Ariadne

by Jennifer Saint

Gods might enjoy mortal skill in hunting or music or weaving, but they were always alert to hubris—and woe betide a human whose skills came close to those of the divine.

What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do.

No longer was my world one of brave heroes; I was learning all too swiftly the women’s pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats.

The stories of Perseus did not allow for a Medusa with a story of her own.

I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man’s actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes, and the world would shrink from me instead.

Asterion. A distant light in an infinity of darkness. A raging fire if you came too close. A guide that would lead my family on the path to immortality. A divine vengeance upon us all. I did not know then what he would become. But my mother held him and nursed him and named him, and he knew us both. He was not yet the Minotaur. He was just a baby. He was my brother.

The cold green of his eyes. Like the shock of the chill waters when the seafloor drops away unexpectedly beneath your feet and you realize that you have swum out far beyond your depth.

Why mortals bloomed like flowers and crumbled to nothing. Why their absence left a gnawing ache, a hollow void that could never be filled. And how everything they once were, that spark within them, could be extinguished so completely yet the world did not collapse under the weight of so much pain and grief.”

I know that human life shines more brightly because it is but a shimmering candle against an eternity of darkness, and it can be extinguished with the faintest breeze.”

I would not let a man who knew the value of nothing make me doubt the value of myself.