Dark of the Moon (19 page)

Thoösa barked her unpleasant laugh. "You'll see." She rummaged in a cloth bag on the table. "Here, take this." She held out a ball of undyed yarn the same size as the white Goddess ball that lay in its special casket inside the box at the foot of my mother's—now my—bed. I held the practice ball in my right hand. I turned to the left and took the thirteen steps that would, on the night of the Festival, lead me into the inner chamber, where the Goddess stone would have been anointed with oil and draped in precious cloth.

And then we stopped. This is where we always stopped. What came next I didn't know. I didn't ask, and they didn't offer to tell me. Once I was inside the chamber, the Minos would come in wearing his bull mask. This I had seen at every Planting Festival. When I later emerged holding a snake in each hand, I wouldn't be Ariadne. I would be Goddess.

But this night, I was impatient and tired of secrets. "What does the Minos do in the chamber?" I asked no one in particular. The priestesses exchanged glances but said nothing. Surely they knew. They had to leave the inner chamber when the Minos arrived, but they must have learned something about that part of the ritual.

I tried again. "What is the Ordeal of the Snakes?"

"Where did you hear about that?" Thoösa snapped.

"Never mind." I tried to imitate the tone my mother had always used when dismissing complaints or questions from the priestesses. "It is enough to know that I
have
heard of it and that I want to know what it is." I looked around at them as they stood mute. "Damia?" She stared at the ground. I turned to the others. "Zita? Kynthia? Will no one tell me?" Nothing. "Perialla?"

She raised her eyes and glanced at the others. I thought I caught a shrug from Thoösa. "We can't tell you, Mistress," Perialla said. "Goddess-Who-Was should have told you. I'm sure she would have if she'd known she would be leaving you so soon," she added hastily, clearly not wanting to cast aspersions on my mother's memory. "But it isn't our place. The Minos will have to explain it."

"Very well," I said. "I'll just go ask him." They protested, and Thoösa even tried to block my exit, but I pushed her aside and strode away. If I didn't breathe air that hadn't already passed into and out of the bodies of so many people, I would burst like an overripe pomegranate.

THE PRIESTESS'S DEATH changes
everything:'

I look at Prokris, surprised. I've never heard something so close to a whine from her. She wears a frown that on any other girl would look sulky but which on Prokris merely shows how pretty her mouth is.

"I don't see how," I say. "The mother was never part of your plan."

"No, not directly. The daughter is now the one who holds the power. And I've just realized something. She told me that my husband will no longer be Minos after their Planting Festival. Do you know who will be priest in his stead?"

"Her brother."

"You
knew?
" Her voice must have come out louder than she expected, for she flinches and looks toward the garden wall.

I say, "I don't see how he can perform the rituals. He can't even keep himself clean!" Once, I overheard a girl in town say that someone should have "taken care of him" long ago and that if the Kretans were real men, one of them would have slit the boy's throat. I've grown fond of Asterion, but I can understand her point.

Prokris's next words take me aback. "All you have to do," she says haltingly, her words reflecting ideas coming to her as she speaks, "is marry the girl."

"
Marry
her?"

Prokris keeps her eyes fixed on me. "Make sure you are the one she chooses at that Festival. You can drip some blood on the field or whatever it is—and then, instead of stepping down at the end, you declare that since there is no Minos, you're taking charge."

"Why would they listen to me?"

"Krete needs someone strong in the palace; they've been ruled by priestesses and that old man for too long. Ariadne will be the most important person left, and her husband will be the natural one to assume power. There will be no Minos to get in your way."

I don't much like the idea of participating in their ritual. For one thing, I don't know how they extract blood from the man chosen by the priestess. From what I've seen of Krete, it's likely to be uncomfortable, not a mere prick on the fingertip. For another, we don't observe many religious ceremonies in Troizena, and I don't know how to behave.

Besides, I have no intention of marrying the girl, and I say so.

"You don't have to
stay
married to her," Prokris reminds me. "Just long enough to get established as king. Once they see how a real kingdom operates, they'll be happy to leave off their barbarian ways."

I ponder this and see a flaw.

"How am I to make sure she chooses me at the Festival?" Prokris lays a hand on my knee and smiles. "I don't think you'll find that difficult," she says.

I HAD NOT visited my brother since I had attempted to introduce him to Phaedra two days after the baby's birth. He had erupted into such a jealous rage that I hurried away with my sister while she screamed herself purple. This time I came alone, and Asterion's joy made me weep with shame at my neglect of him. This frightened him, so I quickly forced back my tears and sat next to him and held his hand.

I spent all afternoon there. I sang him songs and told him tales. He loved to try to sing with me, mouthing meaningless syllables in his surprisingly tuneful voice. I never knew how well he followed my stories, so I recounted my own favorites, not the warlike ones that most boys preferred.

I told my brother about Medea and her bravery in sacrificing what she loved the most. I told him about Medusa, who was so powerful that snakes crawled in her hair and so beautiful that men turned to stone at the sight of her. I told him about Moera Krataia, so mighty that even her brother Velchanos bowed to her, and about how she spun the thread that apportioned every mortal's life. I described how she measured each life thread into its appropriate length, weeping when she had to cut one short, rejoicing when she was allowed to leave another long and strong. I lowered my voice to tell him how her scissors finally sliced through the indicated spot and the person died.

When Asterion drifted off to sleep, I placed his hand on his broad chest and left my own there for a moment, feeling him breathe, and then slipped out.

Even before I reached the Minos's residence, I could tell that things had changed. A soft rain was falling in the courtyard, so it was not surprising that it was deserted, but everything about this place looked so different that it took me a moment to orient myself. There was the Minos's bench under his favorite fig tree. Tight buds along its branches looked ready to burst open and turn into the huge leaves that the children enjoyed playing with. Green crocus spears poked their tips through the soil. All this was the same as always, but the rest took me aback. The only other seat that remained was a stool missing one of its three legs. No toys littered the pavement; no awnings were pulled over seats to allow the wives to get a little fresh air even in the rain. The wind picked up some rubbish and swirled it around. The bird cages were empty, their doors ajar.

No sounds of quarrels or laughter came through the columns, no clash of cooking pots, no thud of shuttles banging on looms, no whirring spindles. No babies cried, and no mothers scolded. Even the eunuchs were absent.

A distant voice was all I heard. It was a woman, and she was clearly issuing orders and becoming impatient as they were not followed to her liking. The voice grew louder, and then a portly figure strode into the courtyard and stopped short at the sight of me. A look of annoyance crossed her face. This was the Minos's third wife, who had come with a shipment of tribute from Aegyptos before I was born. No one could pronounce her Aegyptian name, so the Minos had renamed her Ino. Although she had been in Krete for decades, she still kept to her Aegyptian ways, shaving her head and wearing a heavy wig in public, insisting on filmy linen clothes instead of good wool, speaking her strange language to her many children. These children were now all grown and gone, and it looked like Ino was leaving too.

"What are you doing here, mistress?" she asked me in her deep voice, which had retained most of its Aegyptian accent. A servant appeared behind her, dragging a wooden case. She stopped and sat down on the box.

"I'm looking for the Minos," I said.

Ino shrugged. "He's probably in his chamber. I haven't seen him for days."

Indignation swelled in me. She seemed utterly indifferent to the man who had been kind to her for twenty years. "What do you have in there?" I asked, pointing to the case.

"Merely my personal items," she spat. "A wife is allowed to remove her cooking pots and weaving supplies when she leaves."

I knew that the box contained more than that—and in any case, I had never seen Ino holding anything that looked like a cooking pot or a spindle or loom in her pudgy hands—but I didn't care. Let the wives strip the palace bare, just as long as they left.

As though in answer to my thought, the servant said timidly, "The ship leaves at sundown," and the Minos's wife snapped back at her, "Then why are you sitting there? Take that box to where the cart awaits."

The servant grasped the leather handle and jerked the case along the paving stones of the courtyard and out the gate. Ino swept by me without a farewell or even a backward glance.

Once her haranguing voice disappeared, all was silent once more. Or almost. I caught a low sound, as of someone murmuring, and then a pause, and then an answer in a deeper tone. I recognized both voices, despite how muffled they were, and I made my way to the corner of the garden where the little-used door was open a crack. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
That was an illusion,
I told myself firmly.
There was no blood pooling at Theseus'sfeet that time. It was a shadow.
I pushed the door open.

They were seated under a tree. Theseus leaned back, his eyes half-closed, and chewed on a long stalk of grass. Prokris had her arms clasped around her knees; it was cool in the shade, and she must have been trying to keep warm. She rose gracefully and extended a hand to me.

"However did you manage to get away?" she asked as we settled next to each other on the ground.

"I just left," I said. "They didn't try to stop me."

"Good," Prokris said. "They fear you."

I considered. The priestesses, of course, knew how limited were the powers of She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess, and they also knew that my mother had not finished teaching me, yet they were treating me with more deference than they ever had before. Perhaps this was why I craved the company of Prokris and Theseus—they were still relaxed and friendly.

I was about to respond when Prokris held up her hand. She cocked her head, listening.

"What is it?" Theseus asked, but Prokris was already on her feet.

"The Minos is calling me. Poor thing, he's practically alone in there now."

I hadn't heard anything, but Prokris seemed sure as she trotted to the door. Her feet in their fine leather shoes tapped on the paving stones as she crossed the courtyard.

After a moment, Theseus asked, "How are the preparations coming?"

"Well. I should be there practicing." I felt a twinge of guilt, but it wasn't strong enough to make me return to the chamber where the priestesses were surely discussing my bad behavior in their shrill tones. Stronger than the guilt was fear. Why did they stop the rehearsal each time after I removed the Goddess ball from its chest? What would happen when I was alone with the Minos? And what was the Ordeal of the Snakes? I bowed my head and willed my fears to retreat.
He loves me,
I told myself.
He won't let any harm come to me.
But I knew that he was just the Minos, not Velchanos, and he didn't control what happened there.

"And tomorrow is the ceremony?" Theseus asked.

I nodded, not trusting my voice. I could perform it in my sleep. Grudgingly, I admitted to myself that the repeated rehearsals had served their purpose; no moment was unscripted. Nothing unexpected would happen to make me falter and thus render the ritual ineffective. I remembered the year that my mother had stumbled over the threshold to the inner chamber. After she held a long consultation with the Minos, the ceremony was allowed to proceed, but the crops that year had been so bad, the storerooms under the palace were emptied long before the next fall's harvest was in, and many people had died.

That was the year my brother had been moved into his prison. When those forgotten inner rooms were stripped of their contents to feed the people, ancient, fading paintings of a Minos-Who-Was wearing his ritual bull head had been discovered on their walls. Daidalos had constructed more walls, but my brother broke them down—though he didn't seem able to destroy the painted ones—and that was when my mother had finally been forced to tie him there with a spell.

The silence between us lengthened, and I raised my eyes to Theseus. He was looking at me with a half smile. Had he read my mind?

"You'll be perfect." He took my hand and raised it to his lips. They were warm and soft, and I wished their touch to linger. "How could you not be?" He moved closer so that his thigh pressed against mine. A fluttering in my stomach made me tremble. With his free hand, he lightly took my shoulder and turned me to face him, and his mouth moved to my lips, pressing first gently and then more firmly. I was flooded with an unfamiliar warmth, and I found my hand moving to the back of his neck. His tongue lightly flicked on my mouth, and it opened to a sweetness I had never before tasted.

I was gripped by a new fear. I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away, then stood up. "I have to go back," I said shakily. "The priestesses want me to repeat the prayers one more time."

He, too, stood. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

I waved a hand to brush away his words. I fled back through the door, across the courtyard, and into the palace, to the safety of the corridors with their damp air and closed-in smell, through the chamber where the painting of Goddess holding the snakes and wearing her enigmatic smile seemed to simultaneously welcome and mock me as I ran past Her.