Sleeva’s dark eyes darted to the side to take her in, a quick up-and-down that Gwen felt like the slide of a hand. She knew from experience that the amphibious woman was eyeing Gwen’s human-presenting form, trying to figure out what exactly made her a minotaur.
“Sooo . . . a girl will look like you, and a boy . . .”
“A boy would look like this handsome lug,” Gwen finished, as Madoc turned the corner back into the room. “Although hopefully with better dress sense.”
“And what’s wrong with what I have on?”
His wide, dappled nose wrinkled with his words, and she beamed, envisioning what it would look like in a few months, cinched in white gold. He was the most handsome minotaur she’d ever met, and unlike most academics, he wasactuallygood with people. She had no doubt his co-worker’s words were true — people loved Madoc wherever he went.
“He’s had this sweater since grad school, Sleeva,”
The amphibian woman hid her laughter in webbed hands at the scowl Madoc pulled, her slender shoulders shaking.
“Go on, get out of here,” she wheezed out, waving her hand at the towering minotaur. “That was the last group for the day. I’m closing up the gift shop. Go be young and in love somewhere, Doctors Bowman.”
“Oh, I’m getting a private tour of the exhibit! That’s actually what counts as romance for us,” Gwen called out to Sleeva’s retreating back, the other woman’s renewed laughter echoing through the marble hallway as she left them alone. “She seems nice. They all love you here.”
“She’s very nice, and I’m supremely loveable, so that checks out.” He grinned as she swiped at his chest, capturing her arm easily and pulling her flush against him. “One more week, Dr. Bowman.”
His voice was low, barely a whisper, and tears pricked at her eyes at the nearness of the date, an end to the separation once and for all. She hadn’t lied to his co-worker — there had never been any resentment or bad feelings over their separation, but Gwen felt as if she’d woken up one day to mysteriously find herself on the other side of thirty, and the last year had been harder than the entire decade that had preceded it.
“One more week,” she agreed, smiling when he ruffled her hair. “Dr. Bowman.”
“Let me lock up the west entrance and close off the exhibit, and then we’ll start. You enter from there,” he pointed to the doorway behind them, “at that first vitrine, and then move clockwise into the walls. But wait for me!”
She watched his retreating back, heart quivering with fear and excitement and more love than she’d once thought it was possible to feel.One more week. One more week before she left her apartment and the city that had been home for several years; one more week until she settled into life in suburbia, far from a classroom or field office or dig site, far from everything that had been normal for the last ten years. They would be together, but she was still sailing into the unknown, uncertain of how she would adjust to life outside of academia, life with him, side-by-side and not separated by miles and cities and time zones.
The whole world felt possible, Gwen thought, but it didn’t change the way her heart trembled. One more week, and everything would change.
Theseawaswildand angry the day the bireme left Salamis.
It has been that way since we sailed west from Athens, stopping to feast and drink one last time before the princess boarded the ship, and we sailed south.
Periboea thinks herself better than the rest of us, I can tell, but today she is afraid. Earlier, she held my hand and wept as we stared out at the black waves, crashing against the oars like an omen of what is to come, as if Poseidon himself is following to announce our arrival. We are close to the palace at Knossos, very close, the guards tell us. It will only be a few nights more until we arrive at our final destination, until we leave the bireme in chains to be presented before the King. Periboea held my hand and wept, and the tribute from Melos has not stopped sobbing since we left her island behind, but my eyes are dry today.
I will not pretend that I am unafraid. I amveryafraid. The men on the ship have told us stories; whether to warn or frighten us, I do not know. They have accomplished both, and are all the crueler for it.
The beast will devour the men first, they say, leaving us unprotected. He has sharp teeth, they claim, for tearing our flesh and eating us alive, and the body of a man, for raping those he does not immediately kill. I questioned one of the men about how they knew such things, for no survivors had ever escaped, but they only laughed and said I would soon learn. There is a brash young man on the ship who speaks loudly and claims he will save us and slay the beast, and the men laugh at him as well. We will arrive soon in Knossos, and learn we will, and the sea god is as cruel as the men with their stories, but today my eyes are still dry.
The princess is afraid, and I am as well, but I have looked into the oracle fires and have seen the truth that will come to pass. I am Melita of Korinthos, and my name will not be lost to Minos’s maze. We will arrive soon in Knossos and the labyrinth beneath the palace, and I am sailing to my death, but today my eyes are dry.
Thefirstvitrinehelda single set of manacles.
Gwen paused before the glass, the bronze restraints within seeming too small to have bound anything but a child. The walls behind the display cases had been wrapped floor-to-ceiling with a stylized map of the Aegean Sea and all of her islands, red dashes dotting the blue water, marking the path the sacrifices sailed to their final destination at Crete. She tried to imagine what it must have been like for the young men and women — drawn by lots, their fate a simple luck of the draw.
Around the wrist cuffs, the preservation team had done exemplary work revealing the classical labyrinth design, a seven-course block that showed up repeatedly on coins and rings, and vases repeatedly throughout history.Unicursal, she smirked, knowing the misrepresentation in artifacts was one of Madoc’s biggest pet peeves. She tried to imagine the small-statured prisoner these manacles had once held as she rounded the case, examining the restraints from every side. Not a prisoner, she mentally corrected, reminding herself of the exhibit’s theme.
A tribute. A bride.
“They must have been very afraid,” she said suddenly, listening to his tread on the marble flooring crossing back to her, the click of his wide hooves silenced by the silicone gaiters he wore.
Seven young men and seven young women were given in tribute to Crete, to the labyrinth. Gwen closed her eyes and let her mind paint a picture of the young people ferried across the sea, far from their homes, traveling into the unknown.The unknown and a minotaur, she thought, her breath catching at how similar her situation was to whoever had worn these manacles.
“I’m sure they were,” Madoc agreed, his huge hands dropping lightly to her shoulders. The overhead light cast his shadow on the ground before her, his horns cutting an impressive silhouette, absorbing her completely, her and the case holding the manacles, and Gwen wondered if the labyrinth minotaur’s silhouette had been nearly as impressive as this diminutive sacrifice stood before him. “But you know what happened to them. They weren’t afraid for long.”
“Pfffttt, says you. You have no idea what it’s like being a sheltered young woman leaving home for the first time.” His arms wrapped around her, and she leaned into his heat. “I loved undergrad! I loved my roommates and our quad, and all of my friends. I loved my classes. I loved being independent and trying all the things my family kept me from. And Istillwent into the showers and cried every single week because I missed my mom and my room and everything that was familiar. I can promise you, they were fucking terrified, and that doesn’t just turn off like a switch.”
Gwen twisted her head back, eying him defiantly. She didn’t bother reminding him that she had been nearly sick with nerves on that first dig site as well, that she likely never would have fallen into bed with him at all if he hadn’t gone out of his way to make her feel comfortable and lessen the clenching homesickness she’d felt. That initial terror of the unknown had never gone away, following her into adulthood — every new city, new job, each new department and school and field office always felt like entering a black cave where anything might be waiting to swallow her up. Shestillcried in the shower with every terrifying new beginning and knew she would undoubtedly do so again in a week’s time after her move to Cambric Creek.
