only be…I did not—” “Oh, please,” my sister spat. “The world will be ended before you stammer to your finish. I fucked the sacred bull, all right? Now get the thread.”

I stitched my sister up. Soldiers came, their faces carefully blank, and bore the cage to an inner closet. My sister called after them, “No one goes near it without my word. And give it something to eat!” Silent handmaids rolled up the soaked rug and carried off the ruined couch as if they did such work every day. They burned frankincense and sweet violets to mask the stench, then bore my sister to the bath. “The gods will punish you,” I had told her, while I sewed. But she had only laughed with a giddy lushness. “Don’t you know?” she had said. “The gods love their monsters.” The words made me start. “You talked to Hermes?” “Hermes? What does he have to do with it? I don’t need some Olympian to tell me what is plain before my face. Everyone knows it.” She smirked. “Except for you, as usual.” A presence at my side brought me back. Daedalus. We were alone, for the first time since he had come to my island. There were drops of brown spattered across his forehead. His arms were smeared to the elbow. “May I bandage your fingers?” “No,” I said. “Thank you. They will fix themselves.” “Lady.” He hesitated. “I am in your debt for all my days. If you had not come, it would have been me.”

His shoulders were taut, tensed as if against a blow. The last time he had thanked me, I had stormed at him. But now I understood more: he, too, knew what it was to make monsters. “I am glad it was not,” I said. I nodded at his hands, crusted and stained like everything else. “Yours cannot grow back.” He lowered his voice. “Can the creature be killed?” I thought of my sister shrieking to be careful. “I don’t know. Pasiphaë seems to believe it can. But even so it is the child of the white bull. It may be guarded by a god, or it may bring down a curse upon any who harm it. I need to think.” He rubbed at his scalp, and I saw the hope of an easy solution drain from him. “I must go make another cage then. That one won’t hold it long.” He left. The gore was drying stiff upon my cheeks, and my arms were greasy with the creature’s stink. I felt clouded and heavy, sick from the pollution of so much blood. If I called the handmaids, they would bring me to a bath, but I knew that would not be enough. Why had my sister made such an abomination? And why summon me? Most naiads would have fled, but one of the nereids might have done it, they were used to monsters. Or Perses. Why had she not called for him? My mind had no answers. It was limp and dulled, useless as my missing fingers. One thought came clear: I must do something. I could not stand by while a horror was loosed upon the world. I had the thought that I should find my sister’s workroom. Perhaps there would be something there to help me, some antidote, some great drug of reversal. It was not far, a hall off her bedchamber separated by a curtain. I had never seen another witch’s craft room before, and I walked its shelves expecting I do not know what, a hundred grisly things, kraken livers, dragons’ teeth, the flayed skin of giants. But all I saw were herbs, and rudimentary ones at that: poisons, poppies, a few healing roots. I had no doubt my sister could work plenty with them, for her will had always been strong. But she was lazy, and here was the proof. Those few simples were old and weak as dead leaves. They had been collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time of day. I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me. And my own herbs from Aiaia would not be enough, strong as they were. The monster was bound to Crete, and whatever would be done, Crete must guide me. I traced back through the halls and corridors to the palace center. There I had seen stairs that ran not to the harbor but inland, to the wide, bright gardens and pavilions, which in turn opened out to distant fields. All around, busy men and women swept flagstones, picked fruits, hefted their baskets of barley. They kept their eyes diligently lowered as I went. I suppose living with Minos and Pasiphaë they had grown used to ignoring bloodier things than me. I passed the outlying houses of peasants and shepherds, the groves and grazing herds. The hills were lush and so golden with sun that the light seemed to rise from them, but I did not stop to savor the view. My eyes were fixed upon the black outline that stood against the sky. Mount Dicte, it is called. No bears or wolves or lions dare to tread there, only the sacred goats, their great horns curling like conch shells. Even in the hottest season, the forests remain dark and cool. At night, the huntress Artemis is said to roam its hills with her shining bow, and in one of its shadowed caves Zeus himself was born and hidden from his devouring father. There are herbs there that grow nowhere else. They are so rare, few have been given names. I could feel them swelling in their hollows, breathing tendrils of magic into the air. A small yellow flower with a green center. A drooping lily that bloomed orange-brown. And best of all, furred dittany, queen of healing. I did not walk as a mortal walks, but as a god, and the miles fell away beneath my feet. It was dusk when I reached the foothills and began to climb. The branches laced over me. The shade rose deep as water, tingling across my skin. The whole mountain seemed to hum beneath me. Even bloodied and aching as I was, I felt a spurt of giddiness. I traced the mosses, the hummocks of ground upwards, and, at the base of a white poplar, I found a blooming patch of dittany. Its leaves were threaded with power, and I pressed them to my broken fingers. The spell took hold with a word; my hand would be whole by morning. I gathered some of the roots and seeds for my bag, and kept on. The stink and weight of blood hung still upon me, and at last I found a pool, cold and clear, fed by icy melt. I welcomed the shock of its waters, their clean, scouring pain. I worked those small rites of purification which all gods know. With pebbles from the bank, I scrubbed the filth away. After, I sat on the bank beneath the silvered leaves and thought of Daedalus’ question. Can the creature be killed? Among the gods there are a few who have the gift of prophecy, the ability to peer into the murk and glimpse what fates will come. Not everything may be foreseen. Most gods and mortals have lives that are tied to nothing; they tangle and wend now here, now there, according to no set plan. But then there are those who wear their destinies like nooses, whose lives run straight as planks, however they try to twist. It is these that our prophets may see. My father has such foreknowledge, and I had heard it said all my life that the trait was passed to his children also. I had never thought to test it. I had been raised to think I had none of his strengths. But now I touched the water and said, Show me. An image formed, delicate and pale, as if made from curls of mist. A smoking torch bobbed in long corridors. A thread unwound through a stone passage. The creature roared, showing its unnatural teeth. It stood tall as a man, dressed in rotting scraps. A mortal, sword in hand, leapt from the shadows to strike it dead. The mist ebbed, and the pool cleared again. I had my answer, but it was not the one I had hoped for. The creature was mortal, but it could not die as an infant, by my hand or Daedalus’. It had a fate many years in the future, and must live it out. Until then, it could only be contained. That would be Daedalus’ work, yet there might be a way for me to help him. I paced among the shadowed trees, thinking of that creature and what weaknesses it might have. I remembered its black eyes fixed ravening on mine. Its sucking hunger as it fought me for my hand. How much would it take to sate that appetite? If I had not been a god, it would have crawled up my arm, consuming me inch by inch. I felt an idea rise in me. I would need all the secret herbs of Dicte, and with them the strongest binding weeds, ilex root and withy, fennel and hemlock, aconite, hellebore. I would need as well the rest of my moly stores. I slipped through those trees unerring, hunting down each ingredient in its turn. If Artemis walked that night, she kept out of my way. I carried the leaves and roots back to the pool and ground them on its rocks. The paste I gathered in one of my bottles, and added some of the pool’s water. Its waves still bore the blood it had washed from my hands, mine and my sister’s too. As if it knew, the draught swirled red and dark. I did not sleep that night. I stayed on Dicte until the sky went gray and then began walking back to Knossos. By the time I reached the palace, the sun was bright on the fields. I passed a courtyard that had caught my eye the day before, and stopped now to examine it more closely. In it was a great dancing circle, ringed by laurels and oaks for shade from the beating sun. I had thought its floor was made of stone, but now I saw it was wood, a thousand tiles of it, so smoothed and varnished that they seemed like a single piece. They were painted with a spiral, traveling outwards from its center like the furling crest of a wave. Daedalus’ work, it could be no other. A girl was dancing on it. No music played, yet her feet kept perfect time, each step the beat of a silent drum. She moved like a wave herself, graceful, but with relentless, driving motion. On her head shone the circlet of a princess. I would have known her anywhere. The girl from Daedalus’ prow. Her eyes widened when she saw me, just like her statue’s. She bowed her head. “Aunt Circe,” she said. “I am glad to meet you. I am Ariadne.” I could see pieces of Pasiphaë in her, but only if I searched: her chin, the delicacy of her collarbone.

“You are skilled,” I said. She smiled. “Thank you. My parents are looking for you.” “No doubt. But I must find Daedalus.” She nodded, as if I were only one of a thousand who wanted him instead of her parents. “I will take you. But we must be careful. The guards are out looking.” She slipped her fingers into mine, warm and a little damp from her exercise. Through dozens of narrow side-passages she led me, her feet silent on the stones. We came at last to a bronze door. She beat six times in a rhythm. “I cannot play now, Ariadne,” a voice called. “I am busy.” “I am with the lady Circe,” she said. The door swung open, revealing Daedalus, sooty and stained. Behind him was a workroom, half open to the sky. I saw statues with their cloths still on them, gears and instruments I did not recognize. At the back, a foundry smoked, and metal glowed hot in a mold. A fish spine lay on a table, a strange jagged blade beside it. “I have been to Mount Dicte,” I said. “I have glimpsed the creature’s fate. It can die, but not now. A mortal will come who is destined to dispatch it. I do not know how long it may be. The creature was full-grown in my vision.” I watched the knowledge settle on him. All the days ahead that he must be on his guard. He drew a breath. “So we contain it then.” “Yes. I have brewed a charm that will help. It craves…” I paused, feeling Ariadne behind me. “It craves that flesh you saw it eat. It is part of its nature. I cannot take away that hunger, but I may set bounds upon it.” “Anything,” he said. “I am grateful.” “Do not be grateful yet,” I said. “For three seasons of the year, the spell will keep its appetite at bay. But every harvest it will return, and must be fed.” His eyes flicked to Ariadne behind me. “I understand,” he said. “The rest of the time it will still be dangerous, but only as a savage beast might be.” He nodded, but I saw he was thinking of harvest time, and the feeding that must come. He glanced at the molds behind him, tinged red with heat. “I will be finished with the cage tomorrow morning.” “Good,” I said. “It cannot come too soon. I will work the spell then.” When the door closed, Ariadne stood waiting. “You were speaking of the baby that was born, were you not? He is the one that must be kept until he’s killed?” “He is.” “The servants say he is a monster, and my father shouted at me when I asked about him. But he is still my brother, is he not?” I hesitated. “I know about my mother and the white bull,” she said. No child of Pasiphaë’s could remain innocent for long. “I suppose you may say he is your half-brother,” I said. “Now come. Take me to the king and queen.”

Griffins preened, delicate and regal, on the walls. The windows spilled sun. My sister lay on her silver couch glowing with health. Beside her, on an alabaster chair, Minos looked old and puffed, like something left dead in the waves. His eyes seized on me as snatcher-birds take fish. “Where have you been? The monster needs tending. That is why you were brought here!” “I have made a draught,” I said. “So we may transfer it to its new cage more safely.” “A draught? I want it killed!” “Darling, you sound hysterical,” Pasiphaë said. “You haven’t even heard my sister’s idea. Go on, Circe, please.” She rested her chin on her hand, theatrically expectant. “It will bind the creature’s hunger for three seasons of each year.” “That’s it?” “Now, Minos, you’ll hurt Circe’s feelings. I think it’s a very fine spell, sister. My son’s appetite is a bit unwieldy, isn’t it? He’s gone through most of our prisoners already.”

“I want the creature dead, and that is final!” “It cannot be killed,” I told Minos. “Not now. It has a destiny far in the future.” “A destiny!” My sister clapped delightedly. “Oh, tell us what it is! Does it escape and eat someone we know?” Minos paled, though he tried to hide it. “Be sure,” he said to me. “You and the craftsman, be sure it is secure.” “Yes,” my sister crooned. “Be sure. I hate to think what would happen if it got out. My husband may be a son of Zeus, but his flesh is thoroughly mortal. The truth is”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I think he may be afraid of the creature.” A hundred times I had seen some fool caught between my sister’s claws. Minos took it worse than most. He stabbed a finger through the air at me. “You hear? She threatens me openly. This is your fault, you and your whole lying family. Your father gave her to me as if she were a treasure, but if you knew the things she has done to me—” “Oh, tell her some of them! I think Circe would appreciate the witchcraft. What about the hundred girls who died while you heaved over them?” I could feel Ariadne, very still, beside me. I wished she were not there. The hate in Minos’ eyes was a living thing. “Foul harpy! It was your spell that caused their deaths! All you breed is evil! I should have ripped that beast from your cursed womb before it could be born!” “But you did not dare, did you? You know how your dear father Zeus dotes on such creatures. How else can all his bastard heroes win their reputations?” She cocked her head. “In fact, shouldn’t you be slavering to take up a sword yourself? Oh, but I forgot. You have no taste for killing unless it is serving girls. Sister, truly, you should learn this spell. You need only—” Minos had risen from his seat. “I forbid you to speak further!” My sister laughed, her most silver-fountain sound. It was calculated, like everything she did. Minos raged on, but I was watching her. I had dismissed her coupling with the bull as some perverse whim, but she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead. When was the last time that I had seen true emotion on her face? I recalled now that moment on her childbed when she had cried out, her face twisted with urgency, that the monster must live. Why? Not love, there was none of that in her. So the creature must somehow serve her ends. It was my hours with Hermes that helped me to an answer, all the news that he had brought me of the world. When Pasiphaë had married Minos, Crete was the richest and most famous of our kingdoms. Yet since then, every day, more mighty kingdoms were rising up, in Mycenae and Troy, Anatolia and Babylon. Since then too, one of her brothers had learned to raise the dead, the other to tame dragons, and her sister had transformed Scylla. No one spoke of Pasiphaë anymore. Now, at a stroke, she made her fading star shine again. All the world would tell the story of the queen of Crete, maker and mother of the great flesh-eating bull. And the gods would do nothing. Think of all the prayers they would get. “It’s just so funny,” Pasiphaë was saying. “It took you so long to understand! Did you think they were dying from the pleasure of your exertions? From the sheer transported bliss? Believe me—” I turned to Ariadne, standing beside me silent as air. “Come,” I said. “We are finished here.”

We walked back to her dancing circle. Over us, the laurels and oaks spread their green leaves. “When your spell is cast,” she said, “my brother will not be so monstrous anymore.” “That is my hope,” I said. A moment passed. She looked up at me, hands clasped to her chest as if she kept a secret there. “Will you stay a little?” I watched her dance, arms curving like wings, her strong young legs in love with their own motion. This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind. Ariadne’s light feet crossed and recrossed the circle. Every step was perfect, like a gift she gave herself, and she smiled, receiving it. I wanted to seize her by the shoulders. Whatever you do, I wanted to say, do not be too happy. It will bring down fire on your head. I said nothing, and let her dance.