Lost in the Labyrinth, Patrice Kindl [read novel full .txt] 📗

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

ARIADNE,DESCENDING

Knossos

Icarus

Lost

And Returned

Bull Rider

The Presentation

The Festival of the Bulls

My Father’s Son

Theseus

In the Workshop

A Clew of Thread

My World Unmade

Icarus, Rising

ARIADNE, DESCENDING

Author’s Note

Genealogy

Further Reading

Copyright © 2002 by Patrice Kindl

All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions. Houghton Mifflin Company. 215 Park Avenue South. New York. New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Kindl. Patrice.

Lost in the labyrinth : a novel / by Patrice Kindl.

p cm

Summary Fourteen-year-old Princess Xenodice tries to prevent the death of her half-brother, the Minotaur, at the hands of the Athenian prince. Theseus, who is aided by Icarus. Daedalus, and her sister Ariadne.

ISBN 0-618-16684-X (hardcover)

[l. Mythology. Greek—Fiction. 2. Ariadne (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 3. Theseus (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 4 Daedelus (Greek mythology)—Fiction 5. Icarus (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 6 Minotaur (Greek mythology)—Fiction 7 Crete (Greece)—History—To 67 B.C.—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.K5665 Lo 2002

[Fic]—dc21

2002000406

eISBN 978-0-547-34804-9

v2.0415

To my parents, Katy and Fred Kindl, remembering days in Crete

ARIADNE,

DESCENDING

LAST NIGHT I SAW MY SISTER, WHO IS DEAD. SHE STOOD AT THE END OF a long corridor, weeping.

I did not know her until I drew near. There are some here in the Labyrinth who are strangers to me. I thought her a new servant beaten for disobedience, and I looked at her closely only when she did not move as I approached.

Her body was just beginning to be big with child, a child who never saw the light of day. Her neck was encircled by the rope with which she had hanged herself, yet her face was not distorted and discolored, as the faces of the hanged are, and I could see her features clearly.

“Can it really be you, Ariadne, come back after all this time?” I whispered.

She did not answer, but began slowly to sink through the floor.

CHAPTER ONE

Knossos

“XENODICE! COME TO ME THIS INSTANT OR I WILL SLAP YOU! Come this very moment!”

“Yes, Ariadne,” I said, dodging from behind a large oil jar. “It is I, Xenodice. I am here. What is your will?” I removed a large cobweb from my elbow.

“Get me some figs. Not last year’s figs, but this year’s. Nice, plump, fresh figs, newly gathered. You might gather them yourself Xenodice.”

I tried to refuse, knowing full well that it was useless. “Our mother the queen,” I pointed out, “has forbidden us to pick the new figs. Indeed, she has threatened us with terrible punishments if we go anywhere near the figs.”

“That,” said Ariadne, “is why I want you to do it.”

“Oh, but Ariadne!”

My other sisters and brothers each had a slave girl or boy whom they occasionally treated in this way, but nothing seemed to please my sister Ariadne so well as to torment me, her own flesh and blood. She was nearly two years older than I, sixteen to my fourteen on that spring morning. She never ceased to hold that one year and ten months’ seniority over my head like a double-bladed ax poised to strike.

When we were small we had been playmates, and she had often been my defense against the rough play of our older brothers. Now she considered herself a young woman and me a child, and she summoned me only when she wanted something As always, when Ariadne said “Go,” I went, and when Ariadne said “Come,” I came.

“I won’t do it,” I said now, without much conviction. She narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t pinch!” I cried. “I’ll do it—I will indeed, Ariadne!”

There are a hundred thousand eyes in and about the Labyrinth, and the orchards of the queen do not go unwatched. This was the spring fig crop, the fruits fewer but larger than those of fall. They were doubly precious because we all, palace folk and commoners alike, had been eating old, dried figs for many months. Yet by the goodness of the Lady, to whom I whispered a hurried prayer, I was not caught gathering the fruit, though my heart trembled like a bird in my throat all the while.

Ariadne ate so many figs that I thought she would be sick, but she was not. We had both known that in the end I would do whatever she commanded. I argued only to prevent her from taking me entirely for granted.

“Let’s go and see Asterius,” she next proposed. “He would like some figs, I am sure.”

“But its time for our dancing lesson,” I said.

“I only suggested it because you are so fond of him,” said Ariadne. “You always say that I am not good enough to our brother. And now that I wish to do him a kindness you throw up all sorts of objections. You are cruel, Xenodice.”

“I am not,” I said hotly. “Why do you want to go, anyway?” Ariadne loved dancing lessons, at which she excelled.

She shrugged and walked on. “I told you.”

“You merely want to get me into trouble with our mother,” I said, trotting along behind her. “She’ll not be angry with you; I will be the one to suffer. We could go to our dancing lesson now and see Asterius when it is over. It isn’t necessary to go—” I realized with resignation that we were already late for our lesson. The scent of hay and the sound of buzzing flies informed me that we were nearing that portion of the Labyrinth that housed my brother Asterius.

My brother, Asterius.

It is difficult to know what to say about him to you who do not know him. He is very strange. We are used to him and he does not surprise us. When envoys come to our mother’s court from Byblos and Lukka and the faraway land of Egypt, they always ask to see her peculiar son. And when they do see him, they are horrified. I do not like to be present when they first catch sight of him.

He is not clever—how could he be?—but I think that