Robert Thomas
Mythic Circle, #46, p. 48
The maiden quivered on the cold, hard stone, huddled in a dark corner of a dark passage. She pulled her knees close and gathered in the ragged wool stola that was her only comfort. She was sure the passage came to an end here. If it found her she could not flee. But maybe it knew this was a dead end, and it would not come here. Who would hide here, helpless, with no place to run? Her legs might not carry her anyway. She had mostly crawled through the stinking, filthy, sightless hallways. It seemed safer.
Her stomach pinched. Her mouth was dry and chalky. Maybe she could die of hunger and thirst before it found her.
She sat, against the stone, curled tight, shaking. Sometimes, exhausted sleep would overtake her for a few moments before she was pulled back into the dark terror. Her eyes had gradually adjusted. She could just make out the mottled walls of the passages, discern corners and turns. Sometimes, she could recognize, and smell, a mound, a corpse, cut down she knew not when, but in some stage of rot, and she beat away the flies. This is when she would climb to her feet and walk upright, shakily, a short distance, to escape the stench and the bugs, her arms outstretched, before collapsing back down on her bloody knees, and crawling on.
And now she huddled in the cold finality of a dead end, in a corner of Daedalus’ cruel, rough-hewn stone.
She was fading into another tormented sleep.
She heard a sudden huff.
A long, powerful nasal exhalation that shattered the dark, still, noisome air. Then a long, sucking inhale. Almost thoughtful.
The maiden’s whole body became stone. Her jaw dropped and she could feel her eyes widen, involuntarily. She slowed down her breathing. If only she could pull in her stink and sweat and hide it. Her stola was white, like a maiden’s. She hoped the crawling and slinking and sleeping on filthy stone had turned it black, like the air.
She just stared at the opposite wall of the passage. She heard several light steps. Her chest pounded. Please, Athena, she pleaded silently, let this be quick. Give me a quick end. Another bellowing exhalation, louder now, hard and determined. Sweat oozed over the maiden’s white skin. She trembled. She could hear it breathing, smell its filthy stench. She turned her head, slowly. She should not have chosen to hide here. Her eyes gaped into the dark.
She could see the faint outline.
A large man. Broad. Tall. Naked. Muscular. Covered in hair. From its wide shoulders, a man transformed. For human flesh gave way to the folding muscles of a massive, furry bovine neck, and this continued to the large, bloated, menacing head, and black eyes and flaring nostrils and jutting horns, of a mighty bull. The tauros.
The maiden’s throat hardened. She choked back her breath in sputters, her mouth parched and gaping. She pulled tightly against her knees. It stepped forward again, and looked down upon her crumpled, quivering form. In its right hand it held a broad, flat stone.
The maiden remembered what her mother had said to her before she and the six other maidens and seven youths, all of the best family, all chosen by lot, boarded the sacrificial boat in satisfaction of the grim yearly tribute to King Minos of Crete. Do not scream, she said, as they hugged and cried. You are a maiden of Athens. Do not scream. Pray to our goddess for a quick end and a long eternity by her side at the feasting table of Olympus. Do not scream.
It stood. Menacing. She huddled. Helpless.
It suddenly opened its maw and a huge, slimy tongue slapped around before being sucked back, sending forth a stench that smelled like putrid flesh.
The maiden could not scream. Her mouth moved up and down as she tried to force a breath out of tightened innards. She must not scream. She is a maiden of Athens.
“I’m Daphne,” she forced out in a choked whisper. She licked her lips. Then slightly louder, “I’m Daphne.”
She knew not what else to say. She could not scream.
She looked at its hand holding the wide, flat rounded stone. It didn’t move. The beast stood there, looking down at her with large, dark eyes.
Then she remembered. The story of the bull was well-known. The impiety of King Minos. His cursed wife.
“Asterion?” the maiden said, softly.
“Asterion? Is that your name? I’m Daphne.”
It looked down at her and twisted its massive neck slightly. Then it let out another deep breath from flaring nostrils.
The maiden swallowed hard, painfully. She loosened. Let her arms fall from her knees, gently, to the cold stone blocks. She pushed her legs out, slightly.
“Asterion? Will you sit with me?”
It’s ears twitched. It looked away. Another, softer nasal grunt. It looked back at her. And the maiden stared into its big, deep eyes. She gently stretched out a shaking hand, not to the beast, but to the hard floor beside her.
A long moment passed.
The beast dropped the stone.
It turned its back to the wall. It slowly lowered its hulking form down along the rough surface, and sat, leaning against the stone, looking at the wall opposite, as the maiden had done for so long.
The maiden let out a long, low silent breath, and then inhaled slowly. She needed to be calm. She tried to stop shaking. She had not screamed. She was alive.
It just sat against the wall, beside her. Another long moment. The sweat against the maiden’s skin started to dry and she was getting cold.
She licked her lips again, trying to find saliva in her aching throat, and swallowed.
“Asterion, your father shut you up in this place. Made you do-”
No, she must not make him feel guilty. Wicked. Irredeemable.
“Your father put you here. You cannot help who you are, Asterion. But he put you here. Down here in the dark. To live in this horrible place. In these tangled passages.”
It let out another big nasal breath.
It sounded like a sigh.
She looked sideways at its great head. It was matted and caked and reeking. Probably coated with blood. She thought, it had to ram its victims with its head and horns. And how could it tear human flesh with the flat teeth of a bull? Wretched.
And she could see into the one eye. Deep and empty. Was it looking at her?
She adjusted herself and her stola, slightly, toward the beast. It noticed. It turned its head and shoulders, slightly, toward her. It’s hands were on the cold floor too.
She gulped and took a deep breath.
“Asterion. We should go back to Athens. We should try to find our way out of here. And find some of the others who-”
She stopped again. How many of them had it already devoured? She took another deep breath.
“If we can find our way out of this place, we can sail back to Athens. You can save me. And anyone else we find along the way. You can live in Athens. They will not hold you at fault. And you can eat grass and oats and wild flowers, Asterion. And drink pure water. And live in the sun and the fields.”
She was breathing hard. She thought of something else. She smiled in the dark.
“And Asterion. If it is your will, your pleasure, you can sail back here with the Athenian host and unseat your wicked father who put you here. You would look fine in shiny bronze armour, Asterion. Bearing a spear, not a stone. And you can eat the grass and oats of Crete. In freedom.”
The beast looked down to the cold floor for a while. It then inclined its head slightly more towards the maiden. And from its nostrils came a long, low breath. And from its throat came a low, guttural grunt.
The maiden swallowed. The sweat started to flow from her skin again. She slowly raised the hand that was closest to the beast. Slowly, so it could see it with its big eye. And placed the white, stained, stone-sanded hand on the creature’s massive cheek. And just rested it there. She felt the dirt and the matted grime. It did not move. But its eye blinked and twitched.
And they sat there. Its nasal breath long and slow.
She had not screamed. She was alive.
The glimmer of light came suddenly, from around a sharp corner out of the endless twisting passage. The beast fumbled for his flat stone and jerked himself up clumsily. The light expanded to a glowing cloud. A man turned the corner and stopped as if languidly searching for something, holding a torch out before him. He saw them and stepped forward. The maiden pushed herself up off the floor with weak legs, one hand against the stone wall. She felt a sharp, searing rush of excitement. They both squinted against the torchlight.
The man stood tall and straight and furious. He wore a knee-length, purple cloak, clasped at the waist by a leather belt with a golden buckle. A scabbard hung by his side. Curly blond hair with a golden band framed a handsome, dark, determined face. His feet were clad with fine leather sandals. In one hand, the torch. In the other, a large spool of thick red yarn on a spindle. The yarn trailed behind him.
The maiden looked hard past the torchlight.
“My prince!” she shrieked. “Prince Theseus! Prince of Athens! You have come!”
He did not look at her. He looked at the beast.
“I have come, young maiden,” he replied sharply. Then gritting his teeth, “I have come.”
He dropped the spool of yarn and quickly drew his sword. The wide polished bronze glimmered. He gripped the torch tightly at his side. He put one leg forward in battle stance as the beast, suddenly cornered, lowered his massive head and made ready to charge, emitting a long, mean guttural bellow. The maiden looked at the beast and at the hero. And then at the beast. She stumbled forward and put herself between the two, facing Theseus, her arms outstretched beside her.
“My prince,” she choked out, “do not slay the beast!”
“Stand aside, young maiden! Do not get in its way! It will trample you!”
“It will not trample me, my prince. It saved me. It spared me.”
“Stand aside!”
“My prince,” she moaned, now extending her arms forward to Theseus in supplication, “I implore you. The beast is not evil. It is a pathetic victim. Born of unnatural deeds. Shut in here by a cruel father who exacted the abominable tribute from our city. It did not. It has wandered, starving and cold in this place just like its victims. It does not wish to kill again. He does not wish to kill again!”
Theseus’ glared at the maiden and pointed his sword towards her.
“Young maiden, I too have wondered this dark, sickening labyrinth and found half-eaten corpses. Hacked and mangled by that stone he wields. Our youths. Our maidens. You would have been one of those. After the third sacrifice, the third ship, which you boarded with the rest, wailing, I implored the king my father, King Aegeus of Athens, to send me here, to put an end to this gruesome tribute and our subjugation. Stand aside, dear maiden. You are weak and hysterical.”
The maiden buried her head in her hands and cried loudly.
“No, my prince. He did not wish this. Do not hold him at fault. I told him he was not condemned to this. I called him by name. He did not kill me. He sat with me.”
“He sat with you?”
She cried and sniffled into her hands, then looked up at the prince.
“I told him he could eat oats and grass and wild flowers in Attica. I told him he could put on amour and join the host that would unseat his wicked father. Please, my prince!”
She sobbed and coughed, hunched over. Theseus furled his brow and smirked.
The beast tossed away his flat stone and went down on one knee and bowed his head low and put his outstretched hands awkwardly on the stone floor and let out a low, gentle grunt. The maiden turned to him, then turned back to Theseus, smiling through filthy tears.
“Do you see, my prince? You cannot slay a supplicant. He is contrite. He is a victim. No less than we were. He saved me. You saved us. Let there be no more bloodshed. It is impious, my lord, to slay a supplicant. Do not slay him!”
She stretched out her arms again to the prince. They stood. Theseus looked back and forth from the maiden to the pathetic, almost prostrate beast before him. He thought. He sighed. He lowered his sword. Stillness. He sheathed it with a frustrated thud.
“Very well, young maiden. You are right that it is impious to kill a supplicant. I cannot bring the wrath of the gods upon my house.”
He paused, looking down at the beast.
“And you are right that he was shut up cruelly in this place, fed youths and maidens by the tyrant king of Crete, not because the beast desired it, but to preserve his own power, setting Athens as an example to any who might oppose him.”
The maiden sighed heavily and then herself went down on one knee.
“Oh my prince, you are just,” she sniffled. “And you will be a just king. This act of justice will lift you up over all other kings.”
“Rise, maiden. And you too, bull of Minos. Rise before your prince and lord and future king. And mark, while the maiden has won me over and I spare you, the merest violence from you and I will cut you down without a thought.”
The beast raised his massive head and slowly lifted himself upright. He looked at the prince, and grunted gently. In the torchlight now, the maiden and the hero cold see his full grotesque and repulsive form. His body, though muscular, was yet rather emaciated, tired and scratched and weary, covered in filthy matted hair, his hands worn and twisted and his nails black. His neck and head were caked with dirt and blood and gore that stuck to his long, sharp horns and jagged ears. The beast noticed them staring, and lowered his head again.
“He smells, maiden.”
“Yes, my prince.”
“Young maiden, we must try to find the others. Those he has not devoured. And then we must leave. My father is on watch for me at Cape Sounion. We will change my sail from black to white, to signify my safe return.”
As the prince spoke, the maiden noticed another light emerging even more quickly from the passage.
“My prince, behind. Another comes.”
Theseus turned toward the passage, one eye on the beast, and placed his hand on his scabbard.
A young woman appeared, lightly panting. A noble woman, tall and shapely. She carried a torch and a spear. She was dressed in a bright white gown with purple edges, cinched with a purple sash. On her head, a tiara. On her arms, flashing bangles. Around her slender neck, gold chain. Her feet well shod. Her skin white and soft. She held up her torch.
“Ariadne,” Theseus protested, “why did you come here? What are you doing?”
The maiden beheld the noblewoman transfixed. The beast stood still.
“I could not linger any longer at the entrance to this place, my lord. You had been gone a while. I might be seen. I followed you. I followed the trail of thick red yarn as fast as I could. To be with you.”
She looked at the beast with a furrow.
“My lord?”
He swallowed.
“My lady, the beast is a supplicant. He is subdued. The maiden tamed him and he prostrated himself before me. It is impious to slay a supplicant. We shall take him. He is unnatural. That is not his fault. He was shut up in this place against his will by your cruel father. He too is a victim. We will take him to Athens.”
The noblewoman stood frozen. The maiden looked at Theseus.
“Maiden, you know Ariadne is daughter to the tyrant King Minos. We met here. We will be married. She too will leave this place and come to Athens. She will be my queen. Your queen. His queen. She gave me the spool of yarn, maiden, that I could find and kill the beast and then make my way back out of this twisted dungeon.”
Ariadne stepped forward slowly and approached the beast. He stepped back a little. She approached further, resting her spear on the ground, gawking at him in the torchlight. A gentle smile curled her red-painted lips.
“Asterion,” she said slowly and breathlessly.
The beast blinked and twitched his nostrils.
“My half-brother. You are wretched and filthy and bloody. Yes you have suffered. I remember you as a boy, Asterion, unnatural and clumsy, your vast appetite, your fearsome strength, how you became more and more ungovernable.”
“My princess,” said the maiden, “now he will eat oats and grass and wild flowers in the fields of Attica.”
Ariadne paid no heed to the maiden.
“You are black with grime, my half-brother. Your father the great bull was pure white. The finest bull ever. Sent to my father by Poseidon. For sacrifice. You had a beautiful white head and neck too. I used to stroke your head and neck, when you were young. Soft white fur.”
A moment of silence fell.
Leaning on her spear, she turned her head to Theseus, her face suddenly red.
“Would that my selfish father the king had sacrificed the bull as Poseidon commanded!” She spat out the words in anger. “How can one fool the gods? And then my mother the witch Pasiphae struck with unnatural lust for the beautiful white beast, a curse from the sea god in retribution. How ignoble, my lord!” She clenched her face in fury. “And she got that sycophant Daedalus to build her a wooden heifer!” She looked back at the beast. “And all this. This outrage, these cruel sacrifices, this bloody, cursed island!”
Theseus took a step forward.
“And now it ends, my lady.”
She smiled again at the beast. “My brother,” she said plaintively, “Asterion.”
She quickly slid her right hand down the smooth shaft of her spear and thrust it forward into the beast’s heart, tossing away the torch. He fell back against the wall with a bursting, painful bovine shriek from the depths of his flaring nostrils.
“Now it ends, my lord!” she yelled, wide eyes bulging from her red grimacing face. “It is not my supplicant and it cannot live!” With both hands and her whole body she thrust forward, burying the shaft deeper.
Theseus lunged forward. “Ariadne!” He seized her from behind with his free arm, the other grasping his torch, to pull her away.
The maiden fell to her knees, “Noooo, princess!”
Ariadne continued with all her might to thrust the spear forward, lowering her head and haunching her shoulders.
“This abomination cannot live my lord!” she sputtered uncontrollably. “My brother and my shame! Our shame! We are to be married!”
The beast slid down the rough stone wall, trailing a stain of blood, and collapsed on the rock floor. He stretched his mighty head back in agony, grabbing at the shaft. Then he reached an arm for the maiden and bent his neck to her, while the enraged princess continued to thrust.
“Ariadne!” yelled the hero furiously, “let go the spear, Ariadne!” She let go suddenly and he threw her back on to the stone floor. He pulled the spear out of the beast. A pool of thick blood formed on the stones. He tossed the spear aside angrily.
The maiden wailed. “Oh princess of Crete, why?” She scurried over to the beast and knelt beside him and tried to cup his massive head in her hands. The beast looked at her, let out a final, desperate groan, and fell silent, those big dark eyes staring lifeless.
Theseus turned back to the princess and yelled, “a fine act of sympathy for your wretched brother, woman!”
“That was my cruel fate, my lord,” she replied sharply, raising herself off the ground. “The abomination could not live.” She brushed off her white gown and straightened her tiara and picked up her torch. “We are leaving Crete and will be married.” She lifted her chin, proud and noble. “And you, my lord, will have the glory of slaying the beast and liberating the youth of Athens. And your city shall be free. And your rule assured.”
The maiden wept, placing her head gently on the beast’s oozing breast.
Theseus glared at his princess. She stood unmoved. Then his face softened.
“Very well, my lady. You have done your deed. And as you say, I have done mine. I have slain the monster and freed Athens and we shall be married and rule. Now let us leave this hellish place.” He shuffled over to the spool of yarn. “Maiden, come.”
“My lord?”
“Yes, Ariadne.”
“You must be undoubted slayer of the monster.”
He stopped and turned to the princess. She nodded to the weeping maiden.
“You must have the glory. The undoubted glory of slaying the monster. You came into the labyrinth with my spool of yarn and you slew the monster and saved the youths and maidens of Athens and became king.”
Theseus twisted his faced in anguish. She looked back at him with a face of stone. Then he looked at the maiden, who had lifted her head from the beast and sat next to him, smeared all over with his blood, her face black with dirt and tears, looking at them, wide-eyed.
Theseus stepped forward to the maiden, and looked down at her.
“Sweet maiden, what is your name?”
She looked up at her prince, trembling.
“Daphne.”
A moment passed.
“Daphne,” said the prince, softly.
He drew his sword. The maiden screamed.