Read Online The Door in the Mountain by Caitlin Sweet - Free Book Online

this small island, Yantha, but not in the wider world. I’m sure of it.”
    “Well, handsomer than
him
, anyway.” Diantha’s eyes were sharp again, turned to where the cliffside bent to form the western arm of the harbour. Icarus was there, away from the throng, perched on a boulder that looked as if it would tumble into the sea if he moved.
    “An ugly bird
and
an ugly boy,” Ariadne said. “And I don’t think he’ll ever fly.”
    “Better to have no mark at all than a blighted one.”
    Now, now
, Ariadne told herself as a flush swept up her neck and into her cheeks,
she only meant to reassure you
—but Diantha’s words were as relentless and pounding as the waves Deucalion and even Glaucus had made with
their
marks.
    “He doesn’t care that you don’t have a mark,” Diantha said. “Just look—he can’t take his eyes off you—I can see it from here.”
    Ariadne snorted and spun away from the sea and the speck of ship and the bird-boy’s unblinking eyes. “Let’s go,” she said—only there were too many people between her and the way back to the summer palace: people clustering around Minos and Pasiphae, who smiled and talked to them; people smiling at Ariadne, and whispering to each other behind their hands; that insufferable Chara, standing with her hand in Pherenike’s, grinning at Asterion when he made a funny, twisted-up face at her.
I wish they’d all just make room
, Ariadne thought. And then they did—but not for her.
    Asterion took a step. Right away there was a change: heads turned and eyes widened and hands went up in the sign of the horns. Alkaios, who’d been bobbing about just above the ground, came suddenly and firmly back down. A girl weaving rainbow light between her fingers; a man catching spray and making it into flower shapes: they all stopped showing off their godmarks as soon as Asterion took a step toward them.
    He smiled, which made the scar on his cheek pucker even more. Behind him, Pasiphae smiled, too. Diantha murmured, “Those scars should make him ugly like Icarus but they don’t. . . .”
    “They do!” said Ariadne in a rush. “He’s burned and he’s a runt and if he didn’t have such a wondrous mark he’d be nothing to anyone.” The words had begun to tremble, so she stopped speaking—but it was too late: Diantha was staring at her with her mouth wide open.
    “Princess! He has been god-favoured more than anyone else—how could you speak like that about him?”
    Ariadne said, quickly and coolly, “I am very disappointed that you believed me. Perhaps I won’t bring you here next summer.”
    Diantha said again, “Princess!”—but Ariadne was already walking away from her, along the path Asterion had made.
    I hate my life. I hate my brothers and the people who think they’re my friends. I hate this island. I can’t sail away from it like Androgeus did, and I hate that too.
    Her hatred
only grew hotter as the months went on. Androgeus won every competition; Androgeus used his godmark to tame a murderous boar; Androgeus was the toast of Athens. Bull-Asterion presided over a rite and the next day it rained for the first time since Androgeus’s departure and there was rejoicing throughout the countryside. Diantha no longer fawned and followed because she had taken Karpos as her lover—her lover, when Ariadne hadn’t yet had any opportunity to take one of her own! Hatred, rushing in her veins instead of blood
—
until one rainy autumn evening, when another message came from Athens.
    Oh no
, Ariadne thought as the messenger walked around the hearth to stand before her father.
Androgeus can’t have won any more competitions. Surely there aren’t any more
to
win.
    But this messenger wasn’t smiling, as the others had. “Minos King,” he said in a low, breathless voice.
    The royal household had been eating when the messenger had come. Now their spoons and knives clanked against metal plates or clattered against wood. (The long trestle tables had