Chapter V. A Mouse in a Trap #3
And, of course, there were the looks. Quick glances and unwavering stares, gawking at her body like they had never seen anything like it—anything like her.
Ariadne pressed her lips together, wanting to hide behind Quaint’s wide back, but she stared back.
When she did, she realized there was no hunger in the countless eyes around her, but fear, discomfort, alarm.
Some guls retreated when she walked near them, but the looks continued no matter where she went.
Minotauro, someone said. He ate her, but she survived …
“A bunch of blabbermouths, us guls,” Augusto commented disdainfully by her side. “Have you told anyone else? News travels fast around here.”
“I haven’t,” answered Quaint. “I guess his fame precedes him.”
Minotauro, the voices kept whispering. Minotauro.
“I don’t care if they know.” Ariadne tried to search for Rafaela in the crowd, and found her on the other side, chatting with the mother of the little boy. If Rafaela had noticed their presence, she did a good job of pretending not to. “It makes no difference to me.”
“If you want my opinion, you two should mingle before you approach Rafaela, and look as vapid as she is.” Augusto adjusted the bow tie of his midnight-blue tuxedo. “Talk. Laugh. Invite Ariadne to dance, or I will. Just play the game and act nice.”
“Augusto is right.” Quaint unfurrowed his brow and offered a courtly smile. “Shall we?”
Quaint took her to where the other guests were dancing, and she rested her cheek against his chest. Erik had done the same, many years ago, playing music on his outdated record player and bowing to ask her for a dance.
I don’t know, she had stuttered, I never …
Erik’s laughter was crystalline. Then let me teach you!
He took one of her hands and placed the other on his shoulder, hunching down to match her size.
I have been complimented a few times on my skill at the Charleston and the tango, but the waltz has never been my strongest suit.
Erik had led her through the kitchen as Leonard Cohen sang on the record.
One foot here, the other foot there, you’re doing great …
If she closed her eyes, Ariadne could ignore that there were others in the ballroom, scraping meat and grinding bones with their sturdy teeth. She just had to follow Quaint’s light steps and slow dance, his hand resting on her lower back.
But if she opened them again, she would see the humans.
An elderly man guided to a private room.
A young couple undressing in a corner. They looked at her, too, a wild expression crossing the girl’s face when she realized what Ariadne was: a half-eaten human dancing with a gul.
The man shook his head, defeated, and entered a parlor, but the woman stayed there.
Ariadne closed her eyes again.
“I don’t know why they look at me like they’ve never seen a human interacting with a gul before,” she muttered, looking up to see his face. “Haven’t you brought Erik here? Haven’t you danced with him, too?”
Quaint’s fingers stiffened around her waist.
“I have.”
“I can’t imagine that. I know he can dance, but he’s so awkward…” Ariadne smiled against his chest. “Not that I am much better.”
Quaint pulled her by the neck to kiss her mouth, and fragments of words were lost in her throat: no, you’re lovely, so lovely …
At times, she thought he wasn’t speaking Portuguese anymore, but she could still understand, and the only thing that broke the spell was the human woman she could still see from the corner of her eye.
Across the room, the girl covered her chest with her blouse, nauseated at the sight of them.
Ariadne reciprocated the revulsion. The idea that those people chose to be there disgusted her and made her want to shake their shoulders to ask why, why, why?
If only she had had the chance, sometime in the past …
Another woman moved next to the human, walking past her as if she did not exist, the tail of her dress flapping behind her.
“Rafaela’s moving,” Ariadne said against his lips. “I’ll talk to her.”
Ariadne hurried to the other side of the ballroom.
She dodged dancing couples and avoided the tables, almost jumping back when someone touched her shoulder.
A sickly-looking waiter offered his bitten arm, purple marks going from his wrist to his elbow.
She remembered having the same bruises: the finest wine, Minotauro had boasted, tongue running through the holes left by his tusks, enough to make anyone drunk.
“Thirsty, ma’am?”
Ariadne knew he had been drugged by his unfocused eyes and slurred speech.
That, and to withstand the pain—the horrid feeling of fangs plunging into skin and flesh.
For a girl who can be so cold, so unfeeling, so mean, Minotauro had said, holding her limp wrist in the air and offering it to Dami?o, she tastes rather sweet.
“No, thank you.” Ariadne thought of saying something else, but it was pointless. If he hadn’t noticed she could not possibly have been a gul, he was not conscious enough to hold a conversation.
To focus, she tried to remember why she was there—Erik needs me—and kept repeating it until she reached the restroom.
All the stalls were open, and Rafaela stood in front of one of the mirrors, fixing her makeup. She hadn’t noticed her presence yet, and Ariadne closed the door behind her.
“Hello again.”
Rafaela’s bored expression turned into shock when she looked at her, eyes growing wide as Ariadne came closer and leaned against the wall near her. Rafaela grimaced, then pointed at her limbs with her chin.
“Did he eat them?”
Ariadne touched her own exposed arms. She remembered the way Erik had described the eaten and the dead in his journals, but had no recollection of the moment of her release.
Seven children, some as young as six, the oldest one no more than thirteen or fourteen; used, their bodies half devoured and decomposing—I wish I could forget.
“Minotauro?” Ariadne felt a wicked satisfaction in seeing her squirm.
The oldest girl without arms and legs must have been his favorite, Erik had written. Despite the amputations, she’s healthy, well-fed, and has been kept alive, unlike the others. I don’t want to imagine for how long …
“He didn’t,” said Ariadne. “He cut them off so I would never run away again.”
Rafaela narrowed her brown eyes. The empire silhouette of her gown highlighted her heavy belly, and the high heels made her look even taller, but Ariadne was no longer scared.
“I didn’t see Minotauro very often,” said Rafaela. “Only at parties and such. I wouldn’t know.”
“I don’t care. I’m here to see how you’re doing. Are you happy?” Ariadne pointed to her belly. “Your husband must love children.”
Rafaela let out an angry noise, a mix between a shriek and a growl.
“He didn’t— Dami?o didn’t participate in any…!”
“Didn’t he?” Ariadne asked no one in particular. “Calm down. Stress isn’t good for the baby.”
“Haven’t you three done enough harm?” Rafaela hugged herself protectively. “Yes, Minotauro overdid it, but I had nothing to do with that! What do you want from me?”
“I have an offer to make.”
“Offer?”
“It’s ironic, if you think about it.” Ariadne walked around her, seeing both of their figures in the mirror.
Rafaela, lean, elegant, with a healthy glow in her skin and her salmon gown almost reaching the floor, and herself, short, unsightly, dressed in black.
“That your husband caused all of this. If they hadn’t done what they did, Quaint would never have killed Minotauro.
If he hadn’t killed Minotauro, you never would have asked Erik to help you, because you would have had a doctor by your side.
If Erik had not disappeared because of you, I wouldn’t be here. ”
Rafaela breathed audibly, her chin trembling.
“It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. I don’t need…”
“I read your letters,” continued Ariadne. “Your mother died from a maternal hypertensive disorder, and now your blood pressure is high, too. That’s why you’re so desperate.”
Rafaela punched one of the mirrors with her closed fist, and the shards fell to the sink and floor.
Ariadne didn’t flinch.
“This is not an offer!” Her hand bled, but she didn’t seem to mind, removing pieces of glass while grinding her teeth. “You’re terrorizing me, that’s what you’re doing. You horrible, horrible woman.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” snapped Ariadne. If Rafaela thought any of this would scare her after everything that had ever been done to her, she was very, very wrong. “Without all of this, Erik would have never trained me. I would never have become a doctor, like him, who can treat a gul, like you.”
Blood stained Rafaela’s light dress, but the tissue of her hand was already closing the cuts.
“You’re a doctor?”
“Rafaela. Think about whether it’s worth raising your baby with a father like this.
Think, too, about if you want to live the last year of your life pregnant, remembering what I just told you.
Imagining what could—what will—happen to you.
Imagining, if you die, what would happen to your child …
If your imagination runs wild, who knows what could happen to your health? ”
“You’re threatening me.”
“Swear now that your useless, pathetic husband will never harm anyone again, and that you will take us to where Erik and Genebra are.” Ariadne offered her hand, a discreet smile appearing in the corners of her lips.
“In exchange, I will stay by your side. I will care for you, and we will deliver this child together safely.”
Rafaela stood immobile in front of her open hand. She covered her mouth, and let out a strangled laugh.
“This is crazy.”
“Crazier than marrying him? I doubt it.”
“I need to think,” said Rafaela, opening the door. Ariadne ran after her. “I don’t know, it’s too…”