The Flame in the Maze (31 page)

“I do,” Pelagia said. “But she's lost—everyone is, when they arrive here. Some are found again.”

They turned back to face the sea. The ship was smaller. Once it had passed beyond the long rock arm of the harbour, the sail—once white, now blackened with ash—unfurled from the straight new mast and snapped taut in wind. Chara leaned her shoulder against Asterion's arm.
Theseus didn't have a single word for
me, she thought.
After the labyrinth—after all those days and nights—not a single word or look.

::
Daughter of Pherenike,::
Theseus said, as the ship took to the open sea.
::Chara: farewell
.::

Phaidra stared at the place where the island had been long, long after it had vanished. She stared until her eyes stung with salt from the spray churned up by the oars, and darkness hid everything except the stars.

She heard voices behind her, but didn't really listen to them. “My Prince! Will you speak to your father, with your godmarked voice? Will you tell him we're coming? For he said he'd wait for you every day, at Sounion.”

“I will surprise him. The ship will surprise him, coming toward the cape—and he will rejoice even more when he realizes what his eyes are showing him. No. I will not tell him.”

He was there with her, then, a shadow like all the others. “Princess,” he said. “I will bring you with me to my father's palace; I will keep you by my side. You will be happy in Athens: I promise you this.”

She had no heart to say,
It doesn't matter—nothing has, since Icarus fell.
She said, “Yes,” instead, and let him take her hand.

Her eyes were open. She saw nothing but grey-black-white shadows that shifted and swam. She felt a deep thrumming around her but heard nothing. She smelled smoke. Seeing, hearing, smelling: she knew these. Remembered them.

She thought,
Who am I?

The pain answered. It was strongest in her chest, where it burned with the white of a blade-wound. A blade. A chest. A man's cry.

Theseus
, she thought, in a flood of memory and stronger, sharper pain, which threaded thorns through all of her flesh.
And I am Sotiria, who took his wound away. A wound that killed him—because here I am, in the darkness of the Underworld.

The shadows began to part on some deeper, more frightening colour. The mountain beneath her was hot.

Not the Underworld
. Though it seemed impossible—though the air and the heat told her otherwise—she knew this.

I'm alive.

Melaina? Theseus? Chara?
But the heavy silence told her that she was alone.

She could see the sky above her now, thick with black smoke whose twisting made her so horribly dizzy that she had to look away. She stared down at her own body, at first just because it was there, and then because she realized she should be willing it to move.
Legs
, she thought.
Feet. Do something. Twitch? Bend? No? Fine: hands.
Hand
—only one works—I do remember that. Fingers. You start.

Her thoughts felt as if they were whirling around in her head, and yet her limbs lay like a statue's. An old statue, fallen and forgotten in an overgrown courtyard like the one she and her brother used to run past, because they were afraid a creature would lunge at them out of the shadows.
All the time I imagined
they were just dead stone
—
but
did those statues think, like I'm thinking?
What
am I thinking? Gods and goddesses of sky and earth and sea:
why am I alive
?

The first thing that moved was her shoulder. She'd been concentrating on everything but it, so when it twitched, all her spinning thoughts stilled abruptly. A moment later it twitched again. A laugh pushed up under her ribs and she commanded it to subside, because it hurt.

When she rolled onto her stomach, pain tore through her like godmarked silver, just as it had when she'd healed Theseus. She heard herself whimpering, though the inside of her head was full of screaming. She managed two lurches, fresh pain blossoming in the hand she'd ruined when she healed Daedalus. She lifted her head and forced her vision to clear. Surely the mountain's downward slope was far, far steeper than it had been when she'd come up it?
Just go.
Go
, Sotiria.

The mountain grew hotter under her palms and knees as she went, tippy and slow as a snail. The earth was seeping steam; she watched it wind up between her fingers.
Oh, Goddess: why are you angry?
But then she remembered the king who'd been so close, when she and the others had been gathered beneath the black pipes. The king who was mark-mad and spewing fire.

Farther, Sotiria. You have to get as far away from this mountain as you can.

Days went by—or so she imagined. The sky grew even thicker with dark smoke and cloud that would have smothered any daylight. She panted with every lurch forward and forgot that there was still pain everywhere in her reawakened body. She was aware only of the ground beneath her, patchy with grass that singed black as she went, and earth that smoked and crumbled.

At last she rolled onto her back, trying to fill her burning chest with breath. She had to put her chin to her chest to see the mountain.
I'm off the slope
, she thought, and felt boneless with relief and exhaustion and a sudden, aching hunger.
I'm away
.

The mountain was veined with flame, from flanks to ragged top. The flame should have been running, but wasn't: it was flickering. She blinked and squinted.
The mountain's opening
, she thought.
It's cracking apart; the fire's
inside
it.

She flung herself back onto her hands and knees. She scuttled, her back arched, no longer caring that she was leaning on her bad hand, certain that soon she'd be able to stand up and maybe run—but then a roar ripped the air around her, and the earth reared up and threw her into darkness.

Manasses had worried mostly about the donkey, at first. What if his father needed her, while Manasses was gone? Alexios didn't
usually
need her, except once a month or so, when he went to town—and he'd just been there. “He shouldn't need you,” Manasses said as the donkey—Timo—bore him down stony hills and across rivers and pastures, toward the smoking mountain. “He shouldn't. And he'll understand, when we come home. He won't be angry then, even if he is now. Or maybe he'll be a
little
angry that I didn't ask him—but he'd never have said yes!”

After a day, he tried not to think about his father at all. “She's there, Timo,” he said, slipping down a slope that was too steep for the donkey to manage, with him on her back. She blew out her breath, as she picked her way after him. “I'm sure she is. Maybe the bird-man, too. I'll invite them to come home with us. They're very kind—but of course you don't know that, because you were at the lower pasture when they came. But you'll know them soon. Once we've found them and led them away from that mountain. He carried me, you know. The bird-man did, when I hurt my ankle. And then she healed it. Healed it, Timo!”

The fire above the mountain dimmed, on the very first day of his journey, and was replaced by huge, thick snakes of black smoke that writhed their way across the sky, reaching for him. He said, “Hurry, Timo. Hurry! Something terrible is happening, and we need to get to them.” He stopped only twice that day, to let Timo crop at some dry grass, and to eat some of the cheese and bread he'd brought. He didn't let them sleep until the stars were dimming.

On the third day, Timo started trotting, as if she sensed his excitement at being so close to the mountain. He could see the bulk of it, and the fire that ran through it. He made a triumphant sound and raised a fist in the air—and the mountain exploded. Rock and fire flew up and out, toward them; the ground rose, and Manasses tumbled off Timo, who fell to her knees. He lay on his belly, covering his head with his arms. He cried out as the rock shards tore at him; he rolled and rolled to escape the fire, which pattered like rain and set the dry grass alight.
I'm sorry, Father,
he thought.
I'm so sorry—I shouldn't have left; I only wanted to bring her back to us because I knew you'd want this, even if you were afraid to say so.

Just when he thought he and Timo would burn too, the rain began. He didn't believe it, at first, but very quickly his loincloth was soaked, and his skin, and Timo was making surprised, questioning noises beside him. He sprang to his feet and tipped his face up to the rain, which had already turned from fat drops to silver sheets. Timo was shaking herself and stamping her front feet.

“We're saved!” he shouted. He slid over to her, spraying mud, and threw his arms around her sturdy neck. “Timo: we're fine, and she's fine too—I'm sure of it!”

He wasn't so sure only a short time later, as they slogged across the coursing, sucking swamp that had replaced the solid earth. He thought of his father, pacing in and out of their sleeping hut. He saw him as if he were
right there
, wrinkling his brows in that way that meant he was very angry, or very sad.
I'm sorry
, Manasses thought again. He could barely lift his feet.
I'm sorry, but I'm not. I had to try. The bird-man saved me, and she made my ankle better, and she made you smile.

It was Timo who found her. He realized that the donkey wasn't beside him, in the dark grey of the rain, and he turned to call for her—and there she was, nuzzling something on the muddy ground. He fell, as he tried to run to her, and ended up crawling, among and over the chunks of rock that had been the Goddess's mountain.

Sotiria's eyes were open, blinking away the water. They turned to him, when he knelt and leaned over her. Her lips parted.

“Manasses.” He couldn't hear the word, over the rain, but he could see it.

“Yes!” he said, very loudly, so she'd be sure to hear him. “Yes—it's me! I've come to save you, 'Tiria! But where's the bird-man?”

She struggled onto her elbows and winced, and Manasses dropped down so that she could lean on him. Her arm was heavy and slippery on his shoulders, but he didn't flinch. “I don't know,” she said, much more clearly. “But I hope he flew very far away from here.” She moaned then, and closed her eyes, and put a hand to her chest. Manasses touched her hand with his own, which was much smaller than hers. Her fingers were twisted and bent, as if they'd all been broken. He moved the twisted hand gently aside, because he saw a dark, ragged mark, through the cloudy white of her wet bodice.

“Your hand—your chest: you healed someone,” he said.

Her wounded chest heaved. “Yes.”

“It was very bad.”

“Yes.”

He suddenly felt shy. He cleared his throat. “Will you come back with me, now? If no one needs you here?”

She was still for a moment, her eyes wide, despite the rain. Then she squeezed his shoulder and smiled. “Help me up, Manasses,” she said.

She half-slept with her cheek against the donkey's mane and her arms wrapped loosely around its neck.
Her
neck: “Timo,” Manasses had called her. The half-sleep was gentle. Sotiria felt the rain easing. Her eyes dipped open and closed, and she knew the smoke was thinner—grey, instead of black. Sometimes she saw the top of Manasses's head, and his fingers splayed on the donkey's neck. His nails were small and ragged and dirty.

“'Tiria?”

He hadn't spoken in days. She hadn't, either. “Mmmm?”

“We're nearly there. I'm . . . He'll be angry.”

She forced her body straight. She gazed down into his eyes. “Not for long,” she said. Her heart was thudding as if there were nothing else in her chest.

The hut was as it had been. The grass around it—just the same. No godmarked fire; no godmarked rain. Not here.

Alexios was running before Timo had even started to huff her way up the gentle slope to the hut. Sotiria wanted to look at him—only at him—but she looked instead at Manasses. His little hand was clenching and unclenching on Timo's hide, and he was biting his lower lip.

“Manasses?” she said. She could hear Alexios's feet, pounding the thick green grass. She could see his face, though she wasn't looking at it. She knew his cheeks would be burnished with the sun that had begun, finally, to break through the thinning clouds.

“I've never seen him run,” Manasses murmured. “He only ever sort of
trots
, when he's going after a sheep that's wandering. He must be
very
angry.”

“Not for long,” she said again—and then Alexios was there, sweeping Manasses up under one arm and reaching for her with the other. His fingers flexed in her hair, which was soft now, not stubbly. He thrust Manasses onto his hip and the boy burrowed into his shoulder, clinging with arms and legs.

“Don't be angry, Papa,” Manasses said, his voice muffled and wavering. “You should be—I know you should—but, look—I brought her back!”

“Manasses,” Alexios said, in a growl that broke. “You shouldn't have gone.”

He turned to look up at her, his chin wedged against his son's head. Sotiria leaned down and put a finger to his parted lips. As she did, images rippled in a place beneath her eyes: Athens' harbour, bronze and crimson at dusk. Her brother kicking up dust as he darted before her through sun-dappled courtyards. Her mother weeping after she cut herself gutting fish, and only then realizing what Sotiria's godmark was. Chara crouching in the dark by the Goddess's mountain, lifting the mask away from Sotiria's face; sending her on her way with coins that were supposed to buy her passage home.