Angela Jooste

The Princess and the MinotauR

At the centre of the labyrinth, what would you see?

novella, contemporary and mythic

At the entrance

1

Isabelle was born with a river of blue veins beneath her skin. 

            That’s what her father liked to say.

He’d held Isabelle to the light announcing, “She is a blue baby,” and he never tired of telling her how he’d gazed in wonder at her skin, and how her grandmother had pronounced Isabelle was blessed, that a light shone from within her, and would carry her through life. 

He rarely spoke of Isabelle’s mother who died soon after. Her grandmother always spoke of Isabelle’s birth as a miracle, but it was through her birth into this world that her mother’s was taken. She had lost so much blood that the life force drained and never returned. 

On Isabelle’s fourth birthday her father gave her a gift. A small, blue box that had belonged to Isabelle’s mother and fit perfectly in the palm of her hand, and a story that unwound over many nights when she couldn’t sleep. 

The box was a piece of the sky, the colour when day sinks to night. Isabelle placed it on the table next to her bed, so that it glowed under the lamp. It was the first and last thing she saw before sleep and dreams. 

The story began as many do: Once upon a time…

And like the box, Isabelle carried the tale spun by her father’s voice with her from that time on. A story of a girl, born unloved, and the creature whose very existence was tied to her own.

            The night sky was a map, a compass, her father would say. As a boy he had learned to navigate by the stars. When he gave Isabelle a piece of the sky it was a symbol, that by holding that blue box she could somehow orient herself. Long ago, he explained, people would shape mythological characters from the stars as a way to order the chaotic explosion of lights, to position the human within the heavens. 

Often he’d guide Isabelle to look out the window near her bed, opening the blind to allow the night-lights to brighten her room. The moon on a cloudless night illuminated their faces as he traced the stars. The mapping over time and space, embedding myths in their immediate reality. 

“Once, long ago,” he said, “there was an Egyptian goddess. Her name was Nut. She bent her body wrapped in a cloak of stars. She curved her body to become night.” 

Isabelle had a vision of this woman’s body arched, her skin like blue-black silk; her limbs straddling the globe of the earth. Lying in bed, looking at the sky, she imagined catching a glimpse of Nut’s flesh, a patch of her dark skin that was night, sprinkled with white lights. The sky seemed less ominous, less immense, when Isabelle imagine she was somehow under the shade of this luminous being. 

And then there was the other tale her father recounted, one he unwound over many nights, and it began like this:       

Once upon a time…

And there was a beginning. It began with the idea of a beginning, as no one could actually pin that once upon a time. 

As if the beginning was woven from air, mapped within the stars where gods peopled an expansive space, the heavens made earth. Yet some might say it all began when the labyrinth came into being. 

A map of heaven made of stone.

Isabelle would let her father’s voice drift over her, as if through telling this tale he was weaving a spell to help her sleep. He said his story was about a princess, and over the nights he told it, Isabelle found it strange how her dreams would become entwined with his words, so that she could never be sure of what she had dreamed and what he had actually said. 

The words and images wove together so that Isabelle’s imagination created a world she truly inhabited, beyond her father’s storytelling. But she could clearly remember the beginning: “There was a young princess, her name was Ariadne, and she lived on the Isle of Crete…”  

* * *

Ariadne held the ball of twine and wound the thread from the centre out. The steady motion of her hands calmed and stilled her thoughts. 

The boat was coming tomorrow, the coming of the time to honour what was kept secret but which was known. 

At the centre there resided a beast.

On the Isle of Crete time was marked by the coming of this moment. That every nine years an honour should be made, a sanguine pact. An honour in blood.

The twine was thick and coarse and her fingers ached to keep the thread from unravelling to the ground. Ariadne lifted her head to gaze out to sea. The boat would be coming the following dawn, to land at the shore where she sat. 

She wondered at a trip over seas as calm as this. 

They would be coming from Athens; seven young men and seven young women, arriving under the sky, which as the sun set began to stain the colour of the blood they would give in honour of what lived at the heart of her father’s kingdom. 

To celebrate, a wild bull would be slain, bound and roasted on the day the entrance to the labyrinth was opened. The gate was kept closed and guarded until the arrival of the ninth year against the spirits that came from the west. 

What kind of heart could abide such a ritual?

For many on the island it was also a time to mark the coming of the religious year; but hidden and secret was the abandoning of the civility of daily life for the unleashing of the shadow side of the heart. Her mother, Pasiphae, had never explained what many of the people who worked in the palace and the surrounding town had known for years. As the princess of the house, she needed to be kept from this. She was being prepared for another celebration, one she had been groomed for her whole life, to marry someone chosen by her father, to bring honour to the house of King Minos.

But she had learned the secret many years ago.

2

Minotaur: I was born in a chamber of a palace. 

Some would say I was born of love; a love misguided. Others believed my conception and birth unspeakable. What I do remember was a blinding light and then darkness.

I came into the world amid the screams of my mother and then nothing. After that there was often silence, and two sensations: light and dark. These have coloured my days since then. 

The light of the day and the dark of night. 

Except on a clear night there was the moon and the stars, and this light, soft and reassuring, comforted me. 

Into the labyrinth

1

There was a point just before sleep when Isabelle would let her mind drift through spaces, sometimes places she had inhabited in her life: a small room, the oppressiveness of heat, and a glimpse of sky through the window from her bed. Then she would come to a room that was empty and her mind closed darkly. 

The bed heaved beside her. He slept restlessly. She reached to touch Theo’s face and felt his jaw beneath rough, spiky skin. His face relaxed in sleep with a hint of a smile. Content. She felt protective of him while he slept. 

Theo slid his leg over her thigh and for a moment the weight was unbearable and then it shifted as they folded into each other. Waking briefly, he asked if she was okay and her voice came quietly that she was. His arms tightened around her and she pressed her face into his chest, breathing his skin. 

That night the room had shrouded her sleep and Isabelle had a dream. It was a familiar dream of a figure falling endlessly through space, and as she fell asleep in Theo’s arms it came again.

There was never an end to the boy’s life in her dream, only this falling limbo. Isabelle was standing nearby, witnessing his fall as he passed her; free falling, floating. She was thinking to herself: I never had the chance to say goodbye. 

So you left us all. 

I can’t believe you’re gone, she kept saying to the boy in her dream. Who could hear her heart? The beat was heavy and full, swelling to the point where it could overflow and spill into her chest, a field of blood.

Then the image shifted and she was walking across a stretch of sand, the rhythm of the tide tugging the grains beneath her feet. She was walking towards a pier and could see the boy standing there, at the edge—the edge of time. 

He was facing out to sea and everything around him was moving: the sky, water and sand. He turned to look at her with eyes coloured a murky green like the watery land surrounding them. Then his eyes darkened and closed, leaving a lifeless mask of skin. 

She dreamed that he stopped breathing in a place so high that as he gasped, his body arched like he had wings, but he didn’t fly. Instead he was falling. Endlessly. 

Isabelle woke gasping for air, her eyes wide with the dream still moving in the dark. She reached to touch Theo and the rise and fall of his breath was deep. She rested her head on his chest, her body lying along his length, and his arm curved around her. Her breathing calmed, shocked as it had been with the images that had floated and rushed and jolted her awake. She almost envied Theo’s ability to sleep. But he didn’t dream. When he told her this, she couldn’t believe that he seldom had a night when he would find himself in another world as he closed his eyes. Yet there was peace in this and she would gladly welcome a sleep without dreams.  

Her gaze rested on Theo. He was exhausted from a long day of teaching and an evening spent with a visiting Professor and his wife. 

“This is the last thing I need,” he’d said as she met him after work at the university. His eyes wore dark circles from the previous night of marking papers until the early hours of the morning. 

“Do we need to go?” Isabelle had asked. She’d knocked before entering his office, amused at having to act the student to see him. At his rather curt “Come in!” she’d opened the door slightly to poke her head around the corner, smiling at the frown that greeted her. He’d laughed at seeing her, his pleasure apparent. Dinner with the Professor was supposed to be at a small restaurant that Theo favoured on the Esplanade in St. Kilda. Theo piled more papers into his backpack that needed to be marked. 

His shoulders slumped at Isabelle’s reminder of dinner. “You don’t have to come tonight, Issy.” She was dwarfed in his chair, swivelling around in it like Alice lost in his office. 

“I know. I want to though. I haven’t seen much of you with all the work you’ve been doing.” She spoke lightly, nothing accusatory about it. Theo smiled tiredly and finished packing. They walked out of the brown brick building that housed the English department, into a night heavy with the scent of jasmine creeping nearby. 

“Heaven,” breathed Isabelle and snaked her arm through the crook of his. It was exactly that, and a night she envisaged being spent very differently. But she was aware of the fine line Theo walked with work and their relationship, how his career had been one of the reasons for his marriage ending, and his departure to live in another country.

“Well, I’d rather we were spending it alone,” Theo admitted in frustration. “I should never have booked that restaurant. I’d rather save it for us than associate it with work.” 

Isabelle grinned. “So, what’s this Professor’s name again? I should know that much at least.” 

Theo scowled. “Christopher Humboldt.” 

And what followed Isabelle remembered only in snatches of images and words.

How she’d tried lightening Theo’s mood in the car with a story about one of her students from the art college. That on entering the studio for a critique, Isabelle found the student fast asleep, only later discovering the student fell asleep at precisely the same time every day. And the amazing fact, it was the time when she was actually born. The student’s art consisted of rooms she created from woven paper where you could sit and meditate. Far away from her home, the student was making places she could inhabit, if only briefly, a traveller through space between two distant lands. 

How Theo stopped her before they went into the restaurant, pulling her to him to tilt her face so he could kiss her gently, then urgently. Her eyes had widened with the pleasure of surprise and she’d said, “More please.” 

How their buoyancy evaporated on meeting the Professor and his wife. That Theo’s tiredness was only underscored by the exuberance of the Professor, whose praise for Theo was only outdone by his wife who proceeded to get drunk while flirting shamelessly with Theo. 

Isabelle’s body had been taut, like thinning wire, as she listened to the ceaseless flow of talk from the Professor. To still her thoughts she’d looked out at the dark sea that appeared as an expanse, like a veil as it bled into the sky. The restaurant buttressed the sand, built as it was along the beach, and the lights from the boardwalk didn’t spread to penetrate the murky dark, drawing Isabelle’s gaze to puzzle at its depth. She’d thought about painting it, a space where the self would be absorbed to the point of being lost.      

How droll the Professor had sounded with comments about “taste” and the concept of “taste cultures”. She’d smiled to herself thinking of one of her art school colleague’s recent comments: “Culture!” he’d spat the word when they’d listened to a speech at an exhibition opening. “What do they think this is? Science? What do they think we produce—stuff in Petri dishes! Fuck culture!”  

There’d been a low-level hum in the restaurant beneath the Professor’s words, with waiters discreetly attending to a sizeable number of guests for that time of the week. Isabelle had been grateful for the activity, allowing for easy pauses as they struggled through the discussion about work. 

Theo had looked at her often, dragging his eyes away from Isabelle to speak to his guests. And the words that nearly left her mouth: When can we leave? Theo read the question in her eyes: Leave? Not soon enough! His look had deflated with his body. 

How Theo’s eyes shuttered, wary, at the Professor’s remarks about what a nuisance students could be, interfering with the real work of research. Isabelle knew that the students were one of the few reasons Theo continued teaching. At thirty-three, he hadn’t quite got the jaded expressions that accompanied some of his colleagues who would like to see the backs of the “lot of them” when semester ended. 

            Then, the attention had passed to her: “Don’t you teach, dear?” the Professor had asked. 

The tone and endearment had grated, but she’d bit back the retort. “I do actually.” 

“What area do you specialise in?”

“I teach art, practical art.” Both the Professor and his wife had perked up at this. The very word “art” held an aura for some people.

“Really, how fascinating, you’re an artist then?” 

“Yes, I am.” 

“What kind of art do you do?” Here we go, she’d thought.

“I paint mostly.” He’s going to ask what.

“What exactly do you paint?”  

Theo had suppressed a grin, knowing the inevitability of this line of questioning. 

“Abstract mostly.” The words that followed felt stiff like cardboard and as palatable in her mouth, “The figure or a subject might be alluded to, but it’s often disguised. Leaves more to the imagination.” 

Yet the focus that night had been mostly on Theo. How the Professor and his wife’s perception of his success were almost intoxicating, as if he exuded this substance that they could smell, touch or taste. 

Isabelle felt certain that she was one of the few who saw Theo in most of his guises. And his heart—she believed that was only revealed to those closest to him. It was the thread that connected them despite the relentless demands of others and work, and it was this that she held onto. 

* * *

The moon was shining a blue-white light through the window. 

They rolled together so that Isabelle was now curled behind Theo. She angled her face to see the moon. A full moon. She always had trouble sleeping when it was full. Tracing a circle on Theo’s back, his arm instinctively moved to stop her, murmuring something indecipherable. She smiled, relaxing her body into his. 

And she slept.

2

Minotaur: I was housed in a bare room with only the smallest of windows near the top of one of the high stone walls. 

However, this was not to be my home for long. I called it home for no other reason than I existed there. It was the space I inhabited. 

One day I was taken from this room, a sheath of cloth tied around my head, so that briefly I saw the faces of the two men who came into my space. What I glimpsed merely confused and frightened me. They did not want to look at me directly; instead they circled and grabbed at my arms so that I became unbalanced. They held me with force and the sweat poured from them so that this room that I had called mine became drenched in their efforts, and something else I was not sure of. Fear, but more than that, something suffocating and putrid: disgust. 

             They had taken the one thing that had made me feel secure. I had no sense of where I was as they pulled me to where I did not know. 

             My struggle with them as I resisted their grasp, was to return to my room, not to escape, and they only handled me with greater force, dragging me without any care as if I were a lump of meat, already dead.        

3

Theo woke while Isabelle was sleeping. 

He stroked her cheek, curling a strand of hair behind her ear. He lightly kissed her forehead, wanting her to sleep peacefully for a bit longer. There were times when she slept fitfully with her dreams. Theo had no idea of the images that accompanied her as she slept, and he couldn’t forget the night she woke with a jolt of her body, mouth open as if to scream. He thought she’d said someone’s name, but when he held her she couldn’t speak, doped with sleep and something like shock. Her mind had another life at night, alive and vivid. It was only through her art that he found clues, scraps of distorted images. 

Isabelle once asked what he dreamed about and his mind went blank, unable to think of a dream except one. It was a dream he’d had repeatedly but couldn’t speak of. 

In this dream he was turning away from the home of his marriage and his son. Theo was walking down the hallway to the door and once over the threshold, he looked back and the door closed without any assistance. Sometimes Kate was standing in the hall, sometimes Max, but the door quickly closed them from view. From him.

How could he speak of the emptiness of such a dream? He preferred the oblivion of sleep, a desert of the subconscious rather than dreams of leaving, of walking out and into an abyss.

There was a pattern to Theo’s days that allowed his efforts to hang in an orderly manner; that gave time a direction so that he could stop himself from simply sitting and staring at the blank walls of his office or the apartment. Theo once enjoyed reading his students’ words, at times rushed and thoughtless, but occasionally insightful, even outstanding. A challenge hopefully to his own musings, that as the years stretched, too easily grew tired. But of late the words blurred in front of his eyes and tiredness overwhelmed any attempt to make sense of them.

             There was one night recently where Theo had sat immovable on the sofa and watched the television until he slept, waking to disoriented images and voices on the screen. He had plenty of nights like this after leaving Kate, in an apartment not unlike this one. Work gave his days a shape, yet it was the silence he tried to escape. The silence signifying all that he felt, that suffocated his heart. Theo filled the silence with clamour. 

Busy days and blank nights. The colour of dry dust. 

And his eyes and head were full of it.

Until Isabelle. Looking at her face so close to his, words couldn’t image her. Theo was unable to break her down into bits and describe her. He often tried, picking up the pen, writing lists as if something would flow from these fragments; to make concrete the shape of her face as she smiled, the coils of hair down her back, the inner strength which came through like a veil of calm. He was always a little surprised that he couldn’t and he’d stop, perhaps also scared to pin and name something that continued to enthral and draw him to her. Lying like this, with just their breath filling the space, the words counted for nothing, couldn’t come close to this feeling.       

Isabelle stirred and stretched against him, opening her eyes. They were the darkest blue and in the light they were like glass. She smiled, still sleepy and unfocused. Theo felt strung out and tight in his gut with the feeling of being with her. Tenderness cut through with the sensation of an invisible hand twisting everything inside. Sometimes it was too overwhelming, like swimming out at sea with no land in sight. 

She reached to hold him, warm and rag-doll-like, her head resting against his chest. She always sought his heartbeat, steady and reassuring, that symbol of love and life, yet encased and distant from touch. 

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

“Not bad, a little restless,” she murmured. “Strange dreams.” 

He traced a vein near her temple. All over her body, beneath her skin, he could see the tinge of blue that shaped her. She was like a cat to touch, bending into his hand as he stroked her.  

“I’ve got an early class today,” he said, pressing his lips to her hair. 

“I know. I’ll shower first.” Before he could respond she slipped out of the bed leaving a rush of air. 

Theo turned onto his back, listening to the water running. He rubbed his sleep-worn face, yawning. A couple of days ago his ex-wife, Kate, had emailed Theo, and the voice that came and went through his mind, at times annoying in its persistence, was laid before him:

I realise we haven’t spoken in some time. It’s been hard to find the right moment to contact you since you left. The point is Max needs to see you Theo. I thought it would be good for him to visit you as soon as possible. He needs to see where you now live, so he has a sense of the place. He keeps asking for details that I can’t give. I know you speak to him, and I don’t want you to feel bad about this, but he misses you very much. I’ve suggested some dates for the visit. Let me know what suits you best.       

Theo got up and went to stand at the open door to the bathroom. Leaning against the doorjamb, he was momentarily at a loss. He stepped into the shower, absently taking the soap from Isabelle’s hand and began lathering her back. His thoughts strayed to what he was about to say. Two days on and he still felt the mess of emotions from reading it. He desperately wanted to see his son, that he was sure of, yet seeing Kate, after all these months, this confused him. 

He knew why. It was all tied to Isabelle. 

  “Issy,” he spoke suddenly and she turned to face him, the water slipping down her face and hair. He looked directly into her eyes and again, was unsure what to say. 

“What’s wrong?” she stared, waiting. “Theo?” Isabelle pressed her hands against his chest, and all thought was wiped clean at her touch. 

He breathed deeply, trying to focus. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. I received an email from Kate,” he paused then rushed on, ignoring the churning sensation creeping up his throat. “She’s bringing Max to see me next month.” He stopped and saw that Isabelle had gone very still, her hands slipping away. 

Kate. Up until now she’d been a distant shadow for Isabelle. Kate and Max. She kept staring at Theo’s face, not saying a word, while he held his breath.

Isabelle turned to catch the water spraying with her mouth, letting it fill so that it spilled down either side of her face. 

            Theo breathed out, the sound filling the silence.

4

Minotaur: I was at the centre. That was where they placed me. 

At the centre of this labyrinth of stone. 

When they took me from my room, it was to another space, open to the sky and with the earth solid beneath. From here I could not see anything but what was above and these walls. But there was an opening, a way to leave. 

At first I went nowhere near it, unsure of what was beyond. I waited, and nothing came. The gap in the wall led to a path, and this path turned into another, and I followed the twisting turns until I looked back to find that going forward and going back felt the same. 

I could feel the walls pressing against my chest as I breathed shallow with panic, disoriented and lost. I made a decisive turn and rushed to retrace my steps to the place I now found I could not leave, never understanding where I was, except that this now was where I had to stay.

A winding path

1

Isabelle was unsure when the labyrinth began.

She stopped painting, leaving the canvases unfinished and propped around her studio, while continuing to make the stretches, priming their surfaces. White surfaces like mirrors: reflections of absence, of space, criss-crossed by barely perceptible threads, lines indicating a movement, a journey. 

Each day Isabelle walked into her studio, navigating her way around the canvases. They were leaning on tables and chairs at angles to each other, some high, some low. At night she would go to sleep and dream that these surfaces were coming towards me, the blankness closing in. 

A suspension of time, a confusion of space.  

Today was no different. The dust particles whirled and shimmered as the light bounced off them and work evaded Isabelle. She’d spent the morning at the college teaching before coming to her studio, a converted factory warehouse space in Richmond; a half hour tram ride from the art college. She sat on the sofa, absentmindedly gazing at the play of light, feeling weighted and strangely light-headed, invaded by a stillness that left her staring at the profusion of white canvases. She’d been trying to feel her way towards a new series of works since her last exhibition, yet any sense of urgency had gone. Instead, her thoughts were punctuated by what Theo had said, that Kate and Max were coming to visit. 

She had stood in the shower that morning, the water dripping down her face, closing her mouth once the dryness had been satiated. Only then did she turn to look at Theo. She wordlessly took the soap from him, feeling her chest tighten, her hands shaking, not sure what her body was instinctively feeling. Theo was still waiting for a response and she knew she had to say something otherwise her withdrawal would be hurtful. 

“It will be good for you to see Max again,” she spoke softly, but clear. Theo’s face relaxed and he placed his hand on her shoulder. 

“Yes. It’s been a while and I miss him terribly.” She nodded and quickly left him in the shower, towelling herself as she went back to the bedroom to get dressed.

They said little as Theo drove her back to her apartment. He offered to come and pick her up at the studio later, suggesting they could go out for dinner. He seemed to want to please her, to show her he was grateful she’d been so easy about it. But all she was doing was keeping a seething feeling at bay, as images and thoughts began whirling through her mind. Something had been unleashed and she had no idea where it was leading.      

Staring at a blank canvas she remembered the day she’d found a photograph lying on Theo’s desk. The woman was strikingly pretty. Isabelle had smiled at the irony of seeing a face she once would have envied. A face like so many at the all-girls school she’d attended and which had become an image of acceptance. Such a contrast to Isabelle: the odd transparency of her mocha coloured skin, the startling blue of her eyes against such dark hair. A wide mouth, her nose a sharp line against the softer curves of her oval face. She was striking, exotic, but not pretty. 

Yes, Kate would never have anguished over being different, of being anything other than what she was. Her ease and grace were perceptible through a single photograph. Isabelle could tell that it had been taken before Theo and Kate were married, before Max. She knew that Theo would always be bound to Kate through him, and while it had never bothered her before, now having to face Kate and Max entering the reality of her life, she wondered at their relationship; the bonds which were outside her and which were now entangling her. 

She visualised strands of her life becoming entwined with Theo’s, forming a weave, a pattern of being together; creating this tie, this thread between them. 

They’d first met at her brother Jack’s house. Isabelle had been standing in the hall looking in the mirror when Theo had appeared behind her, so that they were reflected in the mirror’s surface. Their eyes had met and held in that glass. She’d looked at him and wondered what he could mean, standing there so still. Then he’d smiled and the words he spoke meant nothing, said nothing of any significance, and once again he was her brother’s colleague from university, newly arrived from England. 

The next meeting was during lunch with Jack at a café not far from the university in Lygon Street in Carlton. 

“Dad’s been asking how you’ve been—you’re not calling him enough, Issy.” Jack sounded stern, but was fumbling as he said this with the pile of articles he had to read to prepare for his class. Two years older, he had Isabelle’s dark hair, but their father’s deep brown eyes. Isabelle ignored the comment and turned to look at the people passing by. She immediately picked out Theo’s shape as he walked towards them.

“There’s your friend, Jack.” She could feel a smile shaping her lips. Theo casually strode the distance to their table. He was just over six foot, with that sinewy build of a long distance runner. And his face: thick dark hair framing features that could have been minted on a Roman coin. But it was his eyes that captivated, shifting colour from viridian green to a deep jade depending on the light. Eyes that were now looking directly at her.    

2

“Jack.” Theo greeted him before turning to Isabelle, not censoring his pleasure at seeing her. 

Alongside Philip, an English lecturer, Theo had found a friend in Jack. While Philip had a weariness that was charming and a confidence in his own ability, Jack still possessed that eagerness to prove himself, desiring to create a place through his work at the university. “He’s one of the best young lecturers,” Theo’s research assistant and tutor was quick to point out. “Liked by everyone which is rare and great with the students.” Theo had gone to a few of Jack’s lectures, his area of specialty was contemporary fiction with a strong emphasis on the creative process of writing, not necessarily theory driven, and this immediately appealed to Theo. 

They’d gone for coffee after one lecture and Theo had been curious enough to ask, “Are you doing your own work?” Jack seemed shy at first, but he soon opened up as Theo encouraged him to speak about his writing.

“Yes, I guess I’m one of the few in the department writing fiction. I cross over to teach in the creative writing area when I can. But, yes, my first book is set to be published soon.” Theo had been pleased and a touch, he had to admit, envious, of what Jack had achieved since he’d received his doctorate, and that too was ready to be published. A twinge he knew well enough that resonated in his gut, spoke of the regret he felt at not having taken time to do exactly what Jack was doing. Jack still spoke with eagerness about his teaching, what he wanted to achieve. 

I guess I’d call it hope, thought Theo. Do I still hope? He’d recently read of hope being a kind of deferred reality, but the glimmer of it, to possess it even in the face of it not eventuating, it gave life another dimension that Theo believed was essential. Yet, he’d felt so little hope since leaving Kate. And long before that, came a quiet voice.

That night when Theo first met Isabelle, the conversation at dinner had skated over the surface, mainly between Jack and Theo discussing their teachings. Jack’s friends were an assortment of writers and academics, so Theo felt comfortable. Actually, he hadn’t enjoyed himself like this in a long time. However, there had been another conversation that silently threaded and floated beneath the words exchanged, the banter and lightness of that night. They had both sensed the other without wording the current flowing between them. 

While Isabelle sat beside Theo at the cafe, shielded by her sunglasses, he took his time in studying her face, enjoying the sound of her voice and the ease with which she and Jack communicated. 

“Jack told me you were an artist—do you exhibit regularly?” Theo finally asked. Isabelle hesitated, but he coaxed her to reveal her obvious passion for what she did. That only intrigued him further.

Jack quietly observed and was close enough to see a connection, something shaping between them. He could see that Theo was trying to impress Isabelle who was speaking quite animatedly about the current series of paintings she was working on. But Jack and Isabelle were both unaware that what she said was not being heard. While Theo appeared to be listening he watched her face intently. Ever since that night, he’d been unable to shake the image of her in the mirror from his mind. 

He had not expected to be confronted by such beauty.

Lunch ended with all three going their separate ways. Theo had reached for her hand as if to shake it, holding it instead and relishing the heat of her touch. Neither had broached the possibility of seeing each other again in front of Jack and what followed were days of waiting. 

Theo had called by Isabelle’s studio unexpectedly. Jack had given him the address, holding back the question that Theo could readily see was coming and was relieved when it didn’t. The building looked like an office block, indistinguishable from any other, perhaps a bit older. Climbing the stairs to the second floor of the warehouse, Theo came to the open door to Isabelle’s studio, knocking to let her know he was there.

Isabelle stood by an easel, and behind her was a flood of light. 

“I was hoping you might be here,” was all he could manage to begin with. He hadn’t slept much the night before, wondering if she’d be at the studio when he went to see her, not sure how best to approach her. He kept getting stuck on his greeting, rehearsing it in his mind, and he couldn’t imagine how to progress beyond that. 

“Jack mentioned you’d asked where I worked.” Of course he would, Theo thought, a touch annoyed. Why he’d wanted to surprise her, he couldn’t quite fathom. Isabelle smiled, accepting his presence with ease, gesturing for him to come inside. 

He quickly noted her jeans and t-shirt, old and faded, paint stained, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail so that she looked much younger and less sophisticated than the day at the café. He warmed to her like this, enjoying the casual way she moved around the space, almost oblivious to him except her silence, waiting for him to say something.   

Theo didn’t know how to react at first viewing her work. He was stumped; out of his range to describe, to use language to place and name what he was seeing. How could she do this? He had never felt confused enough to not speak about what he was experiencing. Except once perhaps, the time that Kate had finally spoken. 

And she’s pleased, he thought wryly. 

Isabelle leaned against a long worktable under one of the windows. Paper was strewn across it. Drawings were amid jars of brushes, paint tubes, and two large pieces of glass smeared with the stuff. The smell was heady, oily and astringent, even with the open windows. And he felt hot. Hot with confusion, and the feeling of her in this space despite her distance and an inscrutable look on her face. Hot and edgy, he had to admit, with the actual sensuousness of her work. Nothing had prepared him for this. 

The words weren’t coming and he tried to move rather than stand, only finding himself drawn closer to the paintings and through them, her. 

Too much and not enough. He wanted to be closer and yet the one way he had always sought to create a bridge, to reel in what he perceived, it failed him. 

“Did you want to go for a coffee?” she asked, somehow understanding that at that moment he was swimming, no, treading water to keep afloat, out of his depth.

Theo wanted to run and stay, but she gave him the tiniest escape to save him from what he was never sure he would have done. This only intrigued him more. What would he have done if he couldn’t speak?

It was later that day that he mentioned Kate and Max. They were separated, the divorce still to be settled…

* * *

…and then a shadow fell before Isabelle’s eyes, as if the dust had spun this figure now falling before her. 

Endlessly falling. 

3

Isabelle turned away from the canvases to a blank sheet of paper and with the simplest of lines a form unfurled. 

A girl made of thread.

The drawing of the girl was simple: sparse, a shape, a thought traced on a page. A hope, a dream strung from a deep longing that threaded through time, connecting Isabelle to another place, another self. A younger self. And Isabelle was thinking as she shaped the girl: 

It felt like this.

Slipping through thought to the feeling.   

A slow sliding at first, like rolling in sweet grass down a gentle slope, then quicker as you neared the end so there’s a rush of excitement.

And she wondered: Did Stephen feel this when he first met me?

The girl was one continuous line, a curving space to hold all thought. She was there and she wasn’t, a form barely visible on the page. 

As Isabelle drew her, she was thinking about that first meeting…

Stephen came to sit nearby while Isabelle was drawing the boats anchored out at sea. It was here, during the holidays by the beach, that Isabelle would wait for her father to come back from fishing with her brother, Jack. As Isabelle waited, she dreamed of her father and brother’s voyage out to sea and their return, transforming a day out in the boat to a season away from home. This came through her drawings as flowing thoughts and glimpses of an imagined life, to far and unknown places.

Isabelle’s hand moved, the girl unfolding with her thoughts, memories. A trajectory of force pressing to become visible, to be here and to be known.

“It’s good,” Stephen spoke suddenly, shyly nodding at the drawing. 

It began like this, in the quiet and gentle voice that asked her name, hesitant, but intrigued. Unsure of her response, a slight quiver in his speech, Stephen smiled and Isabelle warmed to it.

She felt her face opening to his and said simply, “My name is Isabelle.”

And Isabelle dreamed of Stephen, not just the night before, but more times than she could count. 

In her dreams Stephen was falling like he was floating on his back in the sky, a mere speck, particle; a light in the sky that she sometimes looked towards. 

Isabelle dreamed of his fall and wondered—why fall to become a point of breath, where the air is all that can be heard and sensed, weightless and heavy. 

Why? Inevitably the thought was left unanswered. 

Was love not enough?

4

Minotaur: Captive. Each day I paced, imprisoned not just by these walls, this labyrinth of stone that I could not leave, for I had no understanding of how I came here, or that there was an exit beyond the twining pathways. I was imprisoned by my fate, and my will to survive. 

Then one day I could sense something for the first time beyond the walls themselves. At night I could see a glowing red lighting the sky, sparks flying in the air, and it was wondrous. I felt that I wanted to leap beyond the walls, what had up until now made me feel safe, to touch these strange lights and see where they were coming from. And the sound, a beating, an echo of a pulse I could sometimes sense in myself when the pressure in my ears became intense, turning my attention inwards to a foreign noise, like water squelching underfoot. 

I had no knowledge that I was hearing my heart.   

It was during the night when suddenly I could hear something else, could feel a thud through the earth. I heard voices. Apart from the screams of my mother, a memory too distant for me to hold, and the brief utterances of my captors, I had barely heard a voice. How then could I speak? With a soul old and imprinted with a language that speaks itself and had always been within me. Yet, any actual sound I made was involuntary. I heard loud voices, and noises that were more than cries of confusion coming closer. I instinctively pressed myself into the corner of my space, receding into the darkness of the walls.

What happened was too quick to remember except with fleeting impressions lit by a flame torch that moved violently with the person that held it.  

Yes, someone came into my space that night and with every intention to harm me. But I could not say it was with the malice and violence of the men who held me captive. This person rushed into my space, the flaming torch exposing eyes that looked frantically until he saw me and then he stopped. My eyes must have mirrored his own, because I was shocked at the sudden invasion and then apprehensive of what he had come here for. 

He knew I was here. He came here deliberately. 

I somehow found myself thinking this and I felt a seething sensation, hot and pricking, rise in my chest. This person had been sent for me and I felt intuitively, to possibly hurt me, but more so to protect himself. There was a storm inside of me, a fury at the fact that my simple intent to exist could be met with such violence. 

What could I have done; what had I ever done to be treated so? And for the first time I wanted to lash out at what I couldn’t understand was the injustice of it, that there was no sense in this. As I rose to move towards him, to defend myself as he struck out wildly at me with the flames of the torch, I could see his fear and the anger inside erupted at having no idea why he should be afraid of me, why the very sight of me seemed to incite this response. 

I tasted blood and flesh and was sickened by it, but they had starved me, leaving me to feed off stray birds, or animals that made there way to me, trapped in the paths that ended where I lived. I loathed it, yet it gave me sustenance. At times I wondered if there was another entrance as raw meat and pieces of rotting food were sometimes left on the path near the gap in the wall; left there by some chance I might find it, but never brought to me. 

For days after that night I smelled the flesh rotting and I dragged the body out into paths where I left it, thinking perhaps someone might come for this person.           

They thought me a beast, craving flesh—for life—believing that is what would keep me alive. But this flesh that I tasted, it was a part of me. I knew that what they believed might sustain me, if it didn’t kill me, was part of me. Human. 

After that night I looked to the heavens, the torches no longer lighting the sky, and I wondered, where did I come from? Who brought me into this life if only to abandon me? Were they alive and did they know that I was here? There were no answers to these thoughts and from somewhere deep inside a cry came and something else, liquid dripping down my cheeks from my eyes. I touched it and tasted the difference from the water that fell from above.  

I looked around me. I could not see beyond this space—except the sky and at night, the stars. The changing position of sun and moon was the only indication that time passed. 

Was there such a thing as time here? 

At the heart there was no time, only this endless present.  

Lost 

1 

In the light of day, the canvas glared at Isabelle. 

            Another day in the studio. 

            Another day out of many, lost.

She turned away and mindlessly picked up a pencil and began to draw. She let her hand move, not focusing to form anything, allowing the flow of it to carry the line across the white of the paper.  

She began outlining the girl, the head slightly bent, arms lightly falling at her sides, clothed in a tunic-like dress, more like a veil than a dress that barely shaped her body. She was floating on the plane of white, hovering, yet the lightness of the line gave her a grace; that at any moment she would lift off the page or fade back into white. Isabelle then started writing, printing words, scrawling them to the side of the girl—dream, float, fall, fly—a list that trailed to an end…boy, Stephen.    

The force of the word imaged on the page stilled her. Stephen. After all these years, it could rear towards her like a blow. She closed her eyes and the dark behind her eyelids became lit with the images from the other night, the falling body and the rush of it, as she stood nearby, unable to move. Isabelle opened her eyes for the light, wanting the brief blankness of white as her pupils adjusted to focus. A fall of words that pinned the girl to one side of the page.    

  Stephen. It was the last word that fell at the girl’s feet. 

They had met on a beach near the sea house, neither aware at the time that Stephen had met Jack days before, when they were fishing at the pier in town. She was fifteen and Stephen was barely older. She could still picture vividly the day he came to sit by her, and his smile. Broad and shining. And the way he’d looked at her, so that she felt uncomfortable and unsure at the intensity of such a look. It was prickling, exciting.  

Isabelle almost laughed when Stephen had mentioned that of all the places he could have come from, they lived in the same city. But she didn’t, having heard her grandmother speak of fate, and that it was probably meant to be. At first, the three of them would explore the town and surrounding beaches, and it was during these outings that Isabelle learned about Stephen’s father and younger brother. He rarely mentioned his mother, but Jack had been told she’d died when he was quite young. It was something they all shared. 

One evening, sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the pier, he spoke quite suddenly, jarring the quiet. 

“He’s always working you know. Since she died. That’s all he does.” He stopped, as if surprised at admitting this. “And he hardly mentions her. Like she was never here.” 

Neither Jack nor Isabelle spoke. 

“Like Luke and I aren’t even here.”

His words had fallen into the air around them to become part of it. There was a weight to the words, like they were rocks that he carried. Isabelle tried to imagine the burden of a father driven by grief and the absence of the love that he was unable to give. Then she thought of her own father. He was freer now in talking of their mother, so Isabelle never felt the heaviness of her death through him. It was at that moment that she wanted to reach out to Stephen, to console perhaps, or merely reassure him of another presence, that he wasn’t alone.   

Stephen would often look at the sky during those nights. Isabelle would sit beside him and she told him the tale of how an Egyptian goddess had wrapped the world in her skin. His breath had caught at the thought of it. 

“You’re unique, what you know. The way you think. It’s out there.” He’d flung his arm to arc across the sky, one of the truly spontaneous gestures she’d seen from him, as if for a moment he was letting go like he could fly.  

Once they’d seen a shooting star and Isabelle had closed her eyes and wished for what she hoped to come true. Yet it was already true even if the words couldn’t shape the feelings. Stephen had reached for her hand, and in that moment of time, it was enough.  

Isabelle’s hand had been moving while she’d focused her mind somewhere past. 

Stephen’s name was no longer on the page, erased in the black leaving an uncertain, dented space next to the girl’s feet. 

2

Later that evening, Isabelle watched from her studio window the light close to that in-between phase of sun and darkness. Objects became distinct, and in the street below she could see the shapes becoming sharp against the blue of the sky. 

She waited for this time of day-night, feeling a stillness that took an edge off the sharp, harsh light of day. In the sky shone the first star. As a child, her father had told her to wish upon the first star of night and that her wish would somehow be sealed within its radiance. She no longer believed that was true.

Isabelle turned to the canvas with the outline of a body moving in and out of the frame. It was faint, she found she could barely bring herself to touch the surface, the charcoal slipped from her hand at the slightest pressure, and then quickly, not stopping to think, she made the marks and stepped away. The line was almost continuous to form a body-print. That was all she could face doing. 

It had been a week since Theo had mentioned the email from Kate. He’d be coming soon to the studio and again he’d ask how she was going, eager to see what she’d been doing. 

Theo would often come near the end of the day and sit while she continued her work. The old sofa she’d dragged up from the street, cast aside and worn, and made new with the fabric she’d thrown over it, she now associated with him. She’d find herself glancing in its direction as if to catch him while he wasn’t even there. He liked to just sit and read, having spent a day talking and thinking through words, finding a calm in this space to relax. He’d come in quietly, folding his long body onto the sofa that beckoned sleep, and with the sound of music playing he’d relax. 

She’d sometimes feel him looking at her, brief or long, not wanting to intrude but intense in his watching. His inability to find the words that first day still lingered, as if words would only fall heavy against the lightness of her work, or would grate and grind against the sensuality that arched towards a touch that would move with its rhythm, not the grabbing for language that might briefly satisfy. 

He was patient in his watching, wanting to learn by seeing. 

Theo had described how that simple act of meditation allowed him to go beyond his mind, to stretch into his body, his senses, and to go further again to see with his imagination. A process of thought and feeling like links in a chain, but not so linear. Rather an interlacing, a series of interconnections, where thought, sensation and all possible imaginings curled and unfurled, folded and unfolded. A curving trajectory that was more a leap than a step. And it was here, in this space, that he’d told her he felt most that he could write; begin to write the way he’d dreamed of when he was still at college, still hoping for the flight of the mind that went beyond interpreting other people’s work.   

Once he’d asked directly, “How do you know what to do?”

Isabelle had been working on two paintings concurrently, both connected through a line that she continuously wove from one to the other. A black thread that moved in and out of the colour and blankness that shaped and collapsed the space. There was a hint of a form; something that Theo thought might even have wings. His eyes were almost squinting with the question and she laughed so that his face relaxed.

“I’m conscious of it and not I guess. Hard to describe. At times I’m so involved I’m not quite sure where it’s going, but also I am, if that makes any sense. I might start with an idea or feeling. If I’m working on a series I often begin by writing my ideas before I paint, or use line, drawing out the ideas. I might read around the subject before I can begin to see the connections, what I might want to do.”

His face enlivened at this. “You write?”

“Yes,” she’d smiled cheekily at his incredulity. “It’s really a myth about artists and language you know.” 

He’d laughed despite the seriousness of what was guiding him. “What exactly? What do you write?” 

“I write in this small book I carry with me. It’s like a sketchbook, but I’ll often write words, lines or rows. Thoughts, whatever comes.” 

She’d sifted through sheets of paper scattered on the trestle table to find the small book, and then she walked over to him, arm outstretched like she was offering a gift.

“Are you sure?” He’d been surprised at her willingness to hand something so personal to him. 

She’d had no doubts. “Of course.”

And Isabelle was thinking how so many times she’d welcomed his attention. 

But right now, she would rather turn the canvas the other way than try to explain what she could not begin to understand herself. 

Another blank canvas, another barely marked. 

On a piece of paper she had drawn the first star of night so that it filled the whiteness with radiant rays, points of light. Then with a piece of white cotton she measured and sewed on the paper an outline of the girl. Her dress was a fragmented veil of rose pink gauze that Isabelle stitched to hover over the girl. 

Isabelle felt the urge to pin the girl down, to make her present. She found herself sewing the girl to the paper so that she punctured and traced the star, the gauze tenuously hinged by small nips of thread. 

            Moving back to the window, seeing the stars, Isabelle remembered a moment so wondrous she still wasn’t sure it was real.

Every year, for as long as she could recall, Isabelle and her father and brother would pack their bags and pile them into the car to drive to a house by the sea, north along the coast. A home filled with air. It sat lightly on the land, simple in its construction, painted white with a deck facing towards the beach. Rooms with whitewashed walls that flowed one into the other. It was a place to breathe, and it was here that Isabelle’s father’s sister and her family, as well as her grandmother, would be waiting. 

It was also here that Isabelle’s father taught her to swim in the shallows, and for a treat he’d carry her to deeper water so they could dive under the waves, until there came a time when she could swim alongside him and dive herself.

When Isabelle was cold, the veins of blue would seep to the surface of her skin and her grandmother wouldexclaim at her blue grandchild, “I tell you she’s blessed!” Isabelle’s cousins would collectively roll their eyes, but her aunt would smile softly at her brother and touch his arm, sharing a message only they could understand.

Isabelle grew to love slipping through the water, finding the currents and sliding along with them. Her father called her a dolphin, and he had to lure Isabelle out at the end of the day with the setting sun. This was her favourite time, as the night cloaked the light of day and the first star appeared. She would stay in the sea, floating on her back and feel as if she was becoming one with the sky. Floating in an endless plain, as sea and sky met. 

One night Isabelle stayed much longer than usual in the water, and when the lights in the sky began to shine, the water darkened to reflect the stars and she was swimming among them. As the waves rolled in and around her body, the stars seemed to spray from beneath and then fall, as if falling from the sky. 

A sea of stars.  

As Isabelle looked towards the sky, she could see one constellation, and it was above and below, so that she was suspended within it. Her body was aligned with three stars, Orion’s Belt.  

There was another thread of stars that linked the story of Ariadne to Isabelle’s very present, the Pleiades, the seven sisters, so that her tale could be woven from out of the night sky itself.  

* * *

Ariadne could remember waking one morning to a cloudless sky. From her bed the view out of the window was at an angle, so that the sky was framed, a square of blue.                                                                                            

            The heat that summer was oppressive and her thin limbs were weighted. She often felt this tiredness. It would creep up to course through her body as if she was suddenly possessed. Her wet nurse and companion, Maia, could find no reason for her fatigue and would only suggest rest. Her knowledge of herb lore helped little, as she sensed this was something not entirely about the body. She would hug Ariadne and whisper a story to relax the frown that would invariably come across her young brow. Her own little girl had become a friend of the princess, and they would often play in the courtyard garden where Maia would be preparing food for the day. On the rare occasion, Maia would take them to the nearby beach. The two would laugh and play between water and sand with a delight that, Maia believed, was due to being outside the palace and its heavy walls. All light seemed at times to be absorbed into the stone and little shone in the rooms and shaded courtyards. 

              Maia knew the heaviness was not simply about stone, but about the heart; what was at the heart of this family and the palace of many rooms. Neither child knew anything of this, except that the lethargy that would overcome Ariadne’s limbs was like a shadow cast across her body. Maia came to believe this shadow had seeped into her, as if what Ariadne could not know, had somehow become an unnameable presence she carried within her.  

              King Minos and Pasiphae seemed oblivious to Ariadne and her sister Phaedra’s daily lives, leaving the small comforts for Maia to bestow. Ariadne was four years old when Maia noticed her picking up loose threads and winding them together. At first Maia had no idea what this could mean, but gradually she could see that the constant movement of twine through the little girl’s fingers seemed to calm her. Ariadne would often create these balls of thread without even being aware of what she was doing. Her eyes would appear fixed on a distant point as if she were seeing something else.

Maia began collecting thread for her. Ariadne’s first balls were made of white, and Maia searched for as much thread to keep Ariadne supplied, wanting to give the young princess some joy in what was a lonely childhood. However, Maia knew, and this saddened her, that despite the love she felt for Ariadne and the many ways she would show this, at the end of each day, Ariadne would retire to her room and there was no one who would come to her bed and wish her goodnight. There was no one to kiss her brow as a blessing for good dreams, to carry her through the journey to the following day. Maia would kiss her own child before sleep and could only imagine that she could somehow reach through her heart, a similar gesture of love through the walls of stone, to where Ariadne would be lying, waiting for night and sleep.                     

* * *

Isabelle wondered when her father mentioned Maia, whether he was giving a glimpse of her own mother, that she too would have wanted to look over Isabelle as she slept.

3

Minotaur: Why was I here? An eternal question; a question I asked every day. You might wonder why I would ask this, that I am capable of thinking such things. But I could not help but wonder. 

There were times I would catch a vision before my eyes, of another place quite foreign to me. A place that was an open space, no walls enclosing it, no bare ground and stone. It was covered with a golden plant that moved in the wind, and nearby was an expanse of blue that at first I thought must be like the sky above me. Yet it moved, and it frothed with white foam as it crept towards the land. 

It was water. Unbound and free. 

And the miracle was how it reflected the sky above, so that for a moment, I thought they were one. 

Disoriented

1 

Isabelle felt as if she was coming through a cloudy cocoon, the dust of day blowing from her eyes and mind. 

She’d spent the afternoon in the studio trying to make sense of the drawings, while the canvases stood around her, taunting and stark. Coming home to her apartment, a strange configuration of units in a stately mansion from another century in East Melbourne, she’d hoped to find comfort, instead she walked restlessly from room to room. Standing by the living room window, she could see Theo walking along the street, having planned to meet him here after work. His very pace seemed distracted, moving slower than usual, thinking thoughts he kept increasingly to himself of late. Isabelle turned to wait for his voice on the intercom, answering promptly for him to come up. 

She resumed working on a drawing she’d begun earlier that seemed more like a spiralling line, a piece of thread discarded and lying loose on the page. Theo came in and she heard the door close behind him, and then he stood at the entrance to the living room, not wanting to break her silence as she sat at the long wooden table that doubled for work and dining. 

“Hey,” Theo said hesitantly.

“Hi. You’re early.” He just nodded, watching her.

Theo often sat where she was now, writing ideas for a lecture or reading over his notes. It was a room that could serve to inspire thoughts with book-lined shelves flanking the retrofitted gas fireplace along one wall, while it equally lent itself to reverie, with its windows looking out to treetops, its cushiony sofa and chairs. Isabelle had hung two of her large paintings and some of her smaller prints, and on the floor, a woven rug warmed the oak boards. Small tables were placed around the room with lamps and objects she’d collected. Theo would often pick up random objects, asking Isabelle the story behind them.  

There was life here; unlike the space Theo went home to most nights.

Theo waited for some time until Isabelle glanced at him.  

“Issy?” he said it so she could barely hear his voice. 

Isabelle rose slowly and moved towards him. Her silence was like a shadow clouding the narrowing space between them. The cast of her eyes was thoughtful and quiet. She stilled him with her look and reached her arms around his neck. She’d always welcome him with her arms and a kiss, but this had greater intent. Her mouth was hungry for the moistness of his lips and tongue as if the wetness would restore knowing, sense. Theo abandoned his usual reserve that would often melt around her, responding mindlessly, a mesh of mind and body.

Later, lying in the darkened bedroom with its shadowy lights, Isabelle remembered another time when the dim light from a lamp had lit and splayed shadows across a room where they lay. Those early weeks and the tension of desire unspoken yet imaged-imagined countless times. She remembered the heaviness of silence, these spaces in the time they spent together. Spaces like a pause in the drift of movement. She could not speak of the feelings that her mind could not still, nor did she want to. It was a need to be with someone, to know them. 

She lifted her arm to trace in air the dark spaces figuring around them. Theo, breathing deeply, had closed his eyes and the look of peace across his face took her back again. 

The first time Theo mentioned Kate and Max with any detail, she’d sensed his uncertainty about being ready for a relationship. Perhaps, she should have questioned him further about his feelings for Kate. It was not over, could never be over. But had he moved on enough to have her in his life without doubts? Isabelle could only wonder at the place Kate occupied in Theo’s thoughts and in his heart. 

Why was she coming? It seemed obvious enough; she was accompanying Max. Isabelle knew Theo longed to be with his son. It was apparent every time he spoke of him. Yet, he had come here, to the other side of the world. What was he escaping? Isabelle had not asked. 

Before she had moved towards him that evening, the line she had been twisting on the page had stopped and then started to form an image of words, shaped by a swelling feeling in her chest, a feeling that she was becoming familiar with, but as yet did not understand. 

To be able to touch someone, and to have them reach out to you, not to keep so much locked inside, so that all that flows freely are tears of sorrow, of loss.

To reach out and to embrace.

A lament or a hope? 

Words she couldn’t speak but could write, and did so, alongside the girl made of thread; now witness to her longing.

In one drawing Isabelle had pinned the girl to the space of the page. The girl was stitched up, tight and yearning to feel its limbs stretch; to lift herself up off the page and leap into the air.

“I want to fly.”

Words that Stephen had once spoken. 

It was a wish that Stephen spoke about often, casting the words out to the air itself as if it could suddenly have the power to lift him. He wanted to fly above the land and sea, to real places spun through dreams.

After the summer when they first met, Isabelle and Stephen came back to the city and found another pier by a tamer and more crowded stretch of sand, and they would sit, legs hanging over the sides, concocting tales of a future. While Stephen’s words floated above, Isabelle spoke with her hands weaving thoughts into drawings and later paintings that much to the joy of her father were hanging from the walls of their home. 

Stephen’s arms would move while he spoke, as if wishing his thoughts into action that would mobilise him off the ground; to hover above where he felt he was truly at home. But his mind built another reality. He would be going to university to study mathematics, a prospect his father thought of more favourably than the whims of being a pilot. 

“I’ll fly after I’m finished with all of that.” He’d said it almost happily, believing he could some day do both.

And the girl Isabelle had drawn—there was a star drawn above her, its rays touching her head, but the girl could feel no warmth as they pierced like ice. The girl was held and stifled by its radiance. 

Isabelle drew the girl trapped as Stephen had been. A future determined by a father emptied by grief, all emotion caged and held back from his sons. There was never a question of choice, only the acknowledgement of his talent at something his father could understand. But flying. No.

Like Stephen, Isabelle imagined that the girl made of thread wanted to fly, to soar off the page and escape the confines that shaped her ever more rigidly as Isabelle began diving deeper into memory.

Stephen had recounted a memory of his mother and how she’d smiled at him as he pointed to the plane in the sky and turned to her saying; that’s it. That was where he wanted to be. She’d lifted him in her arms and spun him around, both laughing at the thought.

For a moment he’d felt he could touch the sky.   

2

Minotaur: Some nights I dreamed. 

It felt like I was awake, except I was not in this place; I was no longer caged by these walls. In these dreams I was often moving, but I didn’t touch the earth. I could no longer sense the grit, the heat, and the pull of the ground.  

But was I dreaming? Because I thought for a moment, I was just within the sky I saw every day, like I’d made a leap towards it and briefly, I was suspended there.

3

Theo was restless. He sat at his desk in his office and admitted he wasn’t just restless; he was bored. 

The days were beginning to meld into each other: lecturing, taking tutorials, marking papers, the occasional journal article or book review. He needed a project, something of his own. Then there were the endless struggles with the department for funds. Philip had warned him this would be the case. 

“You know, sometimes I think I should get out, do something for myself, where I’m not answerable to the powers that be, so to speak,” said Philip.   

“Like what?” Theo was only half listening, shaping his next lecture in his mind and watching enviously the students lolling on the South Lawn between classes. 

“I’ve been thinking of freelancing. Editing. I think I’d be pretty good at it.” Philip was almost sheepish making his confession.

“What! Phil, you won’t necessarily earn any more and you’d have to work bloody hard.” Theo couldn’t quite believe he was serious, but Philip was quiet and Theo had to admit he must be.

“It could be good Theo, at least I’d be my own boss.” He had a point, and Philip would be an excellent editor. He was a gifted wordsmith and Theo often found himself knocking on his door for advice. For Philip, writing was a journey and he had an ability to captivate his audience and take them along with what he was saying. 

“You’re right, I’m sorry, it’s just out of the blue. And you’d be a brilliant editor.” Philip smiled and uncharacteristic for him, he blushed at the compliment.

“Thank you. Glad you approve. Actually, I’ve already got my first project.” Theo sat staring at his friend and thought; enough surprises for one day. But he was reflecting on Philip’s ability to act. He wasn’t just complaining as many in the department did, he was doing something about it.

Theo swore when he took this position that he’d stay clear of the politics, but it was unavoidable. He was a visiting lecturer, but still a threat to many. Over time he heard the whispers questioning why he had left such a promising career back in England, as if coming here was a demotion. He could not seem to convey the poisonous atmosphere he experienced there. He’d been tired of watching his back, of the literary factions and infighting. Sometimes, all he wanted was to find a quiet place, to leave this life behind, and just write. 

And that was it, what kept niggling and gnawing at him and that had lately become more persistent. It was his passion, the reason he studied literature at university to begin with. The idea for a book was there, he had started it many times, only to become distracted by his promising “career” as an academic, beginning at the university where he wrote his doctoral paper and where he had made a quick ascent. Too quick, he was now thinking.

He was also beginning to feel paranoid, or irritable. There were times he didn’t want to leave his office, to meet anyone and make inane conversation, or talk shop. He knew he needed to reassess what he was doing, take a risk like Philip. Then there was the recent offer from a university in London to consider. He’d known that the position was being made available when he came here, in many ways he had come here to wait, to bide his time with every intention he now realised, of going back to England. 

He remembered how he kept asking Kate to wait; wait a bit longer for a better opportunity, a better salary, and a better life. But what did that mean? He realised in his own waiting he had not been living at all, just chasing a dream of a life he thought would bring him and Kate the happiness he now saw they didn’t have. 

What happened? When did the threads start to unravel in the life they fabricated together? After Max he could see her silently struggling. It was hard, being at home with a baby, feeling isolated from the world she had been involved in. They had met at university, had grown up together in that idyll. The threads had seemed so strong. They seemed to want so much of the same things from life, but, perhaps that was it, it was too much on the surface; an illusion of a life. Things. An interesting choice of words. He was fixated by her petite prettiness, as so many others had been, and she had chosen him. 

Theo looked out of his office window at the grassy lawns, students, couples, literally rolling about. A history lecturer had made the wry comment that he always knew that spring was on the way when couples started “meeting” on the lawns, performing these rites of passion. Theo could only smile thinking he and Kate had been exactly like them. Then there was Max. She became so distant, turned in on herself and waited. Waited for him to stop his incessant climb up the academic ladder; waited for him to stop and look at her, to hold her and say, “Enough”. To look at her and stay long enough to reassure her of his feelings. Instead there was this distance and the occasional exchange of the words “I love you”. Words not felt. Something between them cracked and the fissure became a gaping hole, which could only be ignored for so long before it was impossible to build a bridge to meet once more. 

He still could not pinpoint a time, a date when this all began—before Max? They seemed happy, or was it merely they knew nothing else of what their lives, their expectations of life could be? He got so tired thinking of where it went wrong, where the course of their lives became split and they began travelling separate ways, but always with the illusion of being together, and perhaps the hope that they could be. For so long the thought of not being together, of a life separate, seemed unimaginable. 

They were bound with ties of blood and love through Max. In him was everything good and pure that had once composed the love they shared. Theo missed him dreadfully. It was what followed before he left that was still too raw. He could not recall the signs, there were none, and he had only himself to blame because it revealed so starkly how little time and attention he had paid Kate towards the end. 

But then it happened.  She was waiting one night for him and he was late as usual. I’ve met someone, she said. Suddenly, no prelude no “let’s talk”, just that; I’ve met someone. Then silence. His and hers. What could he say? Numb—so numb and tired. He realised then how tired he was. So he sat, slumped and waited: waited for her to pour it all out, to point at him and say what he knew she had every right to. But through the numbness something was beginning to burn. And burn. She was in love with someone else, or what she thought was love, he felt like saying, because he could see her pain and her will to free herself of it. This was survival. For her to inflict this pain was only to relieve it slightly from herself. Did she love him, this other nameless man? It was not the question. Words—formula—words to rip and tear away at the very foundation already cracked and split. They had done a good job, he thought, and now she had acted for both of them because he could feel the inevitability of this. Yet nothing could prepare him for the pain. The heart is independent of the mind in feeling first then following reason. Later, later he could reason the pain and make it conscious and free.

He stopped there and stared at the piles of paper on his desk. He just stared. Bella. By name and nature he would playfully say. Nothing had prepared him for this; coming to a land so far away to wait, to heal, and to meet her.

Walls closing in

1

The summer when Isabelle was swimming among the stars, she found herself hearing a voice seeping from beneath her father’s story of Ariadne. It asserted itself as a whisper and once Isabelle heard it distinctly in her dreams. It was a strange voice, plaintive and lonely, as if speaking to no one. She knew who it was as the tale would spin in her mind, and Isabelle let it come out one day as she swam through the currents, deep underwater.

I was at the centre. That was where they placed me. At the centre of this labyrinth of stone… 

Isabelle came up for air, surprised at the force of imagining this beast woven through language, unimaginable, but somehow she’d given voice to it so that it was now part of this tale that wound its way between her world and an imagined past.

Wading out of the water she sat on the beach. Wrapped in a towel Isabelle looked out to the sea. At times it seemed too vast, so that she surprised herself diving into it without fear of being swept away. Her cousins were playing in the shallows, while her aunt and uncle, and her father, kept an eye over them as they spread out the picnic lunch. Jack was swimming further out, keeping a slight distance from everyone that summer. 

And Isabelle wondered what it must have felt like waiting as Ariadne had for something she was not quite sure of.  

* * * 

One day while playing on the beach with Maia’s daughter, Ariadne saw the ships with black sails.

Maia sat nearby, watching over them, and her stomach clenched at the sight. It was that time again. The years seemed to have drifted by effortlessly like the boats gliding through the water. She called to the children so that they could leave.

Ariadne stood transfixed, watching the ships and feeling a strange sensation clutching at her chest. She turned to Maia and noticed the tense smile shaping her lips. This was something new, and she was full of questions. 

“Maia,” she said, “those ships, I have never seen them before.” Maia was unsure what to say, however, she was honest and the silence of the palace that smothered Ariadne, as if she did not exist, was too much. 

“Princess, they are Athenians—they have come to see your father.” Ariadne fell quiet and Maia was relieved at not being pressured. 

Then Ariadne spoke, thoughtful, “What do they want from him?” She asked it innocently, yet, Maia would have to twist the question; it was not what they wanted from King Minos, but what he wanted from them that was the issue.

Maia began to speak and then stopped as she saw two guards from the palace striding towards them. For once, Pasiphae had noticed Maia and the children had gone. Of all the days, it was this day that she was actually thinking of her daughter, needing to know exactly where she was. 

While the guards went looking for them, Pasiphae waited, seated in the courtyard surrounded by her suite of rooms. She sat shaded, her beauty thinned by years of repressed emotion and a loveless marriage that had spawned and kept her bound to a secret that threatened to explode all that she had ever known. She had been born to the sun, Helios, and named, “she who gives light to all”, yet her need for love had led her away from the light to darkness that now shadowed the beauty that had once drawn Minos to her. 

Ariadne could never be part of this, and this was one of the few things Pasiphae was sure of. She must never know that she had been born of a loveless union, that once Pasiphae fulfilled her duty as the wife of the King, bearing him the heirs he craved, a twisted tale ensued that forever tied her to the heart of this palace and Minos’ cruel reign. Ariadne must never know, and now, faced with what was about to occur, Pasiphae felt even more determined to mask the truth and smother her daughter further, abandoning her to her room. 

Tonight, Ariadne would be watched over. She would ask Maia to sleep near the princess, recognizing for a brief moment that she was asking her to protect Ariadne, as a mother should.            

            When Ariadne was born, Pasiphae had lain exhausted, uninterested in the crying baby. Minos had walked away once he was told it was a girl. In his mind there could never be enough sons, and the news of a daughter resounded like a door slamming shut, a burden rather than a gift.

Pasiphae knew this would be the case and was not surprised that Minos did not enter her bedchamber and see the child himself. So, she lay there drifting in and out of consciousness. Ariadne had been born on a tide of blood, but she would never know of the agony of the birth and the distance this created between mother and baby. Pasiphae had no will to hold the child and Ariadne was immediately given to Maia to nurse. 

Maia had looked into Ariadne’s eyes and exclaimed at their blueness. Such beautiful eyes, it was like looking into the sky and sea at once and they glittered as if stars shone there. Maia’s heart went out to her, touched by Ariadne as if she were her own, and she made a silent prayer to keep her safe, to guard her against all ill. She thought: this child is special. There was not a blemish on her skin, the colour of the centre of an almond, so fine that Maia could see a tributary of veins beneath, as if she was fed by a river of blue, not the blood that was flowing from her mother. 

Maia watched concerned for Pasiphae, the other women who attended the birth were quiet, knowing death and life co-existed in that moment. She cradled and sang quietly to Ariadne. 

The day Ariadne stood on the beach overlooking the water and the ships sailing to Crete, Maia briefly caught the flash of those extraordinary eyes and she was reminded of that first glimpse at her birth. She could not help thinking that for one so blessed Ariadne’s heart was aching for the love of her own mother, a love washed away in blood and a moment in time that for Pasiphae had been a rip in space, a rip within herself. 

Pasiphae turned away from her child the day she was born and when she closed her eyes, only to open them days later, she never asked for Ariadne. Instead she grieved for herself and a loss she could never name.    

It was evening and Maia sat in another part of the palace, near the window, so that she could see the flames from the fires in the town. Ariadne and her daughter slept. She could not. 

How was she going to protect them both from this? Pasiphae had sent for her when they came back from the beach. Please have Ariadne’s meal delivered to her room; she must stay there tonight. Maia was silent. I would also like for you to sleep nearby. Pasiphae had spoken quietly, trying to hide her face in the darkness, but Maia could see the flushed cheeks and the eyes shining with an unnatural glow. Maia bowed and left. 

How could she keep these two girls safe? Maia knew she could not stay for much longer. What was at the heart she had only heard of in whispers. The palace was enormous and many rooms were barred from being entered. Yet she heard the roars that would reach from beyond one of the open courtyards and she could only imagine at what might make those cries. 

They said it wasn’t human, but it wasn’t an animal either.

There was one night that Maia remembered, a night that had cast a shadow over the palace ever since. Maia had been asked to help with one other of Pasiphae’s births. She was hysterical with pain, screaming and whispering: It’s killing me, get it out!    

Over and over, Pasiphae kept saying this and the women attending, including Maia, were exhausted trying to keep her still. When the midwife saw the head crowning she went pale and bit the cry that was about to escape. She looked wide-eyed and spoke in a hoarse whisper: Everyone, please leave. Pasiphae looked at her as she pushed, and they both knew. She had kept this secret, but this wizened woman who had attended more births than she could remember, only realised that what she had heard as a whisper, was actually true. 

So, they all left and Maia and the others sat outside to wait. 

The midwife came out bent and shaking. It is dead. That was all she said. They quietly went inside, never understanding that what was born that night had been taken away by another exit, to a place specially made if this was to eventuate. If it lived. And it did. 

Minos heard the news and his face hardened like the stone walls that Daedalus had built to house the secret that would bind all who knew. A twisted tale of lust and a desire for a heart; the product of Pasiphae’s longing for love, a loving heart, with no idea of love as a reality, only illusion.       

Later that night, Maia eventually slept with troubled dreams. Ariadne woke to the sound of screams, thinking them part of her sleep, only to become aware that they were real, coming from somewhere within the palace.

She began to cry out, for what she wasn’t sure, with only the light of the moon reaching into the room, she cried against the shadows and sounds that cloaked her as if to smother. Maia was startled, thinking the moans came from that place deep in the walls of stone, only to see Ariadne moving her body back and forth trying to comfort herself.

It was then, while Maia held her gently, her own daughter watching with eyes wide with fear, she moved with Ariadne’s body to soothe her and she told her a story; a tale of a monster, housed in the centre of a palace of many rooms, to protect all who lived there.

She said nothing of the whispers implicating Ariadne’s mother, and the horror that was at the heart.     

The two girls soon slept when the cries had silenced. One day, Maia knew, the whispers would reach Ariadne and she could only wonder at what the young princess would have to face in the light of the truth.    

2

It was almost a denial, not making marks. 

Isabelle was staring at the blank canvas. Always denial. A shadow seemed to pass across the surface. The falling of a body. The falling from life.  

She’d come to the studio hoping to distract herself, instead she was confronted by her inability to paint. 

How many weeks had this been going on? She’d lost count. 

Sitting at the work table, Isabelle picked up a pencil, moving her hand slightly, barely marking the page, then she blocked out a string of words, eventually joining the letters, threading them with a faint grey line—flight, fly, fall, boy. Beneath the curving line she drew the head of the girl now turning as if looking up towards the words. Sky words. Her body was absorbed into the white, as if falling out of the page. 

Out of sight.      

Stephen’s death had been too painful to deny, but Isabelle’s family tried to. Even Jack, who was so close, had said it was best that she put this behind her and get on with life. It had been denied so that reason could prevail, and so that the pain, unbearable to absorb, to become a part of oneself, could be forgotten. She had resented them for so long, for their belief that for her own wellbeing she should forget. 

Stephen left her, passing through her reality so unexpectedly. Her heart broke. The words imaged what she felt even as the muscle kept pumping, keeping her alive. His heart broke. At least that was how Isabelle had seen it at the time. It was what she preferred to think, trying to make sense of his fall from life. As he fell from that height, his heart had wavered under the strain. The autopsy report had mentioned this, except it was clinically typed to pinpoint the exact cause of death. His neck snapped with the impact of his body hitting the water. His lungs had filled as he’d struggled to breathe. 

Her hand rested on the page. The pencil had left a trailing line like a loose thread from the girl’s dress. She began to draw a curve, the beginning of a heart, then, stopped. The line wavered to shape that symbol laid bare in the space of the girl’s body that wasn’t there. A pulse of blood; the core. She was filled by it and Isabelle wrote a word beside the girl, over and over… 

And she was thinking: When did the feeling become a name?

Isabelle remembered the time when Stephen went away and he didn’t come home when he said he would.

Stephen went on a holiday with his father and brother, up north from the seaside town where they’d met. He began writing to Isabelle, at first stilted, then freer as they found through writing a way to touch on the feelings that slid beneath all they did together. Mapping the details of their days apart, through these letters, emails, and texts, they lived another life—the imagined life of the other.  

Over the girl, under her, beside her, Isabelle wrote…

Then the day came when Isabelle went to his house, expecting Stephen to welcome her at the door, except it remained shut; a shunning silence. She waited outside on the steps until the heat of the sun subsided as an emptiness trawled through her and felt as cold as the air that came from the cooling sea.

One word, over and over, in a continuous thread…

Isabelle felt fear as a strange tearing at her throat and her breath struggled to escape. That night, after texting and waiting for the response or a phone call that would have dispelled all the doubts, the anxious knot released in her cries, muffled so no one could hear. 

And the feeling that was swimming beneath the fear Isabelle knew and she didn’t know. It was unfamiliar, yet real and affirming. How could Isabelle speak of this when she lived waiting and unsure of his return?

While she voiced her fears, there was little her father could do. “We’ll hear something soon,” was all that he ventured to say, not wanting the doubts to become his own. 

Then, quite suddenly, Stephen was there. He came to Isabelle’s home as soon as he arrived, laughing to hear her mistake with the date of his return. As simple as that. The battery of his phone had died, so he’d only just seen her texts and calls. But Isabelle couldn’t laugh or speak of what she had felt and thought. It was there in her breath and came through her lips and into his mouth so that it went deeper to touch a place she couldn’t see.

And the words filled the girl’s mouth and spilled out in threads, wound in veins of red…

Stephen said what she already knew and Isabelle had a dream that night that they were standing at the edge of the beach where they met, and they were lovers, but in that place without time they were more than this. They were lovers, but also family, and each other’s closest friend.      

They were all of this and simply what they were.

One word…

love,

over and over, entwined to fill and spill.  

Isabelle stared for some time at the drawing she had just completed and then turned away to pick up the canvas only to place it next to another, walling herself in.

3

Minotaur: I was trapped by this body. No one could understand that the walls that surrounded me mattered little. I had no understanding of this labyrinth. 

I was its centre. 

What bound me was this body, this shape. Half man, half beast. 

I glimpsed myself once, a mere shadow in a pool of water after the rain. I didn’t even understand at first what I was looking at, just that as I moved what I saw moved with me. But I looked unlike the few people that I had seen.  

There were times when I howled with a feeling I couldn’t name, a need to scream my presence, to reach for something out of this feeling. I was cursed by a consciousness, a heart, and a simple desire to survive. 

To be. 

At the centre was confusion, a conundrum. For how did you live by the heart? How did you think with it and not be simply driven by flesh?

Nearing the centre

1

The following week, Kate and Max were scheduled to arrive. 

It was while Isabelle and Theo were relaxing on the sofa in Theo’s apartment, that she asked him how he first met Kate. 

The question came suddenly and Isabelle wasn’t even sure why she’d asked. Theo was quiet for some time and she had the sense that she’d stepped on territory where she shouldn’t tread.          

“We were in the same English class. She was reading Classics. We kept seeing each other, one of those strange situations of constantly being thrown together.” He hacked a laugh, but it sounded empty and dry. They had barely mentioned Kate and Max since the email had come, a silent wedge that neither of them was able to address. Theo stared into the empty space of the room and Isabelle reached to touch his arm.  

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone there.” She felt awkward for the first time, wanting to ease whatever burden came with his thoughts about Kate, but she also knew that this was not for her to do. 

His look was sharp. “No, don’t apologise. Not at all. It just seems so long ago. Especially being here with you.” He touched her cheek, as if he needed to ground himself. “To be honest, I didn’t think she’d be interested in me. Kate was quite popular, loved parties, and I was the sort who’d find a quiet corner, or someone to talk to.”

“Sounds a bit like me,” Isabelle said ruefully.

“I wasn’t great at that stuff. Unless I got a bit drunk. Then I’d loosen up. Kate always said that’s when I was fun to be with.” He moved his hand to rest on the sofa. Isabelle didn’t know what to say. Thinking about Kate took Theo somewhere she couldn’t go.

“Problem was, I was never drunk enough I think. Always a bit too reserved.” It was only a glimpse, a bare sketch, and Isabelle had to content herself with this, not quite picturing the man she knew from what he was telling her.

“I don’t see you like that,” she said. “You can be joyous and you’re not conscious of it.” 

If Theo wanted proof of the difference between Isabelle with his past, it was her capacity to see such a thing, see the life in him. 

Theo’s eyes half closed and it was a look Isabelle recognized that he’d get before he’d kiss her. He moved his hand to reach behind her neck and pulled her towards him and all the questions ended there. 

Against her ear he whispered, “Let’s not go there, Issy. It’s not about us.” Yet, she wanted to pull back and say it was. How could it not be? But she kept silent.

That night she woke from a dream, her body curled behind him. There was an image that stayed with her, and that hung in the dark air just in front of her eyes. She was sitting in Theo’s lap, holding him, her cheek pressed against his face. Her eyes were closed as she rested in that feeling. It was a sense of completeness—of peace. She held him and thought: This is it, this moment, so full and quiet. Full with my breath and his. 

Full and silent.  

Such a contrast to how she truly felt as the day dawned.

2

Theo was readying to leave work, with a pile of marking to occupy his weekend. Isabelle was coming to meet him so they could leave together. A glimmer of light at the end of a tedious day.  

He always came back to her. He was trying to make sense of the meeting of the past with his present. The two had been so separate, but now they were becoming meshed in his mind, the one reality with the other. Her questions from the other night had sparked a series of thoughts he’d been keeping suppressed, like that time before he left to come here.   

The separation from Kate had been unbearable while he still lived so close. She had stayed in their house with Max, and while he saw Max whenever he could, there had been her new lover to cope with, and he hadn’t coped well with that at all. It ripped through him, after all those years of being together, the idea of her being with someone else. His anger was at himself and at the thought of this other presence in Max’s life. If he was honest, he was angry at Kate for being with him. By physically occupying that space, it was the first step to an emotional bond with his son Theo feared would supersede his own. So it seemed ridiculous to have come here, to another country, removing his presence from Max except as a distant voice or a written word. This need to see Max was pulling him back when he should be moving on.  

Max and Isabelle. Push and pull. He was tense with the backward-forward movement of his thoughts. 

They had not spoken of a future, of cementing their being together with plans. So much of his time with Isabelle was of the moment. She was always in his mind waiting to be thought of. It was longing and desire meshed with an emotion he was still keeping at a distance, that he didn’t name. Yet he knew it was there, and there were times he could see in her eyes a reflection of that feeling. 

Could it be that simple? To voice his heart would be to anchor himself to a present he was unsure of. And he complicated his feelings with doubts. There were still times he thought he could no longer feel, as if that time before with Kate and Max had frozen feeling to an endless present, one where he was locked by the numbing of his heart. 

He had hoped for Isabelle, and all this had begun without reason, but guided by something deeper than consciousness. 

3

The girl was unravelling.

The thread from her dress trailed along the page, looping and dangling, then disappearing. Along the wall, Isabelle had pinned the drawings of the girl made of thread, a couple were nearly blank with the barest trace of her outline, while in others only parts of her appeared on the page.

Isabelle began to loop within the loops, and then she wrote flight, like riding the crest of a wave. The word swelled out of the loops then folded back into them, the weight of the lead preventing it lifting off the paper. Isabelle had only traced the dress, no image of limbs or the girl’s head could be seen, like she’d slipped out for a moment, perhaps still nearby. 

When Stephen passed away Isabelle had no sense of being present—of being present in herself. She kept asking: What sense could you make of someone leaving like that? Where were the signs?

Isabelle struggled to accept what she couldn’t explain. The loss she felt now was dull; the edge had gone in time. However, there was an ache like something blocked and heavy inside which signalled something else. A loss Isabelle felt at a distance and wanted to ignore, but which was figuring within her thoughts every day and weaving through with this shadow.  

The thread of the girl’s dress was shaping another word.

Theo. 

His increasing silences said more than he could know. 

* * *

So much of Ariadne’s life was about waiting, and of time stretching before her, marked by a distant promise of marriage to a man she would not know and would not love. 

            No one spoke of love in this palace built around a central chamber, a place with a heart so dark and unknowable, they surrounded it with a thousand rooms. To venture towards the centre meant traversing a web of stone. There was one way in and out, but only a few ever found their way back to the western gate. 

            Palace of a thousand rooms, a thousand chambers. But what of the heart? She could not speak of love, of a heart, she knew nothing of it except for Maia who as a child had held her and laughed. Laughter was a distant echo from one of the many rooms; it was never shared. 

So, to wait Ariadne would bide her time with threads of coarse twine. The sizes varied, as did the lengths. Some were the colour of the darkest blue, the colour of her eyes, or black like the coil of hair tied at the nape of her neck, snaking a trail down her back. And then there was the red, these veins of blood. On days when time was immeasurable, heavy and dull, she wove the coarsest twine of brown, like the earth that weighted her with a lethargy she could not shake. 

            Today the twine was red, the colour staining the sky as the sun set. She had to go back to the palace soon. She was not permitted to be around the preparations for the feast. Yet, she knew they would drain the blood from the bull’s cut throat to drink as a symbol of regeneration. Of life and death. A cycle: change and the seeming endlessness of time. Of no change in this ongoing repetition. 

This would be her last year she heard her mother say. She was to be married in the coming spring. No mention of where she would go or to whom she would be married. Just that she would be gone from here. She looked again over the sea and wondered if she would finally know the feeling of moving along the water, into the light, towards that point, that line where sea and sky met. What would it be like to leave this place, to be somewhere other than here? She could not imagine. She gathered the remaining twine and walked slowly to the path that led to the wall surrounding the palace.

She would often look at the sky at night, at the stars. She wished she could thread a string of them and wear them round her neck. A knot of stars. Tonight they glowed. She could see distant fires from the window of her chamber. The feast had begun a day early in the town where people were lighting stalks of bound twigs, a field of flames. From somewhere at the centre of the vast palace came a low, rumbling noise. She knew what it was, but she tried to block it, it was familiar enough.

She went to bed with the lights of flames and stars behind the lids of her eyes and dreamed of a boat with black sails coming to the shore where she sat. 

Waiting.

The boat was coming towards the shore and the sails were black. 

However, she was not waiting as the boat moored and the young Athenians were led to the beach. Theseus stood there, watching. He knew what was at the heart of this place, at the heart of the Royal House of Crete. He also knew that within the walls of the palace there lived a young princess. 

Ariadne. 

Tales of Athenian travellers spoke of a young woman who would sit on the beach. Waiting. One man recalled a braid of hair thick and black, as dark as night, and skin so luminous—light and dark, night and day—a beauty of complete serenity. Then there came the news that the princess was to become a bride in spring. It was this that led him here, the dream of a face which older men said would calm the soul of the most restless man, and the challenge of what resided at the centre of King Minos’ realm. He had hoped to see her; instead the sea was as still and blue as the sky that was reflected in its depths, the beach deserted.

They were housed in town where they could walk freely, but under the watchful eye of the King’s guards. He could see the palace walls and one of the four gates. How was he to see her? He slipped down a small path between two houses, he had a vague recollection of the direction to the beach, his only hope was to go there and wait. 

There was a group of guards heading his way and he pressed against a wall. They were surrounding someone. He could see a small figure among them, perhaps—her head was bent, the coil of hair tied at the nape of her neck, snaking down her back. They were about to pass and sensing his gaze she lifted her face to look at him. Her eyes held his. They were the colour of the sky and the water that day. 

How long do you measure a look when you recognise a soul of someone you do not know? 

The feeling inside him was achingly tight; she was more than he could have imagined, more than anyone could have described. She slowly turned away, a quizzical look falling across her face as she lowered her head once more and kept walking. 

He was thinking what to do. He could not get close to her with the guards. The beach, that was all he could think of and he made his way desperately, as if the slightest delay could cost him a chance to see her again. He felt something like panic at possible loss and a feeling of openness, an opening within himself at the possibility of her. That look—it was as if time occurred outside of this feeling of connection without knowing. 

She had felt it. He was certain that she had felt it, too. 

4

Minotaur: I had no home other than here, and yet, I sensed something more, a world beyond. 

I felt this strongly because of the sky, how it changes; how the light moved and how light became dark and then light, again and again. Surely it wrapped more than my small home; wrapped and circled a space larger than these walls and the paths that led to it. 

I knew of the people who lived outside of here. I could hear them and then there were those who dared to come into my home, so that I was sure there was something beyond. 

How vast a space the sky must cover.

I could not imagine it. But I wondered.   

5

Looking at the night sky, Isabelle recalled how her father would hold her hand and they would trace outlines, join the dots of stars to form shapes. He pointed to the constellation of Orion: Orion the Hunter. The Egyptians believed it was the gateway to the universe, and there lived the soul of the god Osiris. He was the brother and lover of Isis, and both were born of the cosmic marriage of the sky and earth: Nut and Geb. 

He kept a picture of the three great pyramids at Giza in Egypt above his desk, next to one of Isabelle’s drawings of three fishermen on a pier. He spoke of the belief that these monuments were channels between heaven and earth, reflecting the light of the sun and the moon. The heavens made part of the earth, by a constellation of pyramids oriented to mirror Orion’s Belt. It was the one constellation that could be seen anywhere in the world, pinpointed as it was near the celestial equator. 

And he would say: as above, so below.

He pointed to another, the constellation of Taurus with its flaming eye, and the stormy cluster of Hyades, half sisters to the seven, the net of stars, the Pleiades. 

A ring of stars.

There was a darker tale to be told that shifted imperceptibly beneath the simple story of love recounted by Isabelle’s father. It had the quality of shadows, now revealing, now hidden, but always present.  

Once when looking at the stars, Stephen had pointed to Taurus and said it was the one constellation he sought. In the night-light his face had darkened, as if a cloud had crossed the path of the moon.  

* * *

Theseus could see why the princess would sit on this beach overlooking the water, still and calm. He wanted to be here just to understand her days of waiting. What was she waiting for? What was she hoping for? She must have sat here and looked at the sky and sea for so long that she had drained the colour with her eyes. 

            Tonight, he and the other Athenians would play out the sacrifice to King Minos’ beast. A dance of death. For that was what it was, a beast, half man, half animal, begat from the union of Queen Pasiphae and a white bull. The Minotaur they called it. A punishment by the gods on the Royal House of Crete. 

            And so it began, a cult of the bull, a cult of death. 

            But it began before Minos was even born, child of Zeus and Europa. Born not of the union of male and female, not of love. Of three sons born, Minos was the first.

            With the wounding and death of his own son Androgeos by Aegeus, King of Athens, a bloody revenge was spawned and enacted on the youths of Athens by Minos. Every nine years he demanded seven men and seven women to avenge the death of his son and the darkness that was at the heart of his kingdom at Knossos.             

            So it began. Daedalus built this labyrinth amid a thousand rooms and oriented its centre towards the sun, as if to bring to the heart, light like a breath of air to expand and alleviate the darkness. At the centre they housed the Minotaur, who thirsted for the blood of human flesh with the coming of every ninth year. Masked as a celebration, they fed the beast the flesh he craved. So shame was brought to the heart of Minos and he was forever bound and tied to what existed at the centre of his home.

            What heart could abide such a ritual?               

Theseus sat on the beach and thought of his father, King Aegeus, who was waiting for his son’s return. For that was the promise he made; that he would sail away under the sails of black, but on his return he would raise the white sails to signal victory. 

A victory over the heart of King Minos’ kingdom. 

Yet it was two hearts he wanted to win. For he had come to slay the Minotaur so that no Athenian would fear being taken to this place which worshiped a cult of death, to finally cut the ties which bound them to this darkness. And the other heart, the one he desired the most, he would take her away from this palace as his bride to Athens. 

6

Isabelle walked into the studio that morning and had not been able to enter. 

A canvas had been placed facing the door, blocking any view of the room. She sidled past it and slowly made her way to where she thought her current painting stood. Somehow, she’d been navigating this space without even realising she had created a maze for herself.  

Isabelle kept making the canvases, thinking as she did this, about the work she would like to do. Yet, each canvas was duly propped at some angle to be forgotten. On closer inspection, as she weaved her way, she noticed very faint marks. Body outlines falling through the blank spaces. The canvas on the easel closest to the work tables had a firmer outline and she could also see marks not present on the others, small grainy marks like the way a child draws stars.

And a thought formed a question: What could this mean?

The line of drawings of the girl made of thread was lengthening along the wall. It was a trailing and fragmented narrative where meaning shone in glimpses through the silence of the line that traced her absence and fleeting presence.

After Stephen’s death she’d found herself making marks on anything that came to hand, leaving a trail of indecipherable scrawls, like writing but, unintelligible. Tracings of her fears, her doubts and her pain. When she felt the tightening in her chest, wanting to let out a cry, she could barely press whatever she held against the paper to leave a mark, perhaps only making a stain, a warped cleft on the page from the tears that invariably came. 

In the evening, after meeting at Theo’s work, they went for a bite to eat at an Italian restaurant where not that long ago they’d had dinner with Isabelle’s father and Jack after her exhibition opening. It had been a night of laughter and celebration, but tonight Isabelle was reserved and quiet.

Theo tried teasing a response from her only to get a wan smile and a paltry, “Nothing’s really the matter,” before she resumed eating. 

I can’t seem to reach her. She almost read his thoughts. 

Her silence settled about her protectively. She asked the simplest questions about Theo’s day but retreated to a place he was unable to follow. 

Isabelle’s thoughts were trapped back at the studio as they made their way to his apartment. “I’ve got some work to do this evening, you don’t mind?” he’d asked, and she’d shrugged, the first sign that alerted Theo to a different mood, lacking in her usual lightness. It was a heavy gesture, as was the slight bow of her head through dinner. Theo stopped her outside the restaurant, holding her shoulders as if assessing the weight she carried.  

“What’s bothering you, Issy?” 

Slipping out of his grasp where once she would have found any reason to hold on, she answered, “I’m just unsure of the work I’m doing at the moment.”  

Later, Isabelle sat staring at the night sky through the window in Theo’s lounge room, calmed at seeing the lights. The night sky was a compass; it oriented her into the present, although looking at the stars was looking at the past, back through time and space. Could she mark a time when she had begun to wall herself in? 

Her last exhibition had been nearly two months ago. After that there was a period of time when she needed to reacquaint herself with the process of beginning her work afresh. She and Theo had visited her father, who now lived at that house by the sea, before travelling further along the coast. They’d had a week-long road trip, stopping whenever they felt like it, swimming in near deserted inlets and doing little, except they chose to do so together. Each day had its own ebb and flow and they’d risen and fallen to sleep with it, content to follow the rhythm, allowing the time to stretch, forcing nothing. 

Perhaps that was it. Coming home, nothing could be the same. Isabelle had gone back to the studio to resume her work and was met by the empty space and a blank canvas. This was a turning point, possibly when it began, this inexplicable accumulation of canvases and a sense of emptiness, a welling sense of loss that would momentarily overtake her, and had not left since that day. 

Somewhere she’d lost the thread that guided her back to herself and her art. Somewhere, she’d lost her way to create a new beginning.

As if it was always just out of reach.

7

Theo stopped marking his papers to watch Isabelle curled in a chair by the window, a distant look upon her face. At that moment he forgot what he was doing and the weight of the days nearing when Kate and Max would arrive. 

It was enough to be here in this room, with her. He almost said what he was feeling, but something stopped him, her silence perhaps, and the uncertainty of what he had to face.   

His gaze drifted to the painting she’d gifted him. 

The barest outline of two fingers entwined, plunged in a depth of water, the blue stunningly deep and intense so that he always felt like he was diving into it. And the figures: Were they lovers? Or, were they holding on to each other simply to survive? 

He’d witnessed her painting it and then at Isabelle’s exhibition opening. A night stamped in his memory as one of firsts: a kaleidoscope of meetings, conversations, but mostly, of seeing Isabelle’s work hung in a space outside of the studio; of seeing her in an environment that altered how he saw her.

His anticipation had been acute.

  “Why can’t I see her while she’s installing it?” Theo had asked Jack. To finally see the works in a different space, to see the culmination of the time he’d been with her while she’d been producing the paintings. He realised it had some personal significance for him, despite it being Isabelle’s achievement. 

“She’s always been like this Theo, trust me. You have to let her be. She’s never let any of us see her during this time. She says it’s too stressful. I think she’s always a bit nervous at viewing her work in a new space, and then the opening is a minefield in itself.”

“But why?” 

“Imagine having your writing published, not what your used to publishing, but a book, something entirely personal. Think of what it’s like to have the public react to it. It’s raw. You’re putting yourself, or something of yourself out there for all to see.” 

“Is that how it feels for you?” Theo asked. Jack rarely spoke of the book that had recently been published to good reviews, but he had been incredibly quiet, unusually internal during the time it came out. 

“Yes. You know, I never quite understood how Isabelle felt about her exhibitions until recently. Even the thesis didn’t give me a clue because I had to go through the assessment period first. I had enough feedback from the academic community by that stage to know it was okay. But I had no idea how frightening it would feel to get my novel out there.” 

Theo simply nodded, glimpsing a difficulty he’d never had to face.

“By the way,” Jack said, “you’ll get the chance to meet Dad tonight. We’re all going out to dinner as well.” This was unexpected. Theo hadn’t thought about Isabelle’s father being at the opening, but it made perfect sense. He felt unreasonably nervous at the thought and Jack smiled to reassure him. “He’s easy-going Theo, and we’ve clued him up about you so it won’t be a surprise.” 

“I don’t know what to think about that!” 

“You seem shocked.” Jack laughed at the rather wide-eyed look on Theo’s face. “Of course we’ve talked to him about you.”  

“Hopefully all good.” 

“Bloody hell Theo, it’s not the Inquisition!”

Ironically, Isabelle and Jack’s father, Ben, was the first person Theo met when he and Jack entered the art gallery.  

“They’ve both been talking about you so much it’s good to finally meet you,” Ben said warmly. 

“Good to meet you too, sir.” Theo slipped immediately into the formality of his upbringing. 

“Not ‘sir’, call me Ben.” Ben laughed easily. He has eyes like Issy, was Theo’s immediate reaction. 

“Hi Dad.” Jack welcomed him and hugged Ben unselfconsciously. Theo could only think with regret that he’d never been able to embrace his father like that. Jack and Ben began talking as if they’d seen each other just yesterday. Theo took that moment to look around anxiously, searching for Isabelle. 

Theo spotted her and watched her closely. At one point he caught her eye and they smiled at each other, Isabelle indicating she’d come over in a moment. He was pleasantly surprised at how much he was enjoying being with Jack and Ben. Even amid this crowd of strangers, they provided an anchor while Isabelle drifted in and out of his vision. Jack was opening up considerably, less tense than Theo was used to seeing him at work. Theo’s own parents, both academics, were reserved people who only inspired a similar response. But Ben was easy company, and appeared relaxed even in this rather pretentious inner city gallery. Apparently he’d recently moved out of the city to be closer to the sea. 

“Nothing like getting up in the morning and knowing you have a day of fishing ahead of you.” The pleasure it gave Ben was evident. He was still enjoying the sense of having found some peace in settling in the town where he’d met his wife; living in the sea house he and his family visited every year.

“I haven’t fished in years,” Theo said, wondering at the simplicity of such an existence, feeling the pull of it. Last time must have been with Kate, he thought. Yes, a rather damp trip that discouraged any further attempts.   

“You and Issy should come and visit. It’s been a while since she was last there.” The invitation was casual, but Theo also recognised the acknowledgement that he was now part of Isabelle’s life. 

The talk between them moved easily but Theo’s eyes kept following Isabelle, noting with a tinge of pride and nervousness that others were doing exactly the same. She’d made no effort to dress up, wearing her usual skinny jeans with a black t-shirt and high top black Converses. She wore her hair looped and gathered so that the swan curve of her neck rose from the neckline of her t-shirt. She was animated in a way he knew yet in this unfamiliar place, he was seeing her anew. Another world opening, one which her work connected her to, but that she stood apart from.  

“It’s always odd at these functions, one person gets sidelined.” Isabelle’s friend Stella had sidled up to him, her words mirroring his thoughts. Theo was almost grateful for her presence. He’d met her a couple of times and was still unsure what to make of her. She was also an artist, but her work could not have been more different than Isabelle’s. Stella’s paintings screamed with colour and heavily outlined forms, often symbolic, but to Theo’s mind, obvious rather than subtle. They grated on him, if he was honest, and he felt their presence more like a wall than a world he could enter. Stella was dedicated, and at least he could admire that about her.

“You mean the partner?” Theo asked to reiterate the point. 

“Exactly, I feel the same when I’m with Craig at his openings. He’s more established and the people pawing him are more persistent, if you get my meaning.” She didn’t sound bitter though. Stella shared a studio with her husband, Craig, and yet the closeness of her relationship seemed to preclude any professional envy.  

“How do you manage?” Theo asked, for the first time curious to know what Stella was thinking. He couldn’t help noticing Stella’s eyes, as one of them wandered a bit when she was tired. 

“I keep a distance. Our work is so different it doesn’t bother me. And Craig’s been painting longer than I have as well. In the end though, it’s not about the work. I waited so long for us to be together that the relationship is too important to jeopardise.” 

Theo warmed to the sincerity of her words and could see why Isabelle respected her. She had her priorities straight. Probably one of the few, he was thinking, as he looked around.       

Stella was watching his face intently. She had a directness he also found disconcerting. They’d gone to her studio one day and she’d greeted them at the door with a sheet wrapped around her over layers of clothes. Stella had smiled, uncaring and hooted. “I’m big in the fashion stakes today. Togas are back!” Isabelle had been oblivious to the strangeness of her attire, but Theo had never seen anything like it. Admittedly she was being practical, it was cold. 

“You’re good for her, Theo.” There was an edge to Stella’s voice. “Take care of her. Take care of her heart.”  

Theo could both understand her concern and was, yet again, taken aback at her openness. And the underlying seriousness to her words. As if cautioning him, but also suggesting that it had been damaged. He had no idea what that meant. 

Stella drifted away and was now roaring with laughter at something Craig was saying. She did have a marvellous sense of humour, quite wicked in fact. 

“She’s witchy, isn’t she?” whispered Jack. Theo smiled at the look on Jack’s face, obviously unnerved by Stella.

“I shouldn’t say it, she’s known Issy for an age, but she’s just in another world as far as I’m concerned.” Jack asked Theo whether he wanted another beer, before venturing to get one for himself. 

Isabelle eventually made her way towards them.

“We’re the closest people here to you, and the last to get your attention!” Ben joked while hugging her.

“I know, I know. You’ll see plenty of me later. I thought we were going out to dinner?” 

She released herself from Ben’s arms and went to Theo, a tired but contented joy on her face as she kissed him. Theo wanted to hold her close, but again the reserve and Ben’s watchful presence prevented him

“Yes,” Ben answered. “We’ve organised all of that. But more importantly, congratulations! I see you’ve done it again, a near sell-out.” 

Isabelle appeared pleased at Ben’s happiness for her. “Thanks Dad,” she said softly. 

So little needed to be said, Theo noted, an understanding that gave their relationship a sense of ease, and in the ensuing evening, he realised how that sense of inclusion in their small family now extended to him. 

* * *

Despite the awkward silence of the evening and Theo’s focus on his work, they made love with such tenderness that it seemed shadowed with a sense of leaving. Theo couldn’t sleep. He watched over Isabelle, as if wanting to protect her. From himself it seemed; of not knowing how he would feel after seeing Kate and Max again, of what that meeting would mean for the future. 

Theo traced his finger lightly along her cheek. He wanted to be sure for her, for both of them, to move beyond this suspension, beyond the past.

            As if it could be that simple.

8

Minotaur: Sometimes I felt a presence outside the stone walls, as if someone was aware that I was here. That I existed. I imagined it to be someone beautiful. 

            How could I imagine this since I had never been outside this place? Once, before the sacrifice, when they gave me the life they believed I craved, a young woman faced me at the centre. 

            She stood, the fire lit lamp illuminating her face that looked at me with such horror and then something like pain. It was then that I felt it. For she reached out to touch me in that dark place, and in that look I felt something within me. 

            For the first time I felt my heart.

A lifeline

1

Isabelle became obsessed when she was younger with looking for patterns on her body like tracing the stars in the night sky. The moles and freckles often formed sets of three, her body make-up. The beginning was Orion’s Belt. Isabelle would trace with her finger the angles that pinned the darkish dots. She could shape two intersecting triangles, spaces that marked the curves of her stomach. Standing in front of the mirror she noticed the tributary of blue veins, intersecting these smallish marks. It was like a map, tracery visible through flesh. 

Her body, a map of trails.

A map of stars. 

One day Isabelle took a black, felt tip pen and joined the moles on her stomach—a children’s dot-to-dot. She held the skin as the line wavered along flesh, imagining if only she could reach her back, an array of lines would web her body.

It was then that Isabelle noticed that along the top of her arm there were three moles and traced a line to join them. Ever since that childhood game, Isabelle would instinctively touch those marks, threading them like stars on a string. When her father pointed to the Orion constellation, he noted a specific cluster and said, “There is Orion’s Belt, three stars, the three sisters: Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak.” 

And it was like a spark, a flash of recognition and Isabelle looked at her arm and said, “Along my arm is Orion’s Belt.” 

He’d laughed. “Yes, along your arm is Orion’s Belt.” 

An echo sealing it as fact.

Three points of light. Only hers were dark as night.

* * * 

Theseus could feel the heat of the middle of the day, and in the light he could not imagine what he would later have to encounter. From the corner of his eye he could see someone coming towards him. 

She walked with her face turned towards the sea. Then looking back to the beach she saw him and stopped. So, she had come, and he could only stand there not knowing what to do. Yet she came closer and closer still and there was that quizzical look upon her face. She stood so close that he could see his reflection in the blue mirror of her eyes. The openness of her look; it was calm and she had no fear of who he might be. She seemed to accept this young man before her, that look before of recognition and unknowing. 

She spoke first, asking who he was. Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, he answered. Her eyes became still and fixed on his face and she no longer smiled. You are here for the feast, she said, not wanting to say what they both knew was true. Yes. That was all he could manage. But the son of the King? She was unsure of what this could mean: Why are you here? She could not understand how the King of Athens could allow his son to leave with the others—this man before her with a face she felt she knew but could not place, a face so open and sure. She could feel a tightening round her heart and felt sure he would not die, he was not meant to. 

For they knew. They knew the other without knowing and the look in each other’s eyes said more than the words that came from their lips. She reached out to touch his face. He was real and flesh. You cannot go in there, she said, you must know what awaits you? She could not bear the thought of not seeing this face again. He reached to touch her hair, the coil of black and traced his finger along her neck, a stem of grace and pure line. I must, he said, as a promise to my father to end this once and for all, so no more Athenians might face King Minos’ beast. She stilled her touch to rest her palm along his cheek. She said what he already knew: No one has ever survived him, and if they did they would never come out of the labyrinth. She looked thoughtful. There might be a way, she said. For in her hand she carried a ball of twine. She’d used it once to make the very journey Theseus would take. It was red: the colour of her heart—the colour of blood. She held it out towards him as if offering her very heart. And she was, because there was no escape from this. In that look which now seemed so long ago she had seen the heart of a man she knew and did not know, she recognised his will, his life entwined with hers, and beyond her control. 

She was meant to be with him, and that was all she knew. For the mind follows the heart, and to comprehend what she felt and her body sensed without doubt, would only make conscious what was there. Had always been. He had been there within her to be made real, made flesh for her to love. For she was meant to love him. 

She held her ball of twine and said: If you hold this end and I the other, you can trail a path to the centre and I will stay near the gate, so when you are done this twine will lead you back to me. With this she gave herself and he took it with both his hands. Then I will take you from here and you will be my wife. Theseus said it surely and there was no doubt between them that it would be so.                                       

2

The suspension of time and space. 

Theo felt as if he could be back in London saying goodnight to his boy. Max slept, tired after the long journey, and Theo stroked his face gently not wanting to leave his side. The openness of a child’s face when sleeping. 

Max had run to him at the airport and he’d barely let go. “Daddy!” he’d yelled over and over like in Theo’s dream, but he was real. And bigger. The shock of this he hadn’t been ready for. Then Kate had come quietly behind him. She smiled and it was easy to be with her after all the anxiety of waiting for this moment. The edge had gone, perhaps it was meeting on this neutral ground, distant from the territory of pain and anger they’d inhabited. They’d laughed together over seeing the delight in Max’s face. He could not recall when last they had laughed like this. 

He stopped stroking Max’s cheek and went to close the door. Kate was on the phone speaking softly. The light of the lamp lit her so she became a part of it. He had forgotten how pale, almost silvery she could be. Fair Kate with slippery blonde hair he used to twist round his fingers for hours. Theo caught himself in this thought when he heard her mention his name. She was speaking to him back in London and her face was serene in the light. How long had it been now? Theo had lost track of time coming here and he realised sharply he had come here to do just that, lose himself; suspend himself from having to move on. He hadn’t been ready for that. But she had. He could suddenly see she had moved on because, what he’d thought was just a means for her to leave him, was much more than that. She loved someone else.

Kate ended the call. Theo was standing there not knowing what to say or do. The traces of her feelings for that other man were alive within her face. Where to go from here? She spoke of Max, “He missed you so much, Theo.” 

He sat and felt incredibly tired from holding his body tight during those days of waiting for them to finally come. All tension gone, he saw her clearly. She had such a lovely face; the word angelic always came to mind because of her silvery light. But her face shone and slipped before him and from out of the shadows behind her, he saw another face that was dark and light at once. 

He asked from weariness, not fearing now what he already knew, “How is he?” The response was in her expression, not in words. She said what he’d been unconsciously expecting all this time. “We’re getting married Theo, I wanted to tell you in person.” 

Theo let something go in that moment. His past? He wasn’t sure; his past with her and those endless days of holding still, caught in limbo, waiting for something to move him. 

“When?” She paused before saying, “In spring.” 

“And Max?” The words were choked with love for his son. 

“He understands, Theo. John has never tried to be anything more than a friend. No one can ever replace you. You just have to look at his face when he saw you to realise that.” 

He felt calmed by her words, a balm to an ache so deep he’d been incapable of finding a way to release it. 

Theo went to kneel before her and took her hand, remembering another time in the thread of memories when he did just this; when he pledged his love to her and asked her to be his wife. He kissed her gently on the cheek. “Thank you,” he said and with a look as gentle as his voice, he let what went between them go, so the space between them seemed to clear. 

And he left her there.                

3

Driving back to his apartment, Theo couldn’t help thinking of the time he’d spoken to Max before leaving their family home.

They’d been sitting on the park bench near their house at the spot where Theo would stake the wickets for a hit of cricket. Each swing of the bat would bring a shriek of laughter from Max. He still had no idea of what the game was about, he just loved playing. 

Theo remembered walking to the park and stooping slightly to reach for Max’s hand. He was readying to leave the house to move into a flat near the university. He and Kate had agreed to this so he’d still be close to Max. And the thought: not close enough. A thought that ached. Not long after Kate had spoken, they’d sat with Max. It was a blur to Theo. He recalled Kate trying to explain to Max what they were still trying to understand themselves. They’d spoken to Max after the tears had been shed: tears Kate openly cried, while Theo had driven far and nowhere to stop by the road. Max saw none of it. Their love for him spared him this. 

Sitting on that bench, Max’s legs swinging over the edge as he watched the ducks waddling near the pond. He’d feed them regularly, mostly with Kate. He had fixed names that he gave arbitrarily to the many that lived there. “Reggie!” he would yell first, “Donald!” was the next. They’d laughed despite knowing the order to come.

Theo bent forward, his elbows on his knees. He balked at saying goodbye to Max. This wasn’t a goodbye. It frightened him to think it and it would frighten Max if he said it.

            So he tried to be straight with Max, what he and Kate always tried to be, as open and gentle as possible. “I’m going to be moving out of the house to a flat nearby, Max.” He pitched his voice low and even. Max turned to look at him, his face nearly level with Theo’s.

“Why?”

“Mummy and I need some time apart, darling. I’ve been very busy at work, and we thought it would give us both time to think about each other.”

“But you could stay and think about each other.” If I’d thought of her more I’d be staying—a piercing point.  

“Yes, I could. But Mummy would like some time alone with you. I won’t be far and I’ll be seeing you often.”

Max went quiet. Theo could see he was trying to fit the pieces of information that didn’t quite make sense. Then he said, “Don’t you love each other anymore?”

Don’t we? How did Max know? Had they been too open with him? He was so young to ask this, to actually think of this. He and Kate had gone to a counsellor—too late for them—but wanting to know how best to approach Max. They’d been told he’d most likely think they didn’t love him, that he was somehow to blame, and that they needed to reassure Max of their feelings as much as possible during this time. But no, Max, always surprising, had gone to the heart of it.

“We haven’t been very loving to each other for a long time. That’s why we need to be apart, to see if we can still love each other.”

Again, Max was silent. “You’re going,” he finally said. 

You’re going. You’re going. Not yet. 

“Yes.” Theo tried to stop the quiver in his voice, lifting his head to look at Max, whose face was now turned to the ducks. “I’m nearby though, Max. Come, I’ll show you.”

Theo stood up and gathered Max in his arms, his weight surprised him. He’s growing. A myriad of thoughts came of not seeing his son each day, and of the small things that he’d miss. That I have been missing. Regret and guilt were woven into nearly every thought Theo had recently. He stood and pointed for Max to look in the direction of one of the university spires in the distance. 

“Just near the tallest tower, see it? There’s a street next to it where the flat is.”

Max nodded but could not really see. It was not yet a reality for him. He looked at Theo and then hugged him tight around his neck. Choked by his son’s arms, choked by tears. Theo welcomed both for the love in it and the feelings Max so easily engendered. Then came the wry thought: I’m not completely unfeeling. Kate too readily accused him of this, and it was not entirely true. 

Theo carried Max for a while like that until he wriggled to be let down, slithering to stand, reaching to hold his father’s hand

4

Again, night and the distance of sleep. Tonight Isabelle found no comfort from the shifting shades of blue in her room that usually invited a floating rest.   

That day Theo had gone to meet Kate and Max at the airport and it had been a day of silence. She had classes that morning and went straight to the studio in the afternoon, only to sit, unable to mark a page or write even a line of words. 

Stella had dropped by the studio for lunch, knowing this would not be an easy day for Isabelle. 

“You did the right thing Issy,” she said through a mouthful of salad. Stella was always dieting although Isabelle never noticed a change in her appearance. “It’s good you’ve given him the space to see them.”

“Well I’m glad you think so. I’m not sure about anything much at the moment.” Isabelle sat with her sunglasses on, looking in the distance as if hoping Theo would suddenly materialise round the corner. Stella noticed her distraction, but didn’t comment. She could see the strain too clearly on her face.

“Yes you are,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Isabelle’s brow furrowed. Stella could always surprise.

“You are sure of some things, Isabelle.”

“Such as?”

“I think it’s obvious about one thing at least.” Isabelle waited. Stella seemed to be dragging this out, but in truth, she was a slow eater. An incredibly fussy eater. Isabelle tensed each time they went out, waiting for the list of instructions regarding how she wanted her food, disregarding the menu. Today it had been simple: a green salad with a basic dressing and a glass of water, ice, no lemon and no straw.  

“You love him.” 

Isabelle didn’t refute her. “But I’m scared sometimes. Too scared, I think, to truly love.” She spoke tentatively, not having voiced what simmered beneath so much of what she thought and felt these days.  

“That’s obvious, Issy. God, after what you went through, I’d probably never dip my toe in the relationship waters again!” Isabelle smiled at how Stella could make even the darkest subject seem transparent and even humorous. Then she looked at Isabelle with her straying eyes, her mauve dyed brown hair and slash of red lipstick giving her face some focus, albeit a comical structure, and she said seriously, “But you’ve been given a chance Issy, and it’s happening for a reason. You want this.”

“So why can’t I open up to him and just let it flow? Let him know how I feel?” She fairly burst with the frustration, her mind thinking back to a rather tense conversation that she and Theo had had about the impending visit. Stella reached to hold her hand reassuringly.

“Sometimes, as they say, and you know I’m loath to quote truisms, the best things that come into our lives are not necessarily meant to be plain sailing.” She puzzled before continuing, aware as Isabelle was that she had muddled a couple of “truisms” trying to get to the point. 

“This was never going to be easy for you Issy, but importantly, it’s happening.” Stella left it there, never one to tell anyone outright what to do about matters so personal, but with Isabelle she could go further, and as they got up to leave she said almost casually, “Open your heart to yourself, Issy. Perhaps you can then reach out to him.”

Back in the studio, Isabelle had checked her phone. There were no messages and Isabelle didn’t expect Theo to call despite keeping the phone near her. 

Isabelle had turned to the canvas that sat closest to her, struggling to bring the floating forms to some kind of life, to pin them to the plane of white rather than having them hover and uncertain like shadows against a wall. The canvas with the child-like stars was propped starkly on the easel. On a piece of paper she had repeated the stars, so that they were high above the girl’s bowed head. Bowed like a blessing. Or asleep with the stars sprinkled about her like dust. She turned to the canvas with the pencil still in hand and began to draw the bowed head of the girl made of thread and stopped. The pencil against the gessoed canvas felt strange, the line not flowing as it did on the paper. Instead the head seemed jerked into position, absent of grace.

She pinned the drawing of the girl beneath the stars next to a piece of paper that rolled onto the floor. It was a list of words unfolding through space…

flight, fly, wing, dust, bird

The previous night the dream had come again, stark and smothering. Before falling asleep she had felt the telltale sign, her breathing had become laboured as she gasped for air. 

He was falling and it was so clear, not the hazy form which shaded her mind, this was clear. Stephen was falling from high up in the sky. In her constant playing over of that moment where he left this life and her—she saw his body at the edge of life and breath, of consciousness which crossed over into the nothingness of air; to become a part of the air in his falling from life. 

She imagined the silence except the rush of air. What did he hear before he died? Did he hear anything except the beating of his heart? 

Isabelle wondered if he died at night, if he was aware of the sky that cloaked him in darkness. Once, as they sat together gazing at the stars, he’d pointed to another star, near Orion’s Belt. “That’s your star”, he’d said to Isabelle. “Bellatrix, the Amazon star.” 

To Isabelle that moment of him passing had been frozen, unimaginable, so that he was falling endlessly. Not being able to make sense of his leaving, yet knowing she would have to live with his absence. 

A rip in space and time, a rip within herself.

She woke, her mouth open, her breath rasping. She remembered waking like this with Theo beside her, and being in his arms had instantly calmed her. She had never thought to speak of him to Theo, had thought Stephen was no longer a part of her life, but he had twisted into her dreams and waking life, ever-present.                 

A dark heart

1

Minotaur: Some would say I was a monster. Yet I knew nothing other than what I was. 

I could sense a different rhythm in the air, a low humming, a vibration in the walls. There were drums playing, and I knew what that meant. Tonight they would send me what they believed I craved. 

            With the rumble of the drums I paced this square and felt a heat building inside of me and the juices began to flow in my mouth. My heart was pounding and my body, my flesh was pricking, burning. I knew what was coming and despite that one hesitation I felt, that time when she reached to touch me, I still needed this offering to keep me alive. But was it purely because I knew nothing else, this taste for flesh; that I’d been led to believe this was what I desired?

2

Sometimes, Isabelle imagined that he spoke to her.

That Stephen spoke to her of how he saw her just before he fell. And before that, how all he could see and feel was a darkness closing in around him, like entering a tunnel without light. 

The girl made of thread was disappearing in this darkness. Isabelle drew her so that her eyes glinted through the black, the only light amid the shadowy space she had come to inhabit.

It happened slowly. Each day seemed cloudier, and Stephen felt more distant, not just from Isabelle, but from everything. There was no way through. 

Isabelle shut her eyes. Opening them, she saw how she’d drawn the girl’s head bent forward as if in prayer, her arms hidden in a cloak that held her tight. She had given her wings, but she couldn’t fly. The wings were trapped, like her arms, stiff and twisted, weighing her to the page.   

Stephen spoke of how he could barely see Isabelle, except before he fell she appeared clearly and for a second he hesitated, but no.

And the words Isabelle kept asking: Was love not enough? 

The girl’s head was bent, her chest a gaping hole.

Yes and no. 

Isabelle’s love was more than he could imagine, but it could never fill the strangling absence that only he could sense and that left him empty outside of her presence.

He couldn’t face the dark, the feel of it inside, but in the end he did. 

The girl was standing on the edge—the edge of a line, her body tilting forward, the wings trapped, so that if she moved ever so slightly forward, she would fall into the abyss, the whiteness of the page to disappear into nothingness.

In the end Stephen embraced the dark by falling, never finding a way through.

* * *

Pasiphae sat in the garden until night fell like a starry cloak. She turned her face to the sky and from deep within the palace she heard a groan. She could feel the heat rise to prick her skin and moisture began beading on her upper lip. Her heart lurched and beat loudly so that the pulse of blood sounded in her ears.

She stood to pace the courtyard, knowing soon she would walk out of the gates of the palace, cloaked like the night and protected by a trusted guard. She would go to the town where the fires had been lit days before to begin the feast.

She was just like him. 

Feeling this heat and the moistness spreading and making her limbs liquid, she knew she was just like him. Once she might have denied this, queen and wife to Minos, whose cruelty she knew too well in his withholding of the one thing she had hoped for, his love. 

Could he ever love? He had never known it and this had become clear after their marriage. She had hoped for so much, and then there was the night of their wedding, a night she blotted out, but could not forget. Something had been born that night. Within her, something had been born and killed. Any tenderness or intimacy that she had believed possible left her in a moment of sheer animal lust. 

Minos desired her. Pasiphae’s beauty was celebrated by so many and Minos had craved her, wanting her for his own, and to be his queen. So that when he came to her that night, aroused as he had never been, fuelled by lust and a sense of victory, he was ready to release his seed without any thought for her other than that he would finally possess what he had desired for so long. He lunged inside her desperate to become part of her flesh, without any thought for her spirit. Something died in her that night. A light went out and you could see this in her eyes, a paler version of Ariadne’s, and what was born was a smouldering fire. 

Pasiphae felt it in her belly, and at that moment as she paced it was beginning to consume. The heat was rising and spreading across her skin so that she was inflamed and she knew too well where it would lead her. Minos knew nothing of where she went on this night, he had turned away from her long ago, and his only intent if he came to her bed was to feed his desire for another heir. He could not know that on their wedding night and the nights that followed, when he entered her flesh that was all he did. Her eyes would dim and what replaced the light in them was this burning. An anger and fear she had for him as he willed himself on her, wanting to control. 

To resist, she became just like him.                

3

Minotaur: How could I ignore this ache? 

It was in my chest and it spread, at times it burned. I tried to calm it by breathing, deep into my lungs to somehow alleviate its pressing pulse. There were moments I threw myself against the wall, or onto the ground when it became too much. And I’d yell, not knowing what I truly felt. My only release was what I saw above. The colour when the light of the sun dimmed soothed me; the draining heat of the day released the hold that gripped me inside. 

I wished it could speak, this ache. 

Would I understand it better if it could announce itself, explain its presence? Or did I have to just feel?    

My body was moving without my really being conscious of it, yet I wanted to be still for a moment because I kept thinking of her face. 

In the dark she’d been like a flame, pure and light, and through the darkness she lit this confinement of mine. My cell. She’d pierced through this flesh and stilled me. 

Something was tugging inside, dulling the heat so that I almost hesitated, faltering in my movement, and from within this body I let out a cry. It felt as if my heart was welling up through my throat to gush from my mouth. I wanted to scream my presence so that someone would come to find me here. 

My heart…I could feel my heart. 

And I no longer wanted to be here, confined in this space. 

At the centre 

1

There was one drawing that puzzled Isabelle. 

In the days marked by Theo’s absence she’d created a small work in coloured pencil, gradually shaded blues from light to dark, with a line demarcating what she now thought of as sea and sky. She pinned it to the wall not far from the stretching line of drawings of the girl made of thread, except she had placed it more to the side, so that the light from the window gave it a reflective quality during the day.  

What moves me? What moves you?

Those words. She wrote them in pencil across the bottom of the drawing. An echo to the horizon line. They came involuntarily as she stared, at times mesmerised by the drawing. She had structured the picture like a window, taking care that the shading not bleed outside the imaginary rectangle she used to frame the view. On the table lay another drawing similar to the horizon pinned on the wall, except this was lighter so that the line was barely perceptible. 

Vistas pulling her forward and away from the tangled web she’d been creating. Isabelle sat at the work table, picked up the Delft blue pencil and continued the drawing, oblivious to the darkening room and the wall of canvases closing in from behind.

2

Isabelle and Theo sat opposite each other, their eyes distracted. 

Isabelle tried to speak, tried to ask how they were. But the words stuck, like the food she was mindlessly feeding herself. 

Theo had come by the studio unexpectedly. When she heard his voice on the intercom she was briefly paralysed seeing the maze of canvases and went to meet him downstairs. Both were aware that for the first time she did not allow him into her space. It had been over a week since Kate and Max had come and no word during that time. Isabelle went home every night, and the tears were there, choked and ready to flow, but they didn’t. She willed them not to. Or to feel the fear which was beginning to overwhelm her. She pushed the plate away. 

She could sense his unrest, an unease that she immediately projected through her fear that he must be thinking of leaving. She could not reason it otherwise, having spent days believing his continued silence could only mean this and a delay in wanting to speak to her. Then there was a part of her that reasoned to focus on how she felt for him, and how he felt for her. But he’s said so little of how he feels, came a niggling voice, the part that wanted the reassurance that words could bring. 

Sitting across from him, his confusion was palpable, his silence was distance itself. The doubts were firmly in place and despite the voice that reached for her heart, there was also the knowledge of what he’d said, that in coming here he still had hopes for another position in London and that his contract would eventually end. This he revealed very early in their relationship, and it had been placed between them, a small buffer that kept them from anchoring their feelings to a future. They never spoke of this as a reality, and those initial words were without consequence, too far away to seem a threat to what they were discovering. So their lives still orbited the other, not yet bound and woven enough to seem improbable in its unravelling. However, that seemed an age ago and the thought of him leaving had become physical; fear and an anguished cry she was keeping somewhere deep within herself. 

“Theo?” she spoke softly across the table, wanting him to look at her. He lifted his head and his eyes were brooding. He was miles away. He raised his eyebrows slightly and she fought the impulse to get up and leave. She breathed deeply and broached the subject they had both been avoiding. 

“How are they, Theo? You haven’t said anything about them.” She was gentle, not wanting him to be defensive. He looked at her for some time. He seemed to struggle with how to speak of them, of what had gone before. 

She waited. 

3

Theo looked at Isabelle and was momentarily at a loss. 

The bones of her face were too sharp and there were dark smudges under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping, and he jolted at how he hadn’t been part of her life since they’d come. Her eyes were the darkest blue he could imagine, as if he could sink into them like a deep, calm body of water. He so much wanted to fold himself in her arms and forget—simply forget. Her hair was tied at the nape of her neck, a stem he would hold gently in his hand. How could he ignore her? He’d somehow been living a life that had excluded her, when in fact he needed to bridge the gaps and inconsistencies of his own making. 

All he could say was, “They’re fine—Max is happy,” and, “I’d forgotten how much energy he has.” Then he fell quiet. 

Isabelle prodded, “And Kate?” 

He looked at her again and saw her sitting a little straighter, her face closed. He was unable to sense what she was thinking, so that he could almost see a veil between them. What could he say? Kate faded next to Isabelle at that moment. Fair Kate, who could be so light and easy, she was no match for this depth. He had finally let her go, but he didn’t say this. 

“She’s good.” Theo kept looking, wanting to say a torrent of words to help Isabelle see what he was going through. 

The veil was becoming a screen, something harder and resistant to touch. Isabelle was beyond his reach. 

The meal ended in silence and Isabelle insisted he take her home where again they parted and she went in alone. Theo sat for some time in the car after watching her walk away. He sat staring out into an inky night with drops of rain splattering against the windscreen. He felt caught, paralysed. Part of him wanted to run after her and grab hold of her, to reassure her, but something stopped him. 

            Only last night Theo had been the one to put Max to bed and see his son at the close of day. 

            Max had asked quite suddenly, “When are you coming home?” 

            Theo didn’t know what to say. 

            “You know Mummy is getting married?” 

            “Yes, but you said you wouldn’t be away for long.” 

            That was true. Theo had forgotten, but as he left Max before flying here, he’d said exactly that. The job in London didn’t seem that distant a prospect. How to speak about not being sure of what he truly wanted? Theo couldn’t say anything for some time. Looking at Max’s face and the dark hair and eyes briefly shifted to become Isabelle’s. Was he making some kind of choice? Could he ever make such a choice? In the days since Kate and Max had come, he’d been simmering with these thoughts. 

            “What if I stayed Max? What if I decided to live here for at least a part of the year? How would you feel about that?” Theo held his breath waiting for his reply. 

            “Mummy said you might,” Max said. 

            “What did she say exactly?” 

            “She said you were teaching here and that you might stay.” 

            “But how would you feel if I stayed?” 

            “Sad,” he said immediately.

            “Do you want me to come back to England?” Theo had no idea what he would do if Max said yes. 

            “Do you want to stay?” Theo didn’t expect this, except, hadn’t Max asked once before if he and Kate still loved each other? Theo didn’t know whether to feel pride at how sensitive and intelligent Max was, or cry at realising the separateness of their lives. How much he kept changing and Theo was not there to witness it. 

            “I might want to Max, but I’d visit regularly, maybe even spend part of the year teaching so I’d stay longer. How does that sound?” 

            Max smiled at this, accepting it as a given. “Soon?” 

            “Yes, very soon.” 

            Theo stroked his face for some time. 

            “Will you get married again, too?” Theo halted his touch. He’d said nothing, had indicated nothing about Isabelle, and while it was merely a hypothetical for Max, he’d struck a chord without knowing the truth. 

            “I might one day, yes, I might.” 

            “Then you and Mummy will both be happy.” 

            Max yawned and closed his eyes so that he didn’t see that Theo was crying.   

* * *

Theo couldn’t remember the drive back to his apartment, how he came to be lying on his bed, still dressed and exhausted, and feeling an ache beginning to spread through his chest.    

4

Minotaur: I looked to the sky, the stars. 

I was breathing so hard the air was rasping through my chest, ripping at my flesh. I no longer wanted to be here. I could hear the pounding of the drums becoming louder still. I knew it couldn’t be long now, and I stalked the earth, scraping the walls so that bloody welts hatched my skin. 

I was moving relentlessly, wanting to burst from this place, from within myself. 

I wanted to feel.  

I had a memory that I sometimes wondered if I’d dreamed it or experienced it, not sure whether I imagined her, or if she was real. 

Because once, a girl came into my home. This was not at the time of the drums. Of the offering. And what I remember: she was lit so bright the only thing that I could see were her eyes, eyes of the most intense blue that they seemed made of the sky that I could dive into to forget myself; forget all pain. And it was pain that I saw within them, pools of water that offered me a reflection. 

I could see myself through her eyes.  

And then she spoke: “I had to see for myself.”

I did not understand, mesmerised by the water that was spilling, falling down her cheeks. 

I reached for her, not thinking that she might fear me, as I felt no threat in her presence, only stillness. Startled she said, “No!” But she did not move from where she stood. Then tentatively she reached to touch the face that no one had touched since the day I was born. 

“No,” she said more quietly and the sounds she made were so foreign, I had never heard crying, only screams of fear and then terror. She stroked my face, so light I was not sure what I was sensing; it was more like the stirring of the air, a slight breeze passing across my cheek. 

We stood like that, lost in time.

Eventually she pulled her hand away and turned to leave, then—

“They think you a beast,” she said. “I do not know what you are. If you can even understand me.” 

When she touched me for the last time, my head bowed. 

“You are of my blood,” she whispered. “How could this be?”

Then she was gone and the light went with her. 

In her touch I felt a release. I wanted to ask, to form a sound to speak of what was in my heart. But she was gone and all I could hear was its beating.  

And the cry that eventually escaped was a howling echo of the void I lived with, only briefly having felt a connection that might have eased what was tearing me apart. 

5

It was early morning as Isabelle made her way to the studio. Her mind was distracted with dreams and the flow of days—days merging without any real sense of beginnings and ends. She had lost track of the time since her last dinner with Theo, only remembering walking away from him that rainy night and feeling the tears spill and mingle with the falling drops. Tears Theo never saw.

He had tried to call, but he was met with silence and the voicemail on her phone. She could not speak, not knowing what to say, except feeling the frustration at his uncertainty and her own confusion. 

So, she walked without being attentive to the life around her, but with intent, a focus that she recognized as a need to go to the studio and work. The dream had come again the night before, except in this one it had been Theo falling. Instead of standing mutely by as she normally did in this falling-dream, she tried to scream to stop the fall.

The sight of the maze no longer taunted her. It was a path she travelled daily, and today she walked it with ease. The canvas with the child-like stars and head of the girl seemed oddly light. The previous day, to distract herself she had drawn a series of wavelike lines and they had curled into words, like swimming through a current…water, sea, sliding, slippery, salty, wet, strong, pull, endless…and the girl was entwined in the lines, a slight form floating amid a net of wet tresses and her dress, barely there. Isabelle had joined the child-like stars with lines, an expanding web, a map, so that above the girl was a compass to guide her thoughts.

Isabelle picked up the pencil and continued the line to the next canvas so that the map of stars covered the entire surface, the lines shooting off the canvas into a space unseen. Then she came to a canvas that was not blank, the body print floating endlessly, shaped by the white of nothingness. She continued map-making, so that the stars and lines covered the entire form, the body locked in a grid, no longer drifting without time.

There was a star at the heart, and with a smudge of red paint she burned a core that was startling. A rose–red star. Aldebaran, the flaming eye of the bull. 

Taurus.

6

How to speak of love? 

To speak of it is to lose something, yet in trying, perhaps that is the beauty of it. 

There are some things that cannot be spoken of, where words are not enough, where language fractures to leave no verbal trace.  

There was a point in Ariadne’s tale, when the thread was offered and then taken. When for an instance all seemed possible, and what Ariadne had waited for was real. Then it was gone, and something within her left as well. The love that filled her drained, leaving a void that threatened to overcome, so that she became that void, no longer fully present. 

Before Theseus, Ariadne had Maia, and this, apart from her mother, was the first loss that preceded the abandonment Isabelle now recognized almost as her own. 

Unspeakable and unreasonable.    

* * *

With the coming of the night there came the lighting of the fires in the village and the beginning of the feast. 

At the western gate of the palace there stood the King’s guards and the young Athenians ready to enter the labyrinth. There was a roar from the heart of the undulating stone walls. Ariadne stood within the walls of the western gate, waiting with her ball of twine. This coil of blood pledged and promised to Theseus; a lifeline to thread his way through the labyrinth to slay what existed at its centre. She could barely breathe, not sure what would become of him, yet standing in the full light of the sun she had had no doubts that he would do as he had promised his father.

To free them from this darkness once and for all.  

But it was a darkness that was a part of her. She had never spoken of that one time she’d entered the labyrinth, yet she thought of it often. Of him. 

Yet here she stood, willing to sacrifice what was bound to her by blood, as if it would free her. Free all of them.  

This was not mercy. The cruelty of his entrapment had weighed on her, as much her own incarceration in this place: this palace and her status. 

She had stood before him that day and felt the bond; unable to comprehend his existence, how he could ever be freed from a fate she would never wish upon any being. Unable to halt Minos’ vengeance, her mother’s abandonment, her own fate.

Yet here she stood about to change it all. 

Ariadne looked up at the sky and could see the stars—a map of stars—and wished upon them as a guide for Theseus, to lead him back to her. She could hear the drums heralding the beginning of the feast; it was a low, rumbling sound, an imitation of what resided at the heart. It was the sound of a heartbeat and with it the people in the town honoured this rite with the blood in their own veins. With the drinking of the animal’s life force, they would come together, unleashing all inhibition. Many a child was born from this night. It was this that Pasiphae tried to hide from Ariadne, but she had learned of these rites of fire long ago, the unleashing of blood and the life force. 

            She could feel her pulse begin to beat with the sound of the drum. She was beginning to understand why her mother wanted her gone and married; the force was irresistible. Her mother knew she would one day succumb to this as they all did; it was natural, yet as the Royal Princess she should never take part. Pasiphae knew too well the consequence of this night, and made her own rite as a masked woman among the townspeople. 

Hearing the raising of the gates, Ariadne braced herself. Theseus would be carrying a flame torch to light his way, and it was not long before she could see him coming down the path where she stood. She came out of the shadows, having found an inlet in the wall of stone and she stood as before, hand outstretched to offer him the ball of twine. He took the end wordlessly. He could feel the rush of blood at what he had to do, and he bent his head to hers and kissed her lips. In the lightness of his kiss he promised her escape from this darkness and a world beyond these walls.

Ariadne closed her eyes and for a moment could see the stars of the sky as if staring at them herself. And she seemed to be floating among them, as if part of it for just a moment in time. They did not speak as he looked at her once before turning to the other Athenians who would wait inside near the entrance of the labyrinth as Theseus made his way alone to the centre.                                   

Theseus’ heart swelled and crashed within his chest as he moved further into the labyrinth. The paths became narrower and the bends tighter and he could feel another presence so palpable, it was like entering a living organism that overtook his own sense of self. Unseen and unspoken. Theseus could not imagine what he would face, so that when he came to the walled rectangle where all paths led, he had no other thought than to draw the knife the guards had not detected and slay what had inhabited this realm for so long. 

Did anyone hear the cries that ensued? The din within the town was too loud and the palace walls too thick to let sound travel far from within the walls. Ariadne heard though. Years of being attuned to the slightest noise allowed her to hear the screams that were not quite human, and she braced herself for what they could mean. She held fast to the cord that bound her to life and love; all hope was bound up in this thread that was slack to touch. He must have let it go. 

  She waited. Whole hours in seconds, she waited. 

The slightest tug pulled her out of sense suspended. Every muscle tensed. Until she saw him she could not be sure. She held tight as the twine became taut. Then there was a glaring light and she could make out the shadow of his face. She breathed deeply as if life had been breathed into her. They could not speak of what he had done, his eyes wide with what he had seen. No words could recount this, and she had lived so long with its presence she did not need to hear the sounds that would shape the encounter. He took her hand and they moved quickly, followed by the other Athenians. He had asked for the boat to wait, as he knew any escape would be immediate. They all ran through the flame lit paths, tense and anxious with the sudden liberation. Theseus could not comprehend what had happened or that he was leaving with Ariadne; that he finally had what his heart desired. 

It was only as they sailed under a night sky and Ariadne rested in his arms, exhausted and asleep, that he felt as if he held a star, her skin glowing brightly under the moonlit night. He looked to the sky and felt a sense of calm as if blessed and guided by the very gods who had cursed King Minos and the Royal House of Crete.   

7

Minotaur: It was dark here. Except for the light of the moon and the stars. 

The stars light the sky like flames. 

I had sometimes wondered what it would be like to touch them, to reach for the sky that bound them and draw it around me like a cloak. To feel their heat and the warmth of their touch against my skin. 

To feel something other than this raw, nakedness. 

Suddenly, a blinding light. There was someone here in this space with me, holding a flame as if plucked from the sky itself.  Then I saw his eyes. 

We began circling each other. A dance of death. I could feel the heat from the flame and his body. It was as if the space between us had been ignited. Suddenly I was tired, the breath seemed knocked out of me. My chest heaved and I began to feel light. Strange—this lightness—and his eyes were huge within his face and glowed as if the stars were caught within them. I was looking at the sky through him, so that as he came closer, I felt the cloak I had dreamed of engulf me. That I would finally become one with the life beyond these walls. 

That I would finally be free. 

Was I what he feared? Could he have always known me? Known my shape, my needs, and my desires? I could smell his fear, the sweat was dripping off his face and an acrid scent was coming from his skin. I had smelled this before, but this time the victory I would have felt was absent. His fear was no longer the signal for me to lunge towards him and taste that very scent. Instead we performed this dance, a tense circle that at any moment could break. He was tall and lithe like a coiled spring and from the corner of my eye I saw something glint, a flash of light. In his hand was clenched a knife. No one had ever entered this space with something that could harm me other than the torch fire. Except my captors. They had prodded me with steel. Fear at the very sight of me and the unknown at what was at the heart, usually left the person completely unprepared. Except for tales, myths that circulated outside these walls, my presence was an unknown, a whisper. The fear I could now smell was my own. Fear and something else. 

Relief. 

8

Theo carried the weight in his chest and its dull ache. At times it stilled him, so that he panicked and had to focus on breathing to calm and ease the pain.

Kate and Max had left and the difficulty of that leaving, of seeing Max board the plane, not wanting to let his father go, caused the ache to twist and fold him like a blow. Sleep evaded him and even the sound of Max’s voice on the phone no longer calmed the doubts of being so far away from him. 

“He can visit you, Theo,” Kate had said. There was no longer the tense struggle to their talk, so that speaking of Max was now freed from the game of attack and retreat. Their love for Max would bind them across continents. “Or you could visit him.” She’d looked at him, wondering. She had never asked why he’d come here, and it was only recently that she’d been tempted to ask if there was someone that kept him so far away. There was a look in his eyes, eyes that she’d thought she knew so well, that distanced him from her and Max. 

The thought was oddly troubling, that he could have found someone else, as if he had no right after the anger and pain, after the leaving and the break. Her breath caught on the words, wanting to know yet finding she couldn’t ask. His silence was the one barrier in the newly found ease to their relationship. However, there were many barriers now. The boundaries had irrevocably shifted, and she had to acknowledge his silence also wrapped around John. Theo asked so little that her ego pricked slightly at thinking he might not care. But he did, and so did she. Kate hadn’t expected this change, and the leaps that Theo had made to somehow accommodate her life and love was now a gap she had to face. That he might love someone else. 

Theo saw the question in Kate’s eyes, but he focused on Max. He fuelled himself with his energy, his love. Theo tried to share his new home, but the awkwardness at meeting people with Kate, the questions in their eyes at seeing him with this woman and their child, and knowing of another life, dented his joy. He could only think it was not the time, that what needed to be said was not between him and Kate.

The way out 

1

He had to let go. 

That’s what Stephen said to Isabelle in her dreams. He had to let go because the holding seemed unbearable.

Isabelle drew the girl tilting ever so slightly further forward with each sketch, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to step into that space of nothingness.

There were days of Isabelle’s life after Stephen died that she couldn’t remember. Where she would often stare at blank surfaces, at paper and canvases, and wait for something to reveal itself. Yet nothing came. 

Isabelle could see her father’s face at the edge of her vision, strained and ever watchful. He and Jack watched over her, neither sure what to say, how to be. So narrow was her view that she barely registered how Jack felt. 

Isabelle couldn’t even remember that summer they went away, just glimpses of faces, and hours, days, where she willed herself to go into the water only to feel the pull of the tide and an irresistible urge to succumb to the weight of the sand as it pulled at her feet, sweeping out to a deeper sea. On the beach she would often see a figure standing, waiting and watching as she drifted, not knowing which way to turn. 

Sometimes Isabelle would mouth a question, almost saying it out loud—“How?” “Why?”—only to hear the water washing around her in response. When she dove beneath the waves, trying to sink into the silence another voice would come and she no longer wanted to hear it, knowing it came from a place so dark, the sound of the voice would never escape, except in death.

It was dark there. Dark with Stephen’s fear. So much fear and ultimately one feeling: loss. 

But before the girl on the page was only light, a bright whiteness that would consume her to vanish.

When his mother died, Stephen believed the light was sucked from everything, even the sun. For his father, his brother. Himself. Stephen could only see in a half-light, never in the fullness of light and the warmth and energy that it could bring. 

The radiance of the page was blinding so that Isabelle drew the girl’s eyes shut against it. She was barely a trace, a mere outline so slight; a feather that would float then fall.

He told Isabelle once that she was a light. Luminous. Not sunlight, more the light of a moon; soft, gentle, a force to move and carry, to guide and draw you home. A moon, a star. A distant light, a spark of warmth. 

The girl was nearly there, over the edge, reaching forward to dive into this unknown territory.

But Isabelle hadn’t been enough when a life needs to spark itself, to reach deep within to fuel and fan a flame that gives a person life. When Stephen thought of flying, a small fire would burn and an inner warming allowed him to move, to feel alive. 

And then the girl wasn’t there. There was the line and nothing. Not even a trace. Isabelle’s hand fell from the page.

Isabelle’s love was enough, more than enough, so Stephen had said. But his own love? Not just his love for Isabelle, but love that he had for himself? Was his love for Isabelle ever enough to see through the fear?  

No.

The girl was no longer visible.

2

Minotaur: I yearned to be free from this darkness, free from this wretched body.

  To feel beyond this. 

So that when he lunged to plough my chest with his knife, I did not fight it. I could feel the cold stone along my back and a ragged breath exploded from the gash he had rent. My back arched with pain as I gasped instinctively for the air escaping me. I could see a crimson fluid spilling onto the ground. I didn’t understand until I looked to that space in my chest and feel with my hand a quivering mass at its centre, at that moment it was so fragile and exposed, yet its power over me had brought me to this, to feel. 

I looked into his eyes now filled with horror and pain and I thought he might reach to touch me as I sunk to the earth I had paced all my life, the life-force spilling free. I was spinning within his eyes, and I thought I could finally see myself amid their depths, among the stars that were watered with tears.

3

And then the girl came back. 

The drawings came to an end, but Isabelle continued to draw her on one of the canvases.

The girl made of thread stood again at the edge.

It was a line, like a line drawn in the sand. Her body tilted towards the space beyond, a blankness, yielding nothing.        

The line was made from a thread from her dress, unravelling to the ground, at once trailing and demarcating a place for her to be. The space beyond seemed endless, as Isabelle arranged the series of white canvases in a row. To step beyond the line was to step into these uncertainties, mirrors of a journey that came back to this point. 

This line.

A thread leading to this space beyond. Unknown and knowable. Mirrors of absence, twisted slightly to reflect a dim but knowable self. And ever so faintly along the canvas screens, there was a fine line of the palest blue that traced the girl as she leapt into the white, flying. 

4

When Isabelle was younger, the hardest part before going to sleep was when her father left the room having said goodnight. She was left with her eyes still searching the stars above as she lay on the bed. He would leave hoping Isabelle would close her eyes, with the light of the stars still glimmering behind the lids, a pulsing lullaby. Over time she developed a trick, to adjust to being alone and sinking back into sleep, Isabelle tried hypnotising herself by imagining the bed was spinning round and round.

Round and round within a black box.

* * *

Ariadne stood watching the water as the boat ploughed through it. 

So, this is what it feels like she thought and smiled to think of standing on the beach at Crete and wondering at the feeling of this. They were to rest and wait on the Isle of Naxos before finally going home to Athens. Home. She said the word aloud and felt light as if the past erased had left her with this endless present. Theseus came to stand beside her and held her hand. Looking at him she could not imagine an end to him, to them and to this love she had for him. They had said little since that night, time seemed dislocated, the space between one world and another yet to be bridged by this journey from dark to light. 

            She could see the shore of Naxos and Theseus left her to prepare for anchor. That time of waiting and longing without knowing what she had longed for seemed like another life. Yet she felt the slightest knot within her chest, her heart. What could she sense? She could not understand this feeling, so unexpected and strange. It was as if a shadow had passed across her eyes and she felt a sense of fleeting loss. She could not think why she should feel this.

Once on the beach Theseus asked her to wait while he and the crew went in search of provisions. He held her briefly and kissed her forehead. She sat and felt for the ball of twine from that night, still in the insert of her skirt. The sea was a brilliant blue, but the light was dimming farther out at sea. It will rain, she thought, and tiredness overcame her. She was so tired. 

And she slept.      

Ariadne dreamed of sails of black and of a rectangular courtyard, surrounded by walls, like a black box. She could not see what was at the heart of it, only a dark emptiness and the sky, where a lone, wandering star shone above her. She dreamed of a labyrinth made of stone and wandering through this web she trailed a piece of string, red twine, behind her. 

There were moments when all light was sucked into the walls as she felt her way, searching for the centre. She kept moving until she came to the place where all paths led. 

Yet there was silence, not the roaring of the beast. There was nothing there. She found herself alone. There was no one at the other end to hold the piece of string to help her find her way back out of the labyrinth, except herself.     

* * *

Once Isabelle dreamed she was sitting in a courtyard, surrounded by stone walls and all she could see were the heavens above. The sky was her only connection with a world beyond these walls and she said out loud, “I wish I could fly.”

So she could touch the stars.

A beginning in the end

1

Isabelle stood, her work surrounding her.

The space at the centre of the studio that had compressed to a box, had disassembled, opened as she shifted and reconfigured the build up of canvases, finally giving form to this series of works. A continuous strand. 

An unravelling thread.

She felt light amid the white surfaces, the weight of days and shadow dreams easing like a long exhale of breath.

She traced with her finger the palest line of blue, her arm arcing to follow the flight of the girl to rest at the last canvas. It was blank. In the light of day her body cast a shadow but within it she caught a glimpse of herself. 

            Faintly present.

* * *

Ariadne woke from what seemed an age of sleep; she had no sense of time or place. This was not the beach at Crete, she was sure of that, and then the memory of what had gone before rolled in front of her eyes. 

She was on the Isle of Naxos, but there was something terribly wrong. She looked out to sea; the boat with the black sails was gone. She could only stand there and stare at the water of grey glass, the sky above was a mass of blackening clouds. There was movement everywhere, the push and pull of the water on the sand and through the tears now falling she seemed to be standing in a watery land. No beginning or end. 

He had abandoned her. She could make no sense of anything other than knowing he was no longer here and she had been left alone. How could this be so? There was no reason to this and the pain was coming in waves, like the water surrounding her feet. She could feel the pull of the tide and her body grew heavy and she was sinking into the sand and sea. 

Tears and sea, one and the same, meeting through and around her. Sinking—she had no will to stop this.   

No! Someone was yelling at her from the beach. Don’t…his voice was drowned by the rush of water in her ears and the sound of thunder. He waded towards her, no care other than to stop her from being pulled under. He held her and looked into her eyes, blue grey, the colour washed away by tears and a pain that swept through her. She thought: there is no meaning to this. She gave in and the face before her faded, and she was falling into nothingness, like falling into a cloud of mist. 

He looked at her face. He had waited for this, god of love and forgetting, to finally hold the beauty he had seen from afar. He had waited for them to come here to this very beach and with all the powers bestowed on him he had created the storm to sweep away the boat of black sails with Theseus upon it. 

Theseus, who in the face of the storm had turned away from the beach, realised too late that what he had most desired lay stranded there while the boat heaved and tossed and was swept out to a deeper sea. They had to go back, he yelled in the gale but all cries were drowned as the one he loved was left behind. Forgotten. It would be too late when he returned, Dionysus made sure of this. 

It would be too late for Theseus to come back and find his love. 

With the sweeping out to sea and the sailing to safer waters towards Athens, Theseus would forget his promise to his father. King Aegeus, waiting for his son’s return, would see the sails of black. His son was dead. Anguished, he would throw his body into the sea that would hold his name from that time on.

2

Minotaur: It was dark here. 

And I was sucked back into that space from where I came, the earth now stained with blood. Proof of my life. In this expanse of lights I felt free, as if I was floating. Within the dark a flame lights me from within. My heart. From the earth I could be seen, no longer hidden by a labyrinth of stone. For I had another name. Asterios. The star creature. 

When he released me from my wretched form, I felt my true self evolve into this infinite space, so that I became one between heaven and earth. My body was now lit by pinpricks of light, spinning endlessly through time and space. Eventually I was given yet another name, one that has reached beyond my confined life and the myth that had forever captured me in these walls. 

Taurus. 

3

Theo sat opposite Jack unable to focus on what his friend was saying. Days had passed without any word from Isabelle and he was no longer sure what he could do. She had every reason to be angry, to shun him, but he seemed incapable of reaching out to her.

“Theo. Theo—hello?” Jack was staring at him patiently. 

“Sorry.” He didn’t try to explain; sure that Jack could read the misery on his face. 

“How are Kate and Max?” Jack asked the same question as Isabelle, yet this time the words came. 

“Fine. Kate is getting married, she wanted to tell me herself.”

“Was that unexpected?” 

“Yes…no. No I suppose not on one level. On another, yes—it came as a surprise. I hadn’t realised how serious it was. I always thought she was with him to get away from me.” 

“Did you want her back?” 

There. What Theo had been unsure about was finally spoken. 

“I guess I wasn’t sure,” he said truthfully. “Part of me had moved on, had left it all behind, but I wanted to see Max so much, I was never really sure how I felt about Kate among all of that.”

Theo squinted against the sun. People were rushing around them, the very café where he’d first spoken to Isabelle at lunch with Jack. He felt a sense of peace sitting there, finally saying what he’d been incapable of with Isabelle. How could he speak of doubts to someone who had come to mean so much? To speak of doubts would have meant pushing her away and fear had stopped him that night. Fear of losing her. But you have, came a whisper. 

“Have you spoken to Isabelle?” Jack prompted. 

“I tried, honestly Jack, she asked like you about how they were, and I just couldn’t speak. I can’t explain why not. Probably overwhelmed, I don’t know. I’m a fucking English professor who can’t string two words together to explain to the person I love that I no longer want to go back!” He stunned himself, and Jack, with the vehemence of his speech and the utterance of what had been there all along.

They were silent for a moment. For no conscious reason, other than it seemed the right thing to do, Jack finally spoke of Stephen. The loss he’d felt at his death was great, but because of the relationship between Stephen and Isabelle, all attention had been focused on her. Jack had mourned silently. Neither Isabelle nor Jack spoke of what happened with any depth, but after visiting her studio and seeing her recent drawings and canvases, he recognised what she was trying to do. 

“Have you ever told Theo about him, Isabelle?” Jack had asked during that visit. He was sure she hadn’t. This configuration seemed a way for her to find a path through, perhaps to doing just that.

“No,” was all she said. Jack turned to her. She was leaning against one of the work tables, her head was bent to avoid Jack’s gaze.

“You might have to, Issy. If he means what I think he does, he probably should know this.” She’d looked at him and her mouth twisted to speak, but she kept silent. Jack went to hug her and she held him tight, needing his strength for a moment as her own wavered.  

“I don’t know what’s happening.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “I don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling.” She pulled away and wiped her forearm against her face, smearing the tears that came with her brother’s empathy.

“Of course you must know how he feels for you, Isabelle.” It seemed so obvious to Jack.

“He’s never spoken of how he feels.”

“What do you mean? Surely he’s said something to you?”

“He’s talked round things Jack, but he’s never been direct. I don’t even know what he’s thinking about Kate and Max.” Her voice trailed with the sense of hopelessness, helplessness. 

“You mean he’s never said he loves you?”

“He hasn’t.”

What could he say to this? Both he and his father thought this was exactly the case, given what they’d seen and felt when they were around them. It was such a mystery to know what occurred between two people. Yet it was there, he was sure. Sure and not given Isabelle’s doubts. 

“Perhaps he’s trying to figure things out, Isabelle. It wasn’t that long ago that he left them.” It was the sensible thing to say, probably not that helpful given her consternation. Still, she acknowledged the point.

“You’re right. I can’t force this. But his silence Jack, I can’t know in that silence.”

“Give him time, Isabelle. Maybe it’s his way of asking for space.” 

“I gave him space, Jack!” 

  “Well, think of it in terms of time, Issy. He needs time, and I know it’s frustrating to say it, but it may take awhile. This isn’t something to resolve quickly.”    

Jack had been thinking of the long hours Theo had been working lately, and his unwillingness to engage with him except in passing conversation, mostly about work. Then there had been the distant view he’d had of Theo down Lygon Street near the university. Theo had been with a young boy. Jack assumed the boy to be Max and the woman with fine blonde hair, must be Kate. However, he said nothing of this to Isabelle.           

Isabelle’s work seemed to be feeling through Theo’s silence to resolve her own uncertainty and the fear that this engendered. A fear that tapped into that past with Stephen. 

It was not his place to speak of Stephen, but he spoke to Theo.

He told it like a story, and Theo listened. What he heard was a silent message, for Jack gave no real reason for his account, other than this person had meant so much to him and Isabelle, and that their loss bound them together with a thread over the gap of his absence, never being able to explain or understand his leaving. 

Jack finished and they sat in silence. Sometimes, Jack had a sense of how circumstances could occur in life as if governed by a pattern. That in Theo they had been given a gift, a chance to move on and beyond what they had known.

To begin again.  

But, he kept this to himself.        

4

Theo tried to write a letter to bridge the distance that he could now see through Jack. Screwed up bits of paper thrown about his apartment only frustrated him, and he found himself walking instead in the direction of Isabelle’s studio. He’d done this often of late, standing at the street entrance, ready to push the intercom, only to leave. He half expected her not to be there, except there was a light in the studio window and she answered, hesitating, before letting him in.

When he first entered the room, he couldn’t see her. The door was open, but the view of her worktable was blocked by the row of canvases that were propped and curved to form a path that directed him to face one of the walls and a series of drawings pinned along it. There was a connection, he was sure, but his mind was blurring with the effort to make sense of this, having expected to see her first.   

After his talk with Jack he was left with a glimpse at the unimaginable loss that both had felt and that in sensing his indecision, Isabelle had retreated. She met his silence in kind. There was a tinge of disbelief, having thought he knew her so well, that something so fundamental had been kept from him. Jack had quietly pointed out, “She couldn’t talk about it, Theo. Sometimes I think we’re partly to blame, Dad and I. We encouraged her to forget. Not to speak.” The sad heaviness of this stilled any comment that Theo could make. Indignation collapsed under the weight of the loss he imagined in the light of his own experience. And now, her silence. It propelled him to move, to make a choice, to leap with no certainty of a response.

As he walked he picked up the thread of a line that over successive canvases became a web. A complex form with strange pinpointed shapes that diverted the line becoming more entangled. As he trailed the line he mocked himself again at his incapacity to voice his thoughts, his feelings. To bind them together with the words he felt.  

He followed the tracery of shapes to the one where, caught in the web, there was a figure with a blazing heart, and nearby stood its pair, the head of a girl dreaming, as if catching the image of the mapped body, weaving the co-ordinates with her thought-dreams.   

The line moved endlessly and then there was the string of drawings along the wall of the girl, taking form and life in blinks as he moved along, the words and forms entwining; lost and found.

He finally came to the windows and she was standing by the work tables, quietly still, again waiting for him to approach and say something, but again nothing came. Instead, Theo walked towards her and reached for her hand, their clasp tightening like a knot. 

“Go to her,” were Jack’s final words, urgent to his ears.

Her eyes were wide with a look trying to encompass simply what words could only name. 

How to speak of this? 

“I know, Issy. I know.” His voice held her, as did his arms and then he gestured to her work, “They’re amazing.” A strange twist, given that was exactly what they amounted to: a maze.

“Thank you.” But such praise seemed empty against all that had been left unsaid and Theo stopped, realising this was not the time. Later, there would be time to make sense of this.

  “Do you know about Stephen?” Instinctively she thought he must. Isabelle pulled slightly away but Theo held fast. 

“Yes. Jack told me.” At hearing this she had the instinct of flight, wanting to move away, not being prepared to discuss this. Not yet.

“Don’t Issy. He was only trying to make me see.”

“See what?” A panic edged her question, her eyes eclipsed by dark.

“Why you were afraid.” He spoke gently while his grip held hard. “I didn’t understand, why you couldn’t tell me.”

“I’ve never told anyone, Theo. Only my family and Stella know about Stephen.”

“I know—please, don’t pull away. I’m here Isabelle. I came here for you.”

There was a release at hearing this. The tension uncoiled and she relaxed against him.

“I’m here,” he said simply.

“And Kate?” She spoke into his chest.

The words could flow like that day with Jack and he could say it clearly, “She’s getting married, she needed to tell me that herself. She’s getting married in spring.”

Isabelle looked up at the openness of his face, seeing it as truth.      

“I’m not going back, Isabelle. Not for Kate, or the job in London. That’s what I should have told you that other night. I tried, but I just couldn’t express everything I was going through. Seeing Max was too much, and then his leaving again—you’ll have to believe that.” He placed his hands either side of her face, “It’s simple though. I want to be here. With you.”

And the words were there, but no longer needed in that moment in time. 

A space of no time and a sense of endlessness.

5

From beneath a piece of paper Isabelle pulled out a small canvas.

“I’ve been wanting to give this to you for some time. I’ve often tried to call since I left you that night, but I always stopped myself.”

She walked towards Theo, and he reached for the canvas, curious at its size and surprised at its offering as a gift. The canvas was painted a dark, rich blue, and as if peeking through the surface, small pin pricks of white, seven of them in an elliptical shape, marked the space. 

“Something of the sky,” she said. “Dad always tried to get me to sleep by looking at the sky.” Isabelle watched Theo for a moment. “He used to tell me the story of Ariadne and the Minotaur when I was little to help me sleep.”

“Yes, I remember you telling me once.” 

“At the end of the story, Ariadne was wooed by Dionysius to become his bride, although not without a struggle to escape on her part apparently,” she said with a slight smile. “But what I always found touching about the story was his gift to her.”

“A ring of stars?” Theo asked and could see before him the gesture and its connection that Isabelle was making, the spirit of her in this gift.

            “Yes. And more. It took me a long time to see it but Dionysus gave her the gift of who she truly was. She was part of the sky, a constellation.”

            “Her divinity?”

            “I suppose. Because she became immortal, like him. Eternal.” 

            Theo looked to see that she was smiling, and her openness gave him the strength to speak freely. 

At the centre: a thread from your heart to mine.   

6

Isabelle had set the girl free.

As the girl made of thread leapt into that space to fly she eventually came to land, a new ground, a new place.

She wore a rose red dress. Her face had the contours of a heart and with the lightest touch Isabelle drew her standing on a line that curved the earth.

The girl made of thread was here and present and lit by the white of the page so that her form was part of it and separate. A space to breathe.

Isabelle allowed her to be.

There was an end to the story of Ariadne and Isabelle’s father always wanted her to hold onto it, for it was a happy one, not that many people focused on it. And one day, she actually witnessed it. 

There came a time when Isabelle met Kate and Max, when she and Theo journeyed across the sea to the country he’d once escaped from but now returned, hopeful and more than content. And it was here, in the city where he’d recently negotiated a part-time teaching position, so that he could work in both countries, and where Isabelle too was looking for opportunities for exhibiting, that Theo took her to the National Gallery, and he showed it to her. It was a painting by the Venetian artist Titian, and in luminous colour, the ending to the story came alive.    

* * *

He looked into her face, so pale, with its coil of hair soaked and snaked around her neck and pledged her not just his love but to wipe away all pain, to give her all the pleasure in the world. 

He could never have imagined a beauty such as this; a beauty of grace and calm, night and day, the light of the sun and the stars seemed to glow through her. She was light itself, as if to touch her would not be to touch flesh but pure heat, energy. But, she was flesh, and the cord of red twine trailing along the skirt of her dress was like a vein of blood. It twined around her arm and she held it within her hand like a lifeline. He puzzled at this string and held the other end. She could feel the tug and opened her eyes to look at the face of the man who had held her from her fall into the sea. He marvelled at the brilliance of her eyes, the blue of the sky and sea on the brightest day before night settled into dark and the stars began to shine. He knew then how to express his love, for she was eternal in his heart and should be made so.

Ariadne saw that he held the other end of her length of twine and she thought; I am not alone. There is someone here to help me find my way back. Back from that centre of nothingness that had almost engulfed her, that oblivion she had felt within herself as if all she loved had gone from her, leaving a shell. 

His look was a balm and she felt lighter, the heaviness of pain lifting as if a veil. He said her name and she wondered how he could know this. He said he had always known and that feeling of knowing and not knowing came to her again. Who are you, she asked and he said his name. Dionysus. She let herself drift with the sound of his voice, for she felt calm, and she fell asleep once more with his face behind the lids of her eyes. 

His eyes had glowed like stars, although what she had seen was her reflection in their depths.      

It seemed as if time no longer marked her days; they were endlessly present. Ariadne had stopped in a land between two worlds; the one defined an end and the other a beginning. Now she was in this nether world, where all time was felt in this never ending sense of peace and calm that had stayed with her not long after that day she nearly fell into the sea.

Nearby, playing on the beach were her two sons, hers and Dionysus. Ariadne thought of Maia, watching over both her and her daughter as she was doing now.     

She had become a bride as her mother said she would, and to a man she had never thought could exist, but had been in her to know and to be with. He saw her true self and reflected it back to her. Present and separate. He gave not just for himself but also for her. She became this energy that carried him along and he gave her a life like a gift, a sense of herself in this timeless place. There is no time, not here, and she shone in this place, just being. 

To exist, she just had to be. 

On their wedding day Dionysus gave Ariadne a crown of stars plucked from the sky, reflected in her eyes, and where one day she would truly hold her place. 

A ring of stars.

And in the sky there exists a constellation, a coil, a remnant of Ariadne’s ball of twine. Orion the Hunter stands with his shield held high in readiness to face the charge of the bull, Taurus. 

In the region of Taurus there is a crown of stars.  

When Dionysus gave Ariadne this symbol of the sky, he knew that when it was time, she would finally be her true self and would shine as bright as the light from her eyes. That glimpse of a soul. In giving her the sky Dionysus gave Ariadne her true home. 

For she shines there now. 

A constellation, a thread of stars.

She burns a trail of light so pure that through time and space she still exists—long after the labyrinth had become myth, and its heart burnt into memory and hidden through time. Its truth erased in the telling. 

For no words could recount what was at its heart.

© Angela Jooste 2018