Turning away from him, I concentrated on following the guide and not overtaking him as he led us on the same route the other group had followed, up a convincingly weathered narrow path and through a grove of trees.
Flawlessly sensuous nymphs danced with faultlessly goat-legged satyrs for the amusement of yet another group of tourists.
I looked away, counting my blessings. Other than exceptional strength and agility and the eidetic memory and sense of direction necessary for my erstwhile job as a courier, I had no modifications that distinguished me from natural humans.
Oh, my features might be a little too perfect, as designers would make them if they got the chance. And I wore the black ring of a freed artifact. But those didn’t matter. It could have been worse. Much worse.
A hundred steps past the grove, a seven-foot-tall stone wall rose. A panel of dimatough, inexpertly made to look like wood, covered a narrow doorway.
Our guide touched a button. The panel slid away.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let us enter the fabulous labyrinth of the Minotaur.”
We followed him into a tunnel. Its walls were molded of smooth black dimatough, and the blackness swallowed what light shone from the diminutive lamps on the wall sconces.
The uncertain lighting changed my companions into shapes and shadows. The dank air reeked of manure. It felt like a cheap ride in a second class carnival.
“It smells like a stable,” Pol’s girlfriend said. “I’m not going in.”
The guide turned around. A light affixed at the base of his throat lit his face partially and from below, obscenely emphasizing his mouth. “It’s perfectly clean,” he said his mouth opening and closing, white teeth shining and making him look like a snarling beast. “But the Minotaur…. You see, he’s an animal. He smells.”
In the doorway, square-shouldered Pol bowed meekly to whisper something to his companion.
She giggled. “Oh, don’t be silly. No, I wouldn’t want to deprive you…. I know you want to go in.”
Another bout of whispering, and a muffled giggle. “No, I won’t stay here alone, either. I guess I’m being a silly old woman. We’ll go in, Pol. Come along.”
They joined the party, her high heels clicking as we walked along the ever-narrowing corridor. We stopped in front of a fresco-adorned wall that depicted, in gruesome color and lurid detail, the Minotaur feasting on the corpses of ancient Greek maidens and youths.
The guide turned to face us, winked. “Follow me,” he said.
Flattening himself against the fresco, he slithered sideways, seemingly disappearing into the stone wall. Pol followed, eagerly, smiling like a child at a party.
I tried it next.
There was an opening, of course, to the left side of the panel, an opening so narrow that it required our sliding sideways, squeezing between stony surfaces.
On the other side, Pol smiled at me, and the guide looked away.
“Look what it’s done to my dress,” Nary said as she emerged. “I don’t think anything will get it clean.”
Her bright yellow silk dress showed dust and something like a verdigris stain.
The guide looked abashed. “Replacements will be provided, of course,” he said, and bowed and turned to lead us down the wider, curving corridor into which we’d emerged.
We walked a long time, between black walls and my sense of direction, built into me for my job as a courier, told me that we actually described a full circle before we took an abrupt left turn.
The purpose of the circle would be to make the way seem longer. However disadvantages of being a human homing pigeon my being forced to take a circuitous route countered my carefully designed instincts for always choosing the quickest way. My mind knew where the turns we took were silly and useless and, trudging along the dark, dank, smelly hallways, I literally ached to take a streamlined path.
The ceiling of the next compartment hung so low that we had to duck our heads. Because of his height, Pol had to bend almost double. His dark hair brushed my shoulder.
No one spoke. At the end of the tunnel, the head of the Minotaur, carved in stone, glared at us. We turned right, suddenly able to stand up. The high ceiling, on which the guide helpfully shone his light, displayed another fresco, this one of the Minotaur standing astride a pile of human corpses, while Theseus pierced the beast’s chest with his borrowed sword.
The smell of manure got worse. My hair attempted to stand on end.
“It’s too long,” Pol’s girlfriend said. “And it smells. Can’t we take a short cut? Can’t you call the beast to us?”
“Ah, my dear, but the Minotaur hides in the labyrinth and ambushes us,” the guide said.
Nary murmured something from which the word, “nonsense,” emerged.
To my disgust, I agreed with her. She might be an idiot, but even idiots were right sometimes.
The place did smell like a stable, a musty animal-waste smell. The dark, cold corridors didn’t disturb me any less for my knowing that they were supposed to disturb me.
Most attractions didn’t try this hard to put tourists off.
We turned left, then right, then left again. Two of the frescoes repeated themselves. The carved head of the Minotaur protruded from the tunnel at regular intervals and if it were not for my sense of direction, I’d assume we were going in circles and passing the same carving again and again.
Couldn’t make it too easy to find our way out, could they?
I huffed under my breath, doubting that my complaints would be met with such gentle rejoinders as natural-born Nary’s.
Mostly, I was mad at myself. Why hadn’t I begged off this particular attraction? For that matter, why had I signed up for this tour of Mythos at all?
But I knew why. Greek mythology, with its capricious gods, its heroic mortals, drew me like a half-healed lip sore, to which your tongue strays irresistibly. Hard to read the myths and not to think of our present world, of capricious humans playing god and long-suffering artifacts enduring their whimsy. Hard not to identify with the situations created.
“Imagine Theseus making his way through these dark corridors,” the guide said. “Knowing that at the end he will have to fight a supernatural beast for his life and the lives of his companions.”
I shook my head. Not while discreet electrical lights shone on me, not when I knew the Minotaur was vegetarian and had the intelligence of a seven-year-old.
A high pitched, tremulous scream echoed through the chamber. It ended in a gurgle.
Ahead of us, the corridor bifurcated via doorways opening to the right and left of another horrendous fresco.
I froze in place, all my instincts alert. My heart raced.
Scene-setting, my mind said. But my senses protested it had been too realistic. Too real. The scream had sounded too present, too anguished to be part of the scene-setting.
My nostrils flared.
I caught the smell of the charnel house, the metallic tang of blood mixed with animal waste: the smell of sudden death.
“What! What is that?” Nary asked. “What I want out.”
“Hey, take us out of here,” Pol said. “My friend is” He stopped. “Where did he go?”
I looked around for the guide, as did other tour members. But we saw only each other’s frightened expressions. Our guide had vanished.
“Where did he go?” A young teenage girl clutched at my arm with her hot, moist hand. “Where did he go?”
“He ran,” Pol said.
“Out?” I asked. My voice sounded alien, disembodied. My heart beat too fast, up by my throat.
“I don’t know.” Pol shuffled back a step, opened his eyes wide. He looked restless and skittish as if he too could smell better than natural humans. As if he knew that somewhere close by people had died violently. “But he has to have run. He was here, and then not.”