Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two (25 page)
Read Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume Two Online
Authors: Bernard Evslin
Here sat Minos, holding a golden scepter topped by an enormous ruby. He had chosen this stone, it was rumored, because he occasionally expressed displeasure by braining a courtier, and rubies do not show blood. In truth, save for his occasional fits, Minos rarely lost control. But neither did he discourage rumors that fed fear.
Stationed around the royal seat was the King's Guard. Each man wore breastplate and greaves and bore the double-ax, but had been given leave to omit the helmet. No man, however strong, could stand for so many hours under the Cretan sun with his head stewing in a brass pot.
Some hundred thousand people jammed the arena. The lower steps were reserved for nobility; the lower your station, the higher you had to climb. The crowd had been filing into the stadium since dawn. Squabbles flared up from time to time, and more than one early comer was hurled a hundred feet to the chariot road outside the arena. When this happened, the bullpen slaves would untether a pair of vultures kept for such occasions and the great birds would rummage the corpse, leaving only bones, which were flung to the mastiffs. All this was done with dispatch; the king disliked mess.
Nor was the purpose of the day forgotten by the multitude. People kept looking up at the sky. Surely, with such splendid appeasements under way, the angry god, whoever it was, would feel his wrath cooling and send a few clouds. But the sky was clear, so hot a blue it was almost white, and the sun was a wheel of fire.
Minos raised his scepter, then lowered it. The rites began.
A double file of oxen ambled into the arenaâhuge, clean beasts with luminous eyes and gilded horns. Perched on them were lithe youths and maidens, the bull dancers of Crete. Chosen for their beauty and grace, they were taken from their parents when very young and trained for years. The girls began performing at fourteen, the boys at seventeen; after that, it was thought, their skills declined.
A last pair of oxen walked the circuit; then beasts and dancers stood motionless as the priestesses took up their complaint. Drums began. The wailing turned into shrieks, mounting higher and higher. Suddenly, all sound ceased. A hush fell upon the vast crowd.
A white bull walked into the ring. Riding him was Ariadne, clad only in her long black hair. She rode slowly through the pulsing silence, looking very young and slender on that mountain of throbbing muscle. Suddenly the silence broke. The crowd was yelling, sobbing. Many people sobbing together make a sound rarely heard, an unbearable sound, which grew and grew as the people called to the sky for mercy. For the crowd was caught up in a delirium of belief. The mime of bull and maiden was more real to them than their own parched knowledge. It was life itself. The maiden was Europa returned, which meant that the bull contained something of Zeusâenough, perhaps, to bring rain.
The maiden did not seem to be guiding the bull. Swaying there, slender as a wand, she was vibrantly passive. Every eye was on her; every heart thudded with her own. Each woman felt her spirit yield to the burning god. Every man yearned for Ariadneâthirsted for her, as for rain.
Unseen, the priestesses began to wail again.
Theseus entered the arena. A great hush fell upon the crowd. He walked in, unescorted, wearing a white tunic and a chaplet of roses picked by Ariadne. His single weapon was a hawthorn branch sharpened to a needle point. He walked slowly toward the white bull. Ariadne stood upright on the animal's back and stretched her arms to the sky.
The Minotaur appeared. People gasped in fear. Children shrieked. Light danced on the points of his horns. His sharp hooves glinted on the grass. When he clenched his hands, they were fists of bone. He walked slowly, stalking. He belonged to the sun; every hair of his fleece glittered like a red-hot filament. He was burning and terrible, a sun demon as deadly as drought.
Theseus reached the bull. Suddenly, Ariadne leaped off. She flashed away and vanished into the shadow at the base of the wall. And Theseus was standing on the bull. It was done so swiftly and with such certainty that the crowd thought it part of a new ritual.
For the first moment, Minos was nailed to his throne by amazement. Then such a gust of wrath took him that his senses fused and he fell into a foaming fit. He slumped off the throne and writhed on the pediment. But no one came to him, for this was a sacred occasion and everyone believed that their sacred king, like many a prophet, was responding to divine inspiration with gibbering frenzy.
Besides, everyone was far too occupied watching Theseus ride the bull. It is very difficult to ride a bull that does not want to be ridden, and this one was the largest and most powerful in all Crete.
It bucked. It reared. It stood on its forehooves and tilted itself up, almost somersaulting, then leaped into the air and came down on all four hooves in a spine-cracking jolt. But Theseus clung to its back. He had begun riding before he could walk. What he rode were the enormous colts sired by the surf stallions of Poseidon, and these colts had been as big as wild stags and much meaner.
Now, in the ring at Knossos, he was riding for his life against the Minotaur. He balanced himself on the bull's back like a gull on the deck of a pitching vessel, sliding down and bracing his feet against the horns when the bull stood on its forehooves. Theseus leaped when the bull leaped, landing on his back with his knees bent when he came down. He kept to the middle of its broad back, for the bull sometimes rushed at the walls trying to scrape him off, and wrenched its head about, trying to catch him with its horns. But he managed to balance himself lightly, never looking at the bull but guiding himself by its movements, for he didn't dare take his eyes off the Minotaur.
The monster simply waited. He crouched in the center of the ring and waited, pivoting slowly as the bull circled. The bull stopped, stood there with head lowered, rolling its red eyes. Uttering a howl, the Minotaur charged. Theseus stood on the bull. As the monster came close, he leaped off backward, landing behind the bull's stringy tail, which he seized and wrung with a cruel, expert twist.
The bull went mad and charged. Envenomed blood rose in the Minotaur like a gorge. He lowered his head and locked horns with the bull. The huge crowd churned with excitement as bull wrestled half bullâall except Minos, who was sprawled unconscious in the royal box.
Fettered head to head, bull and Minotaur strove with their horns. Theseus leaped back onto the bull and stood behind the hump of muscle. He jabbed his sharpened branch into the bull's flank, drawing blood, but not enough to weaken the animal. The bull flung its head up, lifting the Minotaur, and hurled him off with a shake of its horns. The Minotaur landed on his feet, darted back, leaped above the bull's head and with a vicious sideways kick drove a hoof into Theseus.
Things slowed for the lad. The Minotaur seemed to float up to him, moving his leg slowly and gracefully, as if underwater. But Theseus could not dodge this slowness. He felt the hoof slicing into his side. He knew he was badly hurt. The pain had not yet started, but he knew how it would be. He was slipping now in his own blood.
Clutching to consciousness with all his will, clutching the hawthorn stick with the waning strength of his hand, he slid off the bull.
The animal loomed above him. Its underside was strangely pathetic. Through its legs Theseus saw the Minotaur coming, slowly, stalking. He wondered dully whether the monster meant to kill him with horns, hooves, or fistsâor simply by wringing his neck like a chicken. He knew his only chance was to goad the bull intolerably, making it attack again.
He struck upward with his stake, jabbing the bull in its most sensitive spot. In the split second that followed, he knew he had done the worst possible thing. The bull rose in the air with an agonized bellow and came down on him with all its weight. He felt his ribs go. He was crushed under the animal's bulk; he could hardly breathe. Every breath was fire; he knew that a splinter of rib must have pierced his lung.
Then he felt the weight lifting. He breathed deeply and almost fainted from the pain. The Minotaur was standing above him. It would be over quickly now.
But the monster was in no hurry. His golden eyes burned down at Theseus. Ariadne's half brother, this Horned Man. So strange.⦠He wondered at the strength of the monster who could lock horns with the bull. Where was the bull? It had trotted off and seemed to have lost interest. Theseus started to swoon. The Minotaur lifted his hoof.
“So he's choosing the most humiliating way,” thought Theseus. “Trampling me to bloody rags on the grass. Why should it be worse to suffer a kick than a blow? Is death by hoof more shameful than death by hand? But death, that's what swallows everythingâoptions, questions, regrets, and all the pain.”
The hoof was poised above his throat. When the monster stamped, Theseus knew, the razor-sharp hoof would shear through his neck, slicing off his head like an executioner's ax. “Poseidon, help me,” he whispered.
With the last flicker of his strength, he reached into his pouch and pulled out the spool Ariadne had given him. How slowly it came out of the bag; it was heavy as a chariot wheel. He dropped it at the feet of the Minotaur. It lay there. The Minotaur spurned it, then raised his hoof again above the crouching Theseus, who feebly tried to whistle the hedge lark melody that he had heard Ariadne whistle to the spool.
Suddenly, the spool leaped into motion. It rolled, unwinding its thread, circling the Minotaur, slowly rising and spinning a cocoon around the monster's body. The bull-man stood as if entranced while the almost invisible thread was binding his strength. He bellowed, thrashed, and tried to tear himself loose. But the thread cut like wire as it wrapped him close, tethering him to himself. In an amazing burst of power, the Minotaur flexed his bound legs and leaped, rising straight into the air and trying to come down on Theseus with his hooves.
He landed near the boy's face. Theseus realized that the Minotaur was still very dangerous, shackled though he was. He pulled himself to his feet, feeling his broken ribs stab him with every panting breath. He grasped his stick and thrust it between the Minotaur's legs, tumbling him to the ground. Then, as his foe lay there, struggling to arise, he lifted the sharpened stick.
A wave of nausea took him; he was swept by dizziness and he knew he was about to swoon. With a last effort, he tilted his stick, managing to aim its point at the Minotaur's throat. He fell, driving the stake into the monster's throat, pinning him to the earth and holding him there as the Minotaur's lifeblood drained away.
Theseus lay across the body of his foe.
It was then that Poseidon allowed his tides to release their pent vapors to the thirsty sky, which immediately darkened. Thunder growled, becoming sweet music to the people below. Everyone in the arena gaped in joyous wonder at the sky, which was turning now into one huge purple-black bruise edged with lightning.
Rain fell in clumps. The clumps became rods, lances of rain that merged into a solid wall of water. It was as if the entire sea had been lifted from its bed and hurled down on the island. The plains flooded; the valleys filled. Whole villages were submerged. People fled to the hills.
The bullring was a great stone bowl; the water was rising with deadly speed. People scrambled up the steps as the water pursued them. Those on the high steps fought to keep their places. And again the weaker ones were hurled off the top tiers; they fell into swirling water and drowned before they had finished thanking the gods for sending rain.
Ariadne had pulled Theseus onto the bull's back. The great beast swam easily out of the arena, across the flooded plain, and into the sea.
Theseus lay in a swoon, bleeding. Ariadne tied him to the bull's horns and began to stitch his wounds with Daedalus's thread. And tried to make the bull go faster; she had spotted her little sister swimming after them.
These three young people, swimming away from an evil kingdom toward their future, were observed by another who read that future clearly. It was the Barley-hag, who had escaped drowning by muttering a quick spell that changed her hut into a skiff. She was squatting now in the tiny boat, cackling happily.
“He will marry them both, one after the other. They will share his glory but die their own deaths. For today he elopes with the king's daughters; tomorrow, he'll sail back and help himself to the rest of Crete. Yes-s-s ⦠young Theseus will return to Athens, inherit his father's kingdom, and assemble a mighty war fleet. He will defeat Minos in a great battle and snatch the crown off his head and put it on his own. Heh, heh, heh ⦠I see what I see and I know what I know. And what I say is always so.⦔
Now, as the wounded young prince and the two princesses sailed away toward that magic line where the sea meets the sky, the muttering of the prophetic hag became clear: Theseus was the kind of young hero who would risk everything and endure anything to make his dreams come true. Years before, observing the agony of his father's defeat by Minos, he had vowed that one day he would stand in the throne room of the palace at Knossos, dictating terms of surrender to Minos. And it would happen just that way.
Defeating the monstrous bull-man called the Minotaur was only the first test in his long quest for glory, and one that he almost failed.
THE NEMEAN LION
For my grandson NOAH
Who needs a monster to counterbalance the angels
that swarm about him
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