The Door in the Mountain (21 page)

“Chara. Help me dress.”

“I’m not well.” Chara’s voice shook—a fine touch, though she hadn’t intended it. With heavy-lidded eyes she saw the princess’s face, blurry and close.
Back up
, she thought.
Look away, just for a moment.

“Get up and help me dress!” Ariadne cried. “The procession begins in two hours! And,” she said, in a quieter voice, “I’ve just been to see
him
. I’ve given
him
the things. Though we still could not test his mind-voice. . . .” At last she turned—and Chara rolled onto her side, stabbed her finger deep into her throat and vomited the remnants of the previous night’s crab dinner onto the floor. There was a great deal of it; she’d made sure to eat far more than she wanted.

She squeezed her eyes shut as Ariadne gave a cry of disgust. Chara heard her slippers tap as she retreated. “And I suppose you’re too sick to clean up after yourself, too!
Gods
, but you try my patience. . . .”

“I know,” Chara mumbled, “that you need my help today. . . .” It took her three tries to swallow over the acrid dryness in her throat.

Ariadne snorted. “Do you think I would let you help me with what must be done today? No—but I will probably miss you when I get thirsty.” She made a choking sound. “You stink. This room stinks; I’ll dress in Phaidra’s. Get yourself to the bathing room. I’ll send another slave in to clean this up.”

The moment Ariadne’s footsteps had faded, Chara pushed herself to her feet. Her throat stung and her mouth tasted of sick but she didn’t stop for a cup of water. She ran. At first she ran through empty corridors, but soon she had to take a public one, which was full of palace folk. She slowed to a walk and tried to school her gasping breaths to silence. They were laughing and talking, holding garlands of flowers and shells, gesturing up at the brightening blue of the sky. “A glorious day for the sacrifice,” one woman said as she adjusted a basket of bread on her hip. The man next to her said, “Indeed—the Great Mother will be well pleased,” and the woman replied, “As will the Bull—though I suppose he doesn’t care so much about the weather,” and they both laughed as Chara slipped around them, unnoticed.

The collection of things she’d left in the darkest corner of the grain storeroom was still there. She knelt and picked up the knife. For just a moment she stared at its long, sharp edge. It glinted only a little because the light from the lamp in a far column bracket was so weak. But she wouldn’t need light.

Come on, then
, she thought.
Do this. Think of Asterion and do it.

She’d chosen the sharpest knife in the kitchen, but it had been made for cutting fish and meat, not hair: it took ages to saw off all her curls. She was nearly panting by the time they lay in soft little mounds around her—but she didn’t pause. She put the knife down and dipped both her hands into the bowl. The water was so cool that she shivered as it ran over her face and down her neck and back. The razor’s bronze was cool, too, and she shivered some more.
Stupid girl. Be steady and firm or you’ll cut your own throat.

The sound of the blade scraping over her skull seemed terribly loud at first, and so did the gasping noises she made every time it caught on her skin.
Scriiiitch snick snick scriiitch
—like Icarus’s taloned feet dragging on rock. She shaved the right side of her head, then the left, then the middle, then rinsed everything and bit her lip because the water stung her cuts. She ran her hands over the stubble that was left and found tufts she’d missed—and even though she was aching with the need to be away, she shaved them too. The Athenians’ heads would be smooth and clean, glistening with oil.

When her stubble was as even as she could make it, Chara set the razor down beside the knife. She rose and dusted the hair off her thighs and the soles of her feet. She wound the cloth around her head the way her mother had, when they’d been going out into the olive groves; she tied the bundle of figs and cheese and bread to her belt and slung the waterskin across her chest. After that she took a few very deep breaths, clenching and unclenching her hands, which felt numb.

This time she took only shadowed, empty pathways that no one but slaves used. She passed some: a boy bent double beneath a bolt of scarlet cloth, an old woman with shell garlands strung over both her arms, a younger woman carrying nothing, but nearly running. They all nodded to Chara; the hurrying woman smiled a tired, resigned smile that seemed to say,
Such a life we have, no?

Chara turned and watched her until she vanished around a corner.
This is my home
, she thought,
or one of them, anyway
—
and I’m leaving it, and I may never see it again.
Tears prickled her throat and eyes, and she thought,
No, Freckles—you have no time; just
go
.

The sun was already high in the eastern sky when she walked out onto the road that led up to the peaks. The procession would take this road, very soon. She would not. She made for the clumps of rocks and cypresses that hid the rising slope. Her bare feet were almost as tough and sure as a goat’s on the rough ground; thank the gods she’d so often refused Ariadne’s demands that she wear boots. Chara ran steadily, even when the sun was directly above and there was no shade to cool her.

I’m a deer
, she thought, as her feet rose and fell.
I’m a deer, a hare, a hound. I’m not tired. I’m not afraid.
She stopped a few times to drink from the waterskin and stretch out her tight calf muscles and retie the cloth around her shorn head. She looked back when she stopped, and saw only the empty mountainside falling away behind her, in waves of silver-green olive leaves and burned red earth.

The sun had edged into the west when she stopped for the last time. She craned up at the great metal door and the peak that soared like jagged horns above it. The door seemed bigger and darker than it had those other years. She unwound the cloth from her head and tilted her face into the wind that always blew here—the breath of the Goddess, warm and sweet on blistered skin. She closed her eyes and saw bright orange spots dancing beneath her lids. When she opened them again, she walked straight for the door. Its metal was hot under her palms and brow. She traced her fingers over the lock and the lines of the smaller door. She bent and set her ear to the door-within-a-door and heard a dull, bottomless roaring that was somehow deeper than silence.

“Asterion,” she whispered, “I’m coming.”

The procession arrived at sunset. Chara heard drums and flutes first, then a distant babble of talking, and singing that scattered on the wind. Suddenly the figs she’d eaten felt like stones in her belly. She pressed herself even farther into the shade of the thick, squat rock she’d chosen, which hunkered on a rise to the west of the labyrinth’s mouth. As the procession’s sounds grew clearer, she imagined what she’d see if she dared to look: the brilliant scarlets, blues, and greens of flowers and dresses and the marble statues on their rolling platforms; the iridescent glinting of shells; the stark white of the Athenians’ shifts; the dark brown of their masks and the bull faces stitched into the golden banners.

She crouched, nearly motionless, until the red sky filled with black and stars. Only then did she ease her cramped limbs straight and peer around the rock. She blinked at the torchlight and godfire that streamed and twisted in the Goddess’s breath. People-shadows were moving among the flames, but she wasn’t interested in them—only in the ones who wouldn’t be moving. Her sharpening vision found them swiftly; after all, she knew where to look. Fourteen of them, bound and still, kneeling in two rows before the door. The boys were in the front, the girls behind. If the girls’ arms had been free they would have been able to reach back and touch the metal. Chara wondered briefly whether it would be hot, even at night.

Theseus
, she thought as her eyes sharpened and she made out the shape that had to be him—the one that was straighter and broader-shouldered than the others,
are you ready? Am I?

As in those other years, there were no guards: just two priestesses, standing at either end of the boys’ line, facing the throng. Chara had watched them, last time; she knew that they wouldn’t glance back at the Athenians unless one of them cried out or caused some other sort of disturbance. None of them did, as deeper night fell. They knelt without moving. The shapes of their mask-horns wavered on the ground, caught in the light.

Eventually all the lights dimmed and died. A flute trilled a last, fading line of notes. A baby whimpered and coughed and went quiet.

Chara slipped out of her clothes and into the white shift a priestess had given her. She had told the sister that one of the Athenians had soiled hers. Fear caught her when she was halfway down the slope. She didn’t falter. She kept crouching low, kept angling toward the line of girls.

Sotiria
, she thought.
Sotiria’s all you’re after. Don’t even try to glance at Theseus—look only for her.

She was at the very end, as Chara had known she would be: the priestesses liked to arrange the sacrifices with the smallest at either end and the tallest in the middle.

Chara dropped to her stomach and pulled herself over the stone-nubbled dirt.
Not a deer, a hare, a hound: an invisible snake . . .
She slithered until the girl’s bound, crossed ankles were right in front of her. Chara lifted herself onto her elbows and whispered, “Sotiria.”

The masked head snapped up.

“Shhh,” Chara murmured. “Gently. I’m right here, just like I said I would be. Everything’s fine. The priestesses can’t see or hear us.”

Sotiria nodded. Chara was close enough to see that her lips were cracked and her skin was caked in dust that made her look very pale, in the starlight. Chara tugged the mask off. Sotiria made a hissing sound and squeezed her eyes shut. When they opened, they were black and steady on Chara’s. Her eyebrows looked very thick and dark beneath the polished nakedness of her head.

“Good,” Chara mouthed. She smiled. Sotiria didn’t.

Chara eased the razor out of her belt and moved behind Sotiria. It took only a few minutes to saw through her wrist bonds, which were thickly knotted and slippery with blood. (And long: thank the Goddess, long enough to re-tie, even after they’d been cut.) Sotiria shuddered but made no sound. The ankle bonds were even thicker, and they creaked as Chara was working at them; the girl beside them shifted on her knees and turned.

Chara froze. Sotiria, who’d been flexing her arms in front of her, craned to look over her shoulder, her black eyes even wider than they had been. Chara put her finger to her lips and smiled again, even though her insides were crawling with dread. She watched the masked girl wet her own lips with her tongue, as if she were about to speak. Instead she slumped farther back onto her heels and dropped her chin to her chest. She made a low, keening sound that lasted for the space of one long breath out. No one else stirred.

Chara set the razor to Sotiria’s ankle bonds again, and they parted in a few cuts. She pressed the girl’s shoulders until she sat back, shuddering more violently than before, her eyes gleaming with tears. “There’s no time,” Chara whispered. “You have to bind me right away.”

Sotiria swallowed and nodded. Her hands trembled as she picked up the lengths of rope. She shuffled behind Chara and slipped the rope around her wrists.

“No,” Chara murmured, as soon as Sotiria had made the first loop. “They made their knots tight. You have to make yours tight, too, or they’ll wonder.”

Sotiria pulled, hard. Chara had been expecting this, but she chewed at the inside of her mouth anyway, to keep from gasping.

“Now the mask,” she said.

This time the girl’s hands were firm right away: they slipped the leather over Chara’s stubbly head and pulled it sharply down, almost to her upper lip. Chara tried to suck a breath in through her nose but the mask pressed against both her nostrils.

“Stop,” Sotiria hissed. “Breathe only through your mouth. And don’t be afraid if you feel like you’re not getting enough air: you will.”

Chara drew in another breath, and another. “Thank you,” she said at last. “Now listen: there’s a rock just up that slope—a big one shaped like a tooth. There’s a waterskin there for you, and a bag with some food and a few coins, and my old clothes.”

The silence that followed seemed so long that Chara thought Sotiria had slipped away without speaking, but then she said, “I shouldn’t. I take people’s pain away; I
promised
to do that, in there. I promised them, and they’re my countrymen, my friends. . . .”

Chara shook her head and wriggled her bound hands. “I’ll be more help to them. I will, though I don’t have any godmark at all, let alone one as powerful as yours. I’ll be the only one who knows what they’ll be facing.
Who
they’ll be facing. Trust me with this, Sotiria. And go—quickly.”

After a moment fingers brushed her cheek, below the mask, and then her throbbing hands. “May all my gods and yours protect you,” Sotiria whispered. “Farewell.”