Chapter IV. Labyrinthine #2
Minotauro. The name reverberated in her bones.
It took her back to that world where nothing existed.
What did Quaint have to do with Minotauro?
The words were tangled in her head: Erik, Quaint, Minotauro, herself.
Rafaela claimed he had killed Minotauro, and Ariadne knew that she had to leave the club now.
Had Quaint helped Erik save her? He doesn’t know who I am, she thought, shocked by the realization. He doesn’t know Erik took me with him.
“Keep your petty fights to yourself,” said Ariadne, her throat going dry. “Just tell me where Erik is, and we’re done with this conversation.”
Rafaela blanched. “I don’t know where— Why would I know?!”
Ariadne took one of the letters from her purse and pushed it against Rafaela’s breastbone.
“Skip the bullshit. Where is Erik?”
“I don’t know.” Rafaela held her belly with her two hands, and Ariadne grasped her wrist before she could scurry away. “I have nothing to do with this.”
“It’s a high-risk pregnancy,” insisted Ariadne. “You need help.”
“I have to go, right now. I have to go!”
Ariadne squeezed her wrist harder, knowing it was nothing compared to a gul’s strength.
“You need a doctor, Rafaela.”
Before she could continue, Rafaela slapped her arm away and fled in the same direction her husband had gone. Quaint was already descending the stairs and calling her name, but Rafaela growled instinctively, more animal than human.
I must look like hell. The thought felt distant, her mind drifting away. Ariadne must have, considering the look of concern in Quaint’s face, but she couldn’t move or speak. Instead, she just stared at the place those people had been, hearing his steps coming closer.
“Ariadne?”
She was not there.
Ariadne was not even her name.
In the yellow house, she was not a person, just a thing to be used.
Minotauro always told her she was buying her time—each year that passed, the reason changed.
At seven, because her seriousness intrigued him.
He hated crying, and she didn’t cry, not even once.
At eight, he claimed she was the prettiest, and that all the other children paled in comparison.
At nine, after she hid in the basement, hoping to escape when he left, he decided she was too smart for her own good.
I’m not a cruel man, Minotauro had said, dragging her by the neck up the stairs.
Her feet rattled against each step. To show you how good I can be, I’ll give you three chances, and if you manage to find your way out of here, I won’t even stop you if you win.
At ten, she planned attempt number one. She knew he could smell her if she hid, so she waited until he visited one of the other kids, and left through the window of his bedroom.
No noise, she told herself, climbing down the cat’s claw vines.
No noise. She sprained her ankle when she fell on the grass, but it didn’t matter, because she was almost out of there.
If she ran, if she could run … She swallowed the pain, but made it only a few houses away, where a neighbor kindly brought her back to the house to treat the calcaneal fracture she’d suffered during the fall.
At eleven came attempt number two. She had been reading his books, searching through the medication he kept in the surgery room, reading all the leaflets of all the boxes.
The skin on her arms had bruises from fangs scattered all over it, and she made a shallow cut near one of them, filling a single cup with blood.
And a bit of Rohypnol, she told herself, taking the cup to bed.
Don’t bite me, she purred, smiling sweetly when the blood stained his lips, kissing his sturdy neck.
I’m in a lot of pain today, please, please.
That time, she almost made it. She lay by his side until he was fully unconscious, took money from his wallet, and left through the front door.
The problem, she realized, was that she didn’t know where she was.
She didn’t know the streets, the neighborhoods, or where a bus could take her.
She didn’t know how to explain what Minotauro was.
She couldn’t even recall where she’d lived before.
The last thing she remembered was staying the whole day in a park, watching as people went by.
Then, she got up and returned from where she came.
At twelve, one last failure. By that point, she had lost all hope that he would tire of her.
All the other children were disposed of after a year or two, and she had expected him to do the same when her body started to change.
It had been changing for the past few years, first subtly, then faster and faster.
Here, he cooed every day, taking a tiny pill from a pink blister pack and caressing her belly.
Pregnancies, said Minotauro, were a risky business at her age.
He knew of a few cases of men who had impregnated human females, and neither mother nor child lived much after it.
The babies could not eat by themselves, and only a few women carried their pregnancies to term.
Maybe in the future, he had said, but I don’t want you to die, not now, not now.
She waited for the perfect day. For months, she had been paying attention to his conversations to learn more about the city.
She still didn’t know how to ask for help, but she had been saving the money she took discreetly from his clothes, and her bag included a few clothes and extra food.
Never again, she told herself, walking out of the yellow house.
And what are you doing here? an amused voice asked behind her back.
The street had been empty a second before, but there was a man there, a man with a top hat.
She tried to run to the other side as fast as she could, but when she looked up, he was already in front of her eyes.
He grabbed her by the neck to drag her back.
To me, you’re just a mouse struggling in a trap.
The memories were dissolved by someone’s warmth.
Ariadne looked to her side. Quaint held her hand, his skin hot and real, his long fingers covering hers.
Follow the thread, Erik had reminded her, and her mind reorganized itself, like a store returning every product to its respective shelf.
They were not in the yellow house. They were inside a taxi, going to a white hotel.
Dami?o and Minotauro were gone, and so were the weeping children she refused to think of.
She was not a little girl, she was a woman, and the man by her side was Quaint.
The taxi stopped in front of the entrance.
“Can you get up?” Quaint asked gently. Ariadne blinked, recognizing his face: his straight black hair, his tan skin, his round glasses, the curve of his nose, his lips, his chin.
“My legs are weak,” she admitted, barely recognizing her own voice. Ariadne couldn’t remember what had happened after she talked to Rafaela, and could only feel grateful for his patience so far. “Sorry.”
“I’m worried about you. Can we talk now?”
“In the room.”
Quaint and Ariadne sat across from each other in the living room of the suite, one on each sofa.
He probably expected an explanation and a report of her encounter with Rafaela.
She, on the other hand, was slowly discerning the shape of her flats, the black pantyhose covering her legs, the tulip skirt, the cardigan, the blouse.
“If anything happened when I was upstairs…”
“Something happened, I guess.” Ariadne looked at Erik’s calligraphy in one of the journals.
Q. called me cruel, read an entry. He thinks death is the most merciful gift those children could receive, a swift, revering, painless death.
Maybe he’s right. But when I saw her, stable, responsive, the last one remaining in a mass grave, I knew I had to give her a chance.
A chance to look back, with autonomy, and decide if life is worth living, after all.
A question I still don’t know how to answer, myself.
That’s why I didn’t tell him I took her with me.
“I’m not sure what to do with it because it also involves you. ”
“I don’t know what Rafaela told you, but that woman’s husband was involved with a very dangerous gul.”
“Minotauro?”
Quaint faced the closed window. The sky was dark, and a streetlight flickered outside. Soon, there would be the high-pitched whistle announcing curfew, and not even the distant chatter from nearby restaurants would be heard anymore.
“What did she say about him?”
“Rafaela? Nothing interesting.” Ariadne wanted to look firm, serious, indifferent, but her ungrateful body betrayed her, it always did. “What do you have to say?”
Quaint took an embellished cigarette case from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
The cigarette hung from his incisors, and he flicked open a silver lighter with his thumb.
“I should have stopped smoking years ago,” muttered Quaint, more to himself than to her.
He dragged on the cigarette, his chest puffing under the shirt.
“He was a member of Cabaré until—well, until his death. We called him Minotauro because of his looks. Massive man, bull-like. Used to work as a surgeon in the past.”
“A surgeon.”
“Another doctor, yes. He would spend a decade or so working in one city, then move to another before his employers could suspect anything. Sometimes, he also treated guls.”
“Were you friends?”
“No, I never trusted him,” said Quaint. “There was something about Minotauro that made my skin crawl. The way he spoke about others, about humans in particular … In this, Erik and I agreed.”
“The others didn’t?”