Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
ARIADNE
CHAPTER 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
THESEUS
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
ARIADNE
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
THESEUS
Chapter 23
ARIADNE
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
THESEUS
Chapter 26
ARIADNE
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
THESEUS
Chapter 29
ARIADNE
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
THESEUS
Chapter 32
ARIADNE
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
THESEUS
Chapter 35
ARIADNE
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
THESEUS
Chapter 38
ARIADNE
Chapter 39
THESEUS
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
ARIADNE
Chapter 42
THESEUS
Chapter 43
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
As always, deepest thanks to my editor, Reka Simonsen.
Thanks also to my agent, Laura Rennert, and to the members of my critique group:
Shirley Amitrano, Thea Gammans, Cheryl Mendenhall, Candie Moonshower,
Carole Stice, and Cheryl Zach, for their encouragement,
their suggestions, and especially their friendship.
Copyright © 2011 by Tracy Barrett
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
www.hmhbooks.com
Text set in 12.5-point Perpetua
Design by Christine Kettner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barrett, Tracy, 1955–
Dark of the moon / Tracy Barrett.
p. cm.
Summary: Retells the story of the minotaur through the eyes of his fifteen-year-old sister,
Ariadne, a lonely girl destined to become a goddess of the moon, and her new friend, Theseus,
the son of Athens' king who was sent to Crete as a sacrifice to her misshapen brother.
ISBN 978-0-547-58132-3
1. Ariadne (Greek mythology)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Theseus (Greek mythology)—Juvenile
fiction. 3. Minotaur (Greek mythology)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Ariadne (Greek mythology)—
Fiction. 2. Theseus (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 3. Minotaur (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 4.
Mythology, Greek—Fiction. 5. Crete (Greece)—History—To 67 B.C.—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B275 355Dar 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2011009597
Manufactured in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4500306350
For Andy and Laura
Prologue
It isn't true what they say about my brother—that he ate those children. He never did; he didn't even mean to hurt them. He wept as he held out their broken bodies, his soft brown eyes pleading with me to fix them, the way I always fixed his dolls and toys.
Tonight is the new moon, and I dance.
I couldn't fix the children, of course. They were dead, their heads flopping on their necks, their arms and legs pale and limp. My mother ordered the slaves to take them away and give them a proper burial, and I held my brother as he sobbed over the loss of his playmates.
My feet remember the complicated patterns that my mother taught me. She guided me, the cow horns on her head mimicking the shape of the crescent moon above us. She held my hand and laughed encouragement as I followed her, my bare feet marking the black sand strewn over the cold stones of the dancing floor. In the morning, women would crowd around its edge and try to read what our steps had spelled out, the signs made by the feet of She-Who-Is-Goddess mingling with the smaller patterns made by She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess.
When the replacement children died as well, my mother said: No more playmates. My brother wailed and roared in his loneliness, deep beneath the palace, until the Minos took pity and said: Just once more. But not children from Krete. The people would stand for it no more, he said.
And so they came in their long ships.
I dance.
ARIADNE
CHAPTER 1
THE SHIPS arrived in the spring, shortly before the Planting Festival. I should not have been out watching them, of course. A few years earlier, I would have gone to the harbor with a group of other children, and together we would have played in the black sand, gawked at the foreigners, admired the goods that were unloaded from their ships. Then, two summers ago, I had become a woman, and my world had changed, had at once constricted and expanded.
Unlike other girls, I had not found the womanhood ceremony joyful. My mother was happy: that day, I joined her in her sphere, now a sphere encompassing two, where she had been alone since her own mother had died and she became She-Who-Is-Goddess in her place. But as I stood in the palace that day, listening to the chants of the priestesses, responding where appropriate, sweating in the heavy robes that my mother had worn years before when she became She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess, as had her mother and her mother's mother, for as long as time was time, I knew that I was losing almost everything I loved. No more friends, no more playing in the courtyard of the Minos along with his children and my mother's other children. All that was left to me were my mother and my brother Asterion, and although he loved me and I him, he was not good company.
The day of the ships' arrival, when everything began to change, a sweet breeze blew into the palace, announcing that spring was about to arrive. The walls of my home, beautiful as they were with their painted decorations below lofty ceilings, closed in on me. I had overheard one servant telling another that the tribute had arrived from Athens, the principal city of the region of Attika across the sea to the north, and I managed to slip out in the late afternoon, when my mother was sleeping.
I watched from my favorite hiding place, a thick bush halfway up the slope. The ships approached, black and narrow, and pulled into the harbor. People climbed into rowboats that brought them to shore and then disgorged them, some wobbling on unsteady legs, others striding forward as though glad to unkink themselves after the long voyage. I envied those travelers who had come so far, stopping at islands, seeing other lands and other cities, learning what foods other people ate, how they worshiped their goddesses and gods, what clothes they wore.
I would never know what they had seen and what life was like where they had come from. If I crossed the sea, I would cease to be She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess and would become merely Ariadne, priestess and daughter of She-Who-Is-Goddess, but not a deity in training. So I turned my eyes to the newly arrived foreigners and burned with hopeless yearning.
Every nine years, the peop
le of many lands took turns sending tribute to Krete. One year we would receive tin from Tartessos, in another, copper from Kypros, or wheat and ostrich eggs from Aegyptos, or ivory from Aethiopia, or precious amber from the frozen countries to the north. These last lay so far away that sometimes the tall, yellow-haired travelers were delayed a year or even two, and we would have one year with no tribute and then one with double riches.
Eighteen years before, the Minos's oldest and dearest son, Androgeos, had been murdered at the Athenian games. In his rage, the Minos ordered that children of Athens, seven boys and seven girls, must be added to the tribute. Before, the Athenian ships had arrived filled only with luscious green olive oil and the delicate Athenian wine that the Minos particularly liked.
My mother had not interfered. It was her role to order tribute, as well as to direct anything else that affected Krete and its trade, but the right of a father to avenge his son is an ancient and powerful one. She knew how much her brother had loved Androgeos, and further, the people of Athens were led by a king, a warlord who ruled by his might. She knew that they believed, wrongly, that the Minos was her husband and the ruler of Krete. They would not dare to oppose an enraged father who was also a powerful leader.
In the first shipment, the Athenians had sent sweet, pretty children who would become household slaves and live easy lives, or so the king of Athens evidently hoped. That way, his subjects would not rebel at being forced to pay this precious tribute. Instead, they were sent to work in the mines, where they died quickly. The second time, when I was six years old, the children were made to play with my brother. I don't remember their arrival, although I must have been taken to the harbor as a treat, not yet being She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess. All I remember is their dead bodies. The Minos had been horrified and had relented. The king of Athens was informed that if he included his own son in the next shipment, the Minos would halt the human tribute.
This time I arrived too late to see them disembark, but still I quickly identified the Athenians in the crowd. They were handsome children, well dressed and obviously well fed. The little girls and boys stayed together in a group, some holding hands, some weeping, some laughing and pelting one another with black pebbles. An older boy stood somewhat apart, and I wondered if this was the king's son. A tall girl tried to comfort a wailing boy, who clung to her. I inched forward; they might say something about Athens.
A voice behind me said, "Mistress?" As almost always happened, I had been discovered by a palace servant. It was Iaera, the sister of a girl I used to play with, and she covered her face with her cloak as she spoke. "She-Who-Is-Goddess is looking for you, mistress." I straightened and sighed. It was unthinkable to make my mother wait.
"A woman is in labor," Iaera went on as we hurried up the hill. Before a turn in the road hid the harbor, I cast a look behind me and saw the sun dipping its edge into the sea and the Athenians being led to the palace by the longer but easier road that curved around the slope.
My mother was the only woman on the island of Krete who was unafraid to be outside after dark. Now that I was She-Who-Will-Be-Goddess and any man who touched me would be put to death with unspeakable agony, I, too, could walk under the stars without an escort. This was good, because babies frequently come in the nighttime, and everyone wanted She-Who-Is-Goddess to bless a birth by attending it. My mother and I would often be called in the middle of the night to walk or ride in someone's donkey cart to where a woman was laboring.
Even after I had accompanied her on many of these errands, I was always transfixed by the change when my mother appeared. The laboring woman might be screaming, her damp hair in a tangle over her face as her red eyes glared wildly around the room. Her large belly would convulse as she lay or sat or squatted in a peasant's tiny hut filled with animal smells or a prosperous merchant's house, the thick darkness lightened only by a smoky torch. But when my mother entered, even before her hands moved in a comforting charm, the woman's face would smooth, and then I would recognize her as a fisherman's wife or the woman who sold sandals in the marketplace or the mother of an acquaintance.
Sometimes the laboring woman died, sometimes the baby, but if my mother was there, both usually lived and were well. Even one girl who came out with her skinny bottom first survived. I remember watching as my mother flicked the soles of the baby's narrow feet with her fingertip and vigorously rubbed the chest of the small, slippery thing until she wheezed and then wailed, turning pink in my mother's strong hands. The baby's mother laughed; my own mother and the other women laughed; even I laughed, although I did not know why.
That night, hours after the arrival of the Athenian ships, we walked home from a house that had not been so lucky, where both the mother and her two baby boys, each as small as a fish that I would eat for breakfast, had died. I couldn't put from my mind the sight of those tiny bodies laid out on the dirt floor or the sudden gush of blood that emptied the woman of her life even as she wept over her dead children. Her little son and daughter sat huddled in a corner—the hut was so small that there had been nowhere else for them—the boy stroking his small sister's hair in a vain attempt at comfort as she sucked her thumb. The farmer who was the woman's husband was too stunned to think to offer us the loan of his one donkey. My mother and I slipped out the door, away from the smell of goats and blood and birth, into a night scarcely darker than the windowless shack.
My mother was quiet as we walked, breathing the sweet-scented night air. I didn't try to talk; she was always curt after losing one she had tended, as though angry or disappointed. She knew that the matter was in Goddess's hands, not hers, but each time we saw a mother or a child die, I sensed that she felt she had fallen short of what was expected of her.
I trailed behind. The dust of the road was cool between my toes, and it felt good to straighten my cramped back and legs. My mother stopped and turned, waiting for me to catch up. She slid her hand through my arm and squeezed it, pressing me close to her side, and we continued, hip to hip, my stride nearly matching hers. I took comfort in her warmth.
"They were too small to live, you know." I was surprised to hear her mention the deaths and didn't answer. "Goddess must have changed Her mind about sending the babies into the world. But the mother..." She fell silent. It would not do to criticize Goddess, especially when we were walking under Her. I looked up at the cold white eye staring down at us.
"We don't know why She chose to take the woman," my mother said softly. "We can only do our best." She shook my arm gently. "And you are learning so well, my girl. When it comes my time, you will also do your best."
"Your ... time?"
My mother stopped and pulled her arm out from mine. One of her rare smiles spread across her face, lighting it like the moon coming out from behind a cloud.
"You don't know?" Her smile grew broader. "Look at me." She turned sideways, smoothing her gown. I felt my jaw drop, and her smile grew to a laugh as I stood goggling at her round belly. How had I not seen?
"Is it..." I whispered, and she stopped laughing and shook her head, looping my hair behind my ears.
"Have I taught you nothing? It's been almost a year since the Planting Festival, and the moon will be full three more times before this one comes into the world. No, this baby is not the god's. I was wrong about Ision." The regret in her voice was plain. I, too, missed Ision, the young blacksmith whom my mother had declared the incarnation of the sky god Velchanos at the last Planting Festival. Ision had appeared to enjoy the days that he spent as her consort. He hadn't cried or fought at the end, when his time came to fertilize the fields.
But if this child was conceived months after the Planting Festival, then Ision was not its father, and so he had not truly been the god. This meant that he had died for nothing. I was sorry for that. He had been a sunny and friendly person, and the new blacksmith was sour and silent. I wondered how my mother felt about her error, especially when she saw Ision's wife at work in our laundry.
We resumed walking. We were near the p
alace now, and dawn was coming, a paler shade of night over the tops of the tall cypress trees that lined the road. The moon followed us, lighting our path. I calculated silently: I was fifteen, my brother three years older. My mother had become She-Who-Is-Goddess at fourteen. So she was now ... what? Thirty-three or thirty-four, at least. I had heard of women who had successful pregnancies and deliveries at that age, but it was rare. Goddess knows what she's doing, I reminded myself, but I couldn't quench the little flame of fear that tingled in my belly as the sun's edge poked over the top of the palace above us.
It should have been nearly silent, the only sound that of the guards extinguishing the torches that lit the outer walls. But instead there arose the noise of hurrying feet, shouts, the clatter of weapons. My mouth dried until my tongue stuck to its roof. I had never known the palace to be attacked, but late at night, when they thought I was asleep, the women told tales of long-ago raids. We were so strong now, though, that nobody dared. Or so I had always thought.
We ran toward the palace and then stopped, panting, in the shadow of the enormous tree that marked the end of the road. No armed soldiers were running in or out through the wide gate. And now I could hear that the shouts were intermingled with a familiar bellowing that echoed off the cold stone walls. I said, "Asterion!" and my mother, her voice tumbling over mine, exclaimed, "Your brother!" I scrambled across the big roots, tripped and nearly fell in the semidarkness, and ran toward the gate.
The Minos met us there, barefoot and with his hair disheveled. "Thank Goddess you've returned!" His voice shook as he clutched his cloak. "He has a girl with him and won't let her go."
"What girl?" my mother asked as we hurried together toward my brother's quarters.
"A girl from Athens." I had heard the women whispering that yet another wife for the Minos was among the Athenian tribute. It must be the girl I had seen comforting the little boy down in the harbor. She was pretty, with fine bones and soft-looking brown hair. Asterion liked pretty things, and when Asterion liked something, he sometimes tried to take it apart. I gulped as I imagined what he might do to the delicate girl. My mother, then the Minos, and then I ran down the narrow stairs into the maze of storerooms and corridors under the palace.
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