king, said. He picked up his wine goblet and took a swallow. “Do you know the beginning?”
Klea chewed a mouthful of stuffed grape leaves and swallowed. “I guess not,” she said.
The king leaned forward. The table was lit by candlesticks and the leaping shadows on his face threw it into high relief. It was a very handsome face.
“It happened on Crete,” he began. “The king, Minos, married a noblewoman from a neighboring kindgom named Pasiphae. Pretty young thing. Had several children. Then, one day, he does something that pisses off Poseidon, I don’t even remember what. Probably peed into the ocean or something. Between you and me, we know how fickle the gods are.”
He winked at Klea. Despite herself, she smiled.
“Poseidon finds this enormous bull somewhere on Crete—it’s absolutely massive—and he makes it mad. Super-mad. Crazy mad. He sends it into the city, where it goes around destroying everything. Buildings, shops, food stalls. It kills a few people.”
“And that’s the Minotaur?”
The king smiled to himself. “Oh no. Not yet.”
Klea leaned back, sipping from her own wine goblet.
“The soldiers in the king’s guard finally get this bull under control, and they put it in a courtyard. Stone walls three feet thick, in the middle of the castle. Finally somewhere it can’t break out of. So that’s when Poseidon plays his trump card.”
“That wasn’t the bull destroying the city?”
The king shook his head. “He made the queen fall in love with the bull.”
The silence flickered in the candlelight. The king’s eyes bore directly into Klea until finally, she looked down at her near-empty dinner plate. She licked her lips.
“In love how?”
“Carnally. Lust, really. He gave her an insatiable desire to fuck this bull. Her servants locked her in her bedroom, where she paced up and down, night and day. She would tear off her clothes and present herself to her window, trying to get the bull’s attention. Howling and moaning, all hours of the night. It went on for weeks, until suddenly, she seemed almost normal again.”
“What happened?”
“Well, everyone was puzzled. At first they thought that Poseidon had lifted the curse, so they let her out of her chambers. She had changed. All that crazed lust had done something to her mind so that she wasn’t the sweet, innocent queen everyone had come to love, but they were glad to have her back at all. But then,” he said, and took a sip of wine, “her belly started to swell.”
Klea blinked. Her mouth had fallen open during the story, and she stared goggle-eyed at the king.
“The king hadn’t touched her in months. He’d been afraid to. He was furious, and he demanded that the man who’d slept with his poor, insane wife come forward. His men scoured the city, and they couldn’t find anything—no one came forward, no one ratted out their neighbor—but finally, they found the answer.”
Stone-still, Klea waited.
“In a storage shed, right outside the palace, there was a hollow carving of a cow. A little smaller than the bull. Big enough for a woman to fit into, and right below the tail, there was an opening. One of the servants had been helping her out of her chambers at night.”
Klea was having trouble believing all this. “She climbed into a statue so the bull would fuck her?”
“In layman’s terms, yes.”
“And she was pregnant with the Minotaur.”
“Yes.”
The king stood and walked to where Klea sat, and offered her his hand. Confused, she took it, and stood. He rested her hand on the inside of her arm and led her to the room’s exit, then turned and faced her. They stood six inches apart, and in the warm night, Klea could feel the heat radiating off of his body. In the low light, his eyes looked like bottomless pits.
“I want you to bring me that bull,” he said. He moved a strand of hair out of her face, and then grasped her chin lightly in his hand. Klea resisted the urge to pull back.
“Why?”