You’ll find this sentence over in the “Author” section of my website. It has also appeared, paraphrased, in several brochures, reviews and interviews.
Like mine, this minotaur is confused (though maybe not as reproachfully silent)
Problem is, slow progress has been no progress for about nine months. I went on writing hiatus when Peter got necrotizing fasciitis last winter. By the time I felt that I’d returned to a Cretan frame of mind, I had to go back and edit The Pattern Scars. I’m utterly incapable of doing two creative things simultaneously, so the Minotaur settled onto the back burner. At first he bellowed and then he huffed a lot and now he’s lapsed into a reproachful, furry silence. And I’m afraid I won’t be able to coax him back to me.
It might be happening again. It might not. I have no idea, because I’m not writing, and when I’m not writing, I get anxious and defeatist and lose all sense of perspective and proportion.
So: write, already. That’s it: the simple, in-your-face-obvious solution. But! But. I’ve been away from it for so long; I’ve lost the thread (a satisfying analogy, given the subject matter); I have no writing time except on Thursday evenings; it might be easier to start from scratch, get that new-idea buzz on…
No: I’ll try. I’ll coax and wheedle, on Thursday evenings, and maybe the Minotaur will bellow back at me.
Also like mine, this minotaur is adorable.
In a show of bravado and/or resolve, I’m going to go beyond blathering: I’m going to post the first chapter of this latest work-in-progress, here and now. (Please forgive its unsightly formatting.)
Take that, me. Take that and write with it.
*
The Reproachful Minotaur (working title only)
Chapter One
It was no use: the water did not move. Ariadne bit her lip and watched her reflection do the same. She dug her fingernails into the basin’s sides and leaned forward so that all she could see were her own wide brown eyes.
“Ariadne – no – let go.” Her mother’s hands lifted her off the stone. Just before they did, Ariadne saw the water fill with sky. “Do not try so hard; it will not make the god think any more kindly of you. Wait, and breathe…Good. Now look again.”
She stepped back onto the stone that brought her upper body to the lip of the basin. She did not look at the queen, but she could see her shadow on the water. The smooth, still water that refused to ripple.
“It will not work.” Ariadne’s voice sounded high and wavery and she coughed a little, as if she had had to all along.
“It will. You are Poseidon’s child; you are a daughter of the Bull. Here – watch me one more time and see how I call up his power.”
No, Ariadne wanted to say – I’ve watched before and I’ve tried before and nothing ever happens for me, even though I’m a princess and already five – but then Pasiphae tilted her head toward the basin, and Ariadne did watch.
For a moment there was only more stillness. Small things moved – the golden rings that dangled from her mother’s ears, and the wispy clouds above the palace’s walls – but Ariadne hardly saw them, just as she hardly heard the voices that sang and shouted in the corridors beyond the altar. It was the quiet that consumed her.
Pasiphae’s green eyes were on the water, yet they seemed to be gazing through it too, into a place Ariadne could not see. For a few breaths the queen stayed like this – like a statue or a bird carried motionless on a river of wind. When she curved her fingers, Ariadne started (she always did, even now that she expected to). The gems on Pasiphae’s fingers winked, and the copper wrapped around her wrists glinted, and one black ringlet slipped down over her shoulder and bobbed just above the water.
The queen smiled. Now, Ariadne thought, and there it was: a circle in the centre of the basin; a silent ripple that rose and broke like a miniature tide against the stone. The queen lifted her hands and the ripple became a wave, and the wave leapt out of the basin.
Ariadne sucked in her breath. She knew what would happen; she had watched her mother draw swells from a calm sea and turn a stormy sea to mirror. But she gasped now, as Pasiphae held the ring of water in mid-air. It shone as her gems did, struck by shifting sun and cloud shapes. It pulsed a bit, as if it too were breathing.
“My thanks, Lord Poseidon,” Pasiphae whispered. She smiled another, even more dazzling smile and brought her hands slowly down, and the water flowed back into the basin and was a smooth, still pool again.
“And so you see,” Pasiphae said briskly as Ariadne blinked, “you must not strain; you must be quiet, open to the bull god’s gift. I learned this from my own mother and was marked by the god by the time I was three. It is past time for you. Now. Try.”
Ariadne leaned forward. She stared at her eyes and brow, which were frowning. She tried to ease away the frown, and did, but then she realized that her hands were clenched. Please, she thought, Lord Poseidon, come to me as you come to her – I’m going to be six soon, and you still haven’t come to me, and even the cook’s child bears a mark –
“Stop!” cried a new voice, so loudly that the water seemed at last to quiver. Ariadne stumbled backward off the stone. She felt her mother’s fingers dig into her shoulders before they pushed her away.
“Husband.” Pasiphae’s voice was flat but somehow also sharp, like the shell Ariadne had cut her knee on the summer she was four.
“Wife,” Minos said. His teeth showed through his beard; they were bared like an angry dog’s. A smile, Ariadne knew. Her father’s smile. She smiled too, a little, and her heart thumped in her chest.
“I see you are still attempting to prove that the child bears your god’s blessing,” the king said. “You are very sweet, Phae, when you are desperate.”
“She bears his blessing because I bore her.”
The water in the basin began to bubble and froth. Ariadne smiled even more widely as red-gold light bloomed beneath her father’s skin.
“Admit the truth at last,” Minos said. He was rubbing the tips of his first two fingers against his thumbs; Ariadne watched sparks kindle and spin. They turned to cinders as they fell. “Her gift may well be from Zeus – for she is also my child.”
Pasiphae took a step toward her husband and now Ariadne could see both of them, standing very tall, a forearm’s length between them. “She may be your child,” the queen said in a low voice, “but this one, at least, is not.”
She put her hands on either side of her belly, which was a small round lump beneath the green folds of her dress. She pulled the folds taut so that the lump was very clear.
Minos made a sound deep in his throat. He raised his hands and held them flat; bronze and copper fire licked along the seams in his palms and up into the air. The flames stretched and shimmered and crackled, and Ariadne lifted her face up into their heat. Behind her the water hissed and churned; it spattered cool against the back of her neck.
“If you continue to flaunt your union with the bull priest, I will cast you out as I did him.” Smoke coiled from Minos’ mouth as he spoke.
Pasiphae laughed. Her cheeks and arms were beaded with moisture. Ariadne knew that soon her mother’s dress would darken and cling to her, as if she had been swimming, and that her father’s tunic would be bored with blackened holes.
“You will not cast me out,” the queen said. “When you banished him, my people rioted – they shattered Zeus’ altar – imagine, Husband, what they would do to this island if you did the same to me. No.” She laughed again, and the water tinkled and sang. “I will bear Poseidon’s child here.”
Minos thrust his arm out. It was bare, coursing with light that was gold now, and so bright that Ariadne had to look away. She saw a tongue of flame dart out and attach itself to her mother’s cheek. It slithered and lashed but could not cling, for Pasiphae’s skin was slick with water. The queen closed her eyes, and Minos cried out a deep, ragged word that Ariadne did not understand, because his open mouth was awash with smoke and rippling with heat.
“Mama!” Ariadne cried. She was not afraid; she just wanted them to look at her now, not at each other. “Papa!” But they did not look at her. They stared and stared, only the two of them in the world, so far away from her.
She reached out and raked her nails along Pasiphae’s arm. The queen rounded on her, water spraying from her mouth, and from the palm that struck Ariadne across the face. “Go – go now,” the queen snarled, but Ariadne was already running.
*
“Hush, Minnow. There, now – hush…”
Naucrate’s skirt smelled like lemons. Ariadne burrowed into it as far as she could, until she felt Naucrate’s knees pressing against her forehead.
“You ran very fast,” Naucrate said. Her hands stroked Ariadne’s back, which was still heaving.
Ariadne nodded into the cloth. She had run fast, and far – all those corridors and courtyards, their walls just blurs of paint. She had not even slowed when she passed the dolphin fresco that had a tiny figure of her in it, beneath a curling wave. She had been too angry.
“Look at me.”
Ariadne did. Naucrate’s head was angled a little; the sun slanting in from the doorway was playing over her dark hair and the bronze shoulder pins that held her shift closed. Her lips were not smiling but her eyes were. Good, Ariadne thought. She will listen, and then she will give me a treat. She always does, when I cry.
“Tell me what is wrong.”
Ariadne swallowed. They weren’t looking at me did not seem right, even though it was true. “They were fighting,” she said instead, and snuffled.
“And what were they fighting about this time?”
“Their gods. And the new baby.”
“Ah. What were they saying about the new baby?”
The words came quickly, now that she knew which ones to speak. “My mother said that the king isn’t its father, but I don’t understand this – he’s my father, and Deucalian’s and Glaucus’ and Androgeus’ – how could he not be this baby’s too?”
Naucrate straightened. She seemed to be gazing at something above Ariadne’s head. The smile was gone from her eyes.
“There are rites – the gods inhabit the bodies of priests…but you are too young to understand.” She blinked and looked back at Ariadne. “Your mother thinks that Poseidon came to her and is the baby’s father, and your father does not want to believe this.”
“He was so angry,” Ariadne said in a rush, glancing up under her eyelashes to watch Naucrate’s face, “I think he hurt her – the fire was all over him, especially in his hands, and he was trying to touch her…”
Naucrate smoothed the damp hair back from Ariadne’s brow. “He did not hurt her. I know the king. He used his fire on me once, when I…displeased him. But even though it crackled and smoked and made me very hot, it never hurt me.”
Ariadne shuffled backward, away from Naucrate’s stool, and crouched with her arms around her knees.
“Little Princess – was there more?”
“It’s just…they were angry about me, really, at first. Because they both want me to have their god-gifts, but I don’t – I’m unmarked and I always will be.” She had not expected these words, which made her want to cry real tears. She bit her lip.
Naucrate rose and went to the table that stood beside the inner door. Ariadne straightened, real and false tears forgotten.
“You do not know that,” Naucrate said as she plucked the lid off an alabaster jar. “I was seven when I was marked, but after all my yearning, my gift was slight. Who could be impressed by a girl whose whistling sounded like birdsong – even if she could imitate any bird on earth? No, in the end there was so much teasing that I thought I had been better off unnoticed by the gods.”
She came back to Ariadne and knelt, holding the open jar. Inside its smooth, purple-veined white were three honey cakes.
“Remember that Daedalus is also unmarked – and yet Cretans, and Athenians too, think him a great man. Now take one of these,” she said. “They’re fresh, and even sweeter than usual. Icarus will be hungry by now; will you take him one?”
Ariadne nodded, her mouth already so full of honeyed oats that she could not speak. Naucrate put another cake in Ariadne’s palm and closed her fingers around it.
“Good. You know where to find him.”
Ariadne did not run this time. She walked slowly, drawing her free hand along the stone walls, feeling where they were sun-warm and where they were shadow-cool. A line of tiny bulls led her around corners and up steps; Daedalus’ bulls, which he had painted low enough that a child could see them. She knew when she came to the one with the golden bird perched on its horn that she was nearly there – and the steps down came after it – and then she was there, in the first of Daedalus’ workrooms.
This one had no roof: it was a courtyard, bounded on all sides by blue-washed walls and scarlet columns. Ariadne could see the three entryways to the other workrooms; the one with the paint pots and walls covered with brushstrokes that never seemed to be the same the next time, and the one with looms that clacked all by themselves and other machines of metal that whirred and clanged, and the one deep beneath the ground that held sea creatures captive in pools fed by salt springs Daedalus had coaxed from rock. These others were wondrous, but the courtyard was more wondrous yet. Here there were towering blocks of marble, some already carved in shapes of men or beasts, others shrouded in cloth and surrounded by wooden ladders and platforms. Vines crawled up the walls and over patches of ground. Tools lay upon them, and models of ships and cities, and even a tiny Knossos, with all its corridors and rooms, and painted clay figurines that were its people. Beside Knossos was the Acropolis, which she knew was far away over the sea, and which Daedalus did not speak of, though Naucrate had told her that he had come from Athens.
He was crouched before the little Acropolis now, with his back to her. She crept up behind him until she could see over his shoulder. He was holding two figurines in his hands: one as long as his forefinger and one half that size. His head was bent. She could see white strands in his close-cropped black hair.
“Ha!” she cried. She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt his muscles bunch and tense and saw him drop the figurines onto the ivy. When he turned his body around he was laughing.
“Again, my Minnow!” he said, disentangling her arms and rising at the same time. “How do you do it?”
“You’re always thinking,” she said, craning up at him. “So it’s easy to surprise you.”
He smiled. His teeth were straighter and whiter than her father’s, though his beard was just as dark.
“Today I am thinking about what must lie beneath our feet,” he said. “Fire, I believe. An ocean of fire that turns rocks to gold. If only I could pluck them free.”
“You’re silly,” Ariadne said, scuffing her sandals against the ivy and the stone. “My feet aren’t hot at all.”
Daedalus nodded at her. “Of course I am silly. And I am glad I have you to remind me of it, Princess. Now, then – what are you holding onto so tightly?”
She held up her hand. “It’s for Icarus.” The honey cake was lumpier than it had been, and her fingers were sticky. All of a sudden she wished she had eaten this one too, and returned to her rooms.
“Ah,” he said. “You are kind as well as regal. Can you guess where he is?”
She did not want to look. But she did: she glanced up to the scaffolding around the tallest slab of marble. He was there, a hunched shadow moving back and forth: she could see this even from so far below.
“Icarus!” Daedalus called. The shadow head turned sharply and cocked down. “Look who’s come to see you!”
Icarus was still for a moment. Good, Ariadne thought, he’ll stay there – but then he spread his arms wide and let himself fall from the platform. She caught her breath and stepped back, even though he was nowhere near her, and she had seen this before. He fell sharply, righted himself and fanned his arms up and down until his feet struck the ground. He crumpled there, knees to ivy, hands skidding out in front of him. Then he rose and stumbled toward her.
His arms bristled with short white feathers, she saw as he approached. Again she tried not to look, tried not to care that there were more than last time, or that his nose was thinner and longer.
“Highness.” His voice was high. He was taller than she was, of course – he was seven – but his shoulders were still rolled forward, so his eyes were level with hers. His pale eyes, silver-white-blue, with round nubs of black within.
“Here.” She thrust out her hand. The honey cake felt sodden and heavy.
One of Icarus’ hands darted out. His fingers grasped the cake – only they were not blunt fingers: they were sharp. Ariadne glanced down and saw translucent points shining from his fingertips. She remembered the owl she had seen at the mountain shrine where her father had taken her last summer, with her brothers. An owl with talons that had curved around its perch.
“My thanks.” His hair looked more layered than it had a few days ago. Shades of bronze and gold and brown brushed against his cheeks and neck. She wrenched her gaze away from it, but then she was looking at his mouth, with its cleft upper lip, all twisted and purple in the middle.
“Your mother wanted you to have it,” she said, staring at his bare feet. His toes were splayed too wide, but otherwise his feet looked unremarkable.
“Yes.” Daedalus put one hand on her head and one on Icarus’. “And we thank you, Ariadne, for delivering it. Now Icarus must eat and rest – yes, rest, my son. If you tire yourself out with changing now, you will never learn to fly – you know this.”
Icarus cocked his head and shifted from foot to foot. “Very well.” His voice was a bit deeper but still sounded like it came more from his nose than from his mouth. Only a few of the feathers remained on his arms. Ariadne could not recall having seen the others vanish. The flesh where they had been was pocked with red circles. “Come back tomorrow, Ari?”
She swallowed and scuffed her feet again. No, she thought, you disgust me – even more words she could not speak aloud, if she was to continue being the favourite of the great Daedalus. Before she could say anything at all, though, voices and footsteps sounded from behind her.
“Master Daedalus – we’ve brought the new hammers for the forge.”
There were five men, their bare chests shining with sweat. Two were pulling a wagon, or something like a wagon (it seemed to have too many wheels; Daedalus had probably designed it as well). Ariadne turned and darted away from them. She did not look back, not even when Icarus called her name.
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