Dark of the Moon (28 page)

As I firmed up the last knot, there came the roar of something large tearing. The sailors stared at our mainsail; a gust had hit it, and a hidden flaw made the cloth split in two and flap uselessly. Theseus appeared from below and strode to where I stood, glared at the ruined sail, cursed, and told the sailors to man the oars. I hid the knotted rope behind me.

"Can we row all the way to Athens?" I was hesitant, since Theseus kept telling me that the smallest child in Troizena knew more about boats than I did.

"Of course not. Or we could, but it would take too long. We'll have to stop and have it fixed." We passed a fishing boat, whose occupants hailed us with friendly waves and directed us to Naxos. I maintained a calm demeanor, while all the time the beat of my heart shook me more than did the waves pounding our bow. I didn't know if my knots had caused the sail to rip or if a lucky gust had just happened to find its weak spot at that moment.

"I'd like to see the island," I told Theseus.

He appeared surprised. "It's smaller than Thera, and less grand." Looking pleased, he helped me into the boat. He rowed well, but still I clung to my seat as the small craft bucked and shook over the choppy waters.

My first steps onto the beach felt unsteady after the rolling of the ship. I was afraid I would drop the baby, so Theseus carried her. Everything looked strange. I knew, of course, that other places were different from Krete, but something about this island was unsettling. Then I realized. "Look, Theseus!" I pointed at the sand underfoot. "It's yellow!" He laughed and took my hand. We walked on the golden sand, Artemis leaving a neat line of rosette-shaped paw marks behind us.

Up in the town, local leaders, alerted to our arrival by the heralds along the shore, welcomed us with a ceremony and what passed for a feast among them. We sat outdoors, eating roasted fowl with herbs and bread dipped in honey. As the sun set, I glanced across the table at Theseus.

"What?" he said, but I shook my head. When the last red edge of the sun had disappeared, I took a huge breath of relief that escaped in a laugh which surprised me as much as him. Three days had passed, and yet he lived. I raised my cup to him, and he returned the salute with a grin, then turned back to the pretty serving girl who was finding the tenderest pieces of meat to put on his plate.

That night, I thought I would finally sleep well, with the worry of Theseus removed from my mind. Instead, I lay awake on a soft pallet on the floor of the king's tiny palace for a long, long time. What was preventing me from sleeping was that seed of an idea, and I felt it growing into something that would change my life yet again.

The seed grew to a green plant the next morning. Theseus slept late, and the wife of our host worried that I would be bored, so she took me on a tour. The town was small, but bright and clean, with cheerful inhabitants, and the queen was proud to show me their Goddess stone in the palace's tiny sanctuary.

"Dionysos is our most important god," she informed me as her hand stroked the gray lump that showed signs of years of anointing with oil. "But I've always loved Selene"—one of Goddess's many names—"I've always loved Selene best." The green plant grew a flower, and I told the queen who I was. Her kind eyes widened, and we conferred until the sun had risen fully and beat down on us as we walked back to town.

"I'm staying," I informed Theseus when he finally sat down to breakfast. He nearly choked on his bread.

"Staying? Here?"

I nodded and reached for a fig. They had been expertly dried, and even now, months after the harvest, they were moist and sweet. "Your Athens is no place for me. I can't go where the people don't know Goddess. Besides, you're unsure of how your father and stepmother will receive you. You don't need me there complicating things." I told him about the Goddess stone and how Her worship had fallen into decline here. "I'll always be a priestess, you know. Goddess's days may be numbered, but I can still venerate Her. Besides, I've always wanted to meet new people and see how they live, and now that I'm here, I want to stay for a while and learn from them. And they can learn from me. They have forgotten most of the ways of Goddess, and the queen is anxious to relearn them."

He looked doubtful, so I added, "If it turns out I don't like it here, I'll send word, and you can come back and take me away." He finally seemed convinced, and when the sail makers came and said with a thousand apologies that they couldn't fix his sail, that they could sell him another, one ready-made of just the correct size and dyed an elegant black, he purchased it for more than what they had been asking and went down to his ship to supervise its installation.

The next day, I accompanied him to the harbor to say farewell.

"I'll send back a boat to see how you're doing, after I'm settled in Athens," he told me. "I have some business to take care of first."

Tension in his voice made me look at him more closely. "What 'business'?"

He threw a stone into the harbor just as his men shouted that the sail had been hung properly and that the wind was freshening. If they wanted to make the tide, they would have to leave soon.

"What business?" I asked again.

He threw another stone. "My father. He won't like to see me return. And his wife—she'll think of me as a threat to both her husband and her son."

"
Are
you a threat?"

For the first time since that last, awful night in Knossos, he looked me in the eyes. "He's the king, and he's within his rights to order me to a certain death, but I don't like that way of ruling. Maybe it's because I grew up in the country, with a king who let people decide most things for themselves, but I want to do something about it. And I don't think he'll like it. I can't change anything while he's on the throne, and he knows that."

He kissed the top of Phaedra's little head and held me in a long embrace. In a way, we were married, so it was proper, and we were friends, so I allowed it. I remembered the first time I had seen him, his broad back to me as he watched the boys in the arena, and I remembered his kindness to my brother. He would always be dear to me, even if I never saw him again.

I watched the black sail until it dipped below the horizon, and then I went in search of twelve intelligent girls to train in the ways of Goddess.

THE GUARD tries to stop me, but I sweep him aside and stride into the king's dining hall. Once again, my father is there; once again, Medea sits opposite him, with their son on her lap.

The king freezes at the sight of me, but his wife springs to her feet, clutching little Medus. "My quarrel is not with you," I tell her, but her eyes are wide and fixed on me, "nor with my brother." She glances at my father and then scuttles across the floor, the little boy protesting that she's hurting him, and disappears out the door.

The king rises, looking at the sword in my hand. "Come to slit my throat at my own table with my own weapon?"

"It's better than the death you planned for me," I say. "But as it turns out, it was I who killed the monster, not the other way around."

"Oh, indeed." His sneer is audible. "As you killed the man who tried to cut off your feet? And as you fed the thief to the turtle?"

I flush. "The blood of the innocent Minotauros fouled this blade. I need to clean it with the blood of a king."

He looks shaken for a moment but then draws himself upright and spreads his hands, palms upward. "I am weaponless," he says.

"Don't worry," I answer. "I have no intention of fighting a defenseless old man in secret. Arm yourself; we will meet outside, in full view of your people, and only one of us will walk away."

I quail at my father's look of confidence, but then I harden myself. True, he has many successful fights to his credit; he is taller than I, and his sword is twice as long. But I'm younger, and I have my rage, bottled up in Krete and on the voyage home. That, and the hours I spent practicing with the Kretan soldiers.

We circle each other in the arena formed by pine boughs, looking for a weak spot. Before I can see more than that his right leg moves stiffly, he lunges at me, shouting a battle cry. His men join him in a raucous chorus. The king swings his sword, but it moves slowly, and I duck under it. I come up behind him and thrust my own weapon at his kidneys, but he flings himself sideways.

We face each other again. He is sweating and panting, but I know better than to assume that he is tiring already. Gray beard or not, this is a warrior.

His sword flashes again, and this time I feel a hot pain as he slices my left thigh. It's not enough to fell me, though, and I bring my own sword up hard and fast under his, and his weapon flies from his hand. It sails through the air and over the heads of his men, who turn to watch it disappear off the cliff and into the sea.

A groan rises from the soldiers, and for the first time, the light of fear shines in the king's eyes. I advance two steps in his direction, and he falls back one step before clearly forcing himself to stand still.

My breath feels harsh in my throat. I spit a glob of snot and dust into the dirt. "Do you yield?" He doesn't answer, so I raise my sword.

"Yield or die," I say, and this time he says, "I yield."

I expect to feel a surge of joy, of triumph, but something holds it back. Perhaps it will come when he bows to me as victor. I lower my arm and advance to him warily, feeling the pain in my thigh at each step. "Drop your sword," he says. I hesitate. "I don't trust you," he goes on. "I won't submit until your hand is empty. I have no weapon, and it's cowardly of you to approach me armed when you have defeated me." The men around us murmur agreement, so I stoop, lay my sword on the ground, and advance.

The king stands with his head bowed. When I'm an arm's length from him, he moves faster than I would have thought possible, and bronze glints in his right hand. I seize a pine bough and thrust it at him. His dagger cleaves it nearly in two before its blade shatters. I reach back blindly, and my fingers close on the hilt of my weapon. I swing it up and bury the blade to a hand's depth in his belly.

Nobody moves. My father looks at me, then at the sword protruding from his midsection. He pulls it out, and blood spreads across his robe. "You haven't killed me," he says hoarsely. He turns and takes a stumbling step, then another, and then he's trotting, blood dripping and then pouring from his belly, his mouth, his nose. The men part to let him through.

"Father!" I call, but whether to stop him or to curse him, I don't know. "Father!"

He says again, "You haven't killed me." He throws his arms wide and shouts, "Poseidon, take me!" as he flings himself off the edge of the cliff. I pull to a stop and lean over. His body bounces off the boulders and splashes into the water. Then there is no sound except the scream of the seagulls and the crash of the waves.

A shuffling behind me makes me turn. Aegeus's men, all of them, are on their knees, and as I watch, they bend and press their heads to the ground. The soldier at their front stands, approaches, and prostrates himself in the dirt. "My lord," he says.

"Get up," I say. He scrambles to his feet, and as we proceed on our way he tries the delicate balancing act of telling me how the people are all rejoicing that the king is dead without insulting the new king's father.

It has been a most interesting homecoming.

I feel a pang—a small one—at the thought that I'll never really know my father. Then I remember Konnidas, and my heart warms. I'll send for him and my mother as soon as I'm settled. She'll be perfect as mistress of the palace, issuing orders and countermanding them just for the fun of it.

It's not long before the poets are telling the tale of my adventures. They misunderstand a great deal. Before I went to Krete, I, too, believed that the Minotauros was born of the unnatural union of a bull and the queen. I believed that he ate people, that he lived in a maze so bewildering that the only way to find your way out of it was to follow an unwound ball of yarn. If I were to tell people of the Planting Festival and about the bull's head worn first by the Minos and then by the man chosen as the god, they would be disappointed. I agree that the truth is not as good a tale.

Some even say that my father, seeing the black sail on my ship, thought I had died on Krete, and that in his grief he committed suicide by jumping off the cliff. I find it absurd that anyone would believe such a tale. He tried to send me to my death, after all, and would have rejoiced rather than been stricken with despair if the monster had eaten me, and the many witnesses to our final battle could contradict that nonsense, but I don't mind what people say.

It does sadden me that they think I killed the harmless Asterion in order to escape from him and that I abandoned sweet little Ariadne on Naxos against her will. I've tried to explain, but mercy killing and leaving behind at her request a woman they see as the spoils of war are not actions they deem worthy of a king, so I let it be.

For although I am a different kind of king than my father, a king is what I am, and I will rule my people.

Tonight is the new moon, and I dance.

My feet remember the complicated patterns that my mother taught me. I guide my little daughter through the steps, and her mouth grows round as she gawks at my cow-horn headdress, which mimics the shape of the crescent above us. She holds my hand, and I laugh encouragement. My bare feet mark the golden sand of the beach, and the signs they form mingle with the smaller patterns made by hers.

I don't need to wait until morning light to read the marks. They will repeat the news I hear from passing sailors, who say that Theseus is well, that his kingdom prospers and his people adore him. The marks will tell those who can read them that Medea and her son fled from Athens and that no one has heard of them since. They will say that Minos-Who-Was died peacefully in his sleep after the last Birth of the Sun Festival and that Damia terrorizes the servants and tends to Orthia as she would a favorite child, spoiling her and giving her everything she wants.