Laburinthos
A Story of Theseus and the Minotaur
“The ‘terror of history,’ for me, is the feeling experienced by a man who is no longer religious, who therefore has no hope of finding any ultimate meaning in the drama of history, and who must undergo the crimes of history without grasping the meaning of them.”
-Mircea Eliade, Ordeal by Labyrinth: Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet
A storyteller does not concern themselves with the truth. Stories are truer than the truth. These are not literal constructs as much as imaginative creations.
Mr. Ibis
PART I: ATHENAI
It was the winter of 1995, and he sat in the school library, as he did so often, this day ruminating upon a word. It wasn’t uncommon for him to chase down odd paths like this, mazes of meaning locked in the books around him, some as old as the 1960s or beyond. They bore the marks of age, names from his parents’ generation etched in pencil in check-out slips no longer used. It was computers now, everything scanned. The card catalogue sat in a corner as a relic. There were far fewer kids in here than he remembered from the year before.
The word was cacophony. It had a sound that intrigued him. He’d gotten it right on the vocabulary quiz; such things came easy to him- bad sound, noise. It struck him so deeply because without knowing he’d been searching for just such a word in his attempt to make sense of his world. The bus in the morning was a cacophony; it was why he walked to school. Class was a cacophony; thus he often skipped. Lunch was a cacophony; hence he was here, in the library where the cacophony didn’t follow. You could here it in the halls though. Music playing on forbidden portable stereos, staccato braggadocio about money and sex, each stream of harsh sound attempting to blast over those of others, even as the listeners raised their voices to talk and argue over it. One could hardly tell the joy from the fighting. Only the drugs kept things civil, and the moist, cut-grass reek of marijuana was always the olfactory adjunct to cacophony. It made it bearable. But what made it necessary?
The big dictionary on the lectern in the back was the oldest book by far in the library. It sat there out of the way to make space for the computer upon which one looked up the holdings. The older librarian complained to the students about it but hardly anyone paid her any mind. She’d always been kind to him though, ordering books from other schools he’d asked for, weird stuff about aliens and the Loch Ness Monster, so he’d listened, and wondered about it. He had heard she was retiring, that maybe she was ill, but thought it would be rude to ask. He liked the dictionary, how it smelled, the soft edges of the pages, worn smooth from decades of perusal. He looked through until he found it.
Cacophany, n. From the Greek . . .
It had been a long journey, and he’d killed a great many men, but the prince had at last arrived in his home, come hence to see his father for the first time. He’d hoped his exploits would make Aigeus proud, but for his part, he nursed no small amount of anger at the conditions on the road. Bandits infested the land, madmen and torturers whose lust for gain was matched by a wanton cruelty that only those who fear punishment from neither god nor man can manifest. But they found too late that their reckoning was indeed upon them, at the hands of a youth they had all taken for prey. At Epidaurus he’d beaten Periphetes to death with his own club. Pituokomptes tied men to trees and tore them apart; he not only slew the bandit in like manner, but seduced his daughter for good measure. Phaia, the hag, had bred a great swine that terrorized the land around Krommuon. The prince fed her to her pet before slaying the monster. Skiron thought he could make the young man wash his feet, but got a fuller bath than he’d hoped for when he was tossed into the sea, to be torn apart by the things that dwell in deep places. Eleusis he purged of the king of wrestlers, Kerkuon, who met his end red faced, choking and crushed in the prince’s arms. And Prokrustes, the most perverse of all, with his sick mockery of hospitality, killing men in his special beds- the fiend slept there still, and always would.
His late mother had told him that his father was a great king, but what king would suffer such outrages to be visited upon his people? Before her passing in Troezen she had led him to the great boulder Aigeus had left in his younger days, having declared that his son would be worthy to meet him when he could lift it and retrieve the items beneath. And so he had. The prince bore a sword in his right hand and old-fashioned sandals on his feet. It was by these signs his father would know him, his son Theseus, come home at last, passing through the city gates.
He did not receive the welcome he hoped for; he saw no sign of hospitality in Athens. Walking the dusty streets, all ignored him as they pursued their business. The merchants’ stalls were busy, prices high due to the rampant banditry, but the city seemed flush with coins and no one seemed to mind. Even the prostitutes had a gaudy arrogance about them, strutting in midday, male and female and some in-between, offering themselves in turn to whoever came. Some were far too young, or too old, but decency seemed no barrier. A turbulent mass of men pushed against each other in all directions, cursing, shoving, and shouting. Making his way to the Acropolis, to the palace of the king, the wretched character of the place did not abate, but quite increased in scope. The nobles’ homes were like those of their inferiors, simply greater in scale, with golden curtains swaying in the breeze, lifting to reveal murals of debauchery in their very dining rooms, where the sounds of drinking parties either begun the night before or meant to last into the next day, or both, could be heard. The noise from it all was awful, a veritable cacophony. He spotted the palace before him at the highest place, and sped there as quickly as he could.
“I’m sorry, but I have to take that into the back for inventory.”
She’d startled him, being old and tiny; she’d approached with no sound as he gazed intently at the tiny print. “They’re getting rid of it?”
“What makes you say that?” Her voice was soothing, as though she was a nurse reassuring him of a benign diagnosis.
“They already moved it and they know it’s here; why take it in the back to count it?”
“There’s going to be a television going here, to display information about the school.” She doffed her glasses as she spoke, as if wanting a blurrier perception of that eventuality. Her clothes were at least two generations past fashion, all wool and linen, down to her dress shoes. The younger librarians wore sneakers. She moved to grab the tome, then hesitated. “Young man, would you lift this for me? It’s a bit much at my age.”
He picked up the dictionary as she’d asked, and it was indeed heavy. Heavier than he’d imagined it would be.
She motioned for him to follow and he did. Oddly, as he walked, the book seemed to get heavier. He wasn’t in the best shape and he chalked it up to skipping gym class. By the time he got into the librarians’ office, he had to set it down.
“That won’t do” she said, calmly but forcefully, as though he’d done something wrong. Huffing, he looked at her, only to see her motion to a door in the back of the office. He hoisted it onto his shoulder as she walked ahead of him, unlocking the door to what appeared to be a storage room. “This is where most of the books are kept when they’re out of circulation,” she remarked casually.
“Do I put it here?”
“No, not here.” She waved him on to yet another door, one in the back of this room. He hadn’t noticed it when they came in, but he was breathing hard and not really focusing on his surroundings. “There was another school here before this one; I worked there in my younger days. Some of the books I brought here with me. Some of them are quite old- unique, really. They’re kept in here.”
She unlocked that door, but before he could open it, he dropped the dictionary.
“That won’t do at all!” She actually sounded a bit angry. “You must pick it up.”
“It’s heavy.” He felt guilty saying it, though it was true. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, but the damn thing weighed a ton.
“Important things are generally heavy. You don’t drop them- you find strength to bear the burden.” She hadn’t even looked back, but rather, stood facing the door, with her withered hand on the knob.
He wanted to leave, really, to go back to the table he liked- the last wooden one- and read something interesting before 5th period began. But it felt too awkward to tell this old woman he was too weak to help, so he bent down and with all the power he could muster, deadlifted it to his waist. He was so embarrassed at his weakness that it didn’t occur to him how odd it was that the dictionary seemed to be getting heavier. He staggered under the load, walking towards her as she turned the knob and opened the door. They entered together.
The whole court was present, having been gathered at the word of the prince’s homecoming. The scribes and nobles and accountants seemed more curious than happy though, as if the arrival of Theseus amounted to a need to readjust plans. They murmured at his approach, off to the side of the great marble hall. He ignored them as he made his way toward King Aigeus
His father sat on his throne opposite the entryway, his queen beside him. Aigeus had been a great hero in his youth, but the stories Theseus had heard he would not have believed had he laid eyes on the man himself before he’d been told them. The king was both withered and corpulent, a melting candle of a man, whose pale skin and sunken eyes told of days spent indoors and nights spent in debauchery. Kohl lined his eyes and rogue his cheeks, his purple robes not fit for any act save lounging.
His new queen Theseus knew by reputation. She was Medea, the witch daughter of Aietes of Colchis-where-the-sun-rises, lately the concubine of Jason of Corinth. It was said she’d murdered her own children and Jason’s intended bride besides, that she’d come to Athens as a fugitive in a chariot drawn by dragons. She clearly knew him on sight. Her red-black eyes glared at him with all the fire of her grandfather Helios, her dusky barbarian face flush with rage at his coming. For though by mortal reckoning she was well past the age for children, she bore the form of youth, and even as she sat on her throne she nursed an infant son at her breast- Aigeus’ heir, until this day.
“Father, at long last I have come, your son Theseus. Many are the perils I have faced in my journey here, but all were well met, and now the people can enjoy safe passage through the countryside. I have seen to my duty, father, that I might do honor to our house.” He ignored his stepmother’s seething and bowed.
“Theseus, I had not expected you, nor so bold a path as you cleared to come here. Did you not know that the men of the wilds are driven hence by their poverty and want, that they struggle in the hills for their bare living?” The king wheezed his words, spitting incredulous disappointment at his heir. “We have long sought some accomodation with them, and had you not cut them down, we may yet have lived in peace.”
“Peace...? What peace does a great king make with bandits?” Theseus’ shock and disgust registered in a tone not fit to address an honored father. “Your son stands before you, victorious against those who made depredations upon your people, and you mock him at though he had despised the laws of gods and men!”
“Things have indeed grown peaceful here, dear child,” Medea interjected, her voice wrapped in a purring tone. The people of this city prosper. Much work remains to ensure that all enjoy the bounty of the land and the benefits of our trading fellowships.”
Theseus ignored her still. “Father, I came to you in search of kleos, of the glory befitting a noble house. You tell me that such things are cast aside that the low might revel and the best debauch? Is this to be my inheritance? For what end did you conceal your gifts beneath a boulder, that I might regret the effort I took to move it?”
“Theseus, such tokens were from another age, another life. Our world has changed, and we with it. This is a time of calm and ease, and may calm and ease prevail forevermore. Your inheritance is not blood and glory, no- it is the bounty of men’s drive and ambition, of cleverness and techne. Look around you, and see all the things the heroes of old have striven for laid out but for you to grasp.” With a wave of his wizened hand he indicated the treasures abundant in the room, tables heaped with silk and golden bowls, rich tapestries, food and wine. The very slaves were hung with gems.
“It is by such things that our house has been corrupted!” Theseus abandoned all restraint. “Foreign gold and foreign whores, and our lineage forgotten. I will have no part of this place, this age, or this degeneracy. I cast off the very dust of this hall and bid you farewell!” And before anyone could react, he turned and stormed from his father’s presence.
The room hardly looked like it belonged in the school building. The shelves were all dark wood, old, and carved with designs. Rolls of paper were piled up in some places, looking like real versions of the fake Declaration of Independence from US history class. Books, all old, some worn and bearing faded spines, but none dusty or poorly kept, took up most of the space. There were small statues and objects that looked like knick-knacks, a well-trodden rug on the floor, and in the middle of the space a plain dark wooden table like the shelves, covered in open books, papers, magnifying glasses, and various kinds of pens. There was an ornate desk off to one side, also piled high with papers and objects, and a teapot sitting on a warmer.
“This is my office. The other librarians don’t come here. The dictionary goes there.” She indicated a position high on the topmost shelf.
He tried to lift it; he really did. But the weight was too much and it fell on his feet. He gasped in pain. “Something stabbed me,” he complained. The old librarian walked over, took up the dictionary and placed it on the shelf all while gazing down at his sneakers. She knelt down.
“It’s just this.” There had been an old metal ink pen on the floor, which the force of the impact had driven up into the sole of his shoe. She grabbed his ankle, lifted his foot high enough to reach it, and wrenched it out. “You’ll be fine,” she said, offering it to him.
He wondered at that; his shoes had a mark across them and one now had a pentip-sized hole in it, as did his foot. But it looked old and valuable, so he didn’t hesitate to pocket it. He gazed around. “How old is this stuff?”
“Like I said, I brought many things here from my former job.”
“From the school that was here before?”
“There have been many schools, actually.”
“And now you’re retiring? That’s what people are saying.” He thought about minding his business on that, but he genuinely didn’t want her to go. He wanted to come back to this room, injuries notwithstanding. It was more than just a kid’s self-importance at being allowed to go places from which his peers were forbidden or ignorant. The more he saw, the more he wanted to know.
She smiled, the first time he’d seen her do that. “Retiring, no, it doesn’t quite work like that. I have a job to do and then I do it and then I find another job. There’s always work to be done.” She gestured around her. “These places don’t tend themselves. They need upkeep. The minute they’re left alone, things fall apart.”
“But there’s other librarians.” He was a bit confused.
“Yes there are, indeed. Time moves on, the old leave and the young take their place. But things get forgotten that way. Lost. Sometimes too many things. Then people forget why we even have libraries, and no matter how hard those other librarians work, it just isn’t enough. That’s why there have to be other kinds of librarians. The kind that don’t leave, but keep returning.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever read the story of Theseus?”
His stepmother was standing before him, leaning on one side of the palace courtyard gates. He was too angry to wonder how she’d gotten there ahead of him.
“Begone, barbarian whore!” Theseus waved his hand dismissively as he strode past her. He looked back once more at the gate, returned his gaze forward, and again saw Medea leaned against the same post, before him as she had been. He slowed his stride and felt for his blade.
“What is this,” he growled at her.
“Do you not know, you who seem to know me?”
“I know you for a murderer, and your spawn for a usurper.”
“Then you know tales and nonsense . . . Such as you the gods give the world for men to call heroes . . .” She rolled her eyes and laughed in a way that kept his hand on his sword.
“You wish me dead. You wish my father’s kingdom for your own. And you corrupt this city with your foreign ways. You will find your charms lost upon me, fresh from the wilds, feeding the crows . . .”
“Enough of this. A time will come when men call you Wise Theseus; clearly the sun has not risen on that day as yet. You must know one thing about me at any rate- my curse.”
“For murder and betrayal . . ? For the blood of your sons? Is that your curse?”
“I killed no sons, for Jason sired none, nor daughters besides. Heroes are not always so bold when out of men’s sight. It was my own father, whom I betrayed to aid him, and my brother, whom I slew for him. For the love of one who betrayed me in turn, for that I am cursed. And my punishment is to forevermore aid such as you- callow, selfish, and arrogant men- until the day should come when one might rise above his nature and become a true hero.”
“My father was a true hero, and in your arms he withers . . .”
“He failed to become what he could have been. That does not have to be your destiny.”
“Of what do you speak?”
“Do you know from whence comes the prosperity of the city?”
“Men gain with gold and cunning what they are too cowardly to win by the spear?”
“Pai amatha! So quickly do you dismiss what you are too dull to understand. It is such that makes for a civilized world, ease that allows for the life of the mind.”
“The people here seem content to leave their minds at their doorsteps. If what they’ve learned has taught them this I’d say the were better off without it.”
“It’s not what they’ve gained that has corrupted them, but what they’ve lost.”
“What do you mean?” Despite himself Theseus found himself genuinely curious where this was going.
“The wealth of Athens comes from trade. Minos, across the sea in ancient Krete, sends his bounty hither.”
“And what does he ask in return?”
“Seven youths and seven maidens, the fairest and most noble, to be delivered to him each year, never to return.”
“What happens to them?”
“No one asks . . .”
“By Zeus, you send the best of your youth to exile and death to ensure your prosperity? What monsters sell the future for the present!?”
“Monsters, you say . . .” Medea noted how he spat the word. “Suppose I were to tell you that just such a creature dwells in Krete, in the very bowels of the palace of Minos?”
Theseus focused on her intently. “You know of this?”
“I know many things, boy, and I know that what lives in the darkness in Krete is a devourer of men. He is beyond your understanding.” She drew close and squeezed his arm. “And perhaps your strength . . .”
“I have slain men and monsters alike and I will slay this fiend who feasts on my countrymen!”
“The ship for Knossos leaves in one week. Your coming was fortuitous; it seems the gods have set this path before you. Take the name of one of the young men and go forth to Krete and to your destiny.”
Theseus’ blood was up, but something stirred within him, a feeling he had not known before- doubt. His nous seized hold of his thumos and he spoke. “You mean for me to depart my home to fight this demon in some foreign dungeon while you sit enthroned, with your boy to follow my father as king. Suppose I strike you dead right here and send your infant in the stead of a pure Athenian?”
Medea’s eyes grew stormy again for but a moment and then softened as her lips curled into a laugh. “I forget sometimes what fools men are. You will be great one day- that I have seen. Your city will be great. But none of my blood will sit upon its throne. No, boy, I despise the Hellenes, the whole treacherous race of you, and my son Medus will sire a line in the east that will burn Athens to ashes. I have seen that as well. You will kill the monster, or he will kill you; it makes no difference to me. You will see me once more on the dock and then never more.”
“I thought your curse bade you help we arrogant mortals. You abandon us so quickly?”
“You mock me, but I will yet save you- perhaps. On Krete there is one who sees as I do, worships the same goddess, understands what you yet do not about the monster. She you must find, for if you do not, you will go forth into the black abyss without a single light to guide you. And thus you must certainly perish.”
“She? Who is she?”
“I help in my own way, arrogant child. Find her yourself. In the meantime, sleep near the docks. If you return to the palace I’ll have to murder you to keep up appearances.”
Theseus turned his gaze to the gate, glancing through toward the distant port of Piraeus. When he turned back after his brief look, his stepmother was gone.
He considered returning to the palace anyway for a moment, but thought the better of it just as quickly and made his way down the hill, looking forward to a week of rough camping among the denizens of the wharf.
PART II: KRETE
“You have a skeptical look on your face.” The old librarian paused her story at the sight of the student’s quizzical squint.
“The story I read didn’t say anything about Medea. It just had Theseus promising to go to fight the Minotaur to save all the other kids from getting sacrificed. And you’re saying the Athenians wanted to send their kids to Crete? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you. Just to the people doing it. People will go to great lengths to accomplish goals that mystify both those better and worse than them. Men spend years and fortunes to die climbing mountains; your peers huff glue in the bathroom across the hall. Only middling people make sense all the time to everyone. But as it happens, these were very middling people doing something quite selfish and evil to maintain their very boring lives, lives of ease and comfort purchased with the blood of their own children. It made terrible sense.”
He still seemed to doubt it, less because of its plausibility than its emotional import. “And where does it say Medea was there?”
“It’s a myth. There are many written versions of the story, and by now I’m sure you’ve realized that as perspectives change, so do narratives.” She walked to the shelf and retrieved a very old-looking book as she spoke.
“But what’s the real version? What actually happened? Or is it just all made up?”
“You have to work backwards from what you have to what might have been. This, for example, is an original edition of Marsilio Ficino’s Iamblichus. It relates part of the story I’m telling you.”
He marveled at the old paper, the smell of the ink, and the curious words. “What language is that?”
“Latin, translated by Ficino from Greek, though it was originally written in Aramaic.”
“You can read all that?”
“I’m a librarian. And this is the only copy of this book on earth. Most don’t even know it exists. Much has been forgotten. Nowhere else does that story appear.”
“So you’re saying this stuff really happened?”
“It still does.”
If Athens had been a degenerate marvel, Knossos, the main city of Krete, was the very hub of a decayed kosmos. It was simply impossible to take in, even far out to sea, and upon arriving at the docks what had been a great expanse of buildings encompassing the whole periphery of his vision now loomed around him as a claustrophobic tangle of structures. There were no streets to speak of, no open areas, just warehouses with spaces between them for walking. The personal guard of Minos was on hand to guide them, along with a cohort of priestesses in their sheer dresses that left them bare-breasted save for what their long black hair could conceal. The warriors shoved the populace from their path as the women danced and sang their strange songs, and Theseus and the other thirteen young people were led as though they were honored guests down winding corridors through sunless alleys, past homes and shops and temples, all interconnected and indistinct, up to the great palace.
The others seemed oblivious to their purpose here, and in the conversation that he had overheard they seemed as one to believe they were to live as guest-friends in Minos’ care until they would be summoned back home. Theseus had not disabused them of these notions. Soft creatures of ease that they were, they promised to be of little help to him in his mission, and would fain believe their real purpose on Krete even were he to tell them. They would probably betray him given the chance. Better to fight his battle and save them despite themselves, should that prove possible.
At last they entered the palace, or so it seemed, given that they stopped in an antechamber of some kind. On the doors lay the image of two double-headed axes, along with strange markings that he took to be their writing. They were stripped to their loincloths and doused in perfume and sparkling dust. The others, male and female alike, marveled at Theseus, tanned, scarred, and sinewy as he was, and he noticed the priestesses and guards having a surprised and intense conversation. They looked concerned. There were whispers and fingers pointed surreptitiously at spears.
Theseus acted quickly. He didn’t know where the Minotaur was but he could sense they meant to let him nowhere near him. They feared what he might do, and rightly so. The guard nearest him had removed his helmet in the heat; Theseus decked him with a fast right hand and snached the helm from his grip before it could hit the ground. He swung it in a wide arc into the head of another guard, who in turn dropped a spear into the prince’s grip. Spinning it around, he drove the butt spike into the stomach of the guard running up behind him, folding him up as the fool was hoping to catch Theseus unawares. And then he ran.
“So did Minos’ wife really do it with a bull?” For all his love of books he was still a boy. The librarian was nonplussed.
“They say that the gods gave Minos a great bull he was meant to sacrifice, that he refused, and that in punishment the gods drove his queen Pasiphae mad and she mated with the bull and birthed the Minotaur.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Of course not. That’s not how monsters happen. Not quite anyway.”
“So what did happen?”
The librarian retrieved yet another book, this one made of leather, judging by the smell. “Liber Lucis Mithrae . . . these pages were scrolls once, bound up later by some unknown scholar in the Dark Ages. Worlds are made from sacrifices, and remade by them, renewed by the offering of blood and flesh. This is an ancient truth. Minos should have known better, should have returned what he’d been given. There’s a cycle to things, birth and death, and the one to whom things are given passes them on and passes them back and thus the universe moves in its harmony. A sort of . . . eternal return, as it were. But Minos imagined that he didn’t need anything but cleverness to keep his world going. Oh how wrong he was.”
“So where did the Minotaur come from?
“A different kind of perversion.”
Theseus ran through the halls, not knowing where he was going, not even the direction in which he was headed. He didn’t fear the Minotaur, but he did fear getting lost here and missing his chance to face the monster. He had been running for an hour at least it seemed, but in these the high-ceilinged halls, all so similar to one another, who could tell? He heard no noises behind him so perhaps at least he’d shaken his pursuers. Finally, he slowed to get his bearings. Rounding a corner, finally able to pay closer attention, he noticed a door that looked a bit unique, with that same double axe motif and glyphs, but smaller and more delicate than the great ones from the room he’d escaped. He shoved it open and entered.
The room was lit by multiple oil lamps all casting their dim yellow glow against frescoed walls. It was a bedchamber, complete with a great four-poster bed, and furnished with chests and seats and all sorts of decorations- statues and paintings and ornaments from places beyond his ken. Great ceramic jars stood along one wall, taller than a man; he’d seen them all over in the city and in what he assumed was the palace proper, but these were glazed and adorned with scenes of stories of the gods, of Prometheus shaping men and giving them fire, of his brother and his ill-starred bride Pandora. And next to the colossal jars, sitting at a table, was a young woman, combing her long, wavy black hair as she stared into a great bronze mirror. Her back was to him, but she stopped moving when he came barging in.
“Do you speak my tongue,” he demanded roughly. Who are you, and where am I?”
She didn’t turn. “I speak your language, Athenian. You are in the House of the Labrus- the double-headed axe in my tongue- and I am its mistress, Ariadne, daughter of Minos and high priestess.”
“I have come to slay the monster who dwells within this place. Take me to him, or I’ll have your head.”
She giggled and turned toward him. She was short and plump and lovely, after the manner of an easterner, her dress doing little to hide her charms. “Will you be biting it off, naked champion?”
He’d dropped his spear some time before, he realized, not that he figured he would need it against this slight, curvy maiden. “I’ve bested human fiends with my bare hands and I’ve not come to banter.”
“I know why you’ve come, Theseus.” She approached him, the bangles on her ankles jingling as she traced a path around him. My aunt sent word. She’s the one who told the guards to be on the lookout for you, to try to stop you.”
“She’s the one who wanted me to come and she tries to stop me?” He marveled that the witch’s powers were such that she was able to speed the news of his arrival faster than a swift trireme.
“The guards were to try to stop you. She wanted you tested.”
“It seems I passed.”
“You’ll know in a moment…”
Theseus heard a great commotion outside. The guards had tracked him down. He grabbed a lampstand and hefted it above his head before the door.
“You can attempt to brain the whole of the palace guard before they kill you, but even if you succeed it only delays your purpose. Or you can get into the pithos beside my night-table,” she said, pointing at the great clay jar.
Theseus thought for a minute. His blood was up but somehow reason took hold. She could have cried out for help but hadn’t. In a flash, he leapt on the table and sprang down into the jar. He heard the guards enter, heard them trade words with Ariadne in their barbarous tongue, words he couldn’t know. For a moment he imagined her betraying him, that a gout of boiling oil would come flowing down on top of him in this clay hole, that his quest would end ignominiously with him in Hades lamenting the treachery of women. But then there was silence, followed by a rapping on the side of the pithos.
“You can come out, hero. I’ve sent them looking for you elsewhere.”
Theseus emerged to see that the room was indeed empty. Climbing back down, he stood before her, now more conscious of the fact that he was still mostly naked. “Why are you helping me?”
“I mean for you to slay my brother.”
“The Minotaur is your brother!?”
“It’s what the peasants say, that my mother mated with a bull to produce him, that we hide him deep within our sanctuary and feed him foreigners.”
“Is that not so?”
“Not in the manner the common folk imagine. Or perhaps even sons of Zeus…”
“What do you mean- you women and your damn riddles!”
“You passed my test Theseus. You’re fair and bold and long for kleos. But I see something else in you. You have the gift of reason; you can think. You can bend your spirit to your mind. Any other hero would be lost against my brother, but you, you stand a chance.”
Theseus found himself liking her. True, her body quite wrapped itself around his imagination, but there was a depth to her. She was a dark sea he wished to swim in. But still there was his mission. “What is the Minotaur? I bid you speak plainly.”
“My brother is what came of a broken ritual, or rather, the breaking of ritual itself. My father was supposed to sacrifice a divine bull to the gods, but he kept it for himself and used it as the foundation of our house’s great wealth. First cattle, then crops, then trade; Krete sits at the crossroads of the world and we have all that men could desire. But though we forgot the gods they have not forgotten us. Our neglect has spawned my brother, whom my father must house in the holiest part of our most sacred places, far from what damage he might cause to the world he created. His vizier Daidalos used craft and magic to imprison him there; men would call it a maze, but it must be experienced to be really known. But imprisoned there, he prevents we priestesses from attending to our rites, and severs our connection to the eternal.”
“Why feed it? A monster so imprisoned threatens no one.”
“My brother is the source of all the wealth of our island, and many places besides. His presence is my father’s assurance of abundance, of coins and slaves and domination, all the things the great of the world would trade their young to attain. For those with much desire nothing more than more. He has taken the place of the gods in our sacred spaces and removed us from sacred time. Everything flows one way now, a great artifice that must be fueled. The youth are the logs on that fire.”
“Your brother… I see it now. You both bind men to a course, one sacred and one profane, one that honors the gods and one that traduces them. He is like some false priest, some hierophant of cargo…”
Ariadne smiled. The Athenian prince caught on faster than she’d hoped. And her imagination was, if anything, more subtle than his. “My people prosper and wither all at once. Ours is a crisis of meaning- our ships are laden but they lack a destination. We row about in circles and we sink. You’ve seen this yourself in your own city. You know what comes of it.”
Theseus nodded. “So be it then. I had resolved to fight this monster when I came here, but you have only given me greater urgency. Take me to him.”
“Give me a moment.” She turned and walked over to a chest. “There are some things you will need…”
Subscribed
“I thought she helped him because she was in love with him? I don’t understand all this other stuff.”
The librarian drew another book from the shelf. “Who said she didn’t? And the other stuff, well, it’s a bit much for one so young. Imagine a place and a time where normal things don’t happen, where you have a connection to things beyond the ‘stuff’ you see everyday. When you think about something ‘meaning’ something . . . I suppose you could say it’s where the meaning comes from. It’s where we go to get away from the things that don’t mean anything. Plato lays it out here- book four of his Aigupton Dialogoi. This is a manuscript from Petrarch, by way of Photios of Byzantium. It’s never been in print, though some have had occasion to encounter it. Petrarch’s Greek hand was never the best, so some errors crept in, but . . .”
“Where did you get all these books? I mean, I know you’re a librarian but this is stuff that looks like it should be in a museum or a college or something. Why is it this library in this ghetto school?”
“Like I told you, I’ve been doing this job for a while. And like I also told you, things can get forgotten and someone has to keep track of them.”
“But why not give them to some professor or something?”
“Who do you think keeps doing the forgetting? And these days, it’s on an industrial scale.”
“But isn’t it their job to teach people things?”
“Yes, much is taught, but little is cultivated. A smart man in our world is a useful man, but neither of the two are the same as a wise man. A time is coming soon when men will have a universe of information at their fingertips and stumble about in the blindest ignorance. Machines will do their work and then their thinking. You’ve seen it foreshadowed, out there, that IBM 486 PC. That’s not a hundredth of what’s to come. They will lose all remembrance of that place and time of meaning.”
“What do we do?”
“Return.”
“Return?”
“It’s a bit tricky getting there, unfortunately.”
Ariadne led Theseus down the twisting, torchlit corridors of the palace, her bare feet treading practiced steps on the worn stone floors. She hefted a bag over her shoulder. Unlike with his mad dash, she seemed to know exactly where they were going, though the prince could swear that they passed the same places more than once. Looking back it seemed that what had been long halls now appeared as dead ends, such that if they had tried to backtrack they would have run into walls. She seemed to sense his unease. “You should know that the pathways do not follow here as they do in other places. The shapes of things bend themselves to different laws. You must trust me.”
Theseus had little choice but to comply, but the effect was a bit unnerving. Bandits he could slay by the hundreds, but corridors that defied sense were a different matter. After a great while they came upon the double doors he’d seen when they’d first brought him to this place. A torch burned on either side of each wooden portal, illuminating the double-axes painted thereon. She turned to him and doffed her bag. “I have two gifts for you.” She held up a sword in her right hand and a ball of string in the other and offered them to him.
He took them and stared at her, the torchlight dancing in her eyes.
“You will need this sword to slay my brother; mark me, he cannot be killed without it.”
“And the string?”
“You must tie it to the latch of the door from which you entered. It is the only way you will find your way back. For though you might kill the Minotaur you will wander lost forever unless you can find a path anew, and that will require no small sacrifice. This is your surest help, to return from whence you came.”
“It doesn’t seem very long. How far will it measure?”
“As far as it needs to. And remember this also. You must never drop it. For once out of hand it will cease to bind you to your source. It is your way back only so long as it connects you.”
Theseus hefted his gifts. The sword was bronze and heavy, a leaf-shaped blade covered with wavy patterns on its edges. Its hilt resembled a spray of water, blue stones adorning it. The thread was linen, in a ball a bit larger than his fist, with both ends sticking out from its midst.
Aridane studied him intently, making sure she had his full attention before she continued. “You will see things beyond those doors that will be strange to you beyond your imagination- things that make no sense, impossible things that yet are. The Laburinthos will test your mind far more than your body. Do not fall into confusion and do not wander from your purpose. You will have to descend deep within, in every sense. The Minotaur dwells near the Fountain of Memory, which flows with the water of Mnemosune. It is the holiest of our shrines. Even if he wanders from it he is scarcely gone for long; he hates it and does everything he can to pollute and desecrate it. You can always find him there, if he does not find you first. And one more thing, there is a boon I desire for helping you.”
“What would you ask of me?”
“I wish you to take me from this place. I wish to marry.”
Theseus’ heart leapt at the prospect. Even in the face of danger his thoughts somehow collapsed into the thought of this princess in his arms. He reached for her. She placed a firm hand on his bare chest.
“Marry . . . after . . . You have a task before you first, hero. Return to me here and we will sail away.” She turned and took a latch in each hand, flinging the doors apart. A great cold blast of stale air hit them, though in the far distance of the hall he could see a dim light. “You should know he has a name, my brother. Minotaur is what men call him. His true name in your tongue is Asterion, the Starry One. You will see.”
Theseus looked at her once more, then heaved himself past her into the tunnel. The doors shut behind him, and anchoring one end of the string to a handle, he rushed off to his destiny.
PART III: MINOTAUROS
“So you’re saying everyone is going to forget the past?” The boy breathed out the last word as he happened to glance around him. He’d thought some of the shelves were metal when he first entered, but they were all clearly wood, very old wood. He wondered at how he’d not noticed that. He could have sworn the room had been lit by the same fluorescent lights as the rest of the library, but somehow during the conversation he realized that he was bathed in the soft, sepia glow of much older incandescence. There were sconces on the wall with those old-timey bulbs. It felt comforting somehow, permanent and pervading.
“They’ll forget themselves, creatures of an eternal present, with neither past nor future, neither memory nor hope, living for the moment.” The old librarian was placing books in an old satchel now, but still fully attentive.
“I don’t understand. I mean, can’t people just do what they want and be happy?”
“A time is coming when ‘do as thou wilt’ will be the whole of the law, and there will be no greater tyranny, the will of the all against the one . Men will go mad, and when they see a man who is not mad, they will attack him, saying ‘he is mad; he is not like us!’” Men and women will cover themselves in ephemera, write it into their very skin. They’ll take pills to wake and pills to sleep. Your peers who howl in the hallways and sleep in class- people won’t even be able to function without fivefold the drugs they take. They’ll be hollowed out, whitened sepulchers, held up to the admiration and disgust of millions with nothing inside but the echoes of what winds slip through the cracks. Lost.”
“How do you know?
“Because I’ve seen it.” For the first time there was real vehemence in her voice, a shudder at what she recalled. He didn’t bother asking how she’d seen it. They were quiet for a while.
“Like Theseus. Lost.”
“Yes, like Theseus.” She resumed stuffing her bag as she continued the story.
With the string tied, Theseus strode off down the tunnel. The walls were lit with torches, which illuminated strange murals. He could see they depicted the gods, but the execution was alien, the Zeus of another race, ancient and foreign. He stood atop his mountain, hurling bolts of thunder at Eastern horrors, giants and monsters. Tuphon was there and his mate Echidna, the progenitors of a whole race of nightmarish beings. Titans- those overreachers, battled their brothers the Kuklopes, the Hekatoncheires. Great hosts of men, adorned as in days long past, contested in the fields below, a war of all against all. But these were not scenes of Zeus victorious; rather, the scene was indeterminate- were the monsters being driven down the slopes or striving upward to shake the very heavens? Theseus looked away, and steeling himself, fixed his gaze ahead to the relatively comforting blackness beyond the light of the last torch in the corridor.
He rounded a corner, then another. For a maze, it seemed to be taking him along a certain path. There was a light ahead, and as if to mock his marvel at the straightforward course thus far, he saw that it was a torch on the wall marking a dead end T-intersection. To his left was a further dim glow off in the distance, but to his right there was only blackness. From that direction, however, he could hear a whisper and breathing.
Something was waiting there for him in the darkness. He hefted his sword and pulled the other end of the string from his ball of thread, tying it around his wrist- the last thing he wanted to do was drop it in a fight in the dark. It was then that he noticed that it hadn’t decreased at all in size this whole time it had been unwinding behind him. Women and their magic. He walked forward, taking silent steps, praying that his smell would not betray him, or that the Minotaur could not see in the dark.
The breathing grew louder. Theseus held the sword before him like a probe, ready to thrust it into the first thing that didn’t feel like stone. He realized then that his own breath was loud enough to be audible, and tried to slow his racing heart. But as he got closer to the sound, he realized it was no monster, and in between breaths he could make out the words of a babbled prayer.
“Mother Athena shine your light in this accursed darkness . . .”
It was one of the youths. Getting close enough to see in the gloom, he recognized him from the boat, still wearing the gold bracelet he’d said his mother had given him for the journey. “I am Theseus, son of Aigeos- who are you?”
“It comes it comes like a shadow filled with stars it comes . . .”
“A shadow filled with stars?” He could barely make out the shape of the young man, but could feel him disturb the air with his trembling.
“It took others and it comes again. Athena will not help me what god will answer me?!”
“Still yourself!” Theseus turned his ear down the hall, listening carefully. There came a whining-whirring sound, followed by a loud ringing the like he’d never heard before, and a curious grinding noise, like some surf on the shores of Hades. Then he saw them in the far distance, twinkling lights, like stars. For the first time in his life a chill ran down his spine.
Even more unnerving was the reaction of the other youth to this. He didn’t seem scared at all, but rather, transfixed at the sight of the lights. They were red and blue and yellow and white, like a rainbow, but dead and cold, flashing without order or rhythm. The youth stopped his prayers at the sight. He neither cried out nor made to move, and the expression on his face was as blank as if he were buying grain at the market.
Theseus could see its form take shape out of the shadows, hulking yet fleet-moving, its breath disturbing the dust on the ground far beneath where its face would be, its eyes glowing red, with the lights adorning it illuminating hints of hair covering its bulk. He absorbed this still mostly hidden specter, turned on his heels, and ran the other way as fast as his legs would carry him.
“He ran away!? I thought he just found the Minotaur and choked him out.” The boy found Theseus’ reaction genuinely off-putting.
“Fought many Minotaurs, have you? Don’t be so quick to judge. You didn’t see what he saw, even that hint of it.” She closed her satchel and sat down on a chair, resting for the first time since they entered. He noticed for the first time that the shelves were almost completely bare; he could have sworn they were full of books when they arrived. She couldn’t have put them all in that bag. When would she have had the chance? Still, those weren’t the first questions on his mind.
“What was it that made it so scary? I thought he fought monsters all the time.”
“He’d fought bandits and a giant pig at that point. Nothing beyond the ken of men. He hadn’t seen those lights before, but he had sense enough to fear them.”
“What do they do?”
“False stars take the place of real ones in the mind, with everything that follows from that.”
Theseus ran from the darkness into the light opposite from the direction he’d come. He’d expected to hear a scream, but there came not a sound. He was alone again, and that thought gave him no more comfort that being chased. He ran and ran, until he could run no more, then doubled over to catch his breath. He was red-faced and ashamed. He’d never run from anything in his life, stared down the worst the world could throw at him without blinking. But those awful lights that glowed so coldly . . .
It occurred to him then that he was bathed in light even now, and that the ground beneath him wasn’t dirt, but some sort of rug that ran from one side of the hall to the other. Glancing around, he realized that the walls were not the rough stone he’d beheld earlier, but flat and covered in some sort of plaster, which, like the carpet beneath him was a kind of sickly brown-gray-yellow color he’d never seen before, like some shade of dull, lifeless flax. The light, which came from above, gave both an unearthly, greenish sheen, and he perceived a low and audible hum, like some distant and unnatural beehive. Looking up, he saw that the light and noise came from behind a pane of glass, too opaque to see through, set into a ceiling made of some kind of ugly plaster tiles held in place with a gray metal frame, which resembled tin but with a matte, ugly finish. The hall continued ahead in a straight line, and he could see more of those ceiling lights, spaced apart equally, as far as he could scan. There were identical halls to his left and right, and, to his horror, behind him. He felt for the string out of instinct and found it still tied firmly to his wrist, the ball in his hand still not reduced in any way. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Theseus walked ahead for a while, though for how long he could not have guessed. He turned right at some point, then left, then forgot which way he’d gone. It didn’t seem to matter. The lights and that hum though, they crept into his mind. Had he died and gone to Hades after all? What mortal could endure this, hour after hour beneath these lights in this gray twilight prison, an abode fit only for bloodless shades? And then he heard that sound once more . . .
He froze at the whining-whirr, but this time had the presence of mind to look all around him. He caught a glimpse of it passing from one corridor to the next nine intersections behind him. In the awful light of these hallways he could make out more of its shape, hairy yes, but with the rough form of a man, its hide not merely adorned with those flashing lights but also some sort of mirrors embedded into it. It moved too fast for him to see its head clearly. After only a moment’s contemplation Theseus saw in move back the other direction six crossway’s back, then three.
He ran, this time not out of raw fear but in the desperate hope that he might find some place more suitable than these accursed endless hallways. But everywhere was the same, those damned lights and the same loathsome interior in every direction. If only he could think, if only he could shut out that horrible light! He closed his eyes. There was nothing to run into after all save the Minotaur, and he could hear him whining-whirring, ringing, and grinding closer behind him.
No sooner had he taken ten steps then he collided face first with a flat surface. Opening his eyes, he saw that it was a door, with a strange round grip for a handle. He pulled it and pushed it even as the noise grew louder still. Finally, he turned it, and the door sprang open. He rushed inside and slammed it shut, and looked around.
“As above, so below. That’s the trite version anyway. The things we see around us participate in the higher things, or at least they’re supposed to. That’s what it means, really, to turn to the stars for guidance. We have different glowing things telling us what to do. And it will only get worse in the days to come.”
The boy wondered at that. “I saw the stars once. We went on a family vacation and we drove through the mountains. I can’t see them where I live.”
The old librarian thought to herself for a moment then asked, “would you care for some tea?"
“Tea?”
“Yes, from that kettle on the top there just behind you.” The boy turned and there was indeed a small stove he hadn’t noticed, a cast iron one like he’d seen in old Looney Tunes cartoons. How had he missed this coming in? He didn’t like tea, but he didn’t want to be rude. “The cups are in the cabinet there just above it, with the sugar and cream,” she added, indicating their location in another bit of furniture he’d not previously been aware of in the room.
He opened the cabinet and saw that it was full of bottles, two clearly labeled ‘sugar’ and ‘cream,’ but others more obscure, some marked in languages the identity of which he couldn’t guess. He avoided them, retrieved the two he knew, and two cups. He poured the tea into each, clumsily adding the cream and sugar to his own, the old librarian declining any of either with a polite head shake. Resuming his seat and taking a sip, he found he actually liked it. It wasn’t like anything he’d tried before.
The door opened to a set of downstairs and a new sensation. There was a distinct smell here, like some strong vinegar or lye; Theseus couldn’t quite place it. The warm and humid air made his skin itch a bit. The lights in this room were similar to those in the previous area, but far dimmer and set in a much higher ceiling. The walls were covered with small, square tiles, stark white, and the staircase terminated not onto ground but a great pool. Three walls lay around him bare and solid, but opposite his position the pool flowed through an opening into another room. The only sound was a faint churn in the water. He descended, the string flowing behind him beneath the door he’d entered, until it came to rest floating on the surface of the water. The disturbance of his entrance into the pool cast flickering shadows on the wall. It was waist deep.
He waded to the other side of the room and through the opening, where he discovered, as he’d grimly expected, another room just like this one beyond it, and another to his right and left. This time, however, rather than being aligned in straight rows, the openings offset in seemingly random ways. Perhaps there would be some place here from which to gain some advantage against the Minotaur. He pushed through the water, which was unnaturally tepid despite being indoors, and so clear he could see the same tiles on the pool bottom just as well as those that adorned the walls. He moved from one room to the next, scanning each interior, looking for the best place to stand and fight.
He heard a splash behind him. All at once the water was roiling, small waves crashing into his chest. Something was approaching, something big. He swung left, then right, sword in hand, clenched tightly to admit no moisture against the grip. With sudden awareness he sensed its presence behind him, and he spun to meet it just as the Minotaur rose from the water in a great explosion of force.
It was half again as tall as Theseus, and twice as broad. As he’d perceived, the Minotaur had the vague outlines of a man, but was not only hairy, but covered in innumerable silvered mirrors and blinking lights that marked this monster as profoundly unlike anything formed by nature. In like manner its head resembled that of a bull in a superficial way, but the face was neither human nor bovine, but some horrible fusion of the two, while its horns, such as they were, were twisted bundles of wires, their irregular ends bent off into barbs all along their length, down to the very end. Its eyes glowed a furious crimson but were glassy like something dead. It’s claws were squared-off and coppery, as were its teeth, which it bared as it let out its by now familiar cry, the whining-whirring ringing grind, made more horrific by its proximity and its reverberating echo against the bare tile walls.
Theseus breathed deeply and fixed his heart for the fight. There was no outrunning the Minotaur in waist-deep water and where would he go in any case? With a loud cry, he fell upon the monster and slammed his sword into its flank. The keen edge found its mark, shattering the little mirrors there, but bit no further. Theseus may as well have struck the bronze ram of a trireme; his sword actually reverberated in his hand. He was taken aback, but only for the split-second it took for him to feel the monster’s great claw swiping towards him. He dropped backwards into the water as the copper talons swung over his face. Undaunted, he sprang up from the water, this time thrusting into the Minotaur’s nether regions. But the point of his blade fared no better than the edge, and there was, unsettlingly, nothing there to strike in any case. This gave him pause, and the Minotaur grasped him quickly with his other hand, lifting Theseus by the neck clear out of the water.
He swung his sword into the monster’s outstretched arm, the futile blows doing nothing but sending small shards of silvered glass into the water below. The monster let out another of his horrid noises, but did not move to bite or rend him. Instead, from his claws and his arm emerged a tendril of wires, which snaked down toward Theseus, wrapping around him. Strangely, the sensation was less that of constriction than caress, even as the ends of the wires wormed their way into Theseus’ own skin. It reminded him of the leeches in the swamps of Lerna. Then the slivered screens began to flash, even as the lights blinked with greater intensity. Images appeared on their surface, of men and women, alone and in crowds, of animals and strange machines like nothing he’d ever seen. Words in a thousand scripts flowed across their surfaces, and a cacophony of noise like he’d never heard before filled the air, echoing the voices of a hellish host. It was horrible, terrifying, and yet, he could not look away.
The spectacle demanded attention. A million things all at once demanded the presence of his mind, each striving for his focus, which he felt flitting from one object to another- an explosion, the breasts of some blond woman, two bears fighting in the woods, a tattooed creature with a eunuch’s voice . . . He felt something like energy departing his body, some part of his life force being given over to these sights, but a part of him, a suddenly growing part of him, wanted to hand it over, wanted to surrender to this. He felt more wires enter his body, his temples, his abdomen, his wrist. And there it happened that the wire tugged on that cord he’d tied there, that cord that bound him to whence he’d come. It pulled tight against his skin such that it pained him, shocked him into awareness that whatever this sensation was, it was unnatural, was inimical to higher things. He felt polluted and angry and fearful all at once; his mind raced to bring itself to bear on the situation. This Minotaur was robbing him of what made him human, a man.
Theseus slid his sword (carefully) between his loincloth and his leg, cutting the garment free. Catching it, he hurled the heavily wet and glass-besharded garment hard into the face of the Minotaur. It hit him with a loud slap, and at once it dropped Theseus to swipe it away. With all his might Theseus dove into the water and swam hard into the next room. There were no passages out of this space. Instead, in the center of the water here lay a great whirlpool. With the noise of the monster looming behind him, Theseus dove in.
“He beat him with his loincloth?” It was the strongest note of incredulity the boy had advanced all day, but, seriously . . .
“Theseus knew one thing about monsters, that they could be cunning, but only men could use the gift of reason. Monsters, like the beasts of which they were perversions, could only act on emotion and appetite. Men can think. Not all men, obviously, but the capacity is there for those who cultivate it. The loincloth wasn’t the most elegant solution, but he knew the Minotaur’s instinct would be to drop what was in his hands to clear his eyes. Beasts and monsters live in the moment. Men are made for more noble ends, and reason is one path to that end.” The old librarian sipped her tea, looking relaxed for once. The boy was feeling a bit relaxed himself now. This weird room felt like home.
“What’s the other path?”
“Reason is the lower attempting to reach the higher. When it goes the other way, it’s called revelation.”
“Why would the higher want to talk to the lower.”
“That’s reason attempting to answer a question that only revelation can resolve.”
The draining water emptied into a dark tunnel, splashing Theseus into a small, flowing stream. There was no light here save at four points just beyond arms’ reach above his head. His probing sword clanged into something hard and metallic, which proved to be a ladder. Climbing up to the points of light he discovered they were holes in some kind of metal lid. He pushed it aside and climbed up.
He was outdoors now, or so it seemed. It appeared near twilight, or perhaps dawn-it was impossible to tell. He stood in the middle of an empty street, which appeared to be covered in some type of hardened tar, studded with small stones. Beside him were small plots of grass, bearing neither crops nor flowers, and in the midst of each sat an identical house. Each house was huge, not much smaller than the palace of his father, with a sloping roof covering in what appeared to be paper covered in the same strange tar as the road. The houses were all that same dull flax color as the rooms he’d previously encountered, but in the weird twilight gloom of this place they were as listlessly drab as the belly of a dead fish. They all had doors of a slightly darker shade than the walls, each with a single round handle. Each home had a row of neatly-trimmed bushes and a single tree before it, but they looked wan and waxen, unnaturally green, like the low grass. A white wooden fence framed the back portion of each. He could see an intersection ahead, with the same houses running identically down each street. Though it seemed to be just before or after the daytime there was neither sun nor moon present. Instead, the cloudless vault of heaven bore only an array of stars, but not the ones he knew. They were all arranged in neat rows, equally spaced, running to each directions’ horizon on the perfectly flat landscape. It filled him with revulsion.
He walked down the street for a good while. He was conscious of growing tired. His body bore puncture marks from the dozens of wires that had stabbed him, and his neck ached horribly from the Minotaur’s grasp. Theseus was hungry and thirsty. Perhaps one of these homes was occupied. He strode through one lawn and banged on the door- no answer. He tried the next one, and got a similar result. The third he simply forced his way into.
Walking inside, he saw that the home was furnished as if for a king. Soft cushions covered all the furniture; there was a table was surrounded by tall chairs. The house was subdivided into smaller rooms, with soft beds in some, assorted furniture of odd type in others. In one, he wrenched open the door of a metal closet and found it full of cold air, but otherwise empty. Uneasy as being there made him in any case, he felt a shudder run through his spine as he realized this house had no hearth. What a cold and evil place this must be for the wretch who would live here. Where one might expect to find one there was instead a box with a glass screen, though one could not see through it inside. He considered breaking it open, but thought the better of it. Whatever dark gods these people worshiped were likely inside, and he didn’t want to disturb them.
There being nothing here, he moved on, and gazing in a few more windows realized the houses were all the same. They were equally empty; no one lived in this bizarre village. He walked further along, looking for some sign of anything conspicuous, but began to despair of it.
He thought it odd that the Minotaur had not yet come. In the prior areas he had shown up after not too long, but Theseus had by now wandered for hours and had not heard that awful din as yet. Perhaps he was not where he ought to have been. Perhaps he should retrace his steps. No sooner did he turn and take hold of the cord behind him than he noticed a light in the window of one of the houses he’d passed. Cautiously, he approached and rapped on the door.
A man answered. He was older and wore- mercifully- familiar clothing. “Do you speak my tongue, stranger? I am Theseus Aigedes, and I seek xenia.”
“Indeed, I know you and your family, young prince. Welcome and enter. I am Daidalos, the architect of this place.”
Theseus stepped inside. However nondescript it appeared on the outside, the interior was nothing like that of the other houses. It was one great open space, a fire blazing in a great hearth to one side, a large wooden work table in the middle, upon which sat innumerable tools the purpose of which the prince could only guess. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with racks of scrolls, some of which were spread out on other tables. Daidalos bid Theseus to sit on a rough bench.
“You built this place, why? You keep that monster fat and happy on the flesh and blood of the young. And why does he hide now, when he’s stalked me thus far?“
“You’ve done well for yourself. You mastered your fear, looked beyond your immediate circumstances, used reason in a crisis- there’s a king to be born from you yet, perhaps.”
“The men in this land speak riddles as surely as the women.”
“You think you’re in Krete, then?”
“Where am I?”
“I hold court here.” A loud clear voice, that of a young man, came from behind Theseus. Turning, he beheld a beardless youth in traveler’s garb, who sat down next to Theseus. From where he came the prince could only wonder. “Daidalos made this particular place but all such topoi are mine by right. The in-betweens and undefineds, the gray borders and cross-overs, these are my territories.”
“Who are you?”
“I bear a message.”
“From whom?”
“I’m told to tell you that Asterion is quite angry. He figured out that you were special, escaping his grasp and all. He wants prince to devour and as you’ve gotten away for the moment, and there are no spare princes, he’s made clear in his own way that some other substitution must be forthcoming.”
“You don’t mean..?!”
“Minos is not about to lose his wealth. He’s but one life to spend in decadence and can always sire more daughters.”
“By Zeus, the monsters outside the Laburinthos are worse than the ones within!”
“Zeus indeed, for it is worse than you think. Long has Asterion lusted for Ariadne.”
“He means to ravish her?! With what tackle, the steer!?
“Worse still. You see, apart from his sister, the object of his deepest hatred is the Fountain of Memory. He has done everything he knows to pollute it, but the water yet flows pure. But somehow, in that mad animal instinct of his, he’s hit upon the notion that drowning a princess and a priestess in the well will serve to defile it forever. And in that he is quite correct.”
“That is why he is not hunting you,” Daidalos added. “He has captured her and is making his way at all speed back to the fountain he so hates. You must stop him there.”
“My sword but annoys him and I’ve not even clothes to protect myself. What am I to do when I face him again?”
“Take this tunic.” Daidalos handed him the clothes from his own back. “As for arms, I have little to avail you here save this.” He strode over to his hearth and plucked out a coal with tongs, dropping it into a hollow fennel stick in his other hand. “It will be dark where you’re going. You’ll need illumination. When it grows dim, rub this black spot here, and it will brighten once more.”
“That’s it then, a stick?”
“And a sure path,” the messenger-lord indicated a door in the rear of the house, one Theseus had not noticed before. Go through there and you will be near enough to Asterion and the Fountain, and of course, Ariadne. The fate of all is in your hands.
Theseus stood and nodded his gratitude. He made his way to the door, opened it, and passed through.
“Who were those guys really? I mean, it was some gods or whatever in disguise, right?” The boy had very sure notions of how these stories went.
“They were who they needed to be at that moment. Men have a hard enough time grasping simple truths in simple times. Laying complexity onto an already great challenge would just cause problems.” The old librarian had finished her tea and moved over to a nearby desk, taking a few things into her pockets.
“By the way, what time is it? I’m not late for class, am I?”
“The school day is already long over. I imagine it will be dark soon.”
“Crap! They’re going to call my mom and tell her I skipped.”
“I imagine so. And you’ll probably get in trouble, suffer a bit. That’s not what important. Suffering is inevitable. The question is, what makes it worth it.”
“Yeah, I’m glad I got to hang out here.”
“You know, this is my last day here.”
He forgot his inquiry and just stared blankly. This morning her rumored departure barely registered in his mind as an afterthought. Now, the idea that she was leaving felt like a great weight pressing down on his chest. “Do you have to go? Did they fire you?”
“Nothing like that. My time is up, you see.”
“I don’t want you to go.” He felt ashamed of how sad he was. His face burned. His eyes moistened.
For the first time, something like softness appeared on her face. “I know. But it’s the nature of things. All earthly relationships are temporary. We have our time together and then that time is gone. That part is over.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Let’s finish our story.”
The door opened into a long hallway. It was dark and dusty, and stuffing his sword into his tunic belt he hefted the fennel-stick and gazed around in the dim light. The walls were white-painted brick, the floor large grayish tiles, and the ceiling high and lined with metal pipes. Everything was covered in thick dust, and the light from the coal revealed swirling motes in the air all around. Before him, far ahead, were cracks of dull light that indicated a door. He made his way there. As he walked, the light grew dim, and as instructed, he rubbed the black spot. Strangely, it felt rubbery under his thumb. He pressed it and all at once a beam of light burst forth from the twig’s end, brighter than a bonfire. In the new glow he saw that the fennel was now a black metal tube, with a knurled grip, and the end that had held the coal was now a flat piece of glass over a glowing gem inside. He marveled at the craft of Daidalos.
Opening the door, he discovered he was inside a vast chamber, like the Agora, but covered with a roof. He stood on a wide walkway that ran over a lower level, with another walkway opposite him, connected further ahead by several bridges. Everywhere was metal and glass, opulence such as he’d never seen, or it would have been, were everything not coated in dust and detritus. Along the sides of the walkway were great panes of glass and even doors of the same material, which opened into dimly lit rooms. There were colors here, unlike the other places, but they were worn and faded, what were once bright pinks and greens chipping into particles and joining the rest of the dander. Those same lights he’d seen earlier, with their uncanny hum and cold gloss were everywhere, flickering and broken in many spots.
As he walked, he wondered if this was indeed some Agora in the underworld, some place shades flitted to but the wares of the dead. There were what he took to be signs above many of the doors, though the tongue escaped him. He passed an open area with tables, as though it were a feast hall, but the seats were hard and uncomfortable and he couldn’t imagine anyone gathering here in joy. Metal staircases ran up and down between the levels, the odd individual steps interlaced like chain links with those adjacent. And then there was the music. At first he thought it was a trick of his imagination, but he realized that the round metal grates above him were somehow producing the sounds of horns and strings and other eerie unknown instruments, along with a faint human voice, scratchy and disjointed. He tried, and failed, to tune it out.
One of the great windows in what he took to be a shop was broken, and inside was a statue, still adorned with clothes. But it was like nothing he’d seen before. It was neither stone nor wood; ivory was closest in color and texture, but it had no weight or solidity or richness of color. It was light and dull and felt horrid to the touch, cold and dry and smooth. It had no features of any kind, no eyes or nose, no fingernails or lips. It was the most lifeless thing he’d ever touched, and he recoiled from it.
Here and there were more familiar statuses, actual marble and bronze, but all were cracked or broken or defaced. Like everything else, they were covered with dust. There were also, in stands of a dozen at a time, those same large pithoi like the ones from Ariadne’s chamber. There was none of the unsettling uniformity of the other places here. This was a ruin, but an occupied one.
He felt somehow that he was approaching the center of things. Scanning up, he stumbled over something lying on the ground. Glancing at it, he at first took it for one of those horrible statues, and indeed it was, but what he noticed next made his blood run cold as the River Stux. For the statute was clad, not in the weird garments of the others he’d seen, but a loincloth like the one Theseus had hurled at the Minotaur, and around its arm was a gold bracelet. This was what came of those who didn’t escape, who didn’t look away, to become these lifeless, weightless, faceless.
He pressed on, forward. He dared to hope he might find Ariadne and the Fountain before the monster found him. But it was not to be. Rounding a corner, all at once, he heard the familiar, ominous noise and, from a cloud of dust, came the Minotaur charging.
Theseus stood calmly as the monster ran full tilt toward him, holding his metal light pointing down. Then as it drew closed to arms-length, he flipped it up, blasting the creature’s eyes with the beam of light. It howled and swerved, crashing into a column, great racks snaking through the course grey stone beneath what had once been colorful yellow paint. The dust cloud kicked up by this served as the cover Theseus needed to run forth to the faint sound of water he heard ahead.
And there it was, looming before him in a great open area, the Fountain of Memory. It was twice his height and spewed water a third again higher, almost reaching the level of the walkway above. There were areas where plants must once have grown around it, which were now bare and empty. Around it was a stone lining wide enough to sit upon, and there indeed bound and gagged and trussed, was seated Ariadne.
Running as he was, Theseus could still hear a great clamor, first behind him, then above and beside, and then at last, with the whining-whirring cry, the Minotaur came crashing down from above. He was right next to Ariadne. What one might imagine was a smile creased his lipless visage.
Theseus charged forward. He tried to shine the light again. The monster ignored it, turning instead to his victim. The prince dropped his metal torch and drew his sword, for whatever good that would do him. He was three strides away when all at once his motion was cut short, as a tug on his left wrist pulled him back.
The string had at last run out.
The Minotaur grabbed Ariadne and hefted her above, roaring his unearthly cry in triumph as he plunged her face first into the water.
Theseus quickly moved to untie the cord, but here he hesitated. Ariadne herself had said never to drop it. Ariadne had said without it he would never return, that he might wander here forever.
Ariadne was drowning and her death would defile the fountain forever.
The cord prevented him from going further and his weapon was useless in any case.
Ariadne thrashed despite being bound, even in the fierce and hateful grasp of her brother.
And in that moment, Theseus understood.
He took three strides back, made three great circles with his arm, gathering the string in wide loops, and then, with his sword, cut the cord free.
He charged the Minotaur as fast as his weary legs could bear him. He grasped the other end of the severed string in his right hand. The monster didn’t even acknowledge him, so ecstatic as he was with his sacrifice. He leapt onto the rim of the fountain and from there onto the Minotaur’s back. He looped the cord thrice around the monster’s great neck, and pulled tight.
The Minotaur would have howled were he able to draw breath, but instead thrashed wildly. Ariadne flew from his grip and slid across the floor. He slammed his full weight against Theseus, crushing him into a column. His claws and wires dug into the prince’s body from every angle he could manage. The same sensation washed over him, a false sense of contentment and ease and satiety, a feeling that told every muscle in his exhausted and beaten body to relax, to surrender and seek comfort at last, probing his mind with the very real knowledge that he would likely die from this. But Theseus willed such illusions away. He’d resigned himself to end his life here when he cut the cord that bound him to all he knew. He had but one thought, one fixed purpose; the whole of his reason, spirit, and appetite were as one in holding firm his grip on those cords, even as they dig into the flesh of his fingers, even as he felt his muscles tear from the strain.
Bit by bit the Minotaur grew weary. It sank to one knee, then the other. The lights on its body flickered ever more dimly. The little mirrors all at once bore the image of a swirling circle. Its eyes glowed less brightly, then shut. The Starry One went dark, and crashed face-first into the cold stone floor.
Theseus at last released his hold on the cord and made his way to Ariadne. He untied her and breathed his own breath into her body. She awoke with a start. “Theseus, you have conquered.” She could only whisper through her blue lips, but her elation was unmistakable.
“Yes, but at no small cost.” He held aloft the bloody cord dangling from his left wrist, though it pained him even to heft that heavy of a load.
“Did I not tell you, Prince of Athens, that sacrifice was necessary. Did your path not take you to the Fountain of Memory? She stood on shaky legs and helped him to his feet. They walked together the last few steps. “Drink, Theseus, and remember.”
He bent and scooped up and handful of cold water, bringing it to his lips. He drank, and he remembered. A myriad of myriads’ worth of images burst into his mind, his whole childhood, the line of Athenian kings, the Pelasgians who once haunted the land, Troy and the thousand ships, the horse-lords of distant plains and strange tongues, Atlantis sinking beneath the waves, and some thousands of other things. And then the weight of it all was at last too much, and he tumbled forward into exhaustion.
“I feel like there’s more going on here than you’re letting on. Why did you bring me back here, I mean, why me?” The boy would have stood as she walked past him, but he felt himself strangely weary all the sudden.
“It doesn’t do any good to explain. The significance of our circumstances only really becomes clear in hindsight, the more distant the better. In other words, young man, you’ll understand one day, perhaps. I have to go now.” She moved not toward the door the came in but through another he hadn’t noticed before, on the far end of the now bare room.
“I want to go with you. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t care. I don’t want to go back to school and deal with all that crap. I want to do this forever. Let me through that door too, please!”
“It’s not a door, young man. It’s a gate. Remember that word, gate. You’ll have your own to enter. Goodbye, and goodnight.” With those words she stepped into the doorway, and the boy fell fast asleep.
When Theseus awoke he was beneath a starry sky, real stars, bright and arranged in the constellations the gods had set up. He felt a swaying beneath him and realized he was on a ship. Glancing over, he saw Ariadne, her gaze fixed ahead.
“You’re awake at last. That’s good.”
“Where are we?” Theseus felt far better than he ought to have; he must have been asleep for some time.”
“Near the island of Naxos. The ship and crew are Daidalos’ men. They smuggled us off the island and are taking us there for the wedding.”
Theseus perked up even more at that thought. “When do we land?”
“In an hour or so.” Ariadne didn’t seem as excited as he was, despite it being her idea.
He said nothing more, who knew with women?
The ship made landfall and Theseus and Ariadne walked down the gangplank onto the beach. She took the lead and beckoned him inland. His mind and heart were racing; was there some feast arranged ahead of them? Who would be there?
That question was shortly answered as a short trail led them to a clearing occupied by exactly two people. One was a matronly woman, the other a handsome youth with flowing dark hair.
“Welcome, prince and princess.” The woman greeted them as if she knew them well.
“At last, said the young man, “my bride has come.”
At that Theseus stopped short. “What is this, some treachery? Who are you- speak, and no games this time!?”
“My name is Dionysos. I am the lord of this place, and Ariadne is my chosen wife. This is my dear aunt Demeter, Mistress of Grain, beloved of all houses, here to bless our union.“
Ariadne looked at him with resignation. “I told you I wanted to leave Krete and marry. And so it has come to pass.”
Theseus was unmoved. “I love her as well as any god. I have paid a greater bride price than you, Lord of Vines.”
Dionysos laughed as a man would at a child’s antics. “Dear prince, I do not wish to rob you of any prize. The gods of Olympos are ever lovers of justice. I give you this choice. You can marry Ariadne, and dwell on this island, and grow old together in this solitude and pass into Hades from each others arms. Or she can be my queen, and I will fix her in the very stars, and you, Theseus, will rule your people with the wisdom you have gained, the courage you’ve shown, and the willingness to sacrifice that marks a true king. Choose.”
Ariadne looked at him. “We both know, don’t we?”
He didn’t make it harder than it had to be. He didn’t say goodbye, didn’t kiss her, didn’t look back. He simply walked away. The ship sailed at that instant for Athens. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt. He knew what he’d given up. He tried to focus on what needed to be done.
His father, wizened in his debauchery, had died, and with Medea and his half-brother gone, Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, became king by birth and acclaim. He returned his people to a rightful path, forsaking by law and example those things that lowered men and in the same manner showing a better way. The arts flourished, and the sciences with them, family life became more whole, and piety became a byword for Athenians. And always they remembered their duties to the sacred and to their fellow men, and those who came long after remembered as well the golden age of Theseus, King of Athens, liberator from slavery in all its forms. And Theseus remembered, in his quiet moments, as no one else ever would, those dark eyes in the torchlight, and thought of what might have been. Such is the nature of sacrifice.
The boy awoke in the middle of the night in his own bed. He hadn’t remembered coming home. His mom made no mention the next day of anyone calling from the school, nor did any of his teachers speak of his absence, but he could barely wrap his head around any of it and hadn’t thought about detention at all. Was it magic? Was it the fact that at this school, if you weren’t actively stabbing someone, you weren’t really a problem yet? His head was spinning trying to make sense of that day.
He returned to the library. The TV was up, and some more computers had been installed. He went to his usual seat in the stacks. There, on his habitual chair, was a pamphlet.
‘NEW PROGRAM: Gifted and Talented Education. Testing begins shortly. Exciting opportunities for those looking for a unique learning environment. Sign the back and turn it in to the school counselor and start your journey today!’
Why not . . ?
