Her golden hair was matted. “What do you think? A baby.”
I put my hands to that gap in her flesh. The blood pulsed hot against me. Slowly, I pressed through the muscles and the wet. My sister made a strangled croak.
I searched in that slickness, and at last there it was: the soft mass of an arm.
A relief. I could not even say what I had feared. Just a baby.
“I have it,” I said. My fingers inched upwards for purchase. I remember telling myself that I must be careful to find its head. I did not want it twisted when I began to pull.
Pain burst in my fingers, so shocking I could not cry out. I thought some scrambled thing: that Daedalus must have dropped the scalpel inside of her, that a bone had broken in her labor and stabbed me. But the pain clamped harder, driving deep into my hand, grinding.
Teeth. It was teeth.
I did scream then. I tried to jerk my hand away, but it had me fast in its jaws. In a panic, I yanked. The lips of my sister’s wound parted and the thing slid forth. It thrashed like a fish on a hook, and muck flew across our faces.
My sister was shrieking. The thing was like an anchor dragging on my arm, and I felt my finger joints tearing. I screamed again, the agony white-hot, and fell on top of the creature, scrabbling for its throat with my hand. When I found it, I bore down, pinning its body beneath me. Its heels beat on the stone, its head twisted, side to side. At last I saw it clear: the nose broad and flat, shining wetly with birth fluid. The shaggy, thick face crowned with two sharp horns. Below, the froggy baby body bucked with unnatural strength. Its eyes were black and fixed on mine.
Dear gods, I thought, what is it?
The creature made a choking sound and opened its mouth. I snatched my hand away, bloody and mangled. I had lost my last two fingers and part of a third. The thing’s jaw worked, swallowing what it had taken. Its chin wrenched in my grip, trying to bite me again.
A shadow beside me. Daedalus, pale and blood-spattered. “I am here.”
“The knife,” I said.
“What are you doing? Do not hurt him, he must live!” My sister was struggling on her couch, but she could not rise with her muscles cut.
“The cord,” I said. It still ran gristle-thick between the creature and my sister’s womb. He sawed at it. My knees were wet where I knelt. My hands were a mass of broken pain and blood.
“Now a blanket,” I said. “A sack.”
He brought a thick wool coverlet, laid it on the floor beside me. With my torn fingers, I dragged the thing into its center. It fought still, moaning angrily, and twice I nearly lost it, for it seemed to have grown stronger even in those moments. But Daedalus gathered up the corners, and when he had them, I jerked my hands away. The creature thrashed in the blanket folds, unable to find purchase. I took the ends from him, lifting it off the floor.
I could hear the rasp of Daedalus’ breath. “A cage,” he said. “We need a cage.”
“Get one,” I said. “I will hold it.”
He ran. Inside its sack, the creature twisted like a snake. I saw its limbs lined against the fabric, that thick head, the points of horns.
Daedalus returned with a birdcage, the finches still fluttering inside. But it was stout, and large enough. I stuffed the blanket in, and he clanged shut the door. He threw another blanket over it, and the creature was hidden.
I looked at my sister. She was covered in blood, her belly a slaughter-yard. The drips fell wetly to the sodden rug beneath. Her eyes were wild.
“You did not hurt it?”
I stared at her. “Are you mad? It tried to eat my hand! Tell me how such an abomination came to be.”
“Stitch me up.”
“No,” I said. “You will tell me, or I will let you bleed yourself dry.”
“Bitch,” she said. But she was wheezing. The pain was wearing her away. Even my sister had an end in her, a place she could not go. We stared at each other, yellow eyes to yellow. “Well, Daedalus?” she said at last. “It is your moment. Tell my sister whose fault this creature is.”
He looked at me, face weary and streaked with blood. “Mine,” he said. “It is mine. I am the reason this beast lives.”
From the cage, a wet chewing sound. The finches had gone silent.
“The gods sent a bull, pure white, to bless the kingdom of Minos. The queen admired the creature and desired to see it more closely, yet it ran from any who came near. So I built the hollow likeness of a cow, with a place inside for her to sit. I gave it wheels, so we might roll it to the beach while the creature slept. I thought it would only be…I did not—”
“Oh, please,” my sister spat. “The world will be ended before you stammer to your finish. I fucked the sacred bull, all right? Now get the thread.”
I stitched my sister up. Soldiers came, their faces carefully blank, and bore the cage to an inner closet. My sister called after them, “No one goes near it without my word. And give it something to eat!” Silent handmaids rolled up the soaked rug and carried off the ruined couch as if they did such work every day. They burned frankincense and sweet violets to mask the stench, then bore my sister to the bath.
“The gods will punish you,” I had told her, while I sewed. But she had only laughed with a giddy lushness.
“Don’t you know?” she had said. “The gods love their monsters.”
The words made me start. “You talked to Hermes?”
“Hermes? What does he have to do with it? I don’t need some Olympian to tell me what is plain before my face. Everyone knows it.” She smirked. “Except for you, as usual.”
A presence at my side brought me back. Daedalus. We were alone, for the first time since he had come to my island. There were drops of brown spattered across his forehead. His arms were smeared to the elbow. “May I bandage your fingers?”
“No,” I said. “Thank you. They will fix themselves.”
“Lady.” He hesitated. “I am in your debt for all my days. If you had not come, it would have been me.”
His shoulders were taut, tensed as if against a blow. The last time he had thanked me, I had stormed at him. But now I understood more: he, too, knew what it was to make monsters.
“I am glad it was not,” I said. I nodded at his hands, crusted and stained like everything else. “Yours cannot grow back.”
He lowered his voice. “Can the creature be killed?”
I thought of my sister shrieking to be careful. “I don’t know. Pasipha? seems to believe it can. But even so it is the child of the white bull. It may be guarded by a god, or it may bring down a curse upon any who harm it. I need to think.”
He rubbed at his scalp, and I saw the hope of an easy solution drain from him. “I must go make another cage then. That one won’t hold it long.”
He left. The gore was drying stiff upon my cheeks, and my arms were greasy with the creature’s stink. I felt clouded and heavy, sick from the pollution of so much blood. If I called the handmaids, they would bring me to a bath, but I knew that would not be enough. Why had my sister made such an abomination? And why summon me? Most naiads would have fled, but one of the nereids might have done it, they were used to monsters. Or Perses. Why had she not called for him?