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

arrive,” said Icarus, “you shall question the captain yourself and prove to me that no man has learnt the mastery of the winds.”

“I will,” I promised him. I could see that he was humoring me, and also that his dreams weighed more with him than he would admit. I longed to be able to tell him that these were false images. I did not like the look of secret happiness on Icarus’s face when he spoke of the second dream. Jealousy bit deep into my heart; I did not think he dreamt of me.

“Perhaps the captain awaits my interrogation even now,” I said, and with a familiar twist of grief in my chest I walked out of the paint-grinding shed. I didn’t look back.

As I walked down toward the harbor I passed the cages of the menagerie, which was almost a second home for me. I spent as much time as I could spare helping Lycia, the chief keeper. I fed the animals, talked to them—I even occasionally did servants work by mucking out kennels and cages. I was happy there; it was my refuge in good times and bad.

Now my favorite monkey, Queta, spotted me and indicated with an imperious cry that she wished to accompany me. As I opened the door of her cage she shrieked with delight and leapt to my shoulder.

“Bring her back soon, Princess,” said Lycia. “She’ll be hungry and thirsty before long.” Queta was still a young monkey and needed frequent nourishment, like a human child.

Icarus was right about the preparations for the ceremonial reception of the new Athenian servants. Carts of potted plants were being wheeled into place and the pier posts decked with wreaths of greenery. Every idler in Knossos Town milled about, pretending to have work to do on the wharves so that they might be present when some sharp-eyed person first spotted the black sail.

Queta was excited, her hair standing up in a fluff all over her body and her tail stretched out rigid as a poker behind her. I held tight to her leash; monkeys do not like large, noisy crowds. Queta might decide she would prefer to observe the scene from atop a fifty-foot carob tree rather than from my shoulder, and then Lycia would be angry with me.

We found a spot on top of a wall where we might watch the jostling crowds without being jostled ourselves, and there we perched while the sun slid slowly down her track in the sky. Queta grew bored with the spectacle before us and occupied herself with picking through my hair, pretending to find and eat nonexistent lice. At length, grunting softly to herself she curled up and went to sleep on my shoulder. I sat unmoving, lulled by sunshine, thinking of Icarus.

I saw my brothers Deucalion and Catreus being carried by on a litter above the crowd. They were twins, born out of my mother within a few moments of eath other. Like many of that kind, they seemed born with but one soul between them: they had little use for anyone outside their charmed circle of two. They had chosen two pairs of twins to bear their litter so that the onlooker was given the uneasy sense of looking at both reality and its reflection. My brothers were as usual talking to each other and did not notice me.

“Princess Xenodice!”

Someone else had spotted me, however. It was Graia, the bossy old woman who had tended me from my cradle, with little Phaedra trailing behind her and the baby Molus in her arms. “Get down from that wall and go at once back to your quarters. Dress yourself properly. You look like a bag of old rags.”

“I do n—” I began protesting, when I looked down and caught sight of my dress. Straw clung to the hem from my visit to Asterius, and a great streak of yellow ocher recalled my visit to the paint-grinding shed. Furthermore, a combined aroma of monkey urine and perspiration from my efforts in dancing class wafted up to my nostrils.

“And bathe,” Graia said. “Come. I will see to it myself.”

She would have taken me by the ankle and dragged me off of the wall by main force had she not a healthy respect for Queta’s teeth. Queta did not care for people laying hold of me and forcing me to do things. As my sister Phaedra now began to object to being removed from the scene of so much excitement, Graia resigned herself to not overseeing my ablutions.

“Very well. I see I must stay here. Tell that worthless girl of yours to stir herself up and do something for a change.” She wrinkled her nose. “And make sure she uses some perfumed oils in that bath.”

“But I want to be here when the Athenians arrive,” I protested.

“No doubt,” she said. “That event may happen anytime from now until midsummer. There will be plenty of time to make yourself presentable. And, Xenodice, when you return, have yourself carried on a litter. You are growing too old to run wild like this.”

Queta, roused from her nap, was scandalized that Graia should speak to me so. She stood up on my shoulders, gripped my hair by the roots, and began a long, vigorous scold.

“Aii! Queta, don’t pull so!” I clapped a hand to my damaged scalp as I slipped down from the wall and began to trudge up the road to the palace again.

Having returned Queta to her keeper, I obediently searched out my slave girl, Maira, and directed her to prepare my bath. I had argued with my nurse, fearing to miss the arrival of the Athenians, but in my heart I knew she was right and that they might not come for days. And besides, like all my race, I dearly love a good bath.

When I encounter people from other nations, either down at the harbor or formally at court, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that foreigners, whatever their