Ariadne

by Jennifer Saint

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.

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.

What the gods liked was ferocity, savagery, the snarl and the bite and the fear. Always, always the fear, the naked edge of it behind the smoke rising from the altars, the high note of it in the muttered prayers and praise we sent heavenward, the deep, primal taste of it when we raised the knife above the sacrificial offering.

Our fear. That was how the gods grew great.

And so Asterion became the Minotaur. My mother’s private constellation of shame intermingled with love and despair no longer; instead, he became my father’s display of dominance to the world.

I turned my face to the twilight sky and sought out the constellations that the gods had etched across its great bowl, the shapes of mortals they had toyed with, picked out in pretty lights. I would not think. I danced instead.

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.

Minos’ cruelty in displaying his tributes was marked. His reasoning was thus: it was in their honor that we feasted.

I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost—but not quite—the same formation.

And so I came to hear the story of Theseus.

I swear to god he spent half of his page time just yapping about himself and ISTG

Where there was evil, he routed it rather than weighed it up to see how he could turn it to his own advantage. Where there was terror and darkness, he vanquished it and flooded the world with searing light. He would serve his city as a righteous ruler.

‘What troubles our citizens? What makes them cry and howl and gnash their teeth? We have a prosperous city, our laws are fair, and we keep them safe. What reason have they to give in to this despondency?’

“You will be glad,” he continued, “to have your sister dance at our wedding.”

we must move quickly.

It would not be long now.

“I will bring her to you—” he took a deep breath “—so that she can dance at our wedding.”

“Damn you, Dionysus!” I spoke aloud. The sound of my own voice was too loud, too strange as it bounced off the cold marble pillars, reverberating through the empty air. “What a way to speak to a deity,” came the reply.

This is freaking hilarious

But Theseus, sleeping soundly beside me, would never tell.

A ship drew near to our shores, bearing the white sails of Athens.

“Ah, I wondered if it had been a gift from your mighty brother-in-law,” he said. I squinted at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“The crown of stars in the sky, just there.”

“get the women. It has begun.”

But the Minotaur had been an aberration, I told myself. I forced myself to look at my son’s little face and I tried to feel, deep in my heart, the connection that should exist between mother and child. He had been born of me, after all. Why did I look at him and see a stranger? He was no product of an unspeakable deed. He was not a hideous half-being; my baby was human at least. Why then did it feel so difficult to love him? I did not know.

He began to walk, and I rejoiced in his every step away from me.

Wow, way to be a mother