Minotaur

by J. A. Rock

  I tried to imagine Darwull and his crew slowly building a palace, stone by stone. I wondered how they had decided on the twists and turns. How they imagined they might baffle a monster. How Darwull had managed to put aside his love for his daughter and do what was best for the town.

  I pictured the Minotaur’s mother carving the white bull. She must have been smart, must have known the slopes of an animal’s body, the regality and power of the creature she carved. She knew which art was worth keeping close to her chest. And her daughter, she knew what people feared, so that when she began her horrific slaughter, she succeeded grandly.

  I had always pictured that decade as one of relentless destruction. But as the preacher told the story of those years, I realized the Minotaur had come to Rock Hill to wreak havoc only once in a while. Many of the people who were killed had sought her where she slept in her lair by the sea. She woke, killed them, and then came into town to demand a price for having her slumber disturbed.

  People can be very stupid. If there is a monster, they must slay it; if there is a secret, they must know it. If the whole world were to go up in flames, there’d be someone wandering around with flesh hanging in burnt strips from a charred skeleton, looking for a reason.

  During a hymn, she crept into my mind—the beast. I didn’t panic, and I didn’t put her out. I let her snuffle through my visions of her prison. A large, dark, lumbering shape; she grinned at some of the things I imagined. Shook her great horned head at others.

  Alle stood in the doorway to our room and held up a massive ball of ratty thread in all colors. It was as big as her head. “Do you see what he gave me?” She was nearly breathless, smiling. “Do you see?”

  “Who? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Rocky Bottom. I stood in our yard and he stood in his and he threw it to me. He’s been collecting it.” She stepped closer to me and held it out as if I might want to see it better. “For years, he’s been collecting the thread he gets to use for craft projects and tying it together.”

  “Why would they give prisoners thread?” I asked. “Suppose they tried to strangle a guard with it?”

  “He gave it to me. He gave it to me and asked if I want to marry him.”

  For a second I couldn’t speak. Was this why she was so excited? “But . . . you can’t mean . . .”

  “I told him no, of course. But I said if he really loved me, he’d get me the information I need.” She placed the thread on our desk.

  “You can’t keep doing this.” I tried not to sound as angry as I felt. “Either tell me who you’re trying to get information on, or stop talking about it.”

  “Thera.” She turned back to me, and her expression grew serious. “I will tell you one day. I’ll tell you all about it. But for now, I just . . . I need to figure this out. Please?”

  I glared at her.

  She tilted her head. “Maybe I will say yes to him.” For the first time, I imagined I heard a note of genuine cruelty in her voice.

  “Shut up.”

  She laughed. “Thera, come on. You can’t really be jealous. You can’t really think I would?”

  “Just knock it off, okay? I’m not in the mood to hear about it.”

  Our plan. The two of us, together, helping each other survive. How could I guarantee she’d stay with me once we had our freedom? That she wouldn’t get married in title only—or worse, marry for love—and leave me on my own?

  When you fall in love with someone, you fall in love not only with her face and eyes and heart, but with her vision of the world. Love leaves no room to stand back and pity another’s delusions. You share them. You join hands lying down and draw an arc across the sky and tell a story about what a cloud looks like, a story that becomes your shared truth.

  But what of the pieces of her you don’t understand? The notes in her voice you cannot hit with your own? The words she uses, but that you cannot remember the meaning of? I wasn’t sure what I wanted in that moment—to share everything with her, or to take back my secrets and begin again in a version of our story where I was aloof and intriguing. Where she begged to know me, but I gave her nothing but cool stares and cryptic promises.

  There came a two-week period where Miss Ridges had laryngitis. Denson tried to take over reading the Dark Tales for a couple of nights, but she couldn’t do the voices. She was a terrible reader, and we knew it, and she knew it, so for several nights there were no stories, and we were all bored.

  It was Bitsy’s idea to sneak into town.

  We used the hole Walter had dug under the fence. The gap wasn’t very big, and we had to do some of our own digging. Our hands and clothes were dark with mud when we arrived on the other side. I looked down at my sweater and couldn’t even see the gold threads anymore. It was just Kenna and Bitsy and me. I hadn’t asked Alle—I’d assumed she would disapprove. Bitsy was thrilled with that decision. “It’s about time you acted like anyone else exists, Thera.”

  Our actions and their potential consequences were not real to me that night. The whole time we were digging, I found myself glancing over my shoulder at Rock Point, imagining lights snapping on, shadows hurtling toward us. Officer Grenwat shoving me to the ground and dragging me to Rollins’s office. I imagined Denson’s disappointment. But everything I imagined only bent back some magnificent, supple wickedness in me and let it fly, made me waver with pleasure. I was never going to be what anyone expected. Was never going to live under anyone’s thumb.

  Bitsy led the way to town. In the dark everything looked strange, and I realized I’d never seen the world outside of Rock Point by night. It was a soft blue dream, layers of mist and the dark curves of mountains like the bellies of sleeping giants. As we passed the prison, I thought about the men sleeping there on hard cots, perhaps lonely.

  The road down to the village was steep and rocky, and I watched my feet in their ragged black shoes; for some reason I was more afraid of falling than of being caught. Kenna kept shaking dirt from her hair. Bitsy’s blond ponytail bobbed, and she walked with purpose, not at all like a scared girl doing a forbidden thing.

  Main Street still had plenty of lights on. The pub was open and leaking laughter and music. People were dining outside at a couple of restaurants, despite the chill in the air. I stared at the patio railings with their flower boxes and gold lights, watched couples leaning across the table toward each other. Heard the clink of silverware and the soft glug of wine being poured.

  I expected people to look at us. I thought maybe they would know we weren’t supposed to be here. But a band of three ragged girls seemed to make no impression. An old man with a gummy beard and a filthy brown coat grinned at us around his cigarette as we passed. I moved slightly closer to Kenna, and then was ashamed of myself for doing so.

  We walked into the pub—a squat wooden building with a lit-up sign. Bitsy tried to order a gin and tonic and was told to “Go on home, little girl.” We were spat back out onto the street.

  “Awf, what’ll we do now?” Kenna asked.

  “Hey, look there.” I pointed across the field behind the pub at an old shed sitting in a cluster of weeds.

  “That looks like a ghost’s paradise. What are you thinking, Ballard?”

  “Nothing. Maybe that’s where I ought to live someday.”

  “I’m going to get us a bottle of wine.” Bitsy crossed the road and led us to a garishly lit convenience market that had a neon sign and a crack in the glass door. I stared inside, wondering how exactly she planned to convince anyone she was old enough to buy a bottle, if she’d just been called a little girl at the pub.

  I was about to suggest we send Kenna in, since nobody was likely to question Kenna in full bully mode, when Bitsy said, “Be back in a jiff,” and disappeared inside.

  She was gone awhile, and we could see through the window when she brought the wine up to the counter. Saw the clerk’s lips moving, then Bitsy’s. Saw the man shake his head.

  I shifted, agitated. “He’s not gonna let her.�
��

  Kenna was already heading into the shop.

  “Kenna!”

  I had no choice but to follow Kenna in. Bitsy was arguing with the clerk. “Just one bottle. Who will it hurt?” She spotted us. “There. These two. They’ll vouch for me that I’m old enough.”

  I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, but Kenna boomed, “Oh, yes. She’s certainly old enough. By far.”

  “If she can’t prove it, I don’t sell,” the clerk said.

  I grabbed Kenna’s arm before she could start forward. “Bitsy, just put it back. We’ll get it somewhere else.”

  Kenna muttered and pulled away from me. I walked toward Bitsy and took the wine from her hand. I could see how badly she wanted to keep arguing. I gripped her wrist and led her away. “Where’s Kenna?” I demanded as we exited. Kenna came out a moment later, and then I rounded on Bitsy. “Why would you argue with him? We’re not supposed to be out here. We can’t draw attention.”

  “He was talking to me like I’m an infant,” she said scornfully.

  “Well, maybe—”

  “Hey!” Kenna interrupted, holding up two foil-wrapped rectangles. “Look what I nicked.”

  Two chocolate bars. We split them up and ate them.

  And that was what started the game.

  We went into town twice more that week and stole small things—candy bars, sodas, a manicure set. We were not so much interested in the items—at least, I wasn’t—as we were in knowing we could get away with it. Knowing that, in an emergency, any one of us could go into any store and emerge with food or drink—it seemed to me a valuable skill to carry with us into our uncertain future. We came back to Rock Point giggling and hid our inedible treasures in Bitsy’s room. Alle was always asleep or pretending to be when I got back, and I wished she would awaken, ask me where I’d been. I didn’t know what I’d tell her. But I wanted her to ask.

  We didn’t go out every night, but I’d say at least five times during the two weeks Miss Ridges was sick, we were in town, practicing discretion, patience, and thievery. I have nothing to say in my own defense. I have grown, and I have regretted, and I have softened, but it is indeed a world where the dogs chew the bones of their own kind. I grew annoyed, though, at Alle’s increasing distance. I had noticed, over the past two weeks, a change in her behavior toward me. She was tense when she kissed me. We touched each other less. On the nights I was out, I climbed into my own bed when I came back, not hers. I didn’t know whether it had to do with me or with whatever she’d learned from Rocky Bottom, but it occurred to me that maybe I couldn’t spend an entire lifetime with someone so closed off.

  “Would you like to go out?” I asked her one evening.

  “Out where?”

  I tried to sound casual. “Into town. Bitsy and Kenna and I have been going there at night, since Miss Ridges isn’t well enough to read. Don’t tell anybody.”

  She looked up from her book, lips parted. “What do you do there?”

  “Just walk around, mostly.” I didn’t tell her about the game of taking small things from shops. “There’s a hole beneath the fence. We’re always back before morning. You should come with us.” I suppose I was giving her a test. Trying to discover whether she could be trained in the art of wildness, whether she could ever want the mayhem I wanted.

  She was silent a long moment, and I began to wonder if she’d actually say yes. “I don’t want to risk it,” she said finally.

  “No, Miss Prim.” I tried to sound teasing and failed. “I didn’t imagine you would.” I knew my anger was irrational, but I wanted to know if she could be dared.

  “I haven’t asked where you’ve been going.” She glared at me. “But you’re damn lucky no one’s come in here looking. If we both go . . .”

  “You mean you’re afraid.” I pulled on a black sweater over a flower print blouse that looked like a damn curtain. I yanked it into place.

  “What are you gonna do if you get caught?”

  “I won’t get caught.”

  “You might.”

  “I won’t.”

  She shut her book. “I don’t like how you’ve been acting. Since you started sneaking off.”

  I turned, my hair crackling from my sweater. “Oh really? Well I don’t act the way I do to make you happy.”

  “I’m not prim. It’s stupid that you think that. You have no idea.”

  I thought of Rocky Bottom, of her excitement over a ball of thread, and my fury grew. “So prove it. Come with me.”

  A long silence. I grabbed my shoes, intending to storm out.

  “Okay.”

  I almost didn’t hear her. “What?”

  “I said I’ll go.”

  I sat on the bed to put on my shoes. “If you go, you can’t wear a dress.”

  “Why not?”

  “In case we have to run. And you can’t get scared and mess everything up.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Okay, then.”

  She lunged off the bed and went to the closet. She searched through our things, coming up with a pair of slacks, and she yanked them on then shucked the dress she was wearing. I forced myself to look away as she found herself one of my sweaters. The blue one with the waves.

  “There,” she said when she’d put it on. “Now can we get going?”

  The walk into town was mostly silent. Kenna kept glancing at Alle, and I stayed tense, silently daring Kenna to say something. Bitsy kept up a steady stream of chatter—about which lessons she hated or which of the recent baby shoppers had looked the strangest. Alle didn’t speak to any of us. I knew the other two were angry with me for inviting her, and as we got closer to town I became increasingly unnerved. Kenna and Bitsy would want to lift a couple of items from a shop, as always. And how was I supposed to explain that to Alle? What if Alle argued, or tried to rat on us?

  We ended up in the pub. Alle had looked horrified when Bitsy suggested it, but she’d followed us in without a word. We didn’t try to order booze this time, just some soda. We sat at the bar like we belonged there, and no one questioned us.

  There was an older couple next to me, maybe in their fifties, and when I could no longer stand the stilted conversation with Kenna and Bitsy, or Alle’s sullenness, I turned to them. “Hello there.”

  The man nodded. “Good evening. What brings you here?”

  “I’m just unwinding after a day of research.”

  The man rubbed his lips together and held his empty glass up as the bartender walked by. “Research?”

  “I’m writing a book.” I tried to sound as serious as Kenna did when she told her stories. “About the Minotaur.”

  “Thera?” Bitsy whispered from a couple of stools down. I ignored her.

  “Oh-ho-ho.” The man nodded. “Another one of those.”

  The woman leaned across him to speak to me. “Honey, I don’t think there’s room in the world for another book about the monster.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about her,” I said. “So it’ll be a learning experience for me.”

  They both look me over. The man squinted. “You couldn’t have been alive when all that was going on.”

  “Were you?”

  They exchanged a glance. “We were children,” he said.

  I bent toward him, excited. “And were you afraid? I’ve heard those were the darkest of times.”

  “Well.” The man passed a hand over his mouth. “Certainly it’s better now that the beast is’n prison. But we still gotta send her tributes. She still holds sway. Doesn’t she, Em?” He nudged the woman.

  “She does. She does.” Em’s head bobbed up and down.

  “What would happen if we stopped sending tributes?” I asked.

  “Dunno, missy. I wouldn’t want to find out.”

  I leaned closer still. “Do you believe she can escape?”

  “Don’t know, don’t know.”

  One of Em’s curls came unpinned and bounced against her cheek. “All we know is, if she escaped, it would be t
he end of Rock Hill.”

  “No bullet can kill her,” the man said. “No steel, no . . .”

  “Arrow,” Em supplied.

  “No arrow. No rope.”

  “No poison.”

  I feared that unless I stopped them they would go on indefinitely, naming things that couldn’t kill the beast. “And did you ever see her?” I asked.

  “See her?” The man’s brows shot up. “I was there for the sacrifice.”

  I cast a quick look at Kenna, who was talking to Bitsy. Then I looked back at the couple. “What’s the sacrifice?”

  “Mmm.” Em smiled a bit dreamily. “There was a mother— How’s it go, William?”

  “A mother,” William continued. “And the beast had snatched up her little one. Was about to devour the child. The mother begged. She lay down in the street, and she begged for the beast to take her instead.”

  “The beast put the little girl down,” Em said. “Killed the mother, but let the child go.”

  I took a shaky breath, my mind snagging on the image of the sacrifice. “Was it the only time she let someone go once she’d caught them?”

  “That we know of.”

  Alle tapped my shoulder. “Thera. We need to leave.”

  I ignored her. “Did anyone know the beast when she was human? Anyone know her as a child?”

  Em nodded. “My grandmother. A troubled girl, she said. With a witch’s eyes.”

  “Thera.” Bitsy was beside me, tugging my arm. “Time to go.”

  “But it’s always easier,” William said as I was pulled to my feet. “Always easier to say someone looks like trouble once they’ve proven they are.” He held up a hand in a strange salute.

  I reluctantly followed the others out the door. It had rained, and the empty street was a slick blue-black. “Why’d you do that?” I demanded. “I was having a conversation.”