Dion: His Life and Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew, and feared, the man-eating monster which had made its home in the Labyrinth, beneath the King of Crete’s palace. The servants dealt with the domestic propaganda, earning money on the side from newspaper stories: In Love with a Monster and My Beastly Nights of Passion . Meanwhile, ‘the sexual predator’ who was earning them extra pocket money was not even ten years old and oblivious to the fact that his private domain had suddenly become such a hot spot.
    The King of Athens had put Tireas to death, hoping this would appease my father, but it didn’t. My father insisted that this wasn’t enough compensation for his beloved son, who had been a guest in Athens when he had been brutally murdered. Instead, after much threatening, on each anniversary of Andro’s death, Athens had to send seven young men and seven young women to feed the hideous Minotaur. The first year the cruel demands were met, Aster was ten. They lasted until his death.
    Upon arrival, the frightened youths from Athens were washed and cleansed and well fed. My father believed in hospitality, even though Athens hadn‘t shown his son any, blaming the whole state for one man’s blunder. At midnight, they would be led, blindfolded, down through the cellar and around its twisted corridors. They would be left in the rooms furthest away from Aster’s quarters, so his night’s sleep wouldn’t be disturbed by their screams. At some point during the night, they would hear a terrible noise, like a bull ready to charge, before being set upon and slaughtered by a chosen few of my father’s men, wearing bull masks. After the young men were slaughtered, the girls enjoyed the added bonus of further discreet tortures by my father’s men before their once-beautiful bodies were bathed in their own blood.
    The next day, the Labyrinth would be opened and the bloodied and mangled remains of the young people revealed. The rumour mill turned and soon the populace was convinced that my poor monster of a brother was a cannibal as well, and that these youths were sacrifices for his large appetite. Athens, understandably, was particularly vilifying.
    Back in the other part of the cellar, Aster only saw four people during his confinement: my brother, sister (although I never saw her there), Daedalus and me. Daedalus, who had of course originally designed the palace, knew the cellar as well as we did. After Andro died, Daedalus took Aster under his wing, bringing him food and things to occupy the monotony of his days. It was under Daedalus’s teaching that Aster’s talent for sculpture flourished.
    On one occasion, when both Daedalus and I were visiting Aster, we hit upon a plan to get us off the island. At first, to fill the void his brother had left, Aster had produced many sculptures in Andro’s image. He then insisted I model for him. Later, relying on memory, he began to make ones of father and mother. I never saw ones of Phaedra, I presume he gave them to her. On this particular visit I noticed, to my horror, that he had branched out even further.
    “What’s this?” I demanded, a cruel and stupid question. Aster was a talented craftsman.
    “Isn’t it obvious? Body of a man, head of a bull?”
    “Oh, Aster!” I tried to comfort him; he would have none of it. My brother was growing into a man before my very eyes and I sometimes forgot it, as if his condition rendered him permanently childlike and vulnerable.
    “This isn’t you!” I angrily shook the model in his face. “It looks nothing like you.” And I threw the hateful figure to the other side of the room, hoping it would smash. Instead, Daedalus caught it.
    “This really is something. Wonderful proportions and exquisite use of knife strokes,” Daedalus said, to diffuse the situation. “I wonder.” Then he looked at Aster. “You know, a talent like yours shouldn’t be confined in here.”
    “What do you mean?” Aster asked him.
    “Well, everyone takes their cut from this monster charade. The