Ariadne Untold

Everything changed when my little brother, Asterion, was born.

I doubt that you recognise the name. That's understandable. In the years that followed, most people forgot that my brother had a name at all.

It's more likely that you know him as the Bull of Crete? No? The Minotaur.

Oh, stop screaming. Get back here; there's nowhere for you to run to. It's all right; all that happened a long time ago.

Now, where was I?

My father, Minos, was a powerful king, even without being the demigod son of Zeus. Powerful enough to strike down those who opposed him. Powerful enough to think that he could withstand the fallout of insulting a god.

Perhaps he was, for Poseidon did not retaliated against my father directly. My father could have withstood an earthquake, or trade ships unable to land in our harbour due to storms. He might even have survived direct attacks, trusting his divine father's potential wrath to limit the destruction.

But the public ridicule that followed his wife, my mother, Pasiphae, falling in love with a bull? Loudly and publically declaring her desire to mate with it? Standing cuckold to a son who was all too clearly the offspring of such a union?

That was too much.

The father I loved died that day, and the monster who replaced him was born.

My father did not order Asterion killed, but he did not spare him out of kindness. He dared not harm my mother, the daughter of Helios and Perse, an Oceanid (perhaps he felt that he had dared Poseidon's anger enough for one lifetime), but once her lustful madness had faded, he was happy to watch her suffer the humiliation that came in it's wake. No wet-nurse would go near Asterion for any amount of gold, so my mother, Queen and Sorceress more near-divine than her husband, was required to nurse him herself.

Father stopped laughing when Mother cursed him to emit serpents and scorpions, after the first time he tried to flaunt a mistres before her.

Those ladies who had refused to mock my mother for Poseidon's curse suddenly found their husbands became very faithful and attentive. A welcome change, even if it was a change born out of fear. Tragedy can have fortunate outcomes, on occasion.

For a time, life was tense but peaceful, and I began to think that things would become better.

Then Asterion began to eat solids, and we discovered his taste for human flesh.

You know what came next, and it is not a time that I like to remember. The war against Athens ended with them being forced to send tribute in the form of the best and brightest of their children, sent into the Labyrinth to die. My brother, as much as I had loved him, knew no reason higher than animal instinct; hunger and territory and rage and lust.

I was barely a child myself when the first tribute was sent, and not yet considered an adult at the second. There was nothing I could do for those unfortunates. Better them, than the revolt that would come if my father was forced to sacrifice his own people.

At the time of the third tribute, lead by Theseus, the newly-discovered Prince of Athens, I could do something.

Daedalus had a soft spot for intelligent young women, but it was not he who crafted the thread that guided Theseus through the Labyrinth.

My father had him watched far too closely for such a trick to succeed. Daedalus was confident, even arrogant, in his abilities. My father was paranoid that someone would try to use Asterion against him, and Daedalus, who resented being forced to stay on Crete, was the prime suspect.

No, I spun that thread myself, for as Penelope later proved, no one pays heed to a woman spinning or weaving, and waited for a tribute who would be clever and mighty enough to survive to use it.

You know the next part, too, and I am no longer so fond of Theseus that I am willing to glorify his actions.

He lived, my brother died, and he and his fellow tributes fled back to Athens befor my father discovered their actions. My younger sister and I fled with them, as part of my bargain with Theseus. Sons were valuable, and my brothers had played no part in Asterion's death. Me... well, suffice to say that I wished to be as far from my father's reach as possible.

I should have known better than to let my guard down. Theseus had only just freed Athens from the control of my maternal cousin, Medea. Little wonder he hesitated to bring her kinswoman home with him, when I had just proven the lengths I was willing to go to.

Dionysus, my beloved, likes to claim that he saw me abandoned and fell in love with my beauty. It is a more acceptable truth than saying that he was impressed with my expansive vocabulary, swearing like a sailor to turn the air blue.

After all I had done, to be abandoned here while Theseus sailed off merrily with my sister, Phaedra? The sister who had been happy to continue as usual and only accompanied us because I did not wish Phaedra left behind to court our father's wrath alone? I felt myself entitled to a bit of foul temper.

Dionysus courted me for some time, allowing me to set the pace of our relationship. After so long living in fear of the men around me, I needed that, and it made me love him all the more.

In the end, the tragedies of my life led me to a better future.

If you enjoyed this re-telling, go check out Ariadne and the Minotaur