Dark of the Moon (15 page)

I was two turns away from my brother's chambers when I heard a sound. It was a man speaking in a chatty, conversational tone. I paused. I knew who it was, even though the voice was distant. I rounded the final corner and saw Theseus's now familiar stocky form seated on the ground, talking to my brother, who was also seated and was staring at the other boy with his mouth dangling open. I saw to my shame that a string of drool hung from his lower lip.

Asterion saw me before Theseus did, and he scrambled to his feet. "Ah!" he said, and pointed to the Athenian. "Adne!"

"Yes, I know." I hurried past Theseus. I hadn't seen him since the day we had met outside the wall of the Minos's quarters, and the memory of his arm around my waist and of his hard shoulder made me flush. As I crossed the line of white stone that marked the boundary of my brother's chambers, I glanced back and saw, to my secret and confusing pleasure, that Theseus was reaching out to stop me. Asterion took my hand and tried to kiss me, but I wiped his mouth first, and then presented my cheek to him. As he embraced me, he mumbled something, his eyes shining, and his crooked teeth showed in the grin that always melted me.

"Is this your new friend?" I glanced at Theseus, whose eyebrows were drawn together.

"You're not afraid of him?" he asked.

I sat down, motioning to Asterion to do the same. Usually he would have done so eagerly, ready to play whatever game I wanted, but this time he hesitated and glanced at Theseus. "Don't you want to see what I've brought you?" I patted my pouch, and now he turned his full attention on me. I loosened the drawstring and pulled out the little winged man.

"Ooooh!" Asterion reached for it, but I held it back, and he subsided, hands clasped, as I had taught him. When I knew he wouldn't move again, I held the figure up and moved it as though it were flying, then placed it on his lap. He picked it up, his mouth puckered in a perfect circle.

It always delighted me to please him, as I was never sure what he would like and what he would stomp to bits in disappointment. I watched as he turned the little man over, bending the toy's knees, twisting its arms backwards at an impossible angle, cocking its head so the painted face looked over its own back. He rocked and laughed in glee.

Seeing him absorbed, I addressed Theseus. "What are you doing here?"

"Came to see the monster."

I was lucky that Asterion was engaged in twisting the limbs of his new toy, or he would have been upset at my indignant gasp. "He's not a—"

"I know, I know," Theseus hastened to assure me. "I know he's not that. Anyone can see it. People call him one, though, don't they? But I don't think he's so bad." He rose to his feet—slowly, I noticed. I was pleased that he had learned so quickly how to keep from startling my brother. "I don't see why they don't let him out. He seems fearfully bored here."

"Oh no!" This time my exclamation penetrated Asterion's awareness, and he paused in his play. I forced myself to smile at him and patted his hand. He went back to what he'd been doing, but now he seemed to be listening. I went on more calmly, as though talking of the weather. "No, he can't be let out. You wouldn't say that if you'd seen—"

"Tomorrow, I'll talk to the Minos about it. I'll see what he has to say."

Before I could answer, my brother burst out in a high-pitched wail. I leaped up and was horrified at the blood dripping from his mouth. "Open!" I commanded. He shook his head. I squeezed his large jaw until it gaped, revealing the broken pieces of a wing of his little toy. I pulled out the ivory splinters from his tongue. When I had finished, he bellowed, throwing his arms around me and drenching me with red-stained slobber. He pulled me down to the floor with his weight, so I sat with his large head on my lap. I sang him one of my mother's lullabies, but he didn't appear to hear me, so I stopped and stroked his hair, feeding him raisins one by one until they were gone. "Hush now," I said again and again. "Hush now."

Theseus watched silently. When Asterion's sobs finally subsided and he lay sniffling, clutching the painted head of the now armless figure, Theseus spoke. "What I want to know is why he wasn't exposed at birth. Would have been the kindest thing for him. For everyone."

"But he's—"

"He's your brother." That wasn't what I had been going to say, but it was true, so I kept silent. Theseus evidently wasn't satisfied, though, and he leaned forward and scrutinized my face. "You were going to say something else, weren't you?"

"Asterion is..." I swallowed. "He's the firstborn of Goddess and Velchanos." Surely Theseus understood by now what that meant, but his face didn't show any enlightenment, so I was forced to go on. "He's the firstborn son of Goddess and Velchanos," I repeated, "and he is Minos-Who-Will-Be. When the Minos dies, Asterion will take his place." Still silence, but I knew what Theseus must be thinking:
How could Asterion perform the duties of a high priest?
Theseus might be unfamiliar with the ways of Krete, but any priest, anywhere, would have to know how to perform rituals, say prayers, make sacrifices—a whole series of things that were unthinkable to anyone looking at my brother as he sat on the floor popping the head of his toy into his mouth and out again, laughing with delight at the sound it made as it flew from his lips.

"Goddess will take care of it," I said. "She always does. She always will. We must trust in Goddess." I was echoing my mother's words, and like her I curved my thumb and first finger into a crescent to lend force to what I said.

"How do you know he's the son of Velchanos?" Theseus asked. A few days earlier, I would have been shocked, but because I had overheard Damia's doubts about my own parentage, I stopped the indignant reply that sprang to my lips.

"He was born at the right time, at the Festival of Birth of the Sun, nine months after the Planting Festival. And the crops were especially plentiful that year."

Theseus looked dubious. "I know something of this. I was told that I was the son of a god, and as it turns out, I'm not."

A grunt from Asterion made both of us look at him and then back at each other. For the first time since we'd met, Theseus seemed to have lost his self-confidence.

"Your father is king of Athens, though, is he not?"

"He is."

"Well, then..." I didn't know much about kings. I knew that in Aegyptos, the king ruled by right of having married the daughter of the previous king and that frequently a brother and a sister would wed to keep the royal line pure. Mykenae's king ruled by conquest, a barbarian system, I thought. In Athens and some other cities, the oldest son of the king took the throne—sometimes, I'd heard, even killing his own father if he was impatient. "Well, then, someday you will be king as well, will you not?"

He gave a wry smile. "If your brother doesn't eat me first."

"He doesn't hurt people on purpose," I said, but Theseus wasn't listening.

"It was my father and his wife who sent me here." I had heard of stepmothers who killed their husbands' children, but it was more commonly stepfathers who were murderous. I didn't understand that. Exposing a child at birth—yes, this was difficult, and it made everyone sad, but nobody had grown to know and love that child, and it was usually the best for everyone.

Before I could answer, Asterion lifted his head and said, "Huh!" He pointed to the doorway.

"What does he mean?" Theseus asked.

"Someone's coming." This was a rare occurrence, and I felt curious. Theseus scrambled to his feet, almost tripping on the hem of his robe, and clapped his hand to his waist as though looking for a sword.

Asterion always seemed to know who was coming. If this were my mother or the Minos, he would be on his feet making eager barking sounds. If it were someone he was afraid of—almost everyone else—he'd be whimpering. But he was squatting, his enormous knees almost up to his ears, and rolling the little ivory head along the floor. Its painted face, the features blurry now, flashed up and down and up and down before coming to rest with only the smooth, white back of its head visible.

Was it merely by chance that the little man hid his face from me?
I later wondered.
Or was it an omen, a warning sent by Goddess?
If it was a warning, it was a useless one. I didn't recognize it as such, and even if I had, I wouldn't have known how to change everything that was about to happen.

I KNOW from the first moment I see the Minotauros that I have nothing to fear from him. He's very tall and hideously ugly, but really he's nothing more than a child in a misshapen body. He seems painfully lonely and bored. The people who attend him wait until he's asleep to leave his food and to empty the bucket that he uses (badly) for relieving himself. He grins, showing crooked teeth, when I first come down to his dark, smelly chamber. I keep an eye on him, but I soon relax.

His sister, Ariadne, is quite different. She's small, and like all the Kretan women I've seen, she has black hair hanging in waves almost to her waist. She is not merely pale, like the rest of the noblewomen here; she has an unhealthy pallor. Her face looks, I think, like the mushrooms that appear in the deep forest after rain and glow against the dark earth. I understand that she rarely sets foot out of doors.

Her eyes are her most striking features. They're large, and so dark that the pupil is invisible in their depths, and long black lashes form a fringe around them. She is not pretty, but in an odd way she is beautiful.

I haven't admitted it to Prokris, but her plan now makes me uneasy. It was different when we were on the ship, sailing who knew where, with a hideous monster waiting to eat me on the other shore. It seemed logical then that once Prokris was established as queen, we would somehow kill the monster, liberate the Kretan people, and take over the country. She promised that she would marry me in exchange for my help, and I would become the island's ruler.

She never doubted that she would become the king's favorite wife, and indeed, the Minos does seem fond of her. But we were wrong about the rest of it. The Minos is not a king. He is the chief priest and some kind of lawgiver, but he is the subject of his sister, and she is the human incarnation of the moon goddess. Prokris can't make such a claim. She's obviously a mere woman, a mortal.

I have also found out that the people here are not ruled by fear of the Minotauros. They call him "
our
monster" with an air of pride. Most of them, anyway. Killing him wouldn't cause a great outpouring of gratitude and support. We certainly wouldn't be liberating anybody.

Prokris is very daring and manages to slip out of the women's quarters frequently, mostly because she has charmed the eunuchs who serve as the Minos's guards. One day, we sit in the crook of a tall cypress just outside the wall. Prokris likes being up this high. She can see into the compound where the Minos lives with his wives and children.

"They took all my things," she says. "Those women went through my bags and chests and took away my clothes and everything else I brought. They sneered and said they were fit only for barbarians. Imagine, these people calling
Athenians
barbarians!"

I'm about to agree, when I realize what she's said. "
All
your things? What about my sword?"

"They took that, too." She sounds glum but not alarmed. "Don't worry; they don't know you brought it. I said Aegeus had given it to me as a parting gift. They gave it to the Minos."

I suddenly feel vulnerable. It's not like I actually had the sword in my possession, but knowing that Prokris had possession of it had given me a sense of security.

"They did let me keep my wedding dress," she goes on. "But they took it away after the ceremony, and I think they cut it up and divided the fabric among themselves. The Minos didn't seem to care, but the women were just vicious."

Prokris tells me that Ariadne thinks she'll be a goddess one day. "She's mad," she asserts.

"Completely mad," I agree. But I wonder.

"It just isn't natural for this whole island to be governed by a woman," Prokris says. "Once you show them what a
real
ruler is like, a real king, they'll come to our side. How could they not?"

I understand her reasoning. A woman can't command an army—no soldier would take orders issued in a female's high voice—and the tasks that women are good at, spinning and weaving and tending to babies, take all their time. Still, I hesitate. The fields of Krete are fertile, and the trade ships stop here regularly, leaving all sorts of goods and departing heavy-laden with limestone and precious saffron. Tribute comes in punctually from the many subject lands. No one seems to fear attack. The maze of storerooms under the palace, except where Ariadne's befuddled brother spends his lonely days, is bursting with grain that the queen doles out evenhandedly to her subjects. They are well fed and seem happy.

My status here is unclear, now that it's become obvious that Ariadne's brother isn't going to eat me. I don't know if I'm an honored guest, a playmate for the Minotauros, a slave, or something else. I don't even know if they'd let me go if I asked, so I don't ask.

Prokris dismisses my concerns and counsels patience. "I'll be able to tell when the time is right," she promises. "You continue charming the little princess, and I'll lull the old man into trusting me completely. I'll know when it's time to move."

So I wait, trapped in her schemes.

MY MOTHER'S servant Iaera ran into the inner chamber. Usually the servants avoided the dark, twisting corridors under the palace like the mouth of Hades, so I was already on my feet with surprise at the sight of her when she grabbed my wrist. The shock of her touch made my throat squeeze shut. "What is it?" I managed to squeak.

"You must come." Iaera dropped my arm as though it had burned her. But her urgency propelled me forward, and I ran out, forgetting Asterion, Theseus, everything except the unknown danger that had alarmed the maid enough to touch me. Iaera was close behind. "Your mother—She-Who-Is—it's the baby."