Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  “How did you do this?” I ask him. “I hadn’t even told you what I was planning.”

  He pushes me out but keeps his hands on my arms. “I’ve known you a long time, sister. I knew there was no way you could stay here after what we saw last night.”

  He looks back and forth between me and Theseus, then says, “Thank you is generally considered to be the appropriate response when someone gives you something…”

  “Thank you!” I say.

  “You’re welcome. I need one thing in return.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Be a girl today, okay? Go on a run with him.” He nods toward Theseus. “Have a picnic. No video games.”

  * * *

  For one blissful morning, Theseus and I act like an ordinary boy and girl who like each other. I try my hardest to ignore my bodyguards following us. The cameramen. Trailing us even tighter than my minders is my fear that this will be the last day I ever spend with him.

  I take him on a run, going back into the hills behind the palace. I show him the trees and the mountains.

  We eat a picnic at the base of the mountain.

  Then I take him to a small circle of trees at the edge of the road that leads back to the palace compound.

  I breathe in the smell of Theseus. When he brings his mouth to mine, it is like a tuning fork has been rung inside me, echoing through me, making my whole being sing. I want to do this for hours.

  I want. I want.

  I want to do this until I can forget every other thing that has happened. I want to be two bodies twined together, two souls joined, two people without history, without responsibilities.

  His hands slide down my back, lifting me to him. Letting me feel him.

  Our kisses are powerful, angry even, like we could kiss away what we’ve seen. Like this could prevent everything that will happen next. My lips are swollen, my cheeks burn from the pressure of his stubble on my face. It hurts a little, but it’s a wonderful kind of hurt.

  “I have to go get ready,” I say.

  He nods.

  “I’ll see you in the stadium,” he says.

  “I’ll be there.”

  SEVENTEEN

  It is four o’clock when I get back to the family hallway, but I don’t go to my own room. I find Acalle’s instead. I knock on the door, and she answers it, surprised, her phone in her hand, her face hidden behind a mud mask, her shortie robe thrown over her bra and thong.

  “Hey,” she says, her hardened mask cracking as she breaks into a grin. “What’s up?”

  “Acalle,” I say, stepping into her room, “I need your help.”

  Her room is a feminine explosion of pinks and reds and animal prints. Pillows and gauze and gold, every surface covered with something valuable and beautiful, a shelf crowded with stuffed animals. The room smells like her, spicy and sweet.

  “Sit down,” she says, heading into her spa bathroom. “Let me get this off my face, and then you can tell me what’s going on.”

  She leaves the door open as she peels off the mask, and I look around for somewhere to sit. Her overstuffed chair is covered with scarves and shoes, and the vanity chair has about twenty dresses thrown over it. The bed makes the pillows on my bed look restrained, but I find a spot at the end. She comes out of the bathroom, wiping the last of the mask off with a cotton ball. I don’t remember the last time I saw Acalle without makeup. She is still so young. I forget.

  “What do you need?” she asks.

  I take a deep breath. I don’t want to lie to her, but I can’t tell her everything, not with the cameras watching. “I want you to dress me for The Labyrinth Contest tonight. I want you to style me.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Because you get me, in a way that they don’t,” I say. “I know that I need to look beautiful, but I want to look like myself, too. I want to be able to walk. I want to have a bra on. I don’t want to pretend to be someone I’m not.”

  She looks at me carefully. “Why would Mother and Mathilde let me do that?” she asks.

  I look up at the cameras mounted to the corners of her room. The cameras that have filmed so much. Identical to the cameras in my room, which have only ever taken video of a girl playing video games in a VR headset.

  “You can put it on the show,” I say, keeping my voice clear. So I don’t sound unsure about this. “You can use it on the Paradoxes.”

  “Wait,” Acalle says. “You’re letting us put you on the Paradoxes. For real?”

  “Yes,” I say. “We can have a girl party or whatever.”

  “Yes!” Acalle punches the air. “Yes!”

  She pulls out her phone and starts furiously texting. “Let’s get this going, we don’t have much time.”

  “The show doesn’t start for three hours,” I say.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. No time at all.”

  She texts my mother and Mathilde to let them know the great news. She texts Icarus to tell him to send a crew, and she texts Xenodice for backup.

  Five minutes later, Xenodice arrives in the room, squealing and carrying a bulging bag of clothes and shoes. A cameraman and a lighting tech follow directly behind her and start setting up. Xenodice dumps the clothes out on Acalle’s bed, where they mix in with the pillows and scarves and other clothes that were already there.

  Acalle snaps a picture and shares it with her millions of followers. Then she looks at me. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.

  She holds the phone high over her head and coaches me. “Turn to the side, now straight on to the camera, chin down a little, don’t smile, but don’t not smile, you know. Smile with your eyes.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I say.

  “Try…,” she says, sounding frustrated. “Xenodice, stop photobombing. You’ll get in there, too, I promise.”

  She snaps the picture. Then shows it to me. I don’t hate it. “Perfect,” she says. Then posts it, #sisterbonding, #makeovers, #Paradoxes.

  Xenodice starts rifling through the clothes on the bed. “What are we going to put her in?” she asks. “This?”

  She holds up a bandage dress. I look at Acalle. “No bandage dresses,” I say.

  Acalle grabs Xenodice’s arm. “We’re styling her to look like Ariadne, not like us.”

  “Of course she’s going to look like Ariadne,” Xenodice says. “She is Ariadne … Duh…”

  “I know that,” Acalle says, purposefully keeping her voice calm and slow. “We need to style her in what Ariadne would wear if Ariadne was stylish…”

  “Thanks, Acalle,” I say.

  “Don’t give me that. You know you’re not stylish. You do it on purpose.”

  “Jeans and a hoodie?” Xenodice says, sounding confused. “Sneakers? What are we going to do with that?”

  Acalle takes a deep breath. “We’re going to elevate.”

  “Oh,” Xenodice says, like she’s finally understanding. “Like take the things she likes, and make them pretty…”

  “Exactly.”

  Acalle looks me up and down, thinking. “Do you have a jumpsuit in there?”

  “Acalle, I don’t know about a jumpsuit,” I say, thinking of any number of awful things that might meet that description.

  “You shush,” Acalle says. “You don’t know about any of this. Trust me.”

  Twenty minutes later, I decide that Acalle is right. We have been through about thirty jumpsuits of various types, and we have ended up with a navy blue one, wide legged, with a golden belt. I have a bra on, thank the gods, and real underwear. Acalle even found a pair of gold sneakers.

  Acalle styles my hair long and down my back, with a pair of golden earrings that hang to my shoulders but feel like they weigh nothing.

  Xenodice puts my makeup on, but thankfully she uses a light hand. I look at myself in the mirror, the two of them standing behind me. The cameras filming us. I am happy with what I see, for once.

  I want to tell them that I lo
ve them. I want to say that I’m sorry for the years that I didn’t understand what they were going through. I want to say goodbye.

  Instead, I say, “Thank you,” and I hope that it is enough.

  * * *

  I am standing at one end of the stadium, where I have stood 141 times. My ball of thread in my pocket. The stadium is full to capacity. The scenes of me and Theseus have millions of views and ratings numbers are way up, near season three numbers. Everyone hopes that by the end of the two weeks when Theseus is supposed to go into the maze that we will surpass the first season.

  What no one knows is that there won’t be another two weeks.

  The stadium field is a lake of fog and flashing lights.

  Icarus’s voice comes into my ear. Tonight, he’s talking to me on the secure channel between our phones. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Wind machines on the edges of the field come to life, blowing away the fog, and the drumbeat starts, beating out my stately pace.

  “Now,” Icarus says.

  I walk out onto the field, head held high. A spotlight finds me immediately.

  The crowd stands and roars.

  The wind machines blow my hair back and make the legs of my jumpsuit swirl around me as I stride down the long field, head held high.

  The competitors file out in their black and gold, each standing in front of their chairs. Thirteen of them, with one empty seat, where Vortigern used to be. In the next chair is the crew cut boy, the one who is supposed to go tonight.

  I look at Theseus. He nods at me and I smile, not breaking my stride.

  I climb the stairs, looking beyond the stage at the heavy doors that lead to the maze.

  I turn to face the crowd. I know what I am supposed to say—introduce the competitors, give a standard line about the will of the gods—but I am not saying it. Not today.

  Instead, I raise my arms, and the noise of the crowd drops.

  “People of Crete,” I say, my voice echoing over the loudspeakers. “People of the world.”

  The Jumbotron shows the people in the stands, my family in their box. My sisters are typing furiously on their phones—social media blast. My mother’s face is calm and serene. My father looks pleased. Elegant and royal.

  “We’ve surpassed season two,” Icarus says in my earpiece.

  Good. I want the whole world watching.

  “One hundred and forty-one,” I say. “That is how many Athenians have died. In revenge for one prince of Crete.”

  On the Jumbotron they show the crowd again, leaning forward, watching.

  “But it has gone on long enough,” I say. “It is time for the Hero of Athens to have his turn in the maze. It is time for him to fight the Minotaur.”

  The Jumbotron switches back to my parents, and my father’s face is murderous. He knows what I am doing. He knows that I have betrayed him. He walks out of the box. He will be calling the security team now, trying to figure out if they can stop me.

  I have very little time.

  “Theseus of Athens,” I say, and Theseus stands. “Are you ready to face the Minotaur?”

  Theseus waits for the hubbub of voices to die down, the calls of “Not Theseus!” or “It isn’t his turn!” or “What is she doing?” or, very loudly from Hippolyta, “That’s not fair!”

  “I’m ready,” Theseus says, stepping toward me.

  “They’re coming for you,” Icarus says in my earpiece. “You’d better get moving.”

  When I look at the edges of the field, soldiers are filling the entrances, getting ready to rush the stage. But the crowd has started stomping, building a new cheer—“Theseus! Theseus!”—their feet and clapping hands drowning out everything else.

  My father won’t dare interrupt this right now, not with the whole crowd involved, not with the ratings rising and rising.

  I don’t have long.

  “They’re calling for commercial,” Icarus says.

  I know we have to move. If they can get a commercial, they’ll pull me back, and this will have been wasted.

  “Theseus,” I say, my voice full of command. “Come with me.”

  He stands and walks to me, then pulls me in for a kiss, in front of the whole world.

  Together we walk quickly to the gate to the maze.

  I pull the thread from my pocket and press it to the doors. They swing open, and we’re through. Then the doors swing closed behind us, and the roar of the crowd drops away.

  The motion sensor lights turn on, and Theseus turns to look at me. “Will anyone follow us in here?”

  “What do you think, Icarus?” I say.

  I get a laugh in my earpiece. “Not likely,” he says. “Your father doesn’t pay anyone enough for that.”

  “How does it look out there?” I ask.

  “Up here?” Icarus says. “Well, I’m hooking you and Lover Boy into a livestream on twenty different channels, every one of which has suspended their programming, and The Labyrinth Contest has the highest ratings since season one. Your parents should be very proud.”

  I laugh. “I have a feeling they won’t be.”

  “Oh, me too, sister,” he says. “Me too. Get going. You are talking too much. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t want to do this.”

  I square my shoulders. “Oh, I’m doing this.”

  Theseus can’t hear Icarus’s end of the conversation, but he’s watching me.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asks.

  I sigh. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  I put my thread into the hook by the door, and we start walking forward.

  “What does that do?” Theseus says, curious.

  “It’s my thread,” I say. “It turns off the obstacles. It’s how I navigate the maze.”

  He turns to watch it spool out behind me.

  As we walk down the steep tunnel, the sights and sounds of the maze rise up to meet us. Water drips from far below, and the smell grows stronger.

  I look at Theseus. He’s pale. “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Sure, sure,” he says. “It’s the smell.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I would say you never get used to it, but I guess you do a little, because Theseus looks like he is going to puke and I only feel a tingle in my nose.

  “What do we do now?” Theseus asks.

  Normally, I would be long gone by now. Already putting on my VR goggles.

  “We find the Minotaur,” I say.

  As we walk forward, the motion sensor lights make islands of light in the silent darkness of the passage.

  “Wait,” Theseus says, grabbing my hand and pulling me close to him. “Ariadne, before we do this, I want to say, you’re the bravest person I’ve ever known.”

  He kisses me quickly, and that kiss carries the weight of our connection. I let myself be lost in this feeling, knowing that this is something new in my life. Something I’ve never had before—a connection not based on blood or friendship or common interests but on something different, something elemental. It’s the feeling I had that first day I met him, a kinship at the heart of us, like we’re a pair of magnets drawn together.

  We break apart, and I can hear a new sound, so low it’s barely audible, a rumbling growl, echoing off the concrete walls of the maze.

  “That’s Asterion,” I say, clutching my thread tightly. “Let’s get going.”

  I follow the directions to get to the heart of it, right and then two lefts, right and then two lefts. I hope that the directions that work in the part of the maze where I usually am still hold true here, in this quadrant where I’ve never spent any time.

  Theseus catches me before I step forward into a tar pit.

  An obstacle. We were not looking for obstacles because my thread disarms them.

  “Icarus,” I say, “why are there obstacles?”

  “I don’t know,” Icarus says, and I can hear the sound of typing as he’s searching his systems. “Oh Hades, Ariadne,” his voice returns. “They’ve disa
bled your thread. The obstacles are online.”

  “We have to face the obstacles,” I tell Theseus, and my nerves are obvious in my voice.

  I rack my brain, thinking about the obstacles, forcing myself to remember what is down there. I’ve been involved in planning sessions, but I wasn’t really paying attention. It never occurred to me that my thread wouldn’t work when we went in the maze.

  “I’ve never done any obstacles,” I say.

  “We’ll be fine,” Theseus says. “Obstacles are good. They’ll keep us on our toes.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to believe him. We walk the tiny ledge that runs alongside the tar pit.

  I don’t look down.

  “Listen,” Icarus says in my earpiece. “I’ve got people banging on the door to the control room. I’m going to have to be radio silent for a while, okay? I’ll try to get your thread back online.”

  “Good luck,” I say, then get back to carefully moving through the tunnel, watching for obstacles. My thread trails behind us.

  “Why do we still have that if it isn’t disarming the obstacles?” Theseus asks me.

  “We have to hope Icarus will turn them back off,” I say. “Also, I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get out of here when this is over.”

  We round a corner to the right and Theseus pulls me up short, pointing at a thin line in the poured concrete floor. “Obstacle,” he says.

  When we make the next turn, there it is, in front of us. A ten-foot stretch of wall with spring-loaded crossbows bolted into the concrete. The springs are set off by pressure points in the floor, so one wrong step will result in an arrow flying through whatever part of your body is in the way.

  “Arrow wall,” Theseus says. “I studied this one on the tapes. It took out a lot of competitors last year. Everyone was trying to avoid the spots on the floor where the arrows would be set off.”

  “But they moved every run,” I say, remembering.

  “Right,” he says. “I have a strategy.” He points at the wall. “The arrows are arranged where the lowest ones can get you in the calf, and the highest ones will get your head, so the only thing to do is to get lower than the lowest.”