Minotaur Page 7

  “Miss Ridges tries to find stories that work for everybody, even the young children.”

  “I know that.”

  “But . . .” Denson’s smile seemed private, just between her and herself. “Miss Ridges, you might be interested to know, is the author of many stories that would be far more . . . suitable to someone with your tastes.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Denson looked like she was trying not to laugh. She reached out and rubbed my shoulder. “Come down to the reading room tonight at nine. I’ll write you a note, in case you get stopped.”

  And so Riley Denson was how I found out about the Dark Tales. Miss Ridges was their creator, and she’d populated her stories with girls who struggled and girls who lied. Girls whose goodness was not innocence, and whose beauty was not in their high cheekbones or their sweeping lashes, or even in their pluck and grit—as was the case with so many of the fairy tales she read during story time—but in their terrible humanness. In the sorrows they laid on themselves with their greed. In their fear of death and of fate—which, in Miss Ridges’s tales, were often one and the same. These girls empathized with their enemies without pitying them, and often they spared a villain’s life, telling the scoundrel at sword point to leave and never come back.

  Each night, after the younger girls had gone to bed and the older girls were busy with games or schoolwork, we’d meet in the reading room—Riley Denson, Miss Ridges, and Bitsy, Kenna, and I. The deal was we girls had to have our lessons done first, and we’d never been so diligent about schoolwork in our lives. We’d listen to Miss Ridges read a Dark Tale, her low voice well suited to antagonists and their murmured cruelties, their vengeful cries. And to heroes—their pride and certainty, their private doubts. The stories contained so much gore and so many lost souls that Miss Ridges would glance up worriedly on occasion, glancing at each of us as if waiting for permission to continue.

  A couple of times I’d invited Alle to attend these covert readings—I felt an aggressive need to share with her the mystery and terror of the Dark Tales. The first time she refused, but the second, she came down with me. I tried, from the corner of my eye, to watch her face as Miss Ridges read. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking until, at a scary part, she took my hand, and I felt glad and brave and ready to defend her from anything.

  Denson got caught up in the stories right along with us—she winced at decapitations and crowed when those who deserved to fall finally tumbled over a cliff. We all praised Miss Ridges incessantly for her genius. She took the compliments with a blush and a lowered head, but always you could see the smile—delighted and a little roguish—twitching at the corners of her mouth. You got the feeling she was quite talented, quite brilliant in her way.

  Bitsy, in her more bitter moods, pretended to dislike the Dark Tales. “She gives her villains black hair, just like every other story,” she said one night as we headed back upstairs.

  I grabbed a lock of my own dark hair and whisked it across Bitsy’s cheek. “It’s common knowledge villains do have black hair.”

  “Uh-huh. And we fairer folk are all lambs?”

  Conversations with her had become rare since I’d grown close with Alle, and I wanted to keep her talking. “Yes.”

  “So I’m not a villain. But you and Kenna . . .”

  “And Miss Ridges.”

  “Miss Ridges, yes. And your roommate . . .”

  “Dark magicians, all of us,” I affirmed.

  Bitsy snorted and trudged up the last couple of steps. “I just don’t understand this obsession with black-haired and blackhearted. Anyway.” She stood in the hall and pulled something from the waistband of her skirt. “I have a favor to ask you.” She handed me Lizzie’s pink unicorn. “I’ve taken it hostage until she stops hassling me to clean up my side of the room. I need you to hide it. If she asks you about it, say nothing.”

  I took the unicorn with a grin. “Who’s the villain now?”

  “Stuff it.” She walked off toward her room.

  “Who’s the villain now?” I followed her down the hall. “Blondiekins? You like the Dark Tales, and we are still friends. Don’t you deny it!”

  “Good night, Thera,” she called, without looking back. But I could tell she was trying not to laugh.

  Bessie Holmes had a dog named Walter—a Labrador mix whose tail had been docked in some accident. He mostly stayed in Bessie’s room in the north ward, but every now and then she’d bring him out into the main yards for us to play with. He was friendly but scared of birds and garishly stupid.

  At the start of spring, Walter fell in love with a stray that had been hanging around the prison. The prison workers called him Murdock. Murdock was a thick-coated shepherd mix with one ear that flopped and one that stuck straight up.

  Murdock would slip onto the grounds when the front gate opened for the food delivery trucks, and then he’d wait in the courtyard until Bessie brought Walter out to do his business. Then he and Walter would run at each other, colliding in what looked like an embrace, licking each other’s faces and under each other’s tails. Bessie tried to shoo Murdock away, but he stayed just out of range of her hands and feet, darting in now and then to bestow as many caresses and kisses on Walter as he could manage before Bessie drove him away again.

  Bessie was deeply troubled by the notion that Walter had such strong feelings for a male dog. Several times, Murdock mounted Walter, or vice versa, and poor Bessie was so disturbed by this she could only shriek and turn away and beg for one of us girls to turn the hose on Murdock.

  Eventually the truck drivers were notified to look out for Murdock when they opened the gate, and to drive him back with rocks. This worked for a time, as poor Murdock was afraid of rocks. But then Walter started slipping out Bessie’s first-floor window when she left it open in the summer. He would wait until Bessie had gone off on her rounds, then shove the window up with his snout and squeeze through. He’d disappear for long stretches—days, sometimes. Bessie would search the grounds, unable to understand how he could have gotten past the fence.

  But she would leave the window open for him, and always she’d return to her room one day to find him curled on her bed, burrs on his flanks and mud in his ears.

  One night, I was staring out my window, unable to sleep. Alle was breathing noisily beside me, her arm against mine. I saw two shadows approaching the fence. Murdock and Walter. I watched them, determined to figure out how they got onto the grounds. But then Alle let out a massive snore, and I turned toward her and missed the dog’s entrance. When I looked again, Murdock was standing outside the gate, staring through the bars as if to see Walter safely inside, before he turned and trotted up the drive and disappeared into the night.

  Staff Welfare Update: Bessie Holmes

  Many of you understand i am in a difficult situation with regards to my dog, with regards to homasexuality. He is a mixed bred & perhaps was been weened too late. Tainted bloodlines & a poor upbringing the veterinarian says. i’m having been tempted to love him all the same & also understanding this may be a phase. But it is hard to trust him as I once did. A member of my divorced women’s choir says her German Shorthaired Pointer fell in love with a stuffed animal. i am not sure which is worse.

  Officer Grenwat’s Note: Dogs do not have homosexuality, they only have INSTINCTS. And their instincts are to hump anything that moves. You could replace Murdock with your own right LEG, and Walter would be in love.

  Van Narr’s Note: Homasexuality? For god’s sake, Bessie.

  “Tell me a story.” I said it like a dare.

  Alle was on her stomach on her bed, looking over notes from our history lesson. “About what?” She didn’t look up.

  “About your parents.”

  Her shoulders grew rigid. I imagined Alle’s story must be something wretched, something to build nightmares on. A real history of violence, as Van Narr had suggested. But when she turned and looked at me over her shoulder, her yellow shawl wrapped around her neck l
ike a scarf, there was no pain in her eyes. She rolled slightly onto one hip, and the pull of her dress across her body distracted me.

  Alle told me a story, but it wasn’t about her parents. It was about the farm she’d grown up on. The work she’d done there. She described her parents—her mother practical and stoic, offering blunt plans for the horses, the crops, the household renovations. But in deed, she was looser, freer. If she said the chickens had to go to the Buckmans’ for slaughter, she’d end up keeping a favorite hen or two.

  And Alle’s father—a quiet man, a dreamer who grew shy when asked what he wanted for himself. Bashful, as though he’d been asked to dance and didn’t know the steps. A gambler, and sometimes a fool.

  She described the seasons on the farm, and the work that needed to be done during each. I expected to be bored, once I realized there was no blood in this tale, but I wasn’t. Eventually, though, I noticed her parents disappeared from the story, phased out so subtly I almost hadn’t noticed. When she stopped after describing last year’s threshing, I asked, “Was your dad upset that the crop was poor?”

  She was silent for a moment. “My father is no longer living.”

  I wondered why people needed their secrets and their mysteries. Wouldn’t it feel good to lay them out, entrust them to someone?

  I only tucked my own closer to my heart.

  “Do you ever wonder,” I asked Denson, “what the beast does? When she’s not devouring tributes, I mean.”

  “No.” Denson was braiding my hair. I liked when she did it, though I looked stupid in braids. “I don’t waste time wondering about a monster.”

  “But maybe she’s not so bad as people think. Maybe she likes . . . cards, or knitting, or—”

  “Thera, please. It’s not wise to take such a dangerous creature lightly.”

  “She was once human,” I insisted. “It was only magic that made her more beastlike, right?”

  “I believe she always had the soul for it.”

  “But you don’t know her.”

  “I have no need to.” She tugged too hard on my hair, and I winced.

  I recognized I had hit a nerve that grew like a weed, one that bled and jittered when it was cut. I turned, and Denson gave a smile like a grimace and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” I offered.

  She stared at my braid through her thick glasses. “My brother,” she said after a long moment. “My brother was sent into the labyrinth. Years ago.”

  My jaw fell, and I tried to look at Denson in a way that suggested I was not frightened, but gruesomely fascinated. Bad things. Bad things, I thought, can’t hurt you if you pursue them with devotion. If you try to pat snakes, if you coo at roaches and ghost hunt late at night. If you relish tales of murder. Then, perhaps, you are safe. “How’d he get to do that?”

  She gave me a sharp look. “It was not a privilege!” She coughed.

  “I didn’t mean that it was!”

  She continued the braid. “I’m sorry. It’s just something that doesn’t hurt any less with time.”

  I didn’t dare speak again. Denson in distress was enthralling.

  “He was convicted ten years ago of murdering his landlord. Spent five years in Rock Hill Prison, and then one day the truck came and took him and three other inmates away.”

  “And you know for sure he went to the labyrinth?” She nodded. “But you don’t know if he survived?”

  Her words came immediately and flatly. “No one survives.”

  I gazed out the window toward the prison. “Did you work at Rock Point back then?”

  “I came here the month before he was taken.”

  I turned back to her, nearly yanking the braid from her grasp. “Did you come here to be near him?”

  She glanced at me again, but there was no anger in her expression this time. “Goodness, Thera. You’d wear out a saint.”

  “You brought it up.” I hoped, guiltily, to engage her in a spat.

  “You’re right. I’m only trying to say . . . I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I suppose that there are things you—things that will seem like rich stories or grand adventures. But that are quite real and very sad.”

  “I’m ready for that.” I grabbed the unfinished braid she held limply in her hand, and I undid it, combing madly through it with my fingers until my hair crackled and strands drifted across my face. “I have seen things that are real and sad. And I’m sorry for your loss, and maybe for all losses ever. I used to want people to fear me. I still do, sometimes. But what I really want is to be a warrior. Like in the old days. I want people to trust me to go places like the labyrinth. I want to fight their battles.” The words had come so fast they were either cow drippings or my truest heart.

  She looked at me with a quiet wonder. Her voice, when she spoke, was just a whisper. “I do believe you will, Thera. I believe you could.”

  After that, I went outside sometimes in the evening as the sun was setting. I’d tell Tamna I needed some fresh air, and she would moan and mumble and nod. I’d go to the west side of the building, near the woods, where I was least likely to be seen. I’d pick up a long stick from beneath the oak tree there and I’d practice using it as a sword. I’d slice the air, thrust at a knot in the tree’s side. I’d spin and then parry an imagined blow.

  Some days I felt silly. Others, I felt a promise in every movement, a grace unconnected to beauty, a certainty that went beyond hope. Some days, I felt I was learning.

  One evening, just as twilight was deepening to night, just as I began to hear Bessie Holmes’s frantic voice calling my name, I pivoted with my sword and was overtaken by the strange sense that I was chasing some scrap of shadow. That there was something I needed to know about this moment but couldn’t grasp. The back of my neck prickled, and my heart drummed. I wandered too close to the iron fence and stepped on a tangle of vine that grew around the bars and puddled on the ground. As I kicked the vine away, I saw a hole under the fence.

  A hole just big enough for a dog to squeeze through, if he was looking to go on an illicit adventure.

  I would be remiss if I did not mention the weasel.

  One fall night, just after supper, a girl screamed in the hallway upstairs. We all came running out of our rooms and clustered around a corner of the hall, where a small, gray-brown creature stood with its hair raised and its teeth showing. The teeth were so small and thin. That’s what I remember—needlelike canines and long yellow incisors. Its eyes glittered in the dim light. Several girls were shrieking, and Franny Gammel yelled, “What is it?”

  “Back away, you idiots.” Bitsy put an arm out, forcing the younger girls back. I was surprised by how panicked she sounded. “It’s gonna attack if it’s scared.”

  “I used to hunt these in the western deserts,” Kenna said to me. “They were the most dangerous game. The one-legged Dr. Eppler Coltrain and I used to—”

  “Kenna,” I snapped. “Go get someone.”

  Bitsy herded the girls against the wall while Kenna went to find help. The creature began to walk forward, its back end swaying side to side. It was some sort of weasel, I thought. I glanced around for Alle and saw that she was staring at the animal, her eyes blank. “It’s got foam on its mouth.” She spoke quietly, without looking up. The animal darted its head, and I saw she was right. Little flecks of foam dripped from its tiny jaws, and it hissed as it waddled by the line of whimpering girls.

  Alle touched my shoulder. “Get the little girls away. Get ’em away.” She stepped forward. The creature turned toward her. It hissed again, and its tail seemed to shiver. The foam coming from its mouth turned pink.

  Bitsy and I shoved Franny and a couple of the little ones down the hall toward an open bedroom. I turned over my shoulder and saw Alle raise her right foot. The creature struck, its teeth bouncing off the bottom of her shoe, and then she brought her foot down on it hard. There was a crack, and a wet sound, and the weasel flopped on its broken back, blood smearing its chin, while the girls screamed anew.


  She stepped on it again, on its head, and then it lay still.

  I could only stare. At the broken animal, and then at Alle. She never took her eyes off the weasel—it was as though she expected it to return to life.

  Bessie Holmes arrived a moment later. She took a look at all of us, started to speak, and then her gaze fell on the weasel. She yelped and put her hands over her mouth. Breathed hard against her palms. “What . . . is that?”

  “Alle killed it!” Little Rina said. “It’s a Mustela nivalis—a Least Weasel.”

  Bessie took her hands away, her mouth open slightly. “Allendara killed it?” She turned her gaze to Alle.

  “It was rabid, Miss Holmes.” Alle’s voice was low and rough. “It would have bit somebody.”

  Bessie stepped forward slowly. “Listen, miss.” She took Alle by the arm and pulled her down the hall. Alle stumbled but didn’t resist. “We’ll been taking this right to Miss Rollins.”

  Alle didn’t respond, but fury welled in me hot enough to burn.

  Bessie jerked her along. “We know what you are capable of, and we are gonna stamp that out right now.”

  I followed. “Let her go. Miss Holmes, let her go. She was only helping.”

  Bessie whirled. “You’re very lucky I don’t take you in too, Miss Ballard.”

  I backed off at the look in her eyes—a manic righteousness that seemed to have its roots in genuine fear. Whatever dastardly thing Alle was, she had the staff more cowed than I’d ever managed.

  We could, I imagined, be an extraordinary team.

  The next day, I was on my way to the kitchen after lessons when Denson stopped me. “Thera, would you go to the parlor, please?” There was something strange about her expression—a dreamy sort of excitement. I wanted to know what was going on, wanted to resist until I was told. Denson looked directly at me through her ridiculous glasses. “It’s a good thing,” she assured me.

  When I entered the parlor, Alle, Bitsy, and a girl named Marcy Gates were seated in the high-backed chairs. Across from them, on the love seat, sat a young couple. The woman had close-cropped black hair and beautiful gold rose-shaped earrings. The man was dressed in a starched shirt and creased slacks. He had his arm around the woman, and the woman was smiling nervously, almost apologetically at Alle, Bitsy, and Marcy. She turned as I entered, her smile growing. “Hello. Are you Thera? You must be.” Her voice started soft but seemed to firm gradually, like an apple ripening on a tree.