My mind had no answers. It was limp and dulled, useless as my missing fingers. One thought came clear: I must do something. I could not stand by while a horror was loosed upon the world. I had the thought that I should find my sister’s workroom. Perhaps there would be something there to help me, some antidote, some great drug of reversal.
It was not far, a hall off her bedchamber separated by a curtain. I had never seen another witch’s craft room before, and I walked its shelves expecting I do not know what, a hundred grisly things, kraken livers, dragons’ teeth, the flayed skin of giants. But all I saw were herbs, and rudimentary ones at that: poisons, poppies, a few healing roots. I had no doubt my sister could work plenty with them, for her will had always been strong. But she was lazy, and here was the proof. Those few simples were old and weak as dead leaves. They had been collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time of day.
I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me. And my own herbs from Aiaia would not be enough, strong as they were. The monster was bound to Crete, and whatever would be done, Crete must guide me.
I traced back through the halls and corridors to the palace center. There I had seen stairs that ran not to the harbor but inland, to the wide, bright gardens and pavilions, which in turn opened out to distant fields.
All around, busy men and women swept flagstones, picked fruits, hefted their baskets of barley. They kept their eyes diligently lowered as I went. I suppose living with Minos and Pasipha? they had grown used to ignoring bloodier things than me. I passed the outlying houses of peasants and shepherds, the groves and grazing herds. The hills were lush and so golden with sun that the light seemed to rise from them, but I did not stop to savor the view. My eyes were fixed upon the black outline that stood against the sky.
Mount Dicte, it is called. No bears or wolves or lions dare to tread there, only the sacred goats, their great horns curling like conch shells. Even in the hottest season, the forests remain dark and cool. At night, the huntress Artemis is said to roam its hills with her shining bow, and in one of its shadowed caves Zeus himself was born and hidden from his devouring father.
There are herbs there that grow nowhere else. They are so rare, few have been given names. I could feel them swelling in their hollows, breathing tendrils of magic into the air. A small yellow flower with a green center. A drooping lily that bloomed orange-brown. And best of all, furred dittany, queen of healing.
I did not walk as a mortal walks, but as a god, and the miles fell away beneath my feet. It was dusk when I reached the foothills and began to climb. The branches laced over me. The shade rose deep as water, tingling across my skin. The whole mountain seemed to hum beneath me. Even bloodied and aching as I was, I felt a spurt of giddiness. I traced the mosses, the hummocks of ground upwards, and, at the base of a white poplar, I found a blooming patch of dittany. Its leaves were threaded with power, and I pressed them to my broken fingers. The spell took hold with a word; my hand would be whole by morning. I gathered some of the roots and seeds for my bag, and kept on. The stink and weight of blood hung still upon me, and at last I found a pool, cold and clear, fed by icy melt. I welcomed the shock of its waters, their clean, scouring pain. I worked those small rites of purification which all gods know. With pebbles from the bank, I scrubbed the filth away.
After, I sat on the bank beneath the silvered leaves and thought of Daedalus’ question. Can the creature be killed?
Among the gods there are a few who have the gift of prophecy, the ability to peer into the murk and glimpse what fates will come. Not everything may be foreseen. Most gods and mortals have lives that are tied to nothing; they tangle and wend now here, now there, according to no set plan. But then there are those who wear their destinies like nooses, whose lives run straight as planks, however they try to twist. It is these that our prophets may see.
My father has such foreknowledge, and I had heard it said all my life that the trait was passed to his children also. I had never thought to test it. I had been raised to think I had none of his strengths. But now I touched the water and said, Show me.
An image formed, delicate and pale, as if made from curls of mist. A smoking torch bobbed in long corridors. A thread unwound through a stone passage. The creature roared, showing its unnatural teeth. It stood tall as a man, dressed in rotting scraps. A mortal, sword in hand, leapt from the shadows to strike it dead.
The mist ebbed, and the pool cleared again. I had my answer, but it was not the one I had hoped for. The creature was mortal, but it could not die as an infant, by my hand or Daedalus’. It had a fate many years in the future, and must live it out. Until then, it could only be contained. That would be Daedalus’ work, yet there might be a way for me to help him. I paced among the shadowed trees, thinking of that creature and what weaknesses it might have. I remembered its black eyes fixed ravening on mine. Its sucking hunger as it fought me for my hand. How much would it take to sate that appetite? If I had not been a god, it would have crawled up my arm, consuming me inch by inch.
I felt an idea rise in me. I would need all the secret herbs of Dicte, and with them the strongest binding weeds, ilex root and withy, fennel and hemlock, aconite, hellebore. I would need as well the rest of my moly stores. I slipped through those trees unerring, hunting down each ingredient in its turn. If Artemis walked that night, she kept out of my way.
I carried the leaves and roots back to the pool and ground them on its rocks. The paste I gathered in one of my bottles, and added some of the pool’s water. Its waves still bore the blood it had washed from my hands, mine and my sister’s too. As if it knew, the draught swirled red and dark.
I did not sleep that night. I stayed on Dicte until the sky went gray and then began walking back to Knossos. By the time I reached the palace, the sun was bright on the fields. I passed a courtyard that had caught my eye the day before, and stopped now to examine it more closely. In it was a great dancing circle, ringed by laurels and oaks for shade from the beating sun. I had thought its floor was made of stone, but now I saw it was wood, a thousand tiles of it, so smoothed and varnished that they seemed like a single piece. They were painted with a spiral, traveling outwards from its center like the furling crest of a wave. Daedalus’ work, it could be no other.
A girl was dancing on it. No music played, yet her feet kept perfect time, each step the beat of a silent drum. She moved like a wave herself, graceful, but with relentless, driving motion. On her head shone the circlet of a princess. I would have known her anywhere. The girl from Daedalus’ prow.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, just like her statue’s. She bowed her head. “Aunt Circe,” she said. “I am glad to meet you. I am Ariadne.”
I could see pieces of Pasipha? in her, but only if I searched: her chin, the delicacy of her collarbone.
“You are skilled,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you. My parents are looking for you.”
“No doubt. But I must find Daedalus.”
She nodded, as if I were only one of a thousand who wanted him instead of her parents. “I will take you. But we must be careful. The guards are out looking.”
She slipped her fingers into mine, warm and a little damp from her exercise. Through dozens of narrow side-passages she led me, her feet silent on the stones. We came at last to a bronze door. She beat six times in a rhythm.
“I cannot play now, Ariadne,” a voice called. “I am busy.”
“I am with the lady Circe,” she said.