A Star in the Dark - A retelling of the Minotaur of Crete story (m. minotaur x f. character, 3rd person, Chpt. 1, sfw) (Patreon)

Since there was some interest on Discord in seeing this WIP, here is chapter one in its entirety for you. 

Content: A young woman is given by her parents to be sacrificed to the monster in the labyrinth, and finds that maybe there's more to the Minotaur than she'd been led to believe. Passing mention of the death of a close friend in the past, and the practice of human sacrifice to the gods. 

Wordcount: 4161

Looking forward to your thoughts on this one! I'll probably put the whole story up on Tumblr at some point in the future, and so far I've got two and a half chapters, plus a few snippets, written. 

A salt-fresh wind swept in off the sea and set the flames of a hundred bronze braziers dancing across the flagstones in the fading light.

Those small fires guttered and roared in the gusting wind, and the young woman’s grim pretence at courage wavered. Ahead of her on a wide, half-moon platform that stretched like a stage devoid of all its players, seven shallow steps led down into the earth.

The walls of the narrowing staircase were faced in smooth, pale masonry, and the downward path seemingly ended at a sheer, vertical wall facing the steps, with no door or entryway onwards. Instead, the end of her journey would begin at the square of utter darkness that waited in the floor where an eighth step would have been, gaping and blank like the maw of a newly dug grave.

Barefoot, the grit beneath the soft soles of her feet dug into her skin, and the same wind that made the flames dance pulled at the folds of her undyed, linen peplos to send undulating ripples through the thin fabric. Goosebumps prickled along her arms and legs. The gold bracelets that adorned wrist and ankle did nothing to warm her and the wind snuck its fingers into the elaborate coils of her long, dark hair, unwinding them and freeing them from the golden net that had held them all in place.

She’d been made up to look like a bride, but instead of a wedding, she walked through the pageantry of her own funeral. She wished bitterly that those coils of hair atop her head would turn to snakes and strike at the two men walking three, silent paces behind her with their bronze spear tips levelled at the small of her spine.

Overhead, a line of ochre-red smeared across the sunset sky like a bloody finger painting, and the copper disc of the sun stained the sea a dark, murex purple as dusk gathered around the cliff-top palace, and her last moments in the light of Helios drew to a close.

The monumental limestone masonry of the royal palace shone out of the dusk like pale bone, and a woman with a kithara wailed shrilly to the insistent beat of seven great drums, their rhythm a second heartbeat in her ears.

Incense, thick and cloying, twisted through the air from the braziers and it burned her throat and lungs and made her eyes water as she passed them. She blinked away the tears that formed; they were not for these people, and she would not let them see her afraid. Behind the incense, the faint scent of jasmine and honeysuckle floated past her from a distant palace garden that she would never see.

Upon the top step of seven, she faltered to a halt, shaking despite her desire to be brave; to bear the humiliation with stoic dignity. Hurt and grief curdled inside her with the last of her sputtering courage, and on impulse, she turned sharply to look back over the gathered folds of material at her shoulder, dark eyes wide and glassy with terror. The searing lance of betrayal that had been broken off somewhere in her ribs was now lodged there forever.

There, among the onlookers, she could see her stoop-shouldered father, with his wildly curly hair blowing around his head, and his tanned skin like leather after so many years under the fierce Cretan sun, his hands rough and strong and always gentle. He’d shown her how to hold a chisel and a mallet, how to split seasoned timber with wedge, mallet, and axe, how to pull the draw-knife across its surface, how to use a lathe to turn wood, and how to cut the joints in a chair so they would fit together perfectly. He’d even shown her how to carve winged sirens into the prows of the new ships and how to tease the shape of a spoon out of a section of wood without slicing her own thumb off.

She’d played in the shipwrights’ yard since she’d been old enough to toddle away from her mother and bring her father his midday meal. She’d laughed and learned along with the apprentices, outshining some and learning from others, until the day she’d nearly lost her index finger to the careless stroke of a chisel, and her mother had called her back to the house to spin and weave instead. In the wavering light of the braziers that lined the short path to her own personal Tartarus, she glanced down at the pale scar in her sun-bronzed skin and ran the pad of her left thumb over the silver line at the knuckle of her index finger where sensation existed only in her memory.

She willed that numbness to bloom out across her body, but her pain burned too brightly and too hot to be doused, and she ground her teeth. Her father couldn’t meet his daughter’s dark eyes across the empty stretch of gritty ground between them, but her mother held her gaze, unflinching.

The music seemed to fade as mother and daughter stood locked in distant, grim, resentful silence.

King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë stood on a raised dais somewhere off to her right, wreathed in embroidered, purple silks and dripping with gold, but she had no eyes nor time for them. It was because of the conceit and hubris of King Minos that she was being sacrificed to the monster below the palace, and because her mother had refused to take a ship and sail away with her that she was standing there now.

Cold, hard eyes spoke only of the desire for her daughter not to shame her. To go with dignity to a death that was, after all, to honour Poseidon. Of course, her parents would be well compensated by the king for their ‘gift’, but as all the misty possibilities along the path of her life were snuffed out like so many tiny candles, she couldn’t muster anything but contempt for her parents.

“I’m your daughter!” she yelled at her mother, her voice cracking as she fought the urge to double over against the pain. The agony of their betrayal clutched and clawed at her insides, the imaginary blade twisting deeper. “How could you? I’m your daughter!”

She hardly recognised her mild-mannered father as he just lowered his gaze to stare at the stones beneath his sandals. Beside him, her mother just kept on staring, her face like a statue at a shrine to discipline.

“I’m your daughter,” she whispered, the words inaudible to all but the two guards who began to steer and poke her down the steps like a cow to slaughter. “That’s all I am to you people,” she said, the words lost. “I’m not even human.”

The men exchanged a look as they neared the end of the stairs, but she couldn’t read it; couldn’t think.

She was about to die, to be torn to bloody shreds by teeth and monstrous hands, perhaps impaled on the horns of the bull-headed monster that rampaged below the palace, foaming and furious in his own imprisonment, and all while they held their stately banquet above and congratulated themselves on their own cleverness for appeasing Poseidon with a little virgin’s blood. And all for an insult dealt to the god almost three decades ago.

Well, at least she wasn’t a virgin.

Would the monster know? Would Poseidon care? Would the god even notice when the thread of her life was cut?

At an impatient flick of the king’s fingers, the two guards stepped forward as one. Their glinting, bronze spear points finally made contact and jabbed through the fabric at her hips, pricking two bloody points in the skin that bloomed like red eyes in the pale linen. She felt nothing. Her heel missed the lip of the opening into the earth, and she toppled backwards with a wordless shriek. Her arms and limbs flailed, and the shadows of the labyrinth reached up and consumed her.

She had promised herself she wouldn’t scream.

When she’d sat in the painted chamber in the royal palace, its walls adorned with lurid frescoes of figures leaping bulls and topless women emptying black amphorae into channels in the earth that had made her think of the runnels of blood in a butcher’s shop; when her hair had been combed and oiled and placed in its glinting net; when she’d had perfumed oil dabbed at the hollow of her throat, the inside of her wrists, onto her nipples, and, especially repulsive to her racing imagination, down between her legs; when she’d been told it was an honour to be deemed a worthy sacrifice to the monster stalking in his unending paths of dark nightmare: she had made an oath to herself that she would not scream. She would shame them with her silence. One last act of defiance.

Yet as she plunged backwards through the rush of foetid black emptiness, she screamed long and loud.

The sound tore itself free from her throat, raw and ringing in her ears as she plummeted down and down and down through the darkness that filled the shaft. The sky became a square of distant starlight that diminished as she fell.

She fully expected to break her back on impact, to feel the blinding crack of her skull on stone, but instead of the unyielding earth, her fall ended in the cushioned embrace of huge arms, as though she were a child who had simply been tossed up and down for their own amusement. The shock of survival made her mind go blank, but the impact of her landing still made her grunt, driving all the air from her lungs as she dangled there in limp surprise.

She couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, but she thought that the arms tightened for just a second, and then with the faintest hint of a sigh, she was set down on the stone floor at the bottom of the twenty foot shaft. Whoever had caught her stepped immediately back from her and vanished into the utter blackness that reared up beyond the well of dim torchlight from above.

On every side there was only darkness, but as she squinted she thought she could just make out two pinpricks of reflected light about seven feet off the ground.

Above, the drummers thundered out their final beats, the sound echoed down through the earth, and then the kithara’s song was heard no more and the silence pressed in. Her ears rang with it.

“What happens now?” she finally whispered into the stretching dark. “I’m guessing I wasn’t supposed to survive that.”

“No.” The answer rumbled out of the blackness beside her and she fought not to lurch away in surprise. The voice was deep and sonorous, and although it was rough, the consonants were softly-articulated as the speaker continued. “You have had quite the day, I imagine.” The tone came across as a little wry and a little amused, and very, very tired.

“You could say that,” she replied carefully, swallowing. Her throat felt as though it had filled up with all the sand and grit on the island, and it hurt from the sharpness of her scream.

Having fully expected to die mere moments earlier — her existence ending in an unceremonious daub on the limestone foundations — instead, she found herself disorientated and a touch delirious at being very much alive and unharmed.

“Come with me then, and rest,” the big, low, gentle voice said. “You can decide what happens next when you have recovered. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

The mundane nature of the questions took her off guard yet again. She was. After a day of ritual fasting, denied anything to eat or drink, it was a miracle she hadn’t passed out. As she turned to try and peer into the dark though, she trod on the hem of her long peplos and stumbled. Her right ankle gave way, her foot rolled into a hollow in the uneven paving stones, and she staggered to keep from falling. It was only the smallest jolt but it ricked the joint and pulled at an old weakness that had lingered after a terrible sprain in her childhood, and she gasped at the sudden flare of pain. It abated almost as suddenly as it had come, but the memory of it left her thoughts spinning.

A huge, firm hand darted out from the shadows to her left. Warm, rough fingers cupped her arm at the elbow and steadied her before retreating once she was steady again. “Alright?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Just… wasn’t expecting…”

“This way.” Heavy, clumping footfalls marked the direction in the darkness before they fell silent again only a few yards away.

She got the impression that her strange saviour was watching her, waiting for her to follow. “Can you see down here?” she asked.

“My eyes have long adjusted to the dark,” came the response. “But even I cannot see where there is no light further in. I know all the twists and turns of this place by feel and touch. Would… it be easier for you to take my arm?”

“If you’re offering,” she said with a shaky smile. “I’m so tired I can hardly stand.”

The footsteps returned, slow and deliberate. “Here,” and her companion nudged her upper arm with an elbow.

“You’re tall,” she said without thinking as she slid her fingers into the crook of a large, muscular arm. Coarse hair like the pelt of an animal greeted her curious fingers, and the muscle felt solid as stone beneath her touch. In the cold that seemed to be seeping out of the stonework and steadily into her bones, her guide was gorgeously warm too.

It was only when they set off again and she heard the slight wheeze to her companion’s deep-chested exhale, and the resonant clunk of what she had at first taken for hard-soled boots, that she realised the truth of him in the dark, and her whole body locked up with rekindled fear.

“You’re him… aren’t you? The… Minotaur.”

Her body froze in place and her fingers slid free of that colossal arm as the momentum of his stride bore him onwards a pace and out of her weak hold. She could feel her own heartbeat thudding against the fragile flesh of her throat and her ears began to ring again. If he was going to turn on her now, it might well be a good time to pass out.

“The Minotaur.” He spat the word contemptuously in the dark, and she heard ‘the monster’ in its place. “The abomination with an appetite for human flesh,” he went on, sneering openly, “And a temper like the sea in storm; the creature so contrary to the laws of nature that it must be sealed away beneath the earth; the unholy thing born of a union between a witch and a beast…”

His words were so bitter she could taste them on her own tongue.

A sigh gusted out of him and she heard the soft, resigned clunk of a cloven hoof on the stone of the passage floor. “Yes,” he breathed. “I am he.”

“Do you have a name?” she asked, and her question was met with a beat of silence.

“Asterius,” he replied hesitantly. “And… yours?”

“Nesaea.”

For a long moment, Asterius didn’t move or speak. She shivered in the dark, waiting, and eventually he heaved another enormous sigh and seemed to rally. “Shall I take you somewhere warmer?” he suggested.

“You’re not going to…?” The words died half-formed on her lips.

“No.”

“Oh.” And then she murmured, “Thank you?”

At that, the creature rumbled a low, displeased growl and she drew in a tremulous breath. Her knees felt like water.

“Forgive me,” he said at length. “I give you my word that no harm will come to you down here, though I would advise you not to wander yet. It is a labyrinth, after all. Come. You must be exhausted,” and again he tipped his right elbow out to her and she took it with a touch more confidence a second time. “I do know the toll that being sacrificed by your own people takes upon the mind and body,” he added with a wry note in his deep bass. “Daedalus has prepared a feast for you.”

“Daedalus?” she asked with a frown. “The King’s architect and inventor?”

“The same,” Asterius confirmed, and she felt the ripples that the nod of his great head made through the muscles of his back and shoulders, travelling all the way down to her hand nestled at the crook of his elbow. She wondered what colour his pelt was as she let her fingertips play subtly through the coarse hair. She also wondered if he had any clothing on or if he was naked as a beast and clad only in his fur. Did he have a tail? Her face warmed with shame at the intrusive direction her thoughts were taking, and she was grateful for the absolute darkness.

In fact it was so dark in the tunnels that it made no difference whether she had her eyes open or closed, but she kept them open as he led her this way and that, through the labyrinth that was his home. The regular rhythm of his great hoofbeats never faltered as he turned left and right down a maze of intersecting, downward-sloping passageways, but he seemed reluctant to speak unless she addressed him first.

“How do you know Daedalus?” she asked after long minutes of silence had stretched between them.

“He designed and built my prison,” he said. “And he was shrewd enough to know that afterwards Minos would probably wall him up in here as well so that no one else would learn the secrets of the place. It took him the first nine years of my existence to construct my labyrinth, along with the tower where he is supposed to live out his days in forced seclusion. But he was hardly about to let himself be locked away after the crowning achievement of his genius, so…”

“He built himself a way out?” She was equally shocked that at just nine years old, the Minotaur — Asterius — had been thrown down into his prison. Had he not seen daylight since then? It was unimaginably cruel for someone who seemed so… gentle.

Asterius nodded again. “Indeed he did. He concealed a series of secret passages in and out of both my labyrinth and his prison tower. Now he can work on his projects uninterrupted — under the pretence of imprisonment — but in fact he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases.”

“Couldn’t you just leave too?”

The Minotaur huffed a derisive exhale. “And be hunted down and pinned on a wall for a trophy instead?”

“Fair point. So it’s just you and Daedalus here?” She wanted to ask about the previous sacrifice from nine years ago, but couldn’t quite bring herself to voice the question.

“Daedalus and his late son, Icarus, are the only companions I have known since my imprisonment, give or take a rare visit from my half-sister, Ariadne.”

“Icarus,” Nesaea breathed. “I know the name. Down at the shipyard, they said they saw him jump from the tower on the cliff… Others said he turned into a bird and flew away…”

Asterius exhaled heavily and shook his head.

His footsteps slowed and he ground to a halt. His deep, rock-slide voice grew rougher under the obvious, grinding weight of grief, and Nesaea regretted her clumsy, intrusive curiosity immediately. “Icarus had his father’s genius for invention, but he was impulsive. He lived too much in the moment. Together they built wings of feather and wood and wax to fly further afield, but the summer day Icarus chose to test their creation was too hot. He ignored his father’s warnings, and… Well. He made it a long way out to sea, but the wax melted in the heat, and…”

“Oh,” she breathed. “I’m sorry, Asterius. I’m sorry you lost your friend.” To have so few contacts whittled down even further must have been unbearable.

He surprised her by placing his left hand down over her own for a moment where she gripped the crook of his right elbow. “You’re kind, Nesaea. I thought… I thought you would be more afraid of me, though I suppose there’s still time enough for that. Come.” And he set off again without waiting for a response from her, towing her along in the dark like a piece of flotsam caught on a fisherman’s oar.

They walked in tense, stilted silence after that, and the journey seemed to go on forever, the floors sloping ever downward with each step. Just when she’d thought they must have walked all the way under the sea from Crete and over to the mainland, a faint, warm glow up ahead broke the endless darkness all around her and she gasped in delight.

“Almost there,” he said at the sound of it.

His footsteps slowed as they drew closer to the light, and she could see that it was the flickering of firelight on the bare, rough-hewn rock of the tunnel wall. The shadows of the passage lapped and ebbed on the floor like black waves on wet sand, and she had to fight the urge to run towards the golden glow ahead after what felt like an age of walking in complete darkness.

Asterius lifted his elbow out of her fingers while her grip was still slack, her attention distracted by the change in scenery, and he halted at the edge of the darkness.

She looked back over her shoulder and caught the faint lines of firelight on the polished line of a curving horn and the distinctive drape of heavy, undyed linen in a diagonal swathe across the Minotaur’s chest. He retreated a step. “Go on,” he said. “Daedalus is… is waiting.”

Nesaea looked ahead to the welcoming glow and then back to Asterius. Taking a slow, deep breath, she held out her hand to him, palm up. “He’s waiting for both of us.”

A billowing sigh was all the answer she thought she was going to get for a long few seconds, until a great cloven hoof stepped forwards out of the dark, followed by the rest of a powerfully muscled leg, wreathed in coarse, wavy hair the colour of pale moonlight. His dignity was covered by a short, asymmetric chiton that was draped over his left shoulder to leave his right exposed, and it had been secured at the waist by a length of what looked like ship’s rope. The fabric of the chiton was dense linen, and she realised it was probably sailcloth.

Finally, his head melted out of the darkness near the roof of the low tunnel and she let her lips part in quiet surprise.

Asterius truly was part-bull and part-man, with soft, bovine ears, and silvery, curling hair spilling down over his forehead. Her eyes travelled down his face to a shining, sandy muzzle, where a heavy, solid ring of glinting gold was looped between his nostrils. Between his big, dark brown eyes, his fur whorled attractively, and his eyes glittered as he stared down at her from his great height. To her shock, his right horn had been cracked off near the root, leaving only a filed-down stump while the left remained as a long, smoothly-curving line in the dark, its dark, blueish contours flecked with pale marks and lines and ending in a light, carefully rounded tip. The weight of his great head was buttressed by a thickly-sloping neck that blended into broad shoulders and muscular arms, and all of him was covered in a dense, milk-white pelt. His hands, which hung passive and quiet at his sides, were more human, though they were huge and knuckly. Behind him, a tail swung back and forth like a pendulum.

Powerful, inhuman, and massive, the Minotaur blinked at her in the dark, and she found her lips moving before she had even registered the thought. “You’re beautiful,” she breathed, lowering her hand when it became obvious that he was not going to take it.

At her words, his ears flicked back and he took a halting, half-step backwards.

“Sorry,” she blurted. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I don't know what I was expecting, but —”

A strident, male voice interrupted from the chamber beyond the passageway, and they both jumped as the moment shattered. “If you two don’t hurry up, this inordinately decadent feast I’ve prepared for us will char to ash!”

Nesaea grinned up at Asterius and turned away. The last of her fears melted away as excitement blossomed in her chest.

“I’ve always wanted to meet Daedalus!” she exclaimed, and scurried off towards the light, leaving the minotaur standing alone in the shadowy tunnel, staring after her.

Part two ->

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Hope you enjoyed it!! Link to my masterlist of stories is pinned on Patreon and linked here.