Odysseus in the Serpent Maze (12 page)

Odysseus wanted to dismiss her fear, but any words of comfort stuck in his throat.

“Perhaps it was Hades himself who made the ship. To steal me away as he stole Persephone,” Helen continued. Her voice was strangely calm, as if such a fate were almost appealing.

“Not
everything
that happens in the world hinges on you, Helen,” Penelope said with sudden anger.

Just then the ship made a deep turn, and they emerged back out into the light. They could see they’d just travelled through a narrow cave that opened into a small bay. Ahead the shoreline was studded with jagged rocks rearing up like monstrous fangs. Thrusting from the midst of the fangs, like a giant tongue, was a stone jetty.

“Not the Underworld, then,” Penelope said dryly.

“Not yet,” Odysseus said.

The ship showed no sign of slowing down, and they were heading so fast towards the rocks that none of them doubted that the ship would be dashed to pieces. Wordlessly, they each grabbed on to the ship’s sides, ready for the fatal impact.

At the last possible moment, the oars snapped down, back-paddling, the flat of the blades set firmly against the wave. A huge spume cast up on either side, filling the ship with spray. In an instant, the momentum of the ship was stopped so suddenly that the four passengers were thrown forward.

Penelope’s head cracked painfully on the deck, and Helen became so tangled in her skirts, she looked bound. Odysseus did a rolling flip. Mentor was flung into the air, landing on the boards like a fresh-caught fish.

For a long moment none of them moved.

Then Helen moaned.

Raising his head, Odysseus was the first to realise that the ship had stopped. He pulled himself up and looked over the side. They were only a few yards from the rock pier.

Glancing up at the sky, he said aloud, “I hope you gods are enjoying the joke.” He gave Penelope a hand, then Helen. At last he started over to Mentor.

“I’m all right,” Mentor said, though a large bruise was already purpling the side of his knee. He stood without help.

“Can you walk?” Odysseus asked.

“If I have to, I can even run,” Mentor answered.

“I suggest running, then,” Penelope said. “Before the boat changes its mind and carries us back out to sea.”

Odysseus went first, dropping over the side into thigh-high water. He held his arms out, and Mentor helped first Penelope, then Helen down, and Odysseus caught them.

At last Mentor jumped too, a grimace on his face when he landed on his bruised leg.

They waded to the stone pier and looked back at the ship, still riding high in the water.

“I wish …” Odysseus began. For a moment he was silent.

“
What
do you wish?” Penelope asked.

“I wish …” He couldn’t say it aloud for fear that Penelope would laugh, but what he wished for was more time on the ship, to learn its controls. Such a ship might carry him tirelessly to the ends of the earth. Instead, he turned to Penelope and said, “I wish we could get somewhere dry and warm.”

“Yes, Prince Odysseus! Yes!” Helen cried. “What about that tunnel over there?” She waved dramatically at a sea cave to their left.

“There’s water in that,” Mentor pointed out. “Hardly dry and probably not warm either.”

Penelope stared at Odysseus oddly, head cocked to one side, as if able to read the
real
wish on his face. Then she turned away, stared up at the cliff, and suddenly shouted, “Look! Up there.”

A door of polished bronze with great incised pictures across the lintel was set right into the cliff face.

Odysseus wasted no time in wonder. He scrambled up a narrow pebble path towards the doorway, the others following right behind.

Closer up, the door was even stranger. The picture over the lintel showed a monster—half bull and half man—standing over a dozen dead children.

“The Minotaur,” Mentor said.

Odysseus controlled a shudder. Some of the children in the picture looked to be his age.

“There’s no keyhole,” Penelope said.

Odysseus placed his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his might, but the door didn’t budge. Mentor came over to help, but still the door didn’t move.

“I don’t think this door’s meant to be broken through,” Mentor said. “At least not by us.”

“Maybe we should go back to the ship,” Helen suggested. “We have food there and water and—”

“Wait!” Penelope had found a small hole in the rock next to the door and poked her little finger in. “Do you think the key goes here?”

Odysseus pulled the key and spearhead from his tunic. He touched the script on the key with his fingers. “Dae-da-lus,” he whispered, as if reading it. Then he inserted the long nose of the key into the hole.

It fit exactly.

“Turn it!” Helen shouted, clapping her hands. “Turn it!”

Odysseus turned the key. Something shifted noisily inside the rock, like the sound in the hold when the oars first began working.

“Daedalus,” he said aloud. “Old toy maker. What kind of toy is this?”

The door sprang inward, and Mentor, who was still leaning against it, fell backwards into the rock.

Odysseus picked him up and, going first, walked into the shadowy passageway. Twenty steps along, where the light from the doorway did not penetrate, he came to a stop.

The others caught up.

“What is it?” Mentor asked.

“Door. Wooden by the feel of it,” said Odysseus.

“Will it open?” Helen asked.

“
Should
we open it?” Penelope asked.

Odysseus felt along the door until his hands came to a metal ring. He twisted it to the left, then to the right. At the second twist, the door made a noise somewhere between a click and a sigh, and opened forward, flooding the tunnel with light.

None of them stepped through. They just gathered at the door’s edge and stared in.

There was an enormous room spread out before them. Oil lamps atop tripods in each corner flickered with warm light.

Odysseus was impressed. “This room’s as large as my father’s banqueting hall.”

“A banqueting hall without couches or chairs?” Helen’s voice was full of disdain.

The room contained a dozen long benches and wooden tables on which rested an assortment of hammers, hasps, pincers and other instruments, as if the user had just stepped away for a moment.

Helen gasped. “Magic!”

“Don’t be silly,” Penelope told her. “It’s a workshop.”

But Mentor was the only one looking beyond the implements. “There’s the master,” he whispered, pointing to a white-robed man in an alcove to the right side of the room.

“And is that his wife?” Penelope asked, equally softly.

A few feet farther was another alcove, occupied by a beautiful young woman.
More beautiful, in a way
, Odysseus thought,
than Helen.

He wondered what Mentor would think of that!

Or Helen.

When the master didn’t immediately summon them into the workshop, Odysseus went forward, followed quickly by the others, holding his hands out, palms upward, in a gesture of friendship.

“We’re shipwrecked and far from home,” he told the white-robed man. “May we have your help?”

Neither the master nor his lovely wife made any response.

“They’re not moving,” Penelope whispered.

“I don’t think they’re even breathing,” Odysseus said. He walked up to the man and touched his face. The cheek was marble.

Astonished, Odysseus said, “Statues!” He examined the young master closely, marvelling at the details. “Look how lifelike they are.”

The four of them crowded around the statue of the young man, then they turned to look at the young woman.

“Who but Daedalus could have made them?” Penelope said. “This
has
to be his workshop.”

Odysseus turned around to look over the workshop more carefully. Built into one wall was a kiln with a forge close by. Small jointed figurines of people and animals fashioned from wood and plaster were arranged on many of the shelves. Whoever Daedalus was, he was a master at his work.

“What use is all this?” Helen complained. “We need food, water, couches, servants.” She plucked unhappily at the folds of her dress. “And a change of clothes.”

“Surely we’ll find something useful here,” Penelope said soothingly. “There should be another room, where Daedalus could sleep and eat.” She started to look around for a door.

“What’s this—a guard dog?” Mentor stood by the side of a metal hound, its body formed of bronze plates riveted together. For eyes it had a pair of rubies that glittered in the flickering light.

Helen laughed. “Woof! That dog couldn’t scare anyone.”

Mentor smiled. “Certainly not me.” He spotted a nearby chest and started towards it. “What about this, Odysseus? Maybe there’s clothing in it we can borrow?”

Odysseus joined him.

A strange clanking began. Then a muted metal growl.

“Stop!” Odysseus whispered hoarsely, putting his hand on Mentor’s shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Mentor halted in midstride.

The bronze dog’s jointed legs moved forward awkwardly, and its head turned with the noise of two metal plates scraping together. The jaws opened, exposing twin rows of sharp metal teeth. Then the jaws clanged shut, sounding like a sword being slammed back into its scabbard.

“Back away slowly,” Odysseus whispered. “Hands out. Show the dog we’re leaving the chest alone.”

They edged backward, but the jewelled eyes followed them.

“Don’t move!” Penelope cried out. “It fixes on motion!”

At her voice, the dog’s head swivelled towards her.

The moment the dog looked away, Odysseus and Mentor each took another step backward.

The great head heard them and swivelled back.

“It fixes on sound too,” whispered Mentor.

Suddenly, with an awful grinding noise, the dog bounded forward, knocking Odysseus aside and ramming Mentor in the belly. Then it skidded to a halt and waited until Mentor—staggering—began to rise.

The bronze dog moved stiff-legged towards him, clashing its terrible teeth as it advanced.

Now behind the dog, Odysseus thought frantically. The knife would be useless against the metal dog. The satyr’s club would have to do. He pulled it from his belt.

“Here,” he cried, “over here, hound.” He banged the club twice on the workshop floor to get the creature’s attention.

The bronze dog turned towards him, then charged. Odysseus brought the club down on the dog’s skull with all of his might.

The metal rang like a gong, and the club broke cleanly in two.

“Oh, oh!” Odysseus cried, and without thinking, jumped aside.

The dog looked up, swivelled its head till it found Odysseus again, and grinned its metal grin.

Then it started after him.

“R
UN, ODYSSEUS!” PENELOPE CRIED
.

The dog turned its head towards the sound of her voice, and in that instant Odysseus vaulted over the nearest workbench.

Swivelling back, the dog found Odysseus at the height of his vault and leaped over the bench after him.

Odysseus ducked low, and one of the metal paws scraped his hair as it landed behind him.

A clay jar broke on its back, and this distracted the dog for a moment, long enough for Odysseus to roll under the table and get to the other side. He saw Penelope hoisting another jar to throw.

“No!” he yelled. “It will come after you!”

Penelope glanced behind her, where Helen stood trembling. She made no move to throw the second jar.

Meanwhile Odysseus was running again, the hound right behind him, knocking over tables and benches. As he ran, Odysseus looked for anything resembling a weapon, but there was nothing there but pincers and hammers and …

He grabbed up a hammer as he passed one table, turned briefly, and tossed it over his shoulder at the bronze monster as hard as he could. The hammer bounced off the dog’s snout and—for a second—it was confused. Then it went after Odysseus once more.

Odysseus had been watching over his shoulder and so did not see the stool in his way. He tripped and fell over it, executing a quick roll. But before he could get up, the hound had bounded forward, trapping him in a corner.

The bronze maw creaked open.

Odysseus could count many—too many—teeth.
Is this it?
He thought.
To die without landing a serious blow? To die lying on the floor of a
…
a workshop?

“Odysseus!” called Mentor.

The dog looked towards the voice as Mentor snatched one of the wooden figurines from its shelf, then tossed it towards Odysseus. The figurine arced through the air, and the dog reared up to snatch it.

But Odysseus stood quickly and leaped higher, catching the figurine in both hands, and in a single fluid motion he thrust it lengthwise into the dog’s gaping mouth.

The beast pounced, pinning Odysseus to the floor, but this time when its jaws snapped shut, the sharpened teeth sank deep into the wooden figurine. It growled and rumbled and clanked. The hinges of its jaw strained and squeaked. But its teeth were jammed fast.

Odysseus didn’t let go of the wooden figure, and he was yanked helplessly from side to side as the dog jerked its head back and forth in an effort to free itself.

“Stop it!” Odysseus cried. “Stop it, you hairless, metal monstrosity.”

But the dog didn’t—or couldn’t—stop. It continued to shake its head, and as it did, a harsh metallic grinding inside the dog rose higher and higher in pitch till it reached an earsplitting whine.

Snatching up hammers, Penelope and Mentor ran over to help, and now they began banging the bronze dog on the head.

“The eyes,” Odysseus shouted. “Go for the eyes.”

The hound shook its head harder and harder as first Mentor, then Penelope, cracked its jewelled eyes. The metal plates buckled under the strain. Rivets popped from the metal frame. One of the bronze legs broke free and clattered to the floor.

Mentor gave one more hammer blow at the right eye, and it popped out of its metal socket.

The bronze dog fell over, its remaining legs twitching spasmodically as its metal chest plates burst apart. Notched wheels and thin metal rods spilled out over the floor. The dog gave one final shudder, and—with an awful clank—fell silent.