Lost in the Labyrinth (16 page)

My mothers condition did not change.

Sometimes I sat in the Bull Pen, looking about and remembering my beloved brother. If I left this place I would be leaving even the memory of him; there would be nothing in Athens to remind me of him. Except Theseus, of course. Theseus, who was to be my powerful brother-in-law in this new life. Could I bear to be a subject in a land whose ruler had killed my poor Asterius?

The wild hatred and despair I had felt on his death had already subsided. Now I sometimes wondered if this were not the best ending for my brother. He had been twelve years old. Soon he would have been a full-grown male, with all the desires and passions of his condition. What would we have done then?

There was little ahead for Asterius but sorrow, I think. So I kissed the ribbons I had been wont to plait into his hair and shed a few brief tears. With all my heart I hoped that he was happy in the Underworld.

On the morning of the third day after I spoke with Icarus and Daedalus, I awoke with a clear mind and a powerful sense of urgency. It was as though a bell had rung in my head. I rose, washed, and dressed. Taking some bread and honey to break my fast, I began to walk toward the mountains as quickly as I could.

I had become possessed of the idea that time had grown dangerously short. Why had I not gone to the mountains yesterday or the day before? Would there be time?

I brought a small saw along with which to cut the saplings. Soon the trail became steeper and the saw banged against the calf of my leg. Sometimes I had to drop to my knees and crawl over steep boulders; I had chosen the shorter but steeper route.

Hurry! Hurry!
I knew how foolish I was being. Once I found the grove of trees and cut a sufficiency of branches, those branches would have to be debarked and sawed into appropriate lengths. Then after they were delivered to Daedalus and they were bound into a frame would come the tedious job of attaching the thousands of feathers, one by one. It would take another day, at least.

Yet I knew that I must hurry.

At last, at long last, I reached the clearing on the side of the cliff where we had sat in the sun and laughed at Asterius's antics. How cheerful and content I had been! Now all was in ruins around me.

The trees were those in which the Athenians had waited. I recognized them easily by their slender, whiplike limbs. I began cutting a tree by the very edge of the precipice, dropping branches into a pile by my side.

What made me look over my right shoulder, down into the chasm below?

I don't know. Perhaps it was the memory of the hawk soaring in the updraft on that earlier, happier day.

I saw a man, flying.

He was below me still, but rising rapidly. It was Daedalus, I decided after a little consideration. His body was curled stiffly inward, like a dragonfly in flight. The big white wings did not beat against the air but were held out to the sides, catching the wind like sails.

Once Icarus had pointed out to me how the biggest birds, the eagles and hawks, would use these air currents that rise up the sides of cliffs to elevate their heavy bodies, and that was what Daedalus was doing now. He was close enough that I could just make out the features of his face, though not with any distinctness. I did not think he noticed me. His face was contorted with concentration; he was expending every ounce of energy he possessed to keep himself flying, to keep himself from being dashed onto the rocks below.

I looked down again into the abyss. There was Icarus, flying toward me.

Why did you not wait for me?
I longed to berate him for faithlessness, but the blame was mine and I held my tongue. He would not have heard me in any case.

Never had I seen a face so full of joy.
This!
cried his eyes, his limbs, his whole body.
This is what I was born and bred for. This moment and nothing else!

I knew it was true. His proper fate was not that of an exile, a dutiful husband to a girl without fortune, position, or beauty. No, here was his destiny, this leap into the sky, this gliding through the air.

I rejoiced for him, I swear to you.

He crested the cliff's edge and went on rising. I believe he saw me, for his radiant smile widened.

Dazzled, I dropped my eyes from his glory.

What had happened to Daedalus? A moment later I found him. He had left the rising air currents and was now flying out to sea. He turned and beckoned Icarus to follow him. but Icarus was not attending.

Icarus went on and on, up and up.

At last he was nothing but a speck of darkness in a brilliant blue sky, headed straight into the sun.

I could look no longer; tears blinded my eyes. I nearly missed seeing the last of him. As he rose higher and higher, I suppose that the heat of the sun began to melt the waxen glue that bound the feathers to the frame. The frame itself disintegrated.

He spun around in a wide spiral and fell—not back to earth but into the sea. I was glad of that at least; it seemed a cleaner death.

Daedalus came back and flew laboriously in a circle, once, twice over the sea where Icarus fell, looking for signs of life. Then he flew away.

Sometime later a messenger arrived, out of breath from the climb.

"My lady! I am sorry, my lady," he panted, "but the queen orders your attendance upon her immediately."

"The queen?" I asked. I looked up at the man, startled out of my lethargy.

"Queen Acalle," he explained, embarrassed. "Your lady mother is dead and your sister Acalle is now queen."

"I see," I said. "I will come."

L
AST NIGHT
I
SAW MY SISTER, WHO IS DEAD
. S
HE STOOD AT THE
end of a long corridor, weeping.

I did not know her until I drew near. There are some here in the Labyrinth who are strangers to me. I thought her a new servant beaten for disobedience, and I looked at her closely only when she did not move as I approached.

Her body was just beginning to be big with child, a child who never saw the light of day. Her neck was encircled by the rope with which she had hanged herself, yet her face was not distorted and discolored, as the faces of the hanged are, and I could see her features clearly.

"Can it really be you, Ariadne, come back after all this time?" I whispered.

She did not answer, but began slowly to sink through the floor.

I am a dignified and important person now, but I ran like the girl I once was to the nearest stairway. I wished to see if my sister's feet would appear on the ceiling of the story below. I descended a few steps and looked to see.

They did. My sister was drifting downward through solid stone.

I glanced around to see if anyone else saw what I saw. But no, I was alone. At this hour few walked these hallways in the nether regions of the queen's quarters. I ran down the rest of the stairs.

"Tell me, sister," I adjured her, after waiting until her head had fully emerged from the ceiling. "What is your will?" She did not speak but wept silently.

As I watched, fascinated, she revolved twice in the air, as a leaf will when it falls. Still she sank, until she began to descend through the next floor.

"Ariadne," I protested, "I—" Her head slipped beneath the stone. I hurried down the next flight of stairs. There were two more floors below us. When she dropped through the last floor it would be into the earth and I would see her no more.

"It is I, Xenodice," I called out. "You fall faster than I run. Stop!"

Her face changed a little then. She made a slight gesture, as of one who says, "I cannot."

"Well, then, fall more slowly," I panted, rounding the turn of the stairs.

It appeared that Ariadne was able to stay her downward movement a little. She flowed through the next floor like honey through a sieve.

I pattered down the last staircase. As I arrived, gasping, before my sister, I saw her beginning to sink through the floor and into the ground beneath. She had disappeared almost up to the knees.

Seeing that I had no time to waste, I at once asked, "Why do you come to me, Ariadne? If you wish to atone for your crimes, you perhaps should plead your cause before Acalle, who is now queen." Thinking that she might not know, I added, "Our mother is dead, and our father also. Three of our brothers—" I broke off and then continued awkwardly, "But of course you knew about those deaths. Do you ... do you ever see them there, where you are?"

Her head drooped so that her chin touched her chest. The floor had reached her waist now.

They tell us that the Underworld is a place of joy and harmony. My sister did not appear to have found it so. But then, mine was a tactless question; none of my family would be likely to greet Ariadne in the afterlife with great enthusiasm. I should not have mentioned them.

Her breast was now at the level of the floor.

"Our brother Glaucus is to marry Semele of Phaistos in the springtime," I said quickly, hoping to cheer her. "You remember Semele. You never liked her, I know, but I believe that they will be happy together. They both like to eat so much. Oh, and little Phaedra is to marry—" I broke off with a blush. Of course she did not want to hear about our little sister Phaedra's wedding plans.

Her face and what remained visible of her body convulsed with emotion and she shook her head "no," her movements as slow as those of a swimmer suspended in deep waters. I cursed myself for my stupidity.

"Do not go, Ariadne," I said. I spoke with urgency now, for only her head remained above the floor. "You have not told me what you require of me." I remembered that she had been buried in foreign soil, without a tomb or the tribute of grave goods.

"Is—is there anything that you need in the afterlife, Ariadne? Tell me and I will make certain that you get it. Only—only Acalle must not know." Her mouth and nose had vanished; her eyes alone beseeched me, for what I did not know.

"Come back!" I cried. "Come back! I—"

My voice trailed off into silence. She was no more.

I whispered, "I—I miss you, Ariadne," but no one heard, and no one answered.

***

It was not until nearly a year after Ariadne fled with Theseus that we learned what had happened to her. Receiving official notice that Theseus was to be married, we were merely surprised they had delayed so long—until we heard the name of the bride: Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Only then did we discover that he had deserted Ariadne on the Isle of Naxos many months before.

Some said that it was an accident. Because of her condition (she was right about bearing his child), she had felt the movement of the ship more grievously than most. She begged, they said, to tarry at Naxos for a time, waiting for the seas to subside. Theseus was willing, all the more so as it meant that the pursuing Keftiu sailed right past them, unseeing. Ariadne slept ashore, while Theseus and his Athenians remained on board the ship in a small harbor on the lee side of the island.

A dreadful storm blew up one night and carried Theseus and his compatriots out to sea. It was fifteen days and fifteen nights before he regained the shore again. By that time Ariadne had abandoned herself to despair, believing him to have sailed off to Athens without her, and had laid violent hands upon herself.

Or so they said.

It is also recounted how Theseus, when he had sailed from Athens to our shores, made a promise to his father, Aegeus, that if he were able to return he would raise aloft a white sail. In this manner Aegeus would know, while Theseus was still at sea, that his son lived.

Theseus broke his promise. He sailed into Athens harbor in a ship with black sails, forgetting in the excitement of homecoming to exchange them for the white symbols of hope. Aegeus saw the ship from the Isle of Kefti fully rigged in black, and in his grief he flung himself over the cliffs into the sea.

So Theseus became king of Athens.

It is a matter of some amazement to me how that man strides unscathed through life, leaving a trail of the maimed and the dead.

It is many years now since that time. Much has changed. My father, King Minos, is gone into the Underworld. My mother's death seemed to stir him from his long torpor and, upon learning that Daedalus had fled across the sea, he sailed in pursuit. He traced Daedalus finally, not to Athens as I had expected but to Kamikos in the western sea—the winds, I suppose, blew him there. My father was greeted with honor by the king of that land, who promised to surrender Daedalus to him. My father slipped in his bath and fell while preparing to appear at a banquet in his honor, breaking his neck.

Or so they said.

I am glad, at any rate, that Daedalus lives still.

Acalle is married and has five children, three girls. Polyidus died, apparently in a fit of mortification at being denied the position of High Priest for which he had schemed so long. Many others, more greatly mourned than he, have followed him into the Underworld: my beloved old Graia, for one.

Athens has grown prosperous under Theseus's rule. No longer just a pirate state, Athens is beginning to exert power among the nations of the world.

Acalle wishes to marry Phaedra, now grown to womanhood, to Theseus, since his first wife, the Amazon queen, is lately dead. This marriage, which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, is beginning to seem a likely event. Acalle is a businesslike and efficient queen; she wants favorable trade relations and cares not a fig for revenge.

Theseus is no longer a young man but an experienced ruler of full years. I hope it will be for Phaedra's happiness—those who love Theseus seem to come to untimely ends. I despair of ever making Acalle listen to my fears about the marriage. I have done what I can to sway her, but she is a stubborn woman, and she is the queen.

And I, Xenodice. Do you wonder what has become of me down the long years?

I lead a quiet life today, respected and, I believe, loved. The love I enjoy is not the love of a man for a woman; I have never had that love and have vowed that I never shall.

I have become Mistress of the Animals, a priestess of influence and power, thereby escaping my elder sister's marriage schemes. The Mistress of the Animals may not marry, nor may she invite any man to share her bed. She is chaste and pure, and much beloved of the Goddess.