queeniegalore

“Are you here to kill me?”

Theseus had not expected the beast to be able to speak, and a few steps into the chamber – the last of many, spiralling ever inward towards the centre of the labyrinth – he pulled himself up and stared.

The beast was huge, taller than the tallest man Theseus had ever known, and muscles bunched and flexed all over his body under gleaming brown skin. The close, shining pelt of his face was also brown, also gleaming, and the horns that sprung from the sides of his great head shone as if they had just been meticulously polished.

A wreath of wilted aster flowers crowned his heavy brow, and one hand came up now, almost self-consciously, to touch it.

“I am Theseus, prince of Athens. I have come to avenge my countrymen and free the land from the monster that stalks these halls,” Theseus said, eventually, when he found his voice.

The Minotaur nodded thoughtfully.

“The children that you send to feed me,” he clarified. “The children you yourself doom.”

I didn’t send anyone, Theseus wanted to protest. None of this was my idea. But when one was a prince, one wasn’t supposed to argue with monsters.

“How is it that you can speak?” he said instead. “I didn’t realise…”

“They told you I was an animal,” the Minotaur finished for him, and looked down at his own nudity, snorting. “They forget that I was a babe, once, nursed by a human mother.” At this he tilted his horns, glancing at Theseus with lambent eyes. “And how goes Pasiphae? Does she yet live?”

Theseus realised he was still holding his sword out before him as if expecting an attack, and forced himself to lower it. The beast was still, seemingly relaxed as he leaned against the wall of the chamber. Theseus knew that for years Athenian children had been sent as sacrifices to the bull of the labyrinth, knew that they were said to be viciously torn apart and devoured. The creature bedecked in flowers and asking about its mother was…was…

“Your lady mother is well.” When in doubt, Theseus resorted to court manners. “She has borne many sons and daughters.”
The beast did not have the face for smiling, but something about the dip of his head, the slight narrowing of his eyes, suggested a smile nonetheless.

“Brothers and sisters,” he mused. “It is well. And so, you have decided to stop sending your children to their deaths and are instead bringing death to me?”

“You do, actually, eat them,” Theseus said defensively. “Do you not?”

The beast shrugged. “Eventually. Do you send them with food? The gates are locked, there’s no escaping this place. They would die of starvation; I do not let that happen. I make their final moments as bearable as I can. They in turn make my life here bearable.”

Theseus took a few more steps into the chamber. “They talk to you?”

“Some of them. I try…” here the beast seemed to falter, letting out a low sigh and slumping a little against the wall. Theseus found his eyes flowing the dips and valleys of muscle that made up that impossible body, the hills of him, the plains.

He had expected an animal.

“The flowers,” he said suddenly wrenching his eyes up to the soft, watchful bull face. “Asters?”

The beast nodded. “Pasiphae named me, before they took me away. Asterion. She bedecks the sacrifices with the asters. I’m unsure if it’s a cruelty or not, what are your thoughts?”

Theseus was finding he had no thoughts. Asterion. The terrible beast, the scourge of Minos, was a softly spoken, thoughtful being who wore flowers on his brow and tried to comfort his victims in the last moments of their lives.

“Asterion,” he said solemnly “I cannot say well-met. But, I think, I am glad to know you.”

Asterion shifted, muscles tensing as he moved into a fighting stance.

“Theseus. They told me tales of you,” he said. “It appears I’m to be slain by the best. A shining, golden little princeling to bring some beauty into my last moments.” He snorted again, even as Theseus, ridiculously, found himself blushing.

“You flatter,” he stuttered, and Asterion laughed, a great, deep bellow that seemed to fill the room and take their air out of Theseus’s lungs.
“You think I would bother with flattery? Come then, little prince, raise your sword. I shan’t make it easy for you.”

Theseus did as he was told. Asterion had no weapons but those sharp, shining horns, those muscles, the very body of him. He too, Theseus realised, was beautiful. In his own way, beautiful.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again in the underworld,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Asterion allowed. “Until then, remember me, that I spoke, that I felt.”

But of course, Theseus thought helplessly. How could I not?

How could I not?