Lost in the Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page B

a wall, allowing us to catch up, then flew onward in what appeared to be a purposeful manner.
    We were nearing some of the humbler portions of the palace. We walked into a kitchen, shocking the cook nearly senseless. She dropped to her knees, her wooden spoon clattering to the floor beside her, as the queen, leading a parade of great ladies and lords, passed through her lowly domain. "Your Majesty! My lord!" the cook moaned, prostrating herself before us. My mother stepped briskly over her, her eyes fixed on the bee. The rest of the party followed suit. In the hall outside the kitchen, the bee stopped in its flight and landed on the floor. We halted and stared at the tiny animal.
    "What does it mean?" my mother whispered.
    Then we saw. The bee was crawling on an iron ring. It had landed on a trapdoor leading to one of the storage rooms.
    "Oh, quickly, quickly," moaned my mother.
    The trapdoor was flung open, and several servants jumped down inside. The bee flew straight to one of the great pithoi, storage jars higher than a tall man's head and broader than his out-flung arms. On the pithos the bee rested.
    "In there," said Polyidus triumphantly.

    When at length the massive jar was tipped on its side and the contents poured out on the floor, they proved to be three in number: an enormous quantity of honey, a dead mouse, and my brother Glaucus, likewise dead, drowned in a vat of golden sweetness.

CHAPTER FOUR
AND RETURNED
    I TURNED MY HEAD AWAY, HALF FAINTING WITH HORROR.
    The crush of people pushing forward to see nearly knocked me off my feet—I would surely have fallen if not for a hand that reached out from the crowd and steadied me with a firm grip.
    I looked up to see Icarus's anxious eyes on mine.
    "Come away, my lady," he said. "You ought not to be here."
    I looked back and saw my wild-eyed mother and my stone-faced father standing motionless, staring down at the body of my little brother as it lay in a pool of honey at the bottom of the storage room.
    "My parents," I said. "I must—"
    "You are better elsewhere, Princess."
    I shook my head. "My mother may want me," I said, resisting as he tugged on my hand. "I will not fall," I assured him, and, indeed, I did not believe that I would. There was a sickness at the pit of my stomach, but that was nothing.
    He nodded and turned his attention back to my parents, who were now descending the ladder into the lower room. In the lamplight poor Glaucus glistened all over, like a statue washed with liquid gold.
    The bee, which had been forgotten, now flew out of a dark corner and settled on the little boy's cheek. Startled, my parents drew back, loath to disturb the servant of the Goddess.
    Then my mother cried out. "It—it is
feeding
on the honey."
    My father roared, like an animal, like a wounded bull. He snatched at the bee to crush it between his fingers, but it flew away, up and out of the storage room, down the crowded hallway (all there flinched and muttered charms of protection when its flight swooped near), and into the outer air at last.
    When the bee had gone my mother fell to her knees in the little storeroom by my brother's body. She raised up her voice unto the Goddess, demanding to know why the Great Mother should see fit to take this child.
    "Have I not been a fitting representative for you here on earth? Am I not a dutiful daughter?" We of the royal house of Kefti were direct descendents of the Goddess—my mother therefore addressed her remote ancestor. "If I have displeased you in any way," she said, her voice choked with rage and grief "I had rather you took my life than those of my innocent children."
    The crowd shifted uneasily as their queen railed at the Goddess.
    Finally my mother ceased her reproaches. Her head drooped and she began to weep. She wailed aloud in her pain: "Oh, my boy! My little boy!" She bent to embrace Glaucus. She took him up in her arms, but he slipped from her grasp because of the honey. She wailed again, and my father