Lost in the Labyrinth

by Patrice Kindl

  "Well, then, fall more slowly," I panted, rounding the turn of the stairs.

  It appeared that Ariadne was able to stay her downward movement a little. She flowed through the next floor like honey through a sieve.

  I pattered down the last staircase. As I arrived, gasping, before my sister, I saw her beginning to sink through the floor and into the ground beneath. She had disappeared almost up to the knees.

  Seeing that I had no time to waste, I at once asked, "Why do you come to me, Ariadne? If you wish to atone for your crimes, you perhaps should plead your cause before Acalle, who is now queen." Thinking that she might not know, I added, "Our mother is dead, and our father also. Three of our brothers—" I broke off and then continued awkwardly, "But of course you knew about those deaths. Do you ... do you ever see them there, where you are?"

  Her head drooped so that her chin touched her chest. The floor had reached her waist now.

  They tell us that the Underworld is a place of joy and harmony. My sister did not appear to have found it so. But then, mine was a tactless question; none of my family would be likely to greet Ariadne in the afterlife with great enthusiasm. I should not have mentioned them.

  Her breast was now at the level of the floor.

  "Our brother Glaucus is to marry Semele of Phaistos in the springtime," I said quickly, hoping to cheer her. "You remember Semele. You never liked her, I know, but I believe that they will be happy together. They both like to eat so much. Oh, and little Phaedra is to marry—" I broke off with a blush. Of course she did not want to hear about our little sister Phaedra's wedding plans.

  Her face and what remained visible of her body convulsed with emotion and she shook her head "no," her movements as slow as those of a swimmer suspended in deep waters. I cursed myself for my stupidity.

  "Do not go, Ariadne," I said. I spoke with urgency now, for only her head remained above the floor. "You have not told me what you require of me." I remembered that she had been buried in foreign soil, without a tomb or the tribute of grave goods.

  "Is—is there anything that you need in the afterlife, Ariadne? Tell me and I will make certain that you get it. Only—only Acalle must not know." Her mouth and nose had vanished; her eyes alone beseeched me, for what I did not know.

  "Come back!" I cried. "Come back! I—"

  My voice trailed off into silence. She was no more.

  I whispered, "I—I miss you, Ariadne," but no one heard, and no one answered.

  ***

  It was not until nearly a year after Ariadne fled with Theseus that we learned what had happened to her. Receiving official notice that Theseus was to be married, we were merely surprised they had delayed so long—until we heard the name of the bride: Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Only then did we discover that he had deserted Ariadne on the Isle of Naxos many months before.

  Some said that it was an accident. Because of her condition (she was right about bearing his child), she had felt the movement of the ship more grievously than most. She begged, they said, to tarry at Naxos for a time, waiting for the seas to subside. Theseus was willing, all the more so as it meant that the pursuing Keftiu sailed right past them, unseeing. Ariadne slept ashore, while Theseus and his Athenians remained on board the ship in a small harbor on the lee side of the island.

  A dreadful storm blew up one night and carried Theseus and his compatriots out to sea. It was fifteen days and fifteen nights before he regained the shore again. By that time Ariadne had abandoned herself to despair, believing him to have sailed off to Athens without her, and had laid violent hands upon herself.

  Or so they said.

  It is also recounted how Theseus, when he had sailed from Athens to our shores, made a promise to his father, Aegeus, that if he were able to return he would raise aloft a white sail. In this manner Aegeus would know, while Theseus was still at sea, that his son lived.

  Theseus broke his promise. He sailed into Athens harbor in a ship with black sails, forgetting in the excitement of homecoming to exchange them for the white symbols of hope. Aegeus saw the ship from the Isle of Kefti fully rigged in black, and in his grief he flung himself over the cliffs into the sea.

  So Theseus became king of Athens.

  It is a matter of some amazement to me how that man strides unscathed through life, leaving a trail of the maimed and the dead.

  It is many years now since that time. Much has changed. My father, King Minos, is gone into the Underworld. My mother's death seemed to stir him from his long torpor and, upon learning that Daedalus had fled across the sea, he sailed in pursuit. He traced Daedalus finally, not to Athens as I had expected but to Kamikos in the western sea—the winds, I suppose, blew him there. My father was greeted with honor by the king of that land, who promised to surrender Daedalus to him. My father slipped in his bath and fell while preparing to appear at a banquet in his honor, breaking his neck.

  Or so they said.

  I am glad, at any rate, that Daedalus lives still.

  Acalle is married and has five children, three girls. Polyidus died, apparently in a fit of mortification at being denied the position of High Priest for which he had schemed so long. Many others, more greatly mourned than he, have followed him into the Underworld: my beloved old Graia, for one.

  Athens has grown prosperous under Theseus's rule. No longer just a pirate state, Athens is beginning to exert power among the nations of the world.

  Acalle wishes to marry Phaedra, now grown to womanhood, to Theseus, since his first wife, the Amazon queen, is lately dead. This marriage, which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, is beginning to seem a likely event. Acalle is a businesslike and efficient queen; she wants favorable trade relations and cares not a fig for revenge.

  Theseus is no longer a young man but an experienced ruler of full years. I hope it will be for Phaedra's happiness—those who love Theseus seem to come to untimely ends. I despair of ever making Acalle listen to my fears about the marriage. I have done what I can to sway her, but she is a stubborn woman, and she is the queen.

  And I, Xenodice. Do you wonder what has become of me down the long years?

  I lead a quiet life today, respected and, I believe, loved. The love I enjoy is not the love of a man for a woman; I have never had that love and have vowed that I never shall.

  I have become Mistress of the Animals, a priestess of influence and power, thereby escaping my elder sister's marriage schemes. The Mistress of the Animals may not marry, nor may she invite any man to share her bed. She is chaste and pure, and much beloved of the Goddess.

  I spend my life now in the mountains among the wild beasts, or in the Queen's Menagerie, which I have expanded greatly. Little Queta the monkey has become the matriarch of a vast tribe of tricksy, troublesome descendants, and we now possess animals unknown to us only a few years ago. My sister presently owns (though the knowledge does not seem to give her much joy) a hippogriff and a mighty elephant from the wild places far to the south of Libya and Egypt. The hippogriff is sickly and has developed a hollow cough in the night, but the elephant does well. I would like to obtain a mate for him and see what result we have. A baby elephant would please me very much.

  My health is excellent, though my wrist never fully healed; it aches sometimes, and I favor that hand. It may seem strange, but when the rainy season comes and I feel the familiar pain in my left arm, I am glad. It is one of the few mementos I have of my brother Asterius.

  I think of Icarus often. In my mind he remains young and beautiful, while I grow old and fat. Never mind—I am happy, even though he took my heart with him into the sea that day.

  It took Acalle very little time to determine my part in the escape of Daedalus and Icarus. When questioned, the guards told her how I had come to visit the prisoners, bearing feathers, wood, and wax. I confessed as quickly as possible in order to save the lives of the guards. They were beaten nearly to the point of death, but they survived. One lived for a year, dying from a bee sting; the other still lives.<
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  Daedalus and Icarus kept their word. They left three exquisite feather masks there in the tower room; I use mine for the ceremony of the Blessing of the Boats every summer, as does the remaining guard.

  As punishment, Acalle locked me up in that same tower for a year and a day. It was just; I have no complaint.

  I learned to live alone during that year; I learned to be self-sufficient. Now when I come down from the mountains I seem to live in a positive hive of activity among my animals and my nieces and nephews—so much so that I sometimes yearn for the peace and quiet of those lonely days.

  I regret nothing, though I grieve for much.

  I only wish I knew what my sister wanted to tell me.

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  In the year 1900, the ruins of an enormous, labyrinthine palace of immense antiquity were uncovered on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea. The Palace of Knossos (or Cnossos) and the civilization that created it quickly became associated with the Greek legend of the maze and the Minotaur. These fabulously wealthy and sophisticated people are known today as the Minoans, after King Minos of myth.

  This book is an attempt to reconcile the archeological findings with that myth.

  The story we know was first written down by an Athenian, Apollodorus, who lived sometime between 100 and 200 A.D. The civilization on Crete reached its peak of power and influence around 1700 B.C.E. (before the Christian, or Common, Era). The events in this tale therefore occurred nearly 2,000 years before Apollodorus was born. It is almost certain that the narrative altered somewhat during that time, over the course of countless retellings.

  My version of this story differs in several ways from those told by Apollodorus, Ovid, and other writers. In most cases, the differences stem from the difficulty of making the myth fit some of the facts we now know about ancient Crete. Because so little of the written language of ancient Crete survived, there is much about this society that we do not know and that I have therefore invented.

  For instance, it is possible but by no means certain that these people were ruled by a queen rather than by a king. The archeological record does seem to suggest that women had a great deal of power, and the myth itself implies that Queen Pasiphae was well able to protect herself and her strange offspring the Minotaur from a husband who could not have been pleased by the birth.

  No one today knows exactly what the inhabitants of ancient Crete called themselves. We do know that their contemporaries, the Egyptians, referred to them as the "Keftiu," and their land "Kefti," or the "Island of Kefti," so that is what I have called them here.

  Some archeologists believe that ancient Crete was actually the lost island of Atlantis, which Plato tells us sank under the sea after a terrible cataclysm. In 1450 B.C.E. the island Thera, a close neighbor and a colony of Crete, was blown to bits by a violent volcanic eruption. The clouds of ash, tidal waves, and earth tremors resulting from this explosion apparently toppled palaces on Crete, sank her ships, and blighted her agriculture. Within fifty years, mainland Greeks had seized control of Crete and one of the world's most remarkable civilizations was no more.

  Legend tells us that Xenodice's little sister Phaedra married Theseus in his old age. She then fell in love with his son by an earlier marriage. When her stepson refused to return her love, Phaedra killed herself, leaving a letter accusing him of assault. Theseus sent his son into exile with a curse on his head, and the young man died soon afterward.

  Reason enough for Ariadne's warning from beyond the grave, even though it proved to be as ineffectual as warnings from beyond the grave usually are.

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  GENEALOGY

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  FURTHER READING

  On the subject of Greek mythology, two adult books are Edith Hamilton's Mythology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942) and Mary Renault's The King Must Die (New York: Pantheon, 1958). For children's books on this subject, see A Gift from Zeus: Sixteen Favorite Myths (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), written by Jeanne Steig and illustrated by William Steig, and Greek Myths (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), written by Olivia Coolidge.

  Unfortunately, many of the books available on ancient Crete have lots of footnotes and few illustrations. However, I do recommend The Knossos Labyrinth (London: Routledge, 1989) and Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete (London: Routledge, 1990), both by Rodney Castleden.

  Two good web sites are www.historywiz.com, a handsome site with basics of Minoan civilization and illustrated with Minoan art, and www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOANS.HTM, a site created by Washington State University, with more text and fewer illustrations. These can also be found by searching using the keyword "Minoans."

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