She was always lovely, and she always loved to play with strings. You see, she was an only-child growing up in a big, island castle. Only children need to occupy their time, find ways to go unseen until viewing hours arrive and the dust is shaved off with oil.
So, she played with strings. She did not wield it or weave. She did not craft, simply carried it around corners, wrapped it around knucklebones until it made shapes, until it made her think about Fate. She often wondered if she had one until her brother was born.
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See, he was born a monster. Sometimes at night, she felt like a monster too, the lonely kind, but his birth was a relief; it put an end to that. She was not that half-dead, half-mange desecration. Her cravings were simple, and his hunger was a death that made her feel more human. She felt less lonely sitting by the bars of his blasphemy.
And so, the gods could pretend not to look at the ugliness; they rebuilt the castle, upside down this time beneath the island. They gave her brother a monster’s inheritance, and her, a key. They brought her to a room of possible companions: 7 knobby-kneed boys, 7 skinny girls with pretty braids. She had not spent much time with kids her age, but she didn’t think they were supposed to look at her like that, their terror immense as their eyes begged for something.
They were ghosts already, and she did not know how to help them. She tried to smile at them while they were rounded up. She produced the key.
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She learned, of course, why they never came back. There were not many feasts in those years, but when there were, she could not bear to look at the lamb. Her mother was happier than usual, and it scared her. Her smiles left swollen lips, and her father was busy trying to kill his wife with his eyes. Neither saw her.
She woke up with it, shaking, listening for the crunch of joints five kilometers below the bed. By day, she drew the string tight enough around her fingers to make them white as the bone.
She did not talk to her parents, and when she did, she felt sick. Her mother’s eyes were acid, and she understood now, what it meant.
She dreamt of leaving. No suitors came. Men did not come for her. The offerings brought to the castle were not hers to take.
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She watched as long as she could watch until she saw something she could not allow to die. Her string pulled taut around her finger, and she finally felt the zing of Fate. This time, it was all hers to take.
She used her key, and nobody noticed her glide silently through the halls. She spoke to him in shadowed corners, none dark enough to hide his eyes or the bouquet of his cheeks. She stammered through her vows, her theory. She nearly tripped through the kiss too, but he steadied her.
She thought it was love, and for her, it was close enough.
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When the day came, she put her string in his palms and pressed. She curled her bone-white fingers around his tanned ones and whispered something sweet, a kiss on the cheek. He said he would come back for her. He said he would kill the monster that her family’s greed had made.
Her own greed came alive. She ate his words with a brother’s hunger.
She was not worried for herself, then, only him. But she knew she would not be spared. She was only as tall as any of the girls before and only a bit more beautiful. She wondered who would do it: her mother with her poison herbs and scorpions, or her father with a ritual blade. If her lover lost, she would be torn to grisly string by the sin of her brother’s fists.
Her faith was taut. They would not be buried together. She didn’t know if her father would spare a coin from the treasury to place under her tongue. She would not know until they came for her: a lover or a butcher.
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Eventually, before her heartstring could snap, he appeared, golden head showered in her family’s poison blood.
She ignored its steaming and ran.
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They were on a boat, and they were kissing, and the bottom of her dress was singed off from the juice of her dead brother’s body. She was shaking; she was joy. She was a bride in dark robes on a boat full of strangers in a world that was a stranger.
Her fingers longed for her string, but she kept her eyes on the horizon. On the horizon was an island.
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They docked, and he helped her down, and she laughed as sea water puddled her sandals. She laughed as they set up bedrolls on the beach, hers away from the rest of the men. She did not understand modesty too well, or shame. Her mother’s lust made a new legend, and her father was never alone. She certainly had no concerns about the hand on her own, too-good whispers on her neck.
When night came, she was content.
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She wanted to roll over onto her lover, but he insisted on distance, for then, for now, Just one more night, my love, he said, until we have a wedding bed of our own. Only the best for you, he said, still stained with her brother’s blood.
She was lulled to sleep by the waves and relief.
She did not think to strain her ears.
She did not think to listen for human bone anymore.
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The next morning, she stumbled, barefoot and cold back into the labyrinth. This time, it was made of sand grass and undergrowth. This time, she was the sacrifice. The monster was inside of her, and her heart was chewed up every minute she stayed awake.
Something terrible must have happened, she thought, some angry god has killed or captured my love and the others. Poseidon or Athena, someone who misses their sacrifices, she reasoned. She reasoned all day, the first morning, until morning turned to night. The strings of sun snapped, and it was just her and the ghost crabs.
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She reasoned all night.
Something terrible must have happened, she repeated.
And it had.
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On day three, when she had no voice left, and her skin was too red to ignore, she stood. It hurt. The strings of meat in her body protested, and she tripped over every muscle in her quest to move. She searched the campsite again, looking for a clue or message. A tool, a token. Food and water, but there was nothing.
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She spent the fourth searching for fresh water. She missed her mother’s scorpions. The island was empty. She killed the ghost crab with a rock and sucked out the hint of sweet inside its rock of a body. She felt even lonelier. She began to weep, but there was not a drop in her body to spare. Her tears were dry and racking. Her tears were sand.
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On the fifth day, she found a puddle of old rainwater. She crawled to it and shoveled it into her. Now the sand was in her stomach too, and she had a moment of relief, a giddy croak of delight, before her body was racked again. She was retching. She was wretched. She had been a princess once.
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Day six was not a day, just the gnawing certainty of death.
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She wondered if she’d go to Asphodel, and if those endless fields weren’t better, at least, for having people as grey and miserable and ghostlike as her. She laughed, and it was hideous. She’d take ghost-people over ghost crabs.
Or perhaps, she shuddered, the Mourning Fields, for those who wasted their life on an unrequited love. She stung with it, and her memory was slipping.
What had her mother looked like, and when would she die?
Her father must be looking for her, in anger, if nothing else.
She would not mind dying in the labyrinth if she had one last look of Crete on the way down. If it meant protection from the sun that was peeling apart her shoulder skin and cheeks. Or maybe she wouldn’t die at all. Maybe she would take her brother’s place and pick the pretty bones she was thrown. The legend wasn’t over, they were not over.
She saw it now, how she would save them.
She would be their new monster.
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Finally, 7 days later (one for each stringy-haired girl she’d watched walk to the slaughter), when she was about to eat sand and cough up gristle, something bright approached. A mirror to the sun, and then, just a man. Tall, dark-beard and fine purple robes, he held his hand out. She could not take it through the shaking, so he picked her up.
After that, there was no island. After that, there was only bright light and bone-white smiles, wine, lots of wine. After that was a wedding and a real bed. No more minotaurs. No more labyrinths. A shiny womb, a gown made of stars, serving boys and handmaidens. After that, she was never untouched, by hands or the light.
She slept on a cloud, but there was no more string.
There was nothing left to cough up because there were no more lungs.
Just sand and legend and an island full of bones.
No more sandcastle, no more death, no more strings to pull.
No more Ariadne.