The Monster's Mother

My husband offended the gods. That’s what started this nightmare. I asked him not to. I warned him, this never ends well, I warned him, you’ll bring us to ruin. “You’ve heard the stories!” I cried. “How could you even consider something so stupid? Have you never heard a bedtime tale?” I shouted myself hoarse but nobody cared. 

On this island, I am counted second to mortal men, though my father is the sun itself. You would think that since they owe their lives and sustenance to my father, they would show me some measure of respect, but you would be wrong. You might also think that Helios would intervene on my behalf, but there you’d be wrong again. 

When I married, I passed from his domain–the Heavens–to my husband’s domain–a tiny island off the coast of Eurasia. I learned early on that any modicum of respect or power must be clawed out with my fingernails. I didn’t mind too much; I was good at it, so why waste time complaining? 

Oh, I was bitter at first, but… It was always unlikely that I would conquer the sky. Crete was a different story. For all that my husband took precedence, he is descended from the immortals. I am an immortal. The power that beauty and magic can forge was a power I had in spades. I would never have been a queen of gods, but I was a queen of mortals, and all told, I did very well for myself. 

I should clarify that my royal husband, renowned for his wisdom, did not scorn some minor deity, but Poseidon, Lord of the Seas. I knew retribution would be swift and terrible, and I feared for my children. In some measure, I feared for this country as well. I even feared for my husband, though it could be argued that he deserved whatever punishment came since he brought this on himself out of sheer stupidity. 

I did not fear for myself. I had done nothing wrong. I did not belong to my husband, I was not born of my husband’s blood, I was not under his protection. I owed him nothing, and I was foolish enough to think that would keep me safe. 

It was pride if I’m being honest, what the mortals call hubris. The thing is, hubris is a fatal flaw in mortals because it equates them with the gods. I am a goddess myself. I am Death’s equal. The same ichor that runs gold through his veins flows through mine; fatality cannot touch me. I’m not Hera or Aphrodite or Athena but I am a goddess in my own right, so surely I’m entitled to my pride? 

Apparently not. No, I’m a disposable piece that can be used to inflict pain or joy as the Olympians see fit.

I will not be ashamed of what I did. I will not apologize. I did what I did out of love and in doing so I brought life. It was my husband who spilt human blood after he would not spill the blood of a bull. It was Theseus–may his soul die a thousand deaths in the Fields of Punishment–who murdered and profaned and destroyed. It was my beautiful baby girl, my Ariadne, who betrayed me. It was Poseidon who orchestrated these events.

Something any fool (except evidently my husband) knows about our gods: they’re constantly pulling strings you cannot see. 

The bull was always extraordinary. It was a charming boast of Poseidon’s, a gift from him that was to be sacrificed to him. The animal’s fur was whiter than sand, whiter than birch, whiter than the purest snow. His horns were high and magnificent. Every muscle was visible through that snowy hide, and there was a strength to him that took your breath away. All the majesty and magnetism of the natural world blended and perfect in one creature. All we had to do was kill it. 

I will not pretend that my heart didn’t twist in my chest at the thought, but I begged my husband to do it anyway. He is fond of saying he has the heart of a king. I am fond of saying I have the heart of a witch. It’s what his people say too, sometimes, and I let them. (They may love or hate me so long as they understand me, understand what I am: not one of them.) 

So what we learned from this incident, right at the outset, is that witches are stronger than kings. I put my pain aside but he could not. His selfishness was a slight to the Sea Lord, so of course the price was terrible. And, I might add, terribly unjust. 

Do not think that I was unaware. I was denied that mercy. I knew precisely what was happening to me, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the bull himself, and that craving. 

It was neither lust nor hunger nor adoration, but some monstrous combination of the three, and it was all-consuming. It ate my thoughts, my seconds and hours, my perceptions and all my dreams. As it consumed me, it became me, until I had long since lost track of where I ended and the craving began. I was all yearning, all desire. I was made of it, or it was made of me. There was no way to tell. I didn’t mind. My life had funnelled down to a single, clear purpose: satisfy the craving. 

I knew I would have to be clever, but then I am clever. We always were, my sister and I. I suppose you have to be clever if you wish to make a name for yourself even when no one wants to hear it. 

My name comes from the word for light, phaos, that is used by my husband’s people. Pasiphaë means “wide-shining.” Appropriate for the sun’s daughter. And I do shine–I am stunningly beautiful. You can tell because when people tell stories about me they always take pains to emphasize my vanity. 

I always find that amusing. Vanity implies an investment in the praise and admiration of others. I enjoy what worship my skill with magics and poisons have brought me, true. Still the idea that I would seek out admiration in people who live short, inelegant lives and then age themselves out of existence has always confused me. 

Anyway, I understood that cleverness was necessary if I was to achieve what had become the sole purpose of my life. I knew I was under Poseidon’s influence, and I did not care. I enlisted the help of someone I knew would be too intrigued to refuse me and too intimidated to betray me. 

Daedalus and I have something like a friendship. No, better than that–a partnership, an understanding. We are both workers of extranormal craft here in my husband’s court, which is otherwise overflowing with mediocre crafts and people. He uses his hands and his mind to create wonders, or to help men achieve them. I use my hands and my mind to work wonders over those around me. 

Some gods might think it overreaching of him to aspire to elevate his invention to the level of godly privileges, like flying or changing form. Men certainly do, though they bite their words back in the face of his genius. He and I know the same thing, that everyone must make their own way in this world. Neither of us would trade our talents for the approbation of those who cannot understand them. I wonder whether they call him vain when they tell tales of him. 

Just as I anticipated, Daedalus was both appalled and eager to help. 

Somehow, he was able to animate the cow. For all the world it seemed a living thing. When you looked into its empty eye sockets, you so expected to see the flame of life that your mind filled it in for you. It could have fooled anyone. Certainly it fooled my husband. It also fooled the bull, which was a more impressive feat. 

I cannot describe to you what stepping into that contraption was like, what it did to me. There is something glorious in becoming what you are not. All I could think as I donned the cow’s body and went in search of that breathtaking beast Poseidon sent was that I finally understood what it would feel like to be Zeus. This is why he does it, I thought, remembering Io and Leda and Callisto and all the others. The ecstasy of escaping myself and embodying another’s form was a sort of perfection I’d never known to dream of. It was freedom, and it was bliss.

After all this time I still remember in blistering detail how that pure, clean whiteness in his fur drank the moonlight so that he seemed to glow. The bull was loveliness incarnate, ethereal and untouchable, so clearly not of this world. The sight of him made my heart beat so loudly that I could hear nothing over the rush of ichor in my ears. The sensation of him inside me, inside that animal body that was at once unfamiliar and somehow my own, was better than anything else I ever felt. 

You probably think that once Poseidon had had his joke and released me from his influence, I would feel revulsion. But I felt neither revulsion nor remorse. 

I knew at once that I was pregnant; deities do. It was with a sharp, expectant joy that I watched my stomach begin to swell. I felt the baby’s vitality and strength, even then. I anticipated the birth of a child I had created in the sheer, triumphant pleasure of being alive. 

When I brought him into this world, there was pain unlike anything I’d known or even imagined could be possible. I reveled in it. It was real, clean pain. It made me feel human. Not disgustingly so, but achingly so, like the weight of experience and creation was tearing me to shreds. I loved it. I loved him too. 

My midwife and idiot handmaidens were horrified. One of them actually fainted. I knew it was nonsense. He was strange and beautiful. He teemed with life, just as he had in the womb. His horns were purest white like his father’s fur, and his chest was taut with powerful muscle. He had eyes as deep and dark as Hades. They glittered with cunning, animalistic intelligence. 

I had my husband Minos’ stupidity to thank for this miracle, so I did him the undeserved honor of naming the child Minotaur. It signifies “the bull of Minos,” to represent his dual nature–human and animal.  

Of course everyone treated my son as though he were some demon loosed from Tartarus to torment them. I didn’t care. He had me, and I intended to see to it that he wouldn’t need anyone else. We spent every moment together. I knew it made his siblings jealous, but I did it anyway. Perhaps I loved him more and perhaps that was wrong, but if I did it was because he needed it more. From his first breath he was rejected and reviled. I didn’t want him to grow up believing that reflected on who he was or who he had to be; I wanted him to know he had choices. He was deserving of love, deserving of anything. 

I nursed him until he would no longer accept my milk. His horns bruised my chest and arms, and his bovine lips struggled to find purchase. I never minded any of it. It was when he could no longer nurse that the trouble began. 

At first I hoped I could keep his eating habits hidden until I found a suitable alternative, but wouldn’t you know Minos was having none of it. I have never understood people’s reactions to this. Do they truly believe it’s so evil for my son to live off human meat when they themselves eat bull meat all the time? I see no difference, but evidently they did. My husband ordered Daedalus to solve the problem. 

Something else Daedalus and I have in common: we clean up the messes Minos makes or we find ourselves dealing with the repercussions that always seem to spare Minos himself. 

Daedalus built an impenetrable, unescapable maze he called the Labyrinth. They took my baby son from me and enclosed him in that unnatural place to wander forever all on his own. I fought for him as hard as I could, but obviously if anyone ever listened to me none of this would have begun in the first place. There was nothing I could do but kiss his head and press his arm and try to cry only quietly, where he would not see or hear me. 

Years passed. My son continued to require sustenance; he was a living thing, a person, no matter what they tried to make him. 

My dear husband’s solution to this one was impressively foolish even by his standards.

Every year after he bested Athens, the young men and women of that city were required to participate in a grotesque lottery. Seven youths and seven maidens unpopular enough amongst the gods to win the draw were sent to the Labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur. 

This went on for two years. I heard their screams from my balcony. My ladies begged me to come inside, but I have enough sense to invariably ignore them. It was horrible. I prayed for silence. When the silence came–the total silence of death–that was worse. 

On the third anniversary of the king’s crowning achievement in senseless violence, Theseus came. He said the sacrifices could stop, that the bloodshed would finally end. He would enter the Labyrinth alone, and he vowed to slay my son. 

He didn’t call him prince, though he was the son of a queen. He did not call him by his name either. He called him “the monster.” He couldn’t ever seem to get his fill of saying it. “I will slay the monster. I will defeat the monster. The monster will no longer go unchallenged. I will not let the monster live.” 

With the flawless perception of the immortals and also with plain old good sense, I hated him on sight. By this time, I was past engaging my husband in fights that went nowhere. Instead, I sacrificed to Poseidon. You began this, my lord, I conjured him. Please let it end in peace for my son. He is guilty of nothing but existing and surviving when others wish he would not. 

I saw right away that Ariadne was taken with Theseus, this gallant and courageous stranger. She was lucky enough to take after me rather than her father. Ariadne is clever, amazingly clever, and she is beautiful. Theseus saw those things too. He gobbled them up and then he destroyed them, as was his way. Ariadne’s cleverness did not protect her. She was brilliant enough to save him, but not wise enough to save herself. 

My daughter betrayed her brother, and me. I do not blame her. She did it out of love, and in the belief that she was serving justice. She is very brave, my girl. She knew it was in her to stop all that violence so she did what she thought was right. 

She gave Theseus a ball of yarn and taught him to use it to navigate the Labyrinth. After he murdered my boy, he took Ariadne away with him. I will not be ashamed that, goddess and queen and witch though I am, I wept when she boarded that boat. Her smile was brighter than my father’s light, and she was clutching the hand Theseus had used to shatter my son’s head under his club. 

She should have clutched it tighter. She should have known, as I did, that trusting Theseus was tantamount to trusting a fire not to burn you. He abandoned her on Naxos, this beautiful, brilliant girl to whom he owed his life. He abandoned my daughter and sailed off, the triumphant hero claiming his throne, leaving broken bodies and shattered hearts in his wake. 

Lord Dionysus took her to wife. He shares my godly perception; he knew Ariadne was worth a thousand of the man who’d left her behind. Instead of marrying her brother’s killer, she married a god more powerful than Theseus could possibly conceive of. That was when I began to hope that Poseidon would honor my prayers after all. When I heard that that Lycomedes went ahead and threw Theseus off a cliff, I was certain of it. 

I believe that my son’s spirit is at peace. Perhaps Theseus did us a kindness in spite of himself. After all, if he’d never come, bringing his lusts and deceits, violences and betrayals, Ariadne would never have met her godly husband, and my son would never have been delivered from a world that was not ready for him. Poseidon answered my prayers, and my son, my prince, my triumph of life and living, has passed into Hades to exist forever among creatures as divine as he is.

I will never fade; I will never die. I am eternal as my father. I built a kingdom for myself on your earth, but I always belonged to heavens and hells beyond what your mortal mind imagines. 

I am infamous for loving; I am infamous for knowing what I wanted and pursuing it. Maybe I should be overflowing with regrets, but I’m not. What I did got me my son. I regret nothing. 

I tell you this not to persuade you of anything. I know mortals–their stories and all their petty judgements. I tell you this because love and loss are sacred among you humans, but they do not belong to you. Gods and monsters feel the same aches and glories, dreams and desires that define your little lives.