Page 88 of The Hymn to Dionysus

There were handprints on my tunic, made in dark honey. They weren’t right. The fingers were fusing, maybe into something like hooves, but I thought maybe it was talons. I eased along the wall, not thinking about it, watching the bull man. I had to strangle down a yell when he jumped to snap at a bat, and what I’d thought was just the hump of his bull-spine snapped open into wings. The pinions brushed me, massive things, as long as my arms. I stared. What else was he? Was he going to turn out to be like the bats too, did he even need to see me to find me in the maze, or could he just shriek and coo and find the shape of me in the sound?

I could only see him clearly in flashes, and only then by the draining moonlight. I watched, willing him to turn away just a few degrees more to take me out of his peripheral vision, which had to be restricted under the mask. He was covered in weeds and—no, they were flowers, he had taken vines and made a kind of cloak from them, some old and wilted, some new. Under that, he was still wearing ordinary clothes, honey-grimy now, with a ribbon of what was still quite clearly Hatti embroidery around the hem. In places it winked with silver thread.

Only two people in Thebes could wear Hatti embroidery.

He turned just far enough, and I could have run then; only, I couldn’t. The last of the bats flapped away.

“Pentheus,” I tried, very quiet, to keep the echoes from hurling it everywhere and startling him.

The bull thing paused, and twitched. It huffed to find that I was awake, then took me by the shoulders and put me back where it had left me to start with, on the cloak on the ground, like I was a little clockwork doll that had wandered off. He had hands, still, but they were something like hooves and claws too.

Be Persephone. Always negotiate.

“Hello again. What have you stolen me for, hey? I’m ugly. You didn’t want Dionysus?”

The bull huffed twice, and under it, as though the air were passing through some extra chamber, there was a soft, birdish twitter; I thought it might be a kind of laugh. Gods, so he was human enough, even now, to understand. Very gently, one massive hoof-claw-hand patted me on the head. Don’t be silly. You stay there. It was sticky from old honey, and strands of my hair stuck and pulled. It was absolutely not the worst thing that ever happened to me, but I’d never more powerfully wanted to yell and run away.

“Thank you, for this,” I said about the cloak he had put me on. It was much cleaner than he was.

Behind the hollow eyes of the mask, serene bull eyes watched me.

“Were you lonely?”

Thump. He had sat down, more like an animal than a person, his spine wrong for sitting upright now. He made a very, very deep sound, a kind of croon, with a whicker of birdsong behind it; it wasn’t a noise anything in the world had made before.

Those enormous wings were folded up now. And there was a tail, a lot longer and stronger than a bull tail. More like a lion. The mask—what was it? I was sure it had been a bull when I saw it first, but it had feathers on it now, and sharp, sharp teeth. I couldn’t see. There was hardly any light.

“I wonder,” I whispered, “if I could take this mask off you. They’re dangerous. There’s a god here, and . . . we’re all turning into our masks.”

He only blinked at me. He let me take the mask and set it aside.

In the dark with only the moonlight to see by, I couldn’t make out much of what was underneath, except fur and eyes that were too golden to be human. I forced myself to look, because I had a feeling that if I flinched, the spell would break, but I let my eyes blur so I wouldn’t see, because if I saw I’d never unsee. I could cheerfully look at someone with all their insides on the outside, and I’d watched witches dissect hearts, that was all normal, but this—I didn’t want to dream about this.

The heavy head went down in my lap, which pinned me, and there was a clack of teeth meeting. I rubbed the patch of fur between the horns, trying to sing the hymn to Ares in my head, because it was so slow, and it made you breathe. A minute, five, ten. Be a marvel, just slice out the hour. If he was like the others, he would change back into a boy soon. Ares, golden-helmed, bronze-clad . . .

There was less weight than before. At first, the tip of the nearer horn had been right by my eye, but it was smaller. He was changing. It was about the speed the flowers round his neck were wilting.

Steps, from the maze. Light.

“Here,” I whispered, which as much noise as I dared to make. Pentheus wasn’t asleep, just resting, liking having some company. “It’s the prince.”

Dionysus came around the last turn with a lamp. My heart tried to lunge right out of my chest. “Oh, Phaidros,” he breathed. “Are you hurt?”

“No. No, it was like—he wanted a doll. I don’t know.”

He knelt down next to us. Pentheus stirred and rumbled a deep sound at us. Maybe I was impatient, but I didn’t think he was changing any more, or not nearly as quickly. Dionysus touched the back of his head and it seemed to settle him.

“What—has happened?” Dionysus whispered, taking in the horns, the wings, the tail—the teeth. “The mask was a bull.”

The tail lashed playfully over his throat.

“He’s not changing any more,” I said, sure now, and worried, because my idea had been to walk out with him once he was himself again.

“Masks go on the inside too,” Dionysus murmured. “Where is it? The mask, do you . . .”

I gave it to him.

Dionysus flinched when he saw it. As though he didn’t want to see, he tilted it to the light of his lamp, and what went over his face was about the same as what went over mine if I’d just seen a spider skating around the rim of a wine cup.