Page 109 of This Divine Revelry

In the silence, I hear a gentle hum from the ground below, and as I notice it I realize too that the ground is warming. Like a forge burns beneath, manufacturing all we can see.

Maybe Silen was right – that talking does help – because there is so much here: pain, terror and a lifetime of fleeing even before that first voice flitted into his mind and told him to run.

With that whirring below? I could believe wading through his past is indeed doing something.

‘I don’t think this is the full labyrinth,’ I say. ‘I think it’s just the layer we’re seeing.’

‘A labyrinth within a labyrinth within a labyrinth,’ Dionysus says with faint amusement. ‘Yes, that seems a more apt manifestation of my mind.’

We round a corner to a figure. A boy, maybe fifteen or so, hunched and rummaging through grapevines tangled on the floor.

‘Oh,’ Dionysus says softly, stumbling to a halt.

The boy lifts his head as though he hears him when none of the others so far have seemed to notice us at all. When he shifts, I see the pointed ears that mark him as a satyr.

‘Ampelos,’ Dionysus says, moving closer. As he releases my hand, that wavering about him flutters once more.

The boy turns, revealing the full horror of himself. He has been gored from collar to hip, his insides spilling. The blood pools across the ground, marking the grapes with a dark red hue.

Dionysus swoops upon him but his hand goes straight through him. He crouches by his side.

‘Did I do this?’ Dionysus asks, his voice quiet. The haze around him settles, and he is younger, softer, his hair in ringlets about his face.

Ampelos blinks. ‘No, of course not. I was thrown from a bull. Then it … charged towards me and … I remember the moon …’

‘You made a boast against the goddess of it,’ Dionysus says, his eyes low, breath shallow. ‘I remember. I thought it was a hallucination.’

‘It wasn’t you,’ Ampelos says, shaking his head, and he too fades, fritters away into nothing.

‘Ariadne.’ Dionysus’s voice cracks.

‘I’m here,’ I say, rushing to him as he stands, haze settling once more, and he grasps my hand tight.

The whirring beneath intensifies – like he is doing something here, impacting the labyrinth and all those lingering below.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. But he doesn’t seem relieved at all that he was not at fault; his jaw is tight and he hauls us onwards.

We round the corner, the labyrinth almost corkscrewing now we are so close to its centre.

I come face to face with myself, grey and hazy. The figure’s hair is matted, skin wind-chapped and dirty, face gaunt from weeks on an island.

I push myself aside, and another me crawls up from the floor, grasping a bleeding throat. Another, a length of rope still trailing on one wrist. The next, exhausted and half starved on the planks of a ship.

A wall closes before us – the centre of the labyrinth. And dozens of versions of myself rise up, surrounding us.

‘This isn’t quite the dream I imagined it would be,’ Dionysus says, letting go to step away from them.

‘Why am I here?’ I demand. ‘You haven’t lost me.’

Yet – the voices, my own voice, seem to whisper. Is it that: does he fear losing me like he lost everyone else?

But it’s not me – not in my entirety. The grey figures are not me swearing my wedding vows or placing that grape tiara on my head or spinning around a dance floor. This is no version of me he would miss. It is me vulnerable, hurt and desperate.

‘You feel guilty,’ I say, turning to him. ‘That’s what this is.’

‘Of course I feel guilty! If it weren’t for my mere existence, how many people would still be alive? Selene never would have taken any notice of Ampelos and Hera wouldn’t have had to avenge herself and –’

‘You are not responsible for their actions!’