I have stalked these rough-hewn halls of stone for most of my life. I am not always alone, but my guests don’t last long here — they’re just visitors, passing through before I usher them into dusky Hades. We have our rituals, them and I. Some of them try to kill me (usually tall, broad-shouldered men with sharp jawlines). They draw spears or swords of bright metal that hurts my eyes; they shout for aid from the heavens; they call me a “foul beast” or an “abomination”. I don’t think they realize that I can understand their insults. The one thing they all have in common is that they die screaming. I tear their limbs off one by one, in no particular order. This feels just. I give them the kind of deaths they are asking for.
The others — the women, the children, the men who do not fight back — killing them never feels like justice. They cry for mercy. They run from me until their legs collapse from exhaustion. As if there is anywhere to hide, when I know every twist of the maze as well as I know my own monstrous body. They pray to gods who ignore them. They sometimes hug my hairy knees and spill their tears on my cloven feet, a desperate appeal to any shred of humanity left in me. They find almost none. I have to eat, after all; no one gets a choice in that. I do give them the small mercy of a swift end. I can crush a skull in the palm of my hand as quickly as a man can crush an olive.
My days pass like this, rarely changing. The hot Greek sun passes slowly overhead, marking the progression of hours as the shadows of the stone walls lengthen and shrink. At midday I can lie in my den in the central chamber of the maze and it shines directly down on me. When there is no one to kill I rest there, listening to the distant sound of an ocean I have never seen outside of my dreams.
I also fill those quiet hours by working with the bones. In the early days I would just let the piles grow, until the corners of my den were stacked high with sun-bleached skulls. Over time I have learned to carve and shape them. With the right cuts, bones will slot together and form a sturdy joint. I often wonder whether I would have made a good smithy’s apprentice if I had been born under a kinder star. There is a simple pleasure in the work of creation that I do not find anywhere else. Sometimes I even forget time, and the fading twilight forces me to put down my makeshift tools.
I have many sculptures in my den, but I am most proud of the man with wings. The feathers are hundreds of finger-bones, smashed flat and smooth beneath my thumb and forefinger. His body is beautifully shaped, with the curved lobes of skulls acting as muscles. He has no head yet: I do not know whose face would fit such a body. I think it should be my own, but my only mirror is the terror on the faces of the humans who look at me. I want to carve a basin and fill it with blood so that I can see my reflection in it. It will be a long project. I don’t know how much blood I will need.
***
When you arrive, I can feel that something is different. Usually when a human passes through the one-way mechanism that brings them into Daedalus’s creation, I can hear their hurried footfalls on the stone almost immediately. This time, after the crashing and whirring of gears and hatches is done, I hear nothing. I listen closely for a long time, pressing my ear to the hot ground. At first I wonder if you are simply paralyzed with terror, unable to move. Or perhaps dead already.
I make my way over to the entrance, taking the short route that passes through the northeast quadrant. The hatch in the wall is sealed, and the hall is empty. I can tell from the way the dust lies that someone came through here recently, but there are no tracks that I can see leading deeper into the maze.
I only hear you when I decide to listen at the wall instead of the ground. You move so softly against it, so cautiously, but I know the baseline silence of this stone so well that even your furtive sliding registers. The thick bull’s heart that beats in my chest quickens. I can feel the blood pounding behind my eyes. You are something new.
We stalk each other for a long time before we see each other. Days creeping through the maze. I curse the loud sound of my hooves against the stone — I have never needed to be quiet before. The humans would always make an effort: a polished shield to blind me, a trap laid at a critical junction, a ball of string to find their way, a blade coated in a heinous venom. But none of it ever mattered. I was always hunting them. Now I can feel you hunting me back.
I don’t think that I have ever felt fear. Perhaps it is this rushing sensation I feel from the tips of my horns to the end of my tail. This complete awareness of every hair on my body. At some point I realize you have the upper hand. You don’t seem to tire, and you’re so good at hiding. My knowledge of the maze is useless when you slide through it so quickly, always a twist or two ahead of me.
You strike when a good predator should; while I’m resting and unaware. I’m half-sleeping in a secluded dead end near the central chamber, trying to regain the energy you’ve made me waste. My life is saved only by animal reflex. When you come hurtling talons-first out of the darkness, my eyes open without thinking and I am already throwing my body to the floor. You miss my soft neck by inches. I don’t think you expected me to be so fast.
I see you silhouetted against the stars for a moment, black writhing tendrils around a small body. Then you’re on me, and something sharp is penetrating the thick sinew of my chest that has repelled so many blades. I blindly tear into your slimy skin and throw you off of me. I can hear something crunch when you hit the wall. You bolt back into the darkness as quickly as you came, quiet as a whisper. I notice that I’m roaring only when you’re gone; a deep, guttural bellow that shakes the stone. Loud enough that they can hear it on Olympus. It echoes through the maze for a long time after I stop.
Your blood is mixed with mine on the floor. I find a piece of you that I tore off, a long, slender arm that continues to squirm as if it’s still trying to find its way back to you. I am hungry, so I eat it. You are so soft on my tongue. You taste like the concentrated brine of the sea breeze that I can smell on windy days. You taste like dark caves by the seashore. Sweetness, salt, depth.
***
When the sun comes up, I return to my den to lick the deep gashes that you left in my chest. I can feel the heat of your poison spreading through me with each heartbeat. It’s strong. Feels like it would kill a man in minutes. For my cursed body, it’s only a few hours of discomfort and weakness. I eat some of the reserves of liver jerky that I keep on a drying rack in the corner.
I allow myself to heal, watching the entrances all the while. I know you must be out there somewhere, nursing your wounds too. I decide to stop hunting you. You have an advantage in the tight corridors. All paths through the labyrinth lead here eventually. You will have to come to me, and there’s no way to surprise me in this open space. I have enough food to outlast you. Time is on my side.
You show up a couple days later, scuttling tentatively through the northern corridor entrance. I get a better look at you in the sunlight. You have smooth, black skin and an ovoid body with twelve slender arms sprouting from all sides. I can see a stump where I tore off the thirteenth. There is a soft clicking sound as you walk whenever your claws touch the floor. You aren’t trying to hide anymore. At your center is a cavern of teeth that hisses and snaps shut — more like a valve than a mouth. Your eyes are arranged in a ring, one between each of your arms. You are like nothing I’ve ever imagined.
You look weak. The right half of your body is sagging. One of the eyes near the stump is swollen. You are desperate. I can hear it in the way the breath comes ragged through your mouth-valve. You are prey and I am predator again. I should be killing you and eating you. Instead I just watch you carefully as you retreat into a corner of the chamber, behind some bones that I haven’t sorted yet.
I remember my first night in the labyrinth. The long route I took to find the central chamber after hours of walking. The way my hooves hurt after contact with the rough stone. Curling up in the corner with nothing to guard against the cold. The raw panic of a trapped animal keeping me awake until sunrise. The way it felt, weeks later, when I finally accepted that there was no exit. No way out.
I bring you some pieces of meat from my supply. You hiss as I get close, but you don’t run. I throw them to you from a body’s length away — I have no interest in feeling your claws again if I can help it. The meat disappears almost immediately. A blur of arms and teeth. I bring you some more. Then some of the precious blood I was saving in an earthenware jug that I found on one of the humans’ bodies.
You eventually collapse, still pressed into the corner. Your eyes close. Your breathing slows. I watch your body at rest for a long time. It’s been so long since I’ve seen something new. I drink in the strange angles of your arms, the way you fold them around yourself like some kind of protective cage while you sleep. I should be on edge, but something about watching you seems to soothe me. I let myself doze off. I dream of the ocean again, a field of blue stretching in all directions with no walls to mark the edges of the space.
The sound of the one-way hatch opening in the distance wakes both of us. The rest and food seem to have worked wonders on you; I notice that the severed arm is already starting to grow back. You’re up and scuttling out into the maze almost immediately. It’s not long before I hear a scream, quickly cut short. You work efficiently.
It’s less than an hour later when you make it back to the central chamber, dragging a bloody, armored torso behind you. You slide it across the floor at me and hiss softly, retreating back to what I’m already thinking of as your corner. I eat the torso. You saved me the softest, meatiest part. I am grateful, but I don’t know how to show it yet.
***
We live like that for some time, like armies camped on either side of a siege wall that could be breached any day. You keep to your area of the chamber. You like to cover yourself in bones and keepsakes from the human bodies during the day. I think the sun hurts your skin. We watch each other warily. You never sleep with all of your eyes closed. When the humans come, one of us kills them and brings back the meat. We take turns. An unspoken give and take that starts to feel more and more like a shared ritual.
One night, the moon is high and full above the maze. The den is covered in muted silver. You are standing rigid near the sculpture of the winged man; your whole body is raised as high as you can, as if you’re trying to get closer to the sky. A sound is coming out of you. A high keening. A repeated pattern like a song. I do not need to know what it means to know you are mourning. Before the maze was the only place I could truly remember, I used to mourn on nights like these.
I cross the invisible border that separates us slowly, my hands out and flat to show that I mean you no harm. I try to shrink my shoulders to seem less threatening. Almost impossible in a body like this, but I try. You flinch away at first, but you only back up a few steps. You let me close the distance. I reach for you slowly, deliberately. I want to know what it feels like to touch another creature without violence. You must want to know too, since you let my hand come to a rest on one of your arms. Your flesh is so cool and soft. It gives way gently under my callused fingers. You slowly twist your arm around my hand. A sound like a soft sigh comes out of your body.
I keep touching you, and you keep letting me. I wrap you in my bulk. I don’t know how to speak to you, but I know how to say this. I know how to say that you aren’t alone. I can feel your breathing slowing down as you press against my fur. For the first time, I realize that my terrible size can have a purpose that is soft and delicate and loving. You are humming gently. Your arms encircle my chest and back until you’re clinging tightly to me. We stay locked together until sunrise, swaying back and forth slowly. It’s a cold night, but we stay warm.
***
We stalk these halls of rough-hewn stone, never alone. I teach you to carve; soon you’re better at it than I am, with your dextrous arms and sharp claws. You teach me your night-songs, and how to walk softly.
We have been watching the hatch. When it opens to let someone through, the mechanism is visible for a moment. Your sharp eyes can pick out the details in the darkness. Our bone replicas of the machine are getting more and more accurate. We point eagerly at the pieces that look the weakest, the gears that look most essential. The sculpture of the winged man stays in the corner, unfinished. We strive towards greater heights now. Somewhere on the coast, a small cave waits for us. It’s so remote that even the most intrepid explorer would never find it. It smells like the wild ocean there, and the sound of the crashing waves will lull you to sleep if you let it.
Scratch Space 