Iris and the Minotaur - Chapter 2/8 [Ink-stained Maiden]

The walk was long, and she soon went from feeling too big to feeling too small. Here the whitewashed walls loomed in the distance with the daunting permanence of the sky, and the roof was masked behind clouds of plaster dust. Heaps of the stuff covered the ground, crunching underfoot like snow or perhaps sand - though the closest things to dunes were the vast stone display slabs. Iris hated walking on sand, and it made such a racket that anything dangerous could surely hear them a mile away.

Asterion tugged at her sleeve, she tried to brush him off. “You can have headpats later Asterion.” She’d seen a door on the opposite wall, maybe so much as half an hour’s walk away. The prospect was putting her in a foul mood.

They crunched on and he kept tugging at her. Finally she let him loop her back around to a particular patch of ground.

“Are we done?” She walked on, pulling him along with her. To her surprise she walked without making a sound. “This ground is soft.”

He nodded and brushed the dirt aside. There was red carpet underneath.

“Finally a road!” Iris smiled. “You deserve a reward for this. I'll make something nice when we set up camp.’

The road wasn’t much help. It looped leisurely around all the slabs before reaching the door - and when they finally got through the door they found another identical room - just round this time.

On and on it went. It felt like an insidious new kind of dead end, because there was always a door - sometimes too many to choose from - close enough to make Iris think, “maybe if I go through this one i’ll finally be out.”

Sometimes there were signposts, but the writing had invariably been worn away by the sand. They even found a map, but it led only to desiccated ruins. Dead trees, worn and calcified, stretched out their branches to the empty slabs as if in prayer. With a bit of sleuthing they found a lake marked as the breadbasket of the tourism industry. Indeed there were a few half-eaten fish still swimming in it, ribs bare with the guts hanging out. Iris tore off a few chunks and threw them back, where they thrashed around before diving out of sight.

They cooked it by burning what was left of the fisherman’s hut. The flame was a meagre thing, barely enough to char the meat. Asterion didn’t have any. That wasn’t a surprise, he had a cow’s tongue after all, but it depressed Iris to sit there eating while Asterion’s stomach growled.

“One day we’ll have a real campfire.” She promised him. “With marshmallows. Have you ever seen a marshmallow Asterion?”

He hadn’t, and his eyes were wide as she described them to him. He shook his head fiercely though when she talked about toasting them. That was such a waste and yet - somewhat alluring? He spent the rest of dinner locked in an internal debate - if he ever found a marshmallow, he wanted to be sure to eat it right.

“The poor thing is unreasonably easy to distract.” Iris thought to herself, and then she got to wondering if there was any way out of this place, and what would become of them if there wasn’t. As the flames burned low Iris tossed the map in too. The useless thing didn’t even burn right.

That was good - maybe. The fire was an obvious signal for anything big and hungry that might be prowling around, though at this point she was almost eager for a fight. All she could do now was kick at the sand and wonder what she was even doing wrong here.

“They’re scared of us.” She winked at Asterion. “Iris the great and her wild little horror. Don’t pout at me, I've heard you snore. They must think I have an army of dragons with me.”

She finished quickly, but Asterion had a hard time getting up again. Iris’s foul mood made her want to snap at him to get up already - but instead she softened. She remembered how awful it was being dragged around shopping malls when she was young.

Iris picked him up and let him ride on her shoulders. “At least I can be useful to you little one.”

They walked through wind and shine, till finally Iris spotted something hazy in the distance. At this point anything other than whitewash and stone slabs and dead things would have been a welcome sight - but this was more than that. This looked like a person, a young girl.

“Might be a mirage.” She said, but Asterion didn’t care. He ran over waving widely, but the woman was so absorbed in her task that she didn’t notice.

She knelt in the middle of one of the great slavs, dusting a copper cup. The plaque was labelled ‘music awards - plaque 6’.

“Why are you cleaning that?”

The girl turned, and Asterion took a startled step backwards. She was startlingly skinny and so light a breeze would blow her away. When she opened her mouth to talk she coughed out ink dust.

“Water.” She begged. If she was trying to make puppy dog eyes she failed, her eyes were so dry they’d shrivelled up in her sockets.

Asterion approached more gently now, waterskin ready. The fool! Iris yanked him back and put herself in front.

“What is your name?” Iris asked.

“Iris of course.” Said the shade.

“Liar.” Said Iris. “We will trade like civilised people - our water for your knowledge. Where is the way out?”

“Out? Out is where the Seer’s are. Their love is too much for me, i don’t go there.” She said, but then as Iris put the skin away. “But there are others of my kind who do! Find one and they will surely take you.”

Iris shrugged and tossed her the water. “Drink up.”

She poured it all onto the cup. Then she kept scrubbing. All that water puddled up on the floor, though to her credit it did get the dirt off.

She raised the cup up, giggled and looked back to Iris with so much pride in those shrunken eyes. Iris slapped the cup out of her hands and kicked it away.

“That may as well have been a participation award.” She said, disgusted.

The creature raced after the cup but it was already too late. Iris had dented it, and the metal couldn’t be pushed back into place. The creature wailed.

“I cannot be held responsible for that.” Said Iris. “If it was a trophy worth having it wouldn't be such poor quality.”

It lunged at her then, teeth splayed out, dry hair cracking and whipping in the wind, but it never reached her. Asterion charged, and his horns tore a weeping gash through the monster’s leg. What life she had left bled out quick, and she died crying.

“Thank you.” Iris told Asterion, though she looked at the ink stains on his horns with worry now. She couldn;t get attached to him, he was a monster too - just not big enough to eat her yet.

The minotaur didn’t respond immediately - he just stared morosely at the remains - so Iris kept talking.

“Isn't it crazy. I spent all my time studying but never got any academic prizes worth talking about. I was told off for playing music in the later years - but I probably could've made this slab a lot fuller. Funny right?”

Asterion didn't know what she was talking about. He knew that losing all the water had upset her though, so he tried his best to palm the puddle back into the waterskin.

“We'll have to find more of her kind. I've got a good feeling about this Asterion.”

That night there was something in the air. Asterion had been hyper all evening and though Iris had been telling him to calm down, she was feeling it too. When they heard the sound of flutes and the stamping of hundreds of feet they knew it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Some great parade was approaching.

Iris pulled the minotaur behind a smaller display podium as they passed. What a parade it was! And what a departure from the mundanity of this place! There were bells to go with the flutes, plus lantern bearers and dancers beyond count all twirling like fallen leaves. They were dressed for ritual, and most promising of all, their robes were stained with ink.

“Well this is splendid. They’ll take us where we need and we won’t even have to pay them. You can fit right in being a monster. I'll need a disguise though, assuming this whole thing isn’t to honour my arrival.” She took in Asterion’s baffled expression and laughed. “Yes, far too much to hope for.”

She wrapped most of her face in cloth and streaked ink across her forehead. It would do.

Her addition caused disturbance at first - to her horror she saw everyone around her was singing.

Bloody music - she thought she was through with all that. She used to enjoy the violin - the notes told her exactly what to do and she just had to put in effort after effort until it worked, she liked that kind of thing - but she and her instruments were bitter exes now. Singing had been the worst of all. She couldn’t count how often she thought she’d nailed an improv only to see her friends giggling to each other.

She did her best, and asked Asterion to do the same, but he just stared at her like she asked him to fly. He took eagerly to the bell though, and eventually the ripples they’d made faded away.

She was quite glad to have company to be honest, even if the company was strange. She could see Asterion agreed. The two lost themselves in the song and dance and before they knew it they came to smaller places where the air was cool, leaving the trophy wastes behind them.