Theseus

Theseus was stepping slowly ahead through the narrow, dark, stone corridors. He was walking as if of habit, as if he was wakeful. He remembered he had to kill Asterius, Pasiphaë’s spawn – she was Minos’ wife – but he ain’t seem to care if he would fulfil the task he had taken on willingly. He was squeezing the sword – that sharp sword that was his power, his victorious flag, his thirsty for blood gonfalon and that had turned into a fond relic, the only warm reminder about his happiness.

He was walking and harking, stumbling over his countrymen’s skulls, the ones he had not managed to save. He had been walking for a long time – a whole eternity – and could not remember when he had started off. The thread in Theseus’ hands was hanging sluggishly, dragging behind him, dead like his thoughts. He kept repeating to himself that he had chosen his destiny when he had left Athens, without expecting anything else but to find his end, though the king – his father, the old Aegean – had bid if he turned alive to put up white sails on his ship. But the sword he had taken from two flattering hands, that cord that was connecting him with the only two warm eyes in Crete through the covered in mold corridors, in this unfamiliar island land, in this world, that sword and that cord had given him the enormous will to win and the confidence that he would overcome the taken with ease ordeal. But the hope had left him at the moment when he felt that the cord, secured by his only daydream’s hands, tensioned by the one who had stayed to wait for him, whom he had trusted to, had hung in the wet, trampled dust and had turned into a simple muddy fiber.

Theseus was walking at random. He did not try to remember the road – it was meaningless. He stepped carefully, almost gropingly through the black corridors of the endless stone Labyrinth in which here and there, too rarely, some crack, some batter between two stones, squeezed the daily skylight. “Shame on Daedalus!” – Theseus whispered to himself. – “They have overpraised his mastery. Both his and Icarus one!” Just the quiet slow steps responded to his thoughts. He felt the tiredness, his dry tongue stuck on his droughty palate, the sword was too heavy in his sweat palm, the scratched by the roughly hewn stones feet hurt at each step. His eyes, gone blind by the oppressive darkness, almost could not tell apart the corridors in front of him, when after the next turn in a raw it seemed to him that the echo of his steps changed, becoming more distant. Theseus stopped and carefully reached out his hands. He found a wall neither from one side nor from the other one. He froze immovably and listened at the distance carefully.

He heard a quiet but deep breathing. His back shivered. His tense look started distinguish unclear outlines, chiaroscuros, drawn by the little light squeezing through a slight gap. He felt the fear like a stone. He could not swallow but his power had come back again. He felt each muscle of his body tight. There was no escape out. He could not run away. He made a step ahead, then one more and the powerful figure, the terrifying torso of the fierce monster raised in front of his eyes.

“Minotaur!” – Theseus pronounced deafly.

“Never call me like this!” – the monster growled. – “I am Asterius!”

“I know it.”

“You know nothing!” – his throaty roar thundered.

They had been looking at each other for a while without moving: the tense eyes of the man, who had gained back his daring shine and the deep hatred pushing to go out from the abysmal pupils of Minotaur.

“Why are you with a sword?” – his voice spread around.

“To stop this nonsense” – Theseus answered firmly.

The monster against him, tight and ready to attack, did not move.

“Why didn’t you kill Minos, the king, the great, because of whose greediness Poseidon drove my mother crazy and she gave her away to the sacrificial bull; because of whose greediness I live like that?”

“Another one will come to the throne and nothing will change, only your death is going to save my people.”

Asterius was looking at him with his shiny eyes.

 “It would be a benefaction for the evil that the cursed Poseidon damaged me with.”

“Do not curse the gods!”

“Do not tell me what to do!” – Minotaur roared. – “They cannot harm me more than this. You will have to fight my death!”

“Your brutish life is precious to you, right?”

“If you beat me out, at least I will die honorably as I have not lived” – the mighty torso raised suddenly, the horns flashed creepily and the degenerate monster rushed over the Athenian.

That was the last thing the man could remember from the struggle.

 

Theseus was stepping slowly ahead through the narrow, dark, stone corridors. He did not know where he was moving to but he felt inside of him the road to the exit. He had finished his mission but that had not made him happy. He was dragging back through the tunnels and kept thinking about the woman who had left the cord she had given to him with love. He felt himself heavy, massive, clumsy, the time had vanished, maybe he had stayed in these dungeons a day or maybe a week. He had thrown the sword away – unneeded, needless. He felt nothing, he thought about nothing. An enormous emptiness was growing up inside of him – the same emptiness that the struck monster had felt all his life long. Gradually, as if he had gotten to know Asterius in those corridors, he started understanding the endless grief gathered in his fierce temperament, the loneliness of the rejected one, he felt him close as if he was his brother, as if they were a whole, as if he was Minotaur himself.

Suddenly he felt a fresh whiff, the stench of the tunnels descended and not long time after, the stars flashed above him. Theseus took a deep breath but did not feel any relief. He stopped at the entrance where she had promised to wait for him till he did not come back, where she had given him the braveness to fight and where he had entrusted her his life. He was alone. He was staying there trying to understand, when the bushes aside started moving.

“Ariadne?”

She went closer and smiled at him.

“What happened? Why did you abandon me?”

“I didn’t. I have heard that the Labyrinth is enormous and the cord would never be long enough.”

“And me? What if I had not found the way back?”

“I knew it you would find it. I left another, a true cord that would always lead you to the exit.” – Ariadne answered and touched his chest. – “Over here.”

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Translated by: Vessislava Savova