Ariadne

by Jennifer Saint

Daedalus took comfort in the baby, Icarus, and I loved to see him walking about with the infant dandled in his arms,

NO NOT AGAIN I WILL CRY

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.

stained the opulent tapestries that hung across the walls, and soured the cream, sharpened the honey with its vinegary taint, and made everything rotten and poisonous and ruined.

But it was Minos’ decree that mattered, not our hopes.

Where would one find the courage to do such a thing? I wondered. To cast away a life of riches and power and anything he desired; to give his life in the very prime of his youth for his people. To go knowingly and willingly into the snaking coils of our dungeon as living meat for our monster. I stared at this Theseus, as if by looking hard enough at him I could decipher the thoughts behind that calm face.

just beside the grand table at which my family was seated, sat Daedalus. His face wore more years than he’d lived, his hair whitened although he was not yet old.

It was not Daedalus that I watched that evening, though. I found that I couldn’t tear my eyes from the Athenians, one in particular.

Cinyras laughed, a nasty poison dripping through his mirth. “He isn’t sniveling like the others. I wonder if he thinks he can take on the Minotaur with his bare hands.” Around us, amusement at the idea rippled across the long benches.

And back then, I did not know how wings could melt and peel away from your body; how someone could plunge so unexpectedly from their soaring ascent to freedom and be swallowed by the ravenous waves below.

How could you say that to me

He did not seek to impress me with embroidered and embellished tales. They were quite enough on their own.