Circe

The mist ebbed, and the pool cleared again. I had my answer, but it was not the one I had hoped for. The creature was mortal, but it could not die as an infant, by my hand or Daedalus’. It had a fate many years in the future, and must live it out. Until then, it could only be contained. That would be Daedalus’ work, yet there might be a way for me to help him. I paced among the shadowed trees, thinking of that creature and what weaknesses it might have. I remembered its black eyes fixed ravening on mine. Its sucking hunger as it fought me for my hand. How much would it take to sate that appetite? If I had not been a god, it would have crawled up my arm, consuming me inch by inch.

I felt an idea rise in me. I would need all the secret herbs of Dicte, and with them the strongest binding weeds, ilex root and withy, fennel and hemlock, aconite, hellebore. I would need as well the rest of my moly stores. I slipped through those trees unerring, hunting down each ingredient in its turn. If Artemis walked that night, she kept out of my way.

I carried the leaves and roots back to the pool and ground them on its rocks. The paste I gathered in one of my bottles, and added some of the pool’s water. Its waves still bore the blood it had washed from my hands, mine and my sister’s too. As if it knew, the draught swirled red and dark.

I did not sleep that night. I stayed on Dicte until the sky went gray and then began walking back to Knossos. By the time I reached the palace, the sun was bright on the fields. I passed a courtyard that had caught my eye the day before, and stopped now to examine it more closely. In it was a great dancing circle, ringed by laurels and oaks for shade from the beating sun. I had thought its floor was made of stone, but now I saw it was wood, a thousand tiles of it, so smoothed and varnished that they seemed like a single piece. They were painted with a spiral, traveling outwards from its center like the furling crest of a wave. Daedalus’ work, it could be no other.

A girl was dancing on it. No music played, yet her feet kept perfect time, each step the beat of a silent drum. She moved like a wave herself, graceful, but with relentless, driving motion. On her head shone the circlet of a princess. I would have known her anywhere. The girl from Daedalus’ prow.

Her eyes widened when she saw me, just like her statue’s. She bowed her head. “Aunt Circe,” she said. “I am glad to meet you. I am Ariadne.”

I could see pieces of Pasiphaë in her, but only if I searched: her chin, the delicacy of her collarbone.

“You are skilled,” I said.

She smiled. “Thank you. My parents are looking for you.”

“No doubt. But I must find Daedalus.”

She nodded, as if I were only one of a thousand who wanted him instead of her parents. “I will take you. But we must be careful. The guards are out looking.”

She slipped her fingers into mine, warm and a little damp from her exercise. Through dozens of narrow side-passages she led me, her feet silent on the stones. We came at last to a bronze door. She beat six times in a rhythm.

“I cannot play now, Ariadne,” a voice called. “I am busy.”

“I am with the lady Circe,” she said.

The door swung open, revealing Daedalus, sooty and stained. Behind him was a workroom, half open to the sky. I saw statues with their cloths still on them, gears and instruments I did not recognize. At the back, a foundry smoked, and metal glowed hot in a mold. A fish spine lay on a table, a strange jagged blade beside it.

“I have been to Mount Dicte,” I said. “I have glimpsed the creature’s fate. It can die, but not now. A mortal will come who is destined to dispatch it. I do not know how long it may be. The creature was full-grown in my vision.”

I watched the knowledge settle on him. All the days ahead that he must be on his guard. He drew a breath. “So we contain it then.”

“Yes. I have brewed a charm that will help. It craves…” I paused, feeling Ariadne behind me. “It craves that flesh you saw it eat. It is part of its nature. I cannot take away that hunger, but I may set bounds upon it.”

“Anything,” he said. “I am grateful.”

“Do not be grateful yet,” I said. “For three seasons of the year, the spell will keep its appetite at bay. But every harvest it will return, and must be fed.”

His eyes flicked to Ariadne behind me. “I understand,” he said.

“The rest of the time it will still be dangerous, but only as a savage beast might be.”

He nodded, but I saw he was thinking of  harvest time, and the feeding that must come. He glanced at the molds behind him, tinged red with heat. “I will be finished with the cage tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” I said. “It cannot come too soon. I will work the spell then.”

When the door closed, Ariadne stood waiting. “You were speaking of the baby that was born, were you not? He is the one that must be kept until he’s killed?”

“He is.”

“The servants say he is a monster, and my father shouted at me when I asked about him. But he is still my brother, is he not?”

I hesitated.