she said.
“Because I want to see if you can do it,” he said simply. He released her chin and began walking back into the room. “Bon voyage,” he said over his shoulder.
No one else at the palace seemed to know about the Cretan Bull, or if they did, they weren’t telling Klea anything. The people didn’t seem to know much about Crete in general, but Klea got the impression that there was something very strange going on over there, something people didn’t approve of and didn’t like to talk about. She didn’t have any idea how she’d capture a crazed, enormous bull, or whether she even could. It was still trapped in that courtyard with the three-foot walls, she supposed, if it wasn’t dead. She had even less of an idea of how she’d get the thing back to Rhodes, and that was all she worried about on the voyage over via trading vessel.
If the bull could destroy this city , she thought, standing on the deck, smelling the Mediterranean sea air , it could tear this boat in half .
At the palace in Crete she was shown to very nice guest quarters—for once, King Eurystheus had written in advance and notified Minos—and the servant who showed her to them told her all about the labyrinth.
“Closed, of course,” he said. “Terribly unpleasant memories. The queen goes in there, but she’s the only one permitted. She visits the grave, naturally.”
“The grave of the Minotaur?”
The man nodded. “You can visit the entrance if you’d like,” he said, and gave her directions.
Klea went down and visited after she had a light dinner. Her audience with the king and queen was the next day. She figured the best plan right now was to just ask nicely for the bull, and come up with a backup plan if they said no. What would happen if she couldn’t complete a task? Was she stuck at the palace with King Eurystheus forever?
A tiny voice in the back of her head asked: would that be so bad?
The entrance to the labyrinth didn’t have any indication that no one was allowed inside. There was no door, no chain, not even a string blocking it off. Klea thought she’d come to the wrong place at first, but it was exactly where the man had said it would be, exactly how he had described it: two huge columns, arching up, covered in vines, stones just starting to crumble. In the declining sunlight, it looked like it could be haunted. With no one else there to tell her not to, Klea stepped inside and went around the first corner, forgetting what she was doing: getting lost in a maze that had killed dozens of people.
She realized it before long, when she stopped feeling the thrill of being where she shouldn’t have been, but it was too late. Klea tried to backtrack but the tall stone halls that opened onto the night sky seemed to turn back onto themselves. Nothing ever looked familiar, but every wall looked like every other wall, with no way for her to differentiate between them. She was lost in the labyrinth.
This is how they sacrificed children , she thought. The only thing she could do was keep going, walking down every path and doubling back, wondering if she’d been there before.
After what felt like hours, Klea turned a corner onto something different, a torchlit scene, shadows flickering against the walls. In the middle, a big marble plinth, pure white. Strangely dressed people gathered around it in odd configurations, few of them moving. One woman, short and blond, wearing what looked like a bronze corset and holding a riding crop, strode from person to person, bullwhip in hand. Klea stepped into the shadows at the edge of the space and watched, slowly creeping toward the firelit marble plinth.
“Lick my feet,” the blonde woman said. Klea took another step and then she could see who the woman was talking to: a man on hands and knees, in front of the marble monument, the first of three men on their hands and knees. He was naked. They were all naked.
Dutifully, the man stretched his tongue out and licked the
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