Bull God Read online

  “Oh, yes,” Phaidra said, her lips down turned. “Mother did that much. Its name is Asterion.”

  At the mention of her mother, Ariadne cast a glance over her shoulder at the child. The birthing of such a one could not have been easy, even though Pasiphae had borne eight before. “How is the queen?” she asked. “It must have been a hard bearing.”

  “She will bear no more children,” Phaidra said, eyes downcast, “but she will live.”

  A thin finger of ice ran down Ariadne's spine. Could Phaidra have wished for her mother's death? But when her sister's eyes lifted again, there was no malice in them. Ariadne let out the breath she had unconsciously caught.

  Phaidra burst into tears. “It's not fair. If mother were well, she would attend to this 'godling' of hers. I can't!”

  “Oh, don't be ridiculous. From all I've heard from our elder sisters, the queen never cared for any of her babes. Until she married, it was Euryale's task to oversee the maids who attended to the new babes, and then Prokris watched over the younger ones. Now I am Dionysus' priestess and it's your turn.”

  “I can't.” Phaidra shivered and clutched her arms around herself.

  Ariadne went and gave her a hug. “Now, now. I know your monthly courses have begun. You're a woman now. It's only a very ugly baby. You know it did me no harm. Did he act in any way other than any other babe? Think what Poseidon will do if his son does not survive. Do you wish to take the chance if any harm came to Asterion that he would break Crete in pieces as he has done aforetimes?”

  “I'm not a woman, courses or not.” Phaidra wept. “I'm only one little girl, and the maids won't obey me. You saw how they ran away.”

  Ariadne looked around at the cowering women. “If you don't run away, neither will they. If they do you need only tell the queen and she will attend to them. After a few are whipped and broken, the others will be obedient.” What she had said was true enough, but some of those maids had served her and her sister, and she really didn't want them to be whipped and broken. She sighed. “I'm willing to help care for Asterion for a few days longer, but I must give instruction to my priests and priestesses about what to do with the midwinter offerings and do some other business at the shrine. I'll return as soon as I can. Meanwhile, let Asterion sleep. If he wakes, feed him as you saw me do and clean him if needful.”

  She went out quickly, aware of the resentful looks cast at her and the contented snuffling of the child. She hoped that by calling it by name she had made it more of a person. It was horrible to think that Phaidra had run to her in the expectation that she would murder a helpless babe. As she fled down the stair and through the corridors that would take her out of the palace, she reconsidered the matter and by the time she was making her way up Gypsades Hill, she was almost smiling.

  What a fool I am, Ariadne thought, walking a little slower now that she was no longer trying to escape her own horror. As Phaidra said, despite the start of her womanly courses, she was little more than a babe herself, mostly because, being youngest, she had never had much responsibility thrust upon her. Asterion was probably no more real to her than a doll.

  Back in the days before Ariadne understood she would never sit between the sacral horns and judge the bull dancing, she had played at being priestess of the Snake Goddess. She could remember how she, herself, would impale a doll on a toy bull's horn to reenact the horror and excitement of a failure in the dance. She had not hesitated to “sacrifice” a doll. As Asterion grew up in Phaidra's care, he would grow real to her and she would come to love him.

  “No one will 'come' to love him.”

  Ariadne's head jerked up and she gasped with shock, losing her balance and starting so violently that she banged her shoulder against the door frame as she entered her chamber. Dionysus stood just beyond the doorway in worse case than she had ever seen him. His face was lined and pallid and streaked with flaking brownish stains; his tunic was blotched, in places soaked, with what she realized was dried blood. More blood covered his hands, blackened his nails, streaked his upper arms and legs.

  Deliberately blind, Ariadne cried, “Oh, my lord, have you been waiting long for me? I am so sorry—”

  “I haven't been waiting at all,” he said. “I've been with you from when you first saw the bull-headed child. You screamed for help. I came.”

  He was perfectly expressionless, his blue eyes staring at her and at the same time through her. Ariadne braced herself against a shudder. If he saw her fear, he didn't offer comfort; his face might have been carved from rock or painted.

  “I screamed for help?” Ariadne whispered, but she remembered the terrible shock, the nearly mindless pleas that had echoed through her and had wiped out all thought for a few moments. “How can you have been there and I not seen you?” she added.

  “I can be unseen when I wish. You know that. Why you didn't see me isn't important. You're wrong about the child, Ariadne. He will bring death and bitter grief upon your family, infamy upon your people. You're wrong about Poseidon too. He neither knows nor cares about the child. If it dies, he'll think his spell was not perfect and, likely, having achieved the revenge of cuckolding the king and causing the queen to produce a monster, if no further insult is offered him, forget. If he doesn't forget, the blame will fall upon me.”

  Until those last words, Ariadne stood silent, staring. “What do you mean, the blame will fall upon you?” she asked, pale with horror.

  “The child must die, but you may say it was by my prophecy.”

  “No!” Ariadne cried, weeping anew. “It's little and helpless. It struggled so hard to live, crying and crying for hours when no one would help it and any other babe would have given up. Why do you say it will bring death and grief? It's strong, but how can a tiny baby do such harm?”

  His eyes focused on her. “Chosen, don't be such a fool. A babe doesn't stay a babe. It grows. And this will grow into such a monstrous thing—”

  “No, no! It's my fault. I'm not a true seer. I only wished to hold you near me, so I told a tale about the bull with a man's head. This is no bull with a man's head. It's a small baby, a little helpless creature. It's ugly but not harmful.”

  Dionysus shook his head. “Whether you like it or not, you are a true seer. I know because the pain of the Vision departed when you found the meaning for it.”

  “It's not true. I know what I did. I put upon that poor malformed little boy all the horror I felt when I realized that my mother was going to betray my father, prostitute herself to Poseidon, just because you had come to my Call. I will do no more hurt to poor Asterion than I have already done by making everyone fear him as a curse.”

  “Will it be more harm to end his life quickly, without pain or fear, than to let him live to know what he is? To see horror and terror in everyone who looks at him? I'll show you how to put your hand on his body and stop its life. The babe will feel nothing. He'll be at peace.”

  “No! I comforted him. I held him in my arms. I cleaned him and fed him. I? I stop a babe's life? Never!”

  “Listen to me. This ... this thing must die, as the bull from the sea should have died. If you won't do this for the child's sake, you must do it for the good of all the people. He isn't a monster now—only, as you say, ugly—but he will become a monster. King Minos and Queen Pasiphae won't be content to conceal their shame. They'll call him a godling and use him to drive out the worship of those they'll call lesser gods, and they'll bring disaster upon themselves and the people of Crete.”

  Ariadne's eyes widened and her face paled further to a ghastly gray. “You would make me a murderer of an innocent babe just so that your worship would continue unabated?” She backed away a step, and then another step. “Compared with my brother's death on my soul, I don't care if no offering is ever made to you again. I don't even care if no grape ever ripens on Crete again. How would I live, Dionysus? How would I live, having murdered a helpless babe?”

  Dionysus' lips thinned. “Stupid native with your tiny mind! What's a single
life here and there among your teeming masses?” He stared at her, then bellowed, “Look at me! I am near drowned in blood from the feeding of the earth at the turning of the year. Have you always lied to yourself about what I am, about how most vineyards are made fertile? The beast must die, sooner or later. I'm only trying to spare you—and Asterion—pain.” He made an angry gesture and his face filled with a disgusted contempt. “Oh, never mind. I'll do it myself. What's a little more blood?”

  “No!” Ariadne screamed, spreading her arms across the doorway although she knew he could put her aside with one hand. “I will not worship a god who murders babes to enhance his own power! Make me mad! Turn my hand against myself. Call my servants and priests and priestesses. Make them mad so they will tear me apart. That would be better for me than to live knowing my god had betrayed me, that the being I love had taken a helpless, innocent life for his own profit. No, I could never forget my brother's death at your hands. I won't worship or honor a god who sheds kin-blood.”

  Dionysus stared at her in silence for one long moment, and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ariadne gasped with horror and ran back to the palace as fast as she could go. But Dionysus hadn't preceded her there to commit murder. She found Asterion just as she had left him, fast asleep, snorting a little with each breath. She collapsed when she saw that the child was safe, sinking to the floor and bowing her head into her hands in a passion of weeping. She knew what she had done. Dionysus was gone and wouldn't return.

  Because of her misery, she spent more time caring for Asterion than she had intended. He wasn't a difficult child, aside from demanding frequent and huge feedings. When he was full and clean, however, he slept or lay quietly watching his own hands wave aimlessly about with those bulbous eyes. He was much stronger than any babe any of the maids had ever seen, and he grew at an almost inconceivable rate, but otherwise he was very like an ordinary baby.

  Over the moon following his birth, the maids and Phaidra did seem to lose their fear of him and Phaidra even appeared to be growing fond. Pasiphae came once, after the second ten-day, leaning on a maid and still pale from loss of blood. From the shadows to which she had withdrawn, Ariadne watched, but her mother didn't cry out in horror at the bull's head which, free from the compression of birth, was now unmistakable. She was clearly delighted with Asterion's appearance.

  She glanced at Ariadne only once, and her lips curved upward in a smile of triumph. “See that no harm comes to the new god,” she said, lightly touching the protrusions on the baby's head where, to Ariadne's horror, the sharp points of horns were beginning to show. “Soon I will show how those of Knossos have been honored.”

  Her heart so heavy it was a burden within her, Ariadne acknowledged what she had pushed from her mind since Dionysus had told her. Her mother intended to display Asterion to the nobles and, possibly, even the commons of Crete and declare him a god. Would that bring upon the island punishment from the other gods? Had she been wrong to save Asterion's life when the price might be so high? Unconsciously, she picked up the child and he rubbed his muzzle confidingly against her shoulder and made a small chuckling noise.

  Before the turning of the year to spring, Asterion was so large and so strong that he didn't need to be held to be fed. Nor could he be contented with milk. He cried and reached for whatever Ariadne ate and, seeing he already had teeth, she tried him on little pieces of this and that. Nothing she gave him ever caused him any discomfort, but what he took most eagerly was meat.

  Once he could be propped up with cushions and simply handed solid food, Phaidra was willing to feed him and she would even shake a rattle or play at hiding behind her own fingers to see him laugh. Ariadne went back to the shrine. After a ten-day of indecision, on the day before the solstice, she filled her golden bowl with dark wine and Called.

  The surface trembled and then Ariadne saw golden hair and blue eyes looking back. She had almost sobbed with relief when she saw the face was not that of Dionysus.

  “You are the priestess of Knossos,” the man said. “What do you want?”

  “By my lord's order, I Call to remind him that tomorrow is the first day of spring when he comes to the altar.”

  “No god comes to an altar that rejects him.”

  “But the child lives!” Ariadne cried, tears running down her face. “I don't reject him. And what of his promise to bless the blooming grapes with me?”

  “Bless them yourself, as you blessed the vines, you who place conditions on your worship. A god can do no wrong. Once you said that.”

  Tears splashed into the wine. The image shivered and was gone. Ariadne bent over the bowl, weeping.

  On the next day she performed the ritual faultlessly, but though she caught one glimpse of Dionysus in the scrying bowl, the image disappeared almost instantly and no god appeared before his painting behind the altar. Numb with pain and despair, Ariadne removed her clothing and lay down upon the altar. In a few moments, the priestesses, faces long with disappointment, lifted her and clothed her again. Having saluted the painted image of her lord, Ariadne began the closing ritual. It was only then she noticed that no member of her family stood below the dais, in fact, that there were very few people in attendance.

  She felt no great surprise, assuming that Dionysus had sent signs of her fall from favor. She didn't care, except for being alone. There was no one to talk with and laugh with, to demand bread and cheese and olives and wrinkle his nose at the wine. She knelt before his chair, laid her head on the seat, and wept.

  After a time there were no more tears and her knees grew so painful that she shifted her body to sit by the chair rather than kneel. Dimly she was aware of a duty that must be done. That sense of responsibility noted how the light brightened as the day drew on toward noon and then slowly faded. When the light was gone, she rose as stiffly as one of the automata that Daidalos was forever constructing and removed her gold embroidered vest and her stiffened, huge belled skirt, which she replaced with a simple gown.

  With set face and staring eyes, forcing breath into herself against the pain that stabbed her throat and chest, she took the vine hook from the wall and stepped outside. In the courtyard of the shrine she looked up into the star-filled sky. “Help me,” she whispered. “Mother, help me.”

  A gentle warmth flowed around her; a soft, warm breeze stirred her hair. Ariadne touched the vine hook, willed light, and it glowed. Filled with such wonder that her pain became bearable, she left the grounds of the shrine and began to walk and then run through the vineyards in the same pattern she had followed when Dionysus ran beside her.

  Ariadne was aware of the power that flowed into her and that she spent in blessing the forming grapes. She was humbly grateful to the Mother for Her support, but there was nothing in it of hand clasping hand and laughter ringing in her ear. She was glad that she could still bring fruitfulness to the vineyards of Knossos, but the deep joy, the contentment of sharing, of loving and being loved was gone.

  Although the priestesses had left a tray of carefully selected food on the small table near Dionysus' chair, as they had done at the previous equinoxes and at the solstice, and Ariadne couldn't remember when last she had eaten, she only cast a stasis over the tray. It cost her nothing, for she was tingling with power, but it had neither meaning nor purpose for her now. All she wanted was oblivion.

  To her surprise, she found that almost as soon as she lay down in her bed, but she didn't keep it long. Too soon she was dragged back to the leaden realization of what she had lost when Phaidra shook her awake.

  “Come!” Phaidra cried. “You must come! Asterion has gone mad. He is screaming and bellowing and striking at anyone who comes near him.”

  The source of her grief. Ariadne was tempted to turn her back on her sister and tell her she had done all she would for Asterion, but she was so surprised by what Phaidra said—Asterion, except in his demands for food, had been a placid child while she cared for him—that she asked what had caused his
rage.

  “Mother!” Phaidra said succinctly. “She showed him to a great concourse of people, and of course they shouted and cheered and Asterion was frightened out of his wits. Then, instead of bringing him back to his accustomed crib and his accustomed servants, she brought him to a new apartment near her own, with a great, gilded bed in which, big as he is, he was completely lost and noble attendants who had no idea how to calm him or how or what to feed him. And then she just walked away—as she does—leaving him with those fools.”

  “Oh, poor Asterion,” Ariadne sighed, getting out of bed and reaching for a clean gown, which had been left for her. “But why is he still so upset? Don't tell me that mother tried to display him again.”

  “As far as I know,” Phaidra said through stiff lips, “he never stopped crying. The men mother 'honored' with appointments tried to hide that they couldn't calm him. Seemingly they muffled his cries and didn't tell her that Asterion was beyond their management. It was only when they began to fear that he would die that one of them confessed. Then mother had me summoned, but although he didn't strike at me or try to bite me, he wouldn't quiet. So I came for you.”

  Not until they arrived at the palace did Ariadne realize that when Phaidra had said Asterion was screaming and bellowing, she was speaking the literal truth. The exhausted and frustrated shrieks of a child mingled with an enraged kind of hoarse lowing that made Ariadne's breath catch. She didn't permit herself to think about it, but ran into the room, calling out, “Hush, hush, Asterion. I'm here. I'll make everything better.”

  On the words she reached out to the thrashing, wailing child, who gulped, reached for her, and let her catch him up in her arms. Ariadne had to brace her knees against the bed because he was almost too heavy for her to lift, but his arms came around her and he clutched her hard, his wailing diminishing as he pressed his muzzle between her shoulder and her neck.