Summer's Labyrinth

When I open my eyes, I’m in a room. The sound of wind and rain whistles through cracks in some window; the pounding of traffic thuds through the fabric of the floor, traveling up into me, through me. It’s familiar to me. Melancholy. Decisive. As if the weather around me is deciduous, ready to deflower itself, time finite. On both sides of me there are beige walls with large, cracked-open windows, where bright sunlight shines through, and bluebell-peppered muslin curtains that ripple like flags as wind throngs through the room. Light pools onto the floor of the carpet, and I move forwards against my own will, sitting down at a rectangular faux-wood table that stretches across the chamber. 

It’s a large room, with a metal bar studded with small light-bulbs hanging above – the chamber for private meals in the royal court. I know this place, and a sense of deja vu overcomes me, as if I’m about to experience something that has occurred before. I peer outside of the window, and the city spreads beneath us – a city that glints with skyscrapers made of metal, and crisscrossing, multilayered pathways for walking and driving that exist in the air, hundreds of feet above the ground. It’s the Crete I know, and yet – it’s different. Something feels wrong; I watch the people stream through the ground-level streets and the lanterns and neon signs that flash on and off.

Strangely, I can’t remember where I came from, or how I arrived at this room, and yet there is a sense of comfort and ownership that grounds me, as if I am meant to be here. 

Dizzily, I take a seat at the head of the table, and the door opens. A woman who I immediately recognize as my mother enters the room, and yet she’s much younger than I remember. She strides into the room, a white dress fluttering around her pale, thin heels, a metal brocade of black gems adorning her head, gripping a sconce of blue fire that licks upwards in the air. Maids surround her, three of them with dark hair twisted into braids, wearing simple white uniforms. Without looking up at my eyes, they deliver multiple trays of food for us – circular silver platters stacked with chunks of white cake, sliced meats, and green grapes that are cold to the touch, along with two plates for eating and utensils that clink in their hands. 

They rapidly set the table for us while my mother watches wordlessly, her lips pursed into a thin line. She sits in a seat a few feet away from me and crosses her legs. It is silent for many moments. I catch my own reflection in the window behind her head, and I suddenly realize that I, too, am many years younger – in my teenage years. My head starts to throb. I place my hands against the table and feel the familiar whorled, cracked texture, grounding myself. 

“Ariadne, it is time for you to consider what, exactly, constitutes your future,” my mother says, cutting into her meal with quick, precise slices. “Have you given some thought to it? You’re nearing the age of betrothal. And yet, some girls pursue their own futures in the court, here in Crete. As our daughter, you’re given a certain choice: you can pursue the path of the academic, or the path of the warrior, or the path of the wife. That is what most are forced into. Or something else.” 

“Do you really think I can choose my own path?” I say. Somehow it feels duplicitous, like her words are a trap. My younger mother’s eyes brim with a kind of lightness. Her cheeks are rosy, and she looks dazed. Golden teardrops hang from her earlobes, and I notice that she touches her belly, hands lightly passing over the fabric. I look down. Somehow, I know she is pregnant, although she refuses to admit it. My head spins. I’m in the past, yet I can’t control my limbs.

“You can always choose your own path,” she says quietly, placing her hand over mine. The gesture is so oddly tender that I want to pull away, but I don’t. “Consider what you want. I think it’s not wrong to be selfish sometimes.”

I pause. In my own reflection I see the hooked curve of my nose and the freckles that smatter my face and the glimmering moss of long brown hair. From any angle, I wish I could reshape the equine shaping of my face and contort it into an image more fair. My asymmetry is not the kind of asymmetry that people want. I can tell my mother wants me to choose anything else other than wife. It’s always come easy to her, the thin black-jeweled crown sitting astride her head naturally, her lithe shape dancing through the fabric imported from China. “I want a family,” I say at last. “However that comes.”

“You want to take care of others?” my mother asks me. She retracts her hand and continues to eat with quick, deft bites. From the platters she unstacks two metal cups. With a quick motion she pours milk from a kettle into both; the milk settles in the cups. “You want to serve? To spend your life catering to the whims of others? To obey a man in the household?” 

“I want to be loved. Wholly.”

My mother sets her cup down harshly and looks at me with eyes stern and dark. “I will not allow it.”

“You must. That is my duty, anyways.” 

She shakes her head. “You don’t know what’s coming––the pains of marriage, of suffering through the monarchy. I won’t let you do that to yourself. You will not meet suitors. You will not undergo courting. I will have you become someone stronger than that. Believe me. You will be grateful for what I am soon to do.” 

“What is that?”

“I am taking you far, far away tonight to meet someone special. Someone who you will not marry. Someone who will teach you something you will never forget.” Her voice is urgent, escalating; her eyes burn into mine, like twin flames. She leans towards me, clenching my hands. “You will be grateful in the future.” 

“Tonight?” I interject. I am shaking my head, pushing the food away. My mother is doing something I do not understand, stepping beyond the bounds of propriety. There is something frenetic about her. I wonder if some madness has seized her, some illness that has ransacked the reason in her mind. Perhaps she died, unbeknownst to us, this morning, and returned from the afterlife having learned from the sinners who disobey the rules of society. We live in this palace in order to function together. “Not tonight.” Tonight everyone will gather at the palace, and lyres will play, and goods will be eaten, and people will dance through the courtyard and watch the fountains bubble and laugh, and I will be watched as the girl shrouded in white satin.

Foreboding comes over me, like water spouting from a fountain. The metal lights on the bar at the top of the room flicker on and off, flies buzzing in. Outside the windows, the vehicles that crisscross through the air are doused in a sudden drizzle – was it raining all along, and I simply didn’t notice? Rain sluices down their headlights ominously, smearing the glows of red, and a headache throbs through me, as if I can hear the angry toil of murmurs from the commoners on the ground. 

The door behind me creaks, it hinges rasping, and heavy footsteps approach and then pass away, thudding on the marble floors beyond the dining chamber. High-pitched laughter blurs past beyond the door. “You don’t control me, either,” I say quietly. “Mother, don’t take me away. Please. Give this to me.” I see the face of a woman scorned, by Father’s many mistresses, but me, I want the simple kiss on the back of my hand, the hand that lets me spin in the moonlight. I want the ache.

“Sit back down,” Mother says. I’m on my feet, lurching forwards. Somehow, I know: I do not want to go with her tonight to meet whoever she wants me to meet. 

“I must see the outside,” I say. “I must practice my instruments for the coming of the soldiers tomorrow. I must retire. Mother, may I be excused?”

Her eyes flash. “Ariadne, listen to me.” 

I dip and bow. “I’m sorry. I must – I must go.” I hurry past her, towards the heavy doors on the other side of the room, push them open. My room will be a safe place for me to rest and reconsider. 

I erupt into the corridor, flying by maids who are carrying platters, past windows. We are on the sixth floor of the central castle, and looking down I pass by rows and rows of shops alight with neon purple glows in the darkness of the evening, and rows and rows of aerial cars that zip past in the looped glass tracks that fill the air with the soft murmur of their wheels brushing past the conveyor belts. In the center of the square that the castle overlooks is a large terra cotta fountain that spouts water, but its gurgle is overwhelmed by the rain that slashes down from above, striking the earth unforgivingly. The talohorses draw forward chariots, their bolted bronze sides glimmering in the rain, accumulating rust at their seams, hooves clopping against the soil, while the people riding in the chariots sleep, waiting to arrive at their preprogrammed destination. Soon, after the rains, people will need to take their talohorses in for repairs at the mechanic shops, which will take apart the animal-shaped machines, plate by plate, and reconstruct them with new parts.

The windows of the castle fly by me on my left, until I skid to a stop. The corridor should lead me to the left wing of the castle, but instead, there is an imposing sandstone wall that blocks off my way. It is simple beige, completely blank, with no grooves of individual bricks that make it up. I place my palm flat against it, some alien artifact that has been inserted in my pathway. I take a few steps back. Perhaps new repairs are being done to the castle. It is odd. I turn on my heel and stride backwards, but every doorway is ominous and locked except for the one back into the chamber with my mother. 

“Ariadne,” she calls after me.

“Mother, I have to go,” I say to her again. “Whatever you want to say it to me – you can say it to me later. Please. I want to be alone right now. I need to think.” Why are there walls? Why do I remember all of this, as if it has all happened before, in a time long, long ago? In a distant, faraway land? I run my hands along the seams of the dining chamber until they stop at a hinge that I remember. The wall peels away to reveal a small metal doorway with a set of narrow steps that ascend upwards, formed of moss-clustered, pockmarked stone. I step upwards even as my mother calls back to me and open the titanium-grade door at the top. This is the fire escape that they created in the early days of the palace – before the great restoration happened, and the exterior renovations of metal and bronze. I suck in a long breath and fling open the door.

But instead of it being the wide expanse of empty roof I was expecting––the place I always go to sit at the very edge, dangle my legs over the lip, drink ambrosia by myself at night, to gaze at the moon and rehearse poetry in my head about love that I cannot fully read, except for with my Latin tutor––the doorway opens into… a studio. 

Four walls rise high on both sides, and the ceiling is flat, rolled-asphalt terra cotta, the brick bright vermillion, classical, and tapestries hang from the walls, beneath a single skylight that shows the evening moon. And in the center is someone hunched over, working away at a small model of something flat on the table, using a scalpel to whittle away at the fine white clay that bends underneath his fingertips. His back is facing me, covered in a brown coat, and black glasses are propped on top of his head. He turns around; his fingertips are coated in clay, and black charcoal smears his chin. 

“I’ve been expecting you,” he says, but his eyes go behind me. Daedalus touches the edge of my shoulder with sorrow – the tide creeps in towards our feet – we watch the recession of the boat’s silhouette – I crumple – Daedalus lights a fire – a funeral pyre for a body never found – these hands covered in clay – create a statue – we shatter – I shatter –

I clutch the edge of a table covered in charcoals and other art materials, a scroll holding a blueprint of the castle unfurled and weighed down with stones at each corner, and try to run back inside. Memories throb into my mind like bullets, flashing by too quickly for me to grasp and unravel –colors, sounds, sensations of pain. 

When I turn around, the studio has fully formed behind me. Where the door from the fire escape was, there is now simply a blank sandstone wall, firm and unyielding. The same blank sandstone as before, as if it is mocking me.

My mother is standing behind me, a black trench-coat wrapped around her, the black crown still glittering in her hair. Dizzied, I step back, gripping the edge of the table. The roof has disappeared; it’s as if space has collapsed, bringing forwards this room that should exist far, far away towards this castle. Yet, it seems that time has passed; the single circular window shows us in the deep of night outside, the moon a bright crescent, torrential rain gusting down into the cobblestone. The quick footsteps of passerby ring out above, and their feet skid past through the window: we are underground now. How? 

Mother hangs her coat on a bronze rack and sits upon a stool, resting her thin face on her palm. “Ariadne. Sit down.” She picks up a piece of chalk on the table and twirls it with familiarity in her hands. The man at the center of the studio walks with a hunched, rapid gait; his eyes are milky, clouded over, full of thoughts from another world. He sits on top of his table and swings his legs like a little boy, and I notice that two of his fingers have been replaced with black metal, joined with slim bronze pins; his other fingertips are stained black and blue and red with charcoals and pastels. The walls are tacked with stacked papyrus scrolls with maps and diagrams on them.

“Daedalus.” The name erupts from my mouth.  

The architect dusts off his hands and peers at me with an amused smile. “Oh, it’s quite strange that you know my name. Quite strange indeed. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

We have. Once. A long, long time ago. In another lifetime. 

“The door bends, and a second strike comes, thrusting through the heavy wood. I look back, shouting, “Mother!”

But she hasn’t moved. She still sits opposite of my previous spot on the table, eyes fixated, glassy and hollow, on the spot where I no longer sit, spooning food into her mouth. Her mouth still opens and closes – as if she is rigged on some program I cannot see.

Behind me, the fist smashes through the wood, and a guttural growl emerges from the opening that has been torn through. Each strike is heavy, purposeful, and rhythmic. It is an inhuman sound, like an animal. My head spins through the possibilities of what it might be, and nothing emerges. Before me, my mother sits like a doll, still parroting to me. 

I tug her on the arm. But instead of her arm yielding to me, her motion is impenetrable to me: my hand passes directly through her. Her image flickers, translucent, and I catch the edges of static blurring around her. And yet – incredulously – she looks so real, every fiber on her head frizzed, the rosiness of her cheeks lively and impassioned. Yet this monster behind me – the door flies off of its hinges and smashes into the window, thousands of pieces of glass scattering. I know it is real. I know it can hurt me. As it enters the room, its hulking frame smashes open the doorway, each of its steps leaving heavy imprints on the rug. Black horns protrude from its head, and matted brown fur fizzes off of its body. A pair of ruby-red eyes flicker out at me, the face grizzled with inhumanity, with animalism, the teeth rotted and yellow underneath a snout. 

The Minotaur.

“You – you shouldn’t exist yet. You haven’t been born yet,” I say. I look back at my mother. Pasiphäe. Somehow I know – this is wrong. This scene should not exist. She tenderly touches her stomach, still young, still thin. She has not yet been driven insane, tugged up in prison; the future flashes through my mind. The Minotaur should not have been born yet.

The walls around me do not match the architecture of my memory.

to be continued – issue iii

writer’s notebook

This is a fictional accompaniment to my nonfiction piece, (Un)creation Myths, where I consider fate from a biological and a literary perspective. I chose a Greek myth that has always captured my interest and decided to rewrite it as a futuristic city. Memory is a labyrinth with shape-shifting walls; synaptic weights can change over time to morph our memories. We can become lost in memories. Many psychiatric illnesses result from the inability to disentangle oneself from memories which are dangerous to our present mental health. Individuals who exhibit externalizing disorders, leading them to commit criminal acts, show deficits in the re-appraisal of negative memories and the inhibition of impulsive actions relating to them. And so on. Controlling one’s memories – according to my therapist, at least, who warns me of how “sticky thoughts” can begin to manipulate my future, generating self-fulfilling prophecies of my worst fears – feels an impossible task, and yet somehow so important to maintaining our grasp on reality instead of being lost inside the labyrinth.

In this science-fiction re-telling of the myth of Ariadne, I wanted to create a mystery story that begins by situating Ariadne in her own memories. However, they feel too real to be a dream, and they are too physical for her to escape. I collaborated with architecture student Alfred Wai Hin Wong to come up with this story idea, sitting in the courtyard of Trumbull College. The walls around us feel unscalable, even though they are capable, technically, of being moved, destructed, and reconstructed. We are trained from a young age to understand what the limits are of what we can and cannot do, of being directed through a funnel of fate.

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