The Strings That Bind Us
By M.K. Hale
“Why do you keep cutting the line?” Icarus asked as he pressed his fingers against the inside of Asterion’s wrist. A bundle of red string hung there like a bracelet, a severed tail dangled limply where his teeth had cut it time and time again. The young man rolled the frayed end between his fingers as if to bind it back again.
It was a gift from the Prince’s sister, Ariadne.
Asterion shook his head slightly, looking at where Icarus’ fingers grazed against him.
“She has gifted you the world and you refuse for—for stone walls and endless nights?”
“My hands are not gentle enough to hold such a precious gift,” Asterion admitted, curling his fingers into fists. He squeezed until Icarus’ hand dropped from where it held him. “It is safer here, in the dark.”
Icarus was uncharacteristically quiet as they looked at each other in the dim light of the labyrinth. They were sitting in the center of the maze—a circular area where Asterion ate and slept—as they did every day. It was something like a room that Daedalus gifted the Prince when he constructed the prison. Though it wasn’t the room itself or the sliver of light that came from the opening above that was the gift, but the humanity of giving a semblance of comfort in his endless torment with nothing in return.
A room.
A bed.
An Icarus.
“What makes here any more safe than out there?” He took Asterion’s hands as he asked and pulled at his large fingers so his palms were open. Icarus pressed his own hands there, flat, their palms kissing. They both looked down at where they connected—the juxtaposition between man and monster.
Icarus could, maybe, wrap his hands around two of Asterion’s fingers. His hand was dwarfed as they pressed together, the porcelain white of his fingers only coming to the second knuckle of the Prince’s hand. It was hard to look at sometimes, to see how fragile he really was. How easily their tender touches could turn to bone-crushing pain. Asterion worried—he always worried—that he couldn’t be trusted to care for something so delicate. His hands should be just as small, pale, and forgiving as his friend’s, Asterion thought.
The Gods are cruel.
He puffed air through his nose. It was loud, animalistic, and embarrassed him. Asterion replied shyly, “Different.”
In the labyrinth, Asterion was in control. He knew every crack, stone, and turn—there was nothing he could be surprised by, he never had to guess. Even with Daedalus, Icarus, his sister—they knew him and weren’t afraid.
But what about the people that lived under the light of the sun? The people who knew not of a prince with the maw of a bull and body of man? Would they press the tips of swords into the meat of his chest as the palace guards did? Would they cower and spit at the floor like their King, his father, Minos?
Not everyone is as kind as Icarus, Daedalus had warned him. Not everyone approaches the strange and unusual with an open, kind hand. Most people approach different with closed fists and fear.
“Different?” Icarus let out an exasperated breath. He removed his hands from Asterion’s to put one to the Minotaur’s chest and the other to his own. Their hearts beat steadily, connected by soft fingertips. If Asterion concentrated hard enough, perhaps he would feel his friend’s heart beat under his own ribcage, nestled beside his.
“You may be a little bit taller than me,” Icarus grinned, “but we are no different. Your heart beats the same as mine, and it breaks the same too. You feel joy and sorrow, you have desires—you love…”
The man looked determined, his eyes sparkling under the fading light that came through the ceiling’s gap. He always knew the feelings that hid between the carefully chosen words that Asterion tried to hand him. But Icarus always refused because he knew better. And Asterion could feel them. He could feel Icarus’ words flowing through his arm, to his palm, spreading through his fingertips, and into the Minotaur’s body. Asterion’s chest swelled and collapsed with the sheer weight of it.
“The only difference between you, and people out there, is they hide their brutality under the guise of man. Inside they are gorgons, they are sirens—perhaps even Scylla on land itself. But you, my dear Prince, you may have been cursed to resemble an animal, but your heart—” Icarus pressed his palm firmer against his chest, pushing Asterion back slightly, “—is made of figs and honey. Pure sweetness. And your hands, like goose feathers, have held me ever so gently.”
When Asterion was young his sister would whisper stories to him through the barred entrance of the labyrinth. A metal cage that separated him from them. His Icarus reminded him of the story of love, Ariadne’s favorite—one soul living in two bodies destined to walk the earth until they found each other again. He felt it, then, as their fragment of daylight was put to bed and the blanket of night dropped them into darkness.
Affection. Adoration. Love.
Icarus had loved him, and Asterion couldn’t help but love him too.
Perhaps, in his own way, Icarus was a beast of man locked away just the same. His kindness was overwhelming, his smile far too brilliant. He has never, the Prince thought, been less afraid of man. Their souls twisted, braided, knotted like the red string that dangled from his wrist. Their string that he would never cut. He would follow its path into the darkest corners of the maze because he knew that it would lead him to the boy who burned brighter than the sun. If brought to his lips he would curl his tongue over his teeth and kiss the line, praying that its strength would last lifetimes.
The Prince of the night.
The boy of the day.
Figs and honey.
Asterion removed his hand from Icarus’ chest and put it over the one that punctured his beating heart. He looked down and let out a puff of air, pleased at the warmth those words wrapped him in. This must be what the sun feels like.
“The poets would be embarrassed at your waxing prose.”
“Are you?”
“No.” The Minotaur’s eyes shone like stars, “Never.”
☼
Asterion began thinking of the string that bound them often after that. How similar they were and although the differences were stark, their hearts still beat as one. He thought, also, of how Icarus and his father were locked away in their tower. It may not be a labyrinth coated in darkness, but it had a taste of the world pouring through their window and onto the floor.
A taunt.
A tease.
Icarus spoke of it frequently; how he leaned out their window to feel the sun caress his cheek and take deep breaths of the ocean air, filling his lungs with salt and the fields of white poppies that painted Knossos. He tried to describe the feeling to Asterion but the words never quite struck. But he did imagine what it would be like to see Icarus escape and live out there where he belonged.
When Asterion tried to picture the sun—warm, bright, golden, giving life and joy to everything it touched—all he could see was Icarus’ face.
How, he wondered, could people be so cruel to the boy whose heart was made of sunrises and sunsets? (They can be pink, orange, and red, Icarus told him. We will watch the colors bleed down the sky one day, I swear it.) If they are beasts—Daedalus and Icarus—they are not like the Minotaur. They do not bare their teeth at those who stand on the other side of barred doors or crush brick in their palm in fits of pathetic rage. They do not cry and wail into empty halls with throaty, guttural moans of a cow or demand the Gods answer angry pleas of: why. If they are beasts, it is because the people up there—that walk along the marble halls and the roads of Crete—are frightened of tender hearts and merciful hands.
He wanted to string those words together into poetics as Icarus had. To whisper them in the safety of darkness and press warmth into his flesh just as the man had done to Asterion. But it was weeks before they saw each other again. What was once daily visits had disappeared under the weighted proclamation of adoration, and he couldn’t help but feel it was his fault. That Icarus, perchance, had realized the error of his decision to be soft hearted with the Minotaur.
Along his room he had tallied the days that Icarus had been gone. When the light disappeared and night returned, another mark was made on the dirt floor. When the numbers doubled in digits, Asterion began to lose hope that his friend would ever return to him.
On that tenth day, he decided to stop marking, yet his mind tallied the sun rising and falling just the same. Even when he turned his back to the light and wandered into the dark, he counted. He told himself he would stop, pleaded for his heart to be merciful. He told himself that Icarus had surely left his tower, somehow, and that he should be elated that his friend could run through orchards and fields and feel his feet cake with dirt and dust for the first time. But in the far depths of the maze, where no one had ventured as light could not reach, Asterion fell to his knees and sobbed helplessly.
On the twelfth day, when the sun had reached its peak and the light shone through the ceiling, something had entered the labyrinth. He stood quietly in the center where he knew he was safest, but the sound of shuffling and dragging was growing nearer. Dirt and loose stone moved and a horrific sound overwhelmed him; flesh on flesh gliding, or maybe it was an animal's fur rubbing together at its arms. He backed away towards one of the arches that led into the maze as it drew ever closer, the sound grew louder and louder until it stood at the other arch.
A feather fell through the air and landed under a beam of sunlight that dappled the floor. It was white with a little mark of gray. It glowed like a star.
The creature came forward, Asterion was ready to turn and flee into the depths of the maze, until he saw him. Icarus smiled, cheeks rising to pinch the corners of his eyes, and Asterion noticed his back had grown a pair of wings. Feathers cascaded down so far that they dragged the ground behind him. Wax covered his chiton and stray feathers latched onto the fabric and the soft parts of his inner arms.
“I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I was busy.”
“I see.”
They grew quiet but Icarus smiled all the same. He took another step forward and came under the light. Shadows cast down his face, masking his expression, but the rest of him glowed.
Asterion spoke first, surprised. “If I didn’t know any better I would think the rumors were true, O’ Son of a Harpy. A beast, just like me, though more pleasing to gaze upon.”
Icarus laughed, loud and unapologetic; he leaned over slightly to touch his stomach as if he were trying to hold his joy there. The Minotaur blew a pleased breath through his nose.
“Perhaps I just needed to be what they expected of me so I could find my strength to leave.”
“Leave?” Asterion stepped back into the center of the labyrinth, crowding Icarus, who looked up at him.
“Yes, we have decided to leave. We can’t stay here any longer, it’s torture.”
“You and your father are leaving your tower. Leaving…” He wanted to say me, you’re leaving me. The words hung on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t muster the courage to utter it. Asterion knew it was selfish to want to keep them all to himself, but he couldn’t help the pang that rattled his chest. They didn’t belong down there with him.
“You are coming too, my dear Prince!”
The Minotaur let out a deep moaning noise that was meant to be a laugh. Exasperated, astonished.
“I cannot leave, Icarus. I am trapped—”
“—You know the way out. We have been to the door and seen the fields that lie just beyond the King’s palace—”
“—I will be hunted and killed if I leave, I cannot go out there. The Gods gave me life so I may bring misery to King Minos’ kingdom. My living is a punishment for him and me. I am not meant to leave this maze. I am not like you.”
Icarus came forward to grab Asterion’s arms. His fingers, like pins, dug into his flesh like he was trying to hold him in place. Asterion’s jaw was clenched and eyes were sharp; Icarus had no intention of backing down from this fight. He had made up his mind and Asterion was a fool to try to change it.
Stubborn as a bull, he thought affectionately. He wished, desperately, that the world could see him through Icarus’ eyes. Maybe he never would have severed a single line.
“Why do you think I grew wings?” His fingers dug in deeper, “There is an island not far from Crete that I will fly us to. We can live there and be happy and safe, away from people. My father told me that no men are there.”
Asterion looked over Icarus’ shoulder at the wings. The wax was thick against his skin and the feathers piled upon it, layer after layer until they were thick like a bird’s. Daedalus was a master inventor, one of the most intelligent men in the world, there was bound to be a contraption within them to allow Icarus to fly.
But he would not be able to carry the weight of the Prince Minotaur.
His heart felt like a marble slab in his chest as he realized this was where their string—that would never touch his teeth, that was meant to last eons—was to sever.
“What would we do on the island everyday?” He asked quietly, body becoming pliant and weak under Icarus’ grip.
“We will swim every morning, and hunt during the day. We will take naps under trees and run, until our lungs burst, through fields of grass and olive groves!” Icarus smiled so hard that it nearly split his face in two, “I will soar into the clouds in the evening and pull the sun to bed, and every night you will paint the night sky with stars. And we’ll lay in the poppies to watch as they shine, whispering to each other about the wonders of our day.”
“Won’t the Gods be angry that we’re stealing their duties? Pulling the sun, painting the sky…”
Icarus laughed and laughed, throwing his head back and rubbed his hands up and down Asterion’s arms. “They will thank us for giving them a break, of course. Who would be cross with two young men who want to do the labor? Maybe they’ll even reward us handsomely with gifts beyond our imagination.”
The line began to fray in the middle, spindling hairs stuck out to show its weakening, though Asterion held on with all his might. Like his love and strength alone would change the course of their fate.
He huffed a breath, “You do have quite the imagination.”
Icarus’ smile softened around the edges, nearly looking sad. Asterion felt the marble slab in his chest grow heavier, making his shoulders sag and curl in until he was surrounding Icarus completely. The man looked into his eyes earnestly, “Promise me you will follow me into the sun.”
“Icarus…”
“Promise me you will follow me, Asterion. Promise me you will not leave me in that world alone; I couldn’t stand it if you do.”
He swallowed harshly as Icarus’ eyes grew glassy. His smile looked broken, and it hurt Asterion so. Because he knew—they both knew—that it wasn't the teeth of a bull that would tear the red threads to nothing. But the claws of the passionate harpy.
“I promise I will follow you, Icarus. I would follow you anywhere. You will never be in this world alone.”
Icarus smiled wetly and came forward to take the Prince into his feathered arms. They held each other there as if time would surely stop and give them just one more moment. But there was no warmth in the stone walls, the Gods did not see their desperate embrace or hear their prayers, time kept moving.
The sun set, as it did everyday, and their string, bleeding red into the dirt floor of the maze, had broken beyond repair.
M.K. Hale (they/she) is a 25-year-old writer and poet from the East Coast. They are constantly testing the bounds of genres and storytelling with queerness and self-reflection. They are currently working on their first novel.