I, Theseus

When you sing of my deeds, dear Athenians, do not embellish. I did not travel to your fair city to serve as its savior. Rather, I came to find my father, your King Aegeus. What I found instead was a foul injustice that my humble country heart could not abide: sons and daughters sent off as flesh sacrifice to the Monster of Crete, the Minotaur. Dear Athenians, when you strike my image in marble—if you must—let it not be of “Theseus, the hero” holding the monster’s hideous horned head aloft, but of “Theseus, son of Athens” draped in these black sails of mourning for the brothers and sisters I could not save.

This will make a fine victory speech, indeed. I have been rehearsing it since I volunteered two weeks ago, and it’s nearly right. I draw my fluttering cloak tighter and glance up at the black sails, pregnant with wind and lashing rain against the storm-torn sky. The white sails my King father Aegeus gave me are below deck, stored alongside the fresh crop of tributes. If my mission is successful, we are to fly the white sails on our journey home, so that he may see them from the cliffs afar and know I am still alive.

“And if I am not?” I had replied, irritated that he should have any doubt as to my success.

“Then your crew shall sail the black. And from miles off it shall break my heart.”

So saith the solemn king, my absentee father, whom I hadn’t met until earlier this month. Of course he loves me now, now that I am grown and beautiful and offering to save his city from its curse.

Our ship rears on the waves, pitching into the troughs. I grip the deck with my toes, easily balanced, and squint through the rain and wind-chopped sea to the craggy isle of Crete rising from the horizon. We’ll arrive in under an hour; it’s time to prepare the tributes. I turn from the view and thread through the busy, grizzled crew to the steps that lead below deck. The sour tang of vomit strikes me as I descend. On the low berths the tributes huddle miserably, some lying down and others with heads between their knees. A lone oil lamp hangs on a chain from the ceiling, swinging its sepia wedge of light across the fourteen terrified faces, looming in and out of shadow. Hollow-eyed and seasick, the seven lads and seven maidens stare at me. All wear sleeveless white silken tunics which display their golden limbs and long articulate throats, an exquisite coterie, by lottery selected.

“Here is what shall happen,” I say. “King Minos will come down to the docks to greet us upon arrival. He will have prepared a feast in your honor. Eat, drink. Keep up your strength. You will likely be separated into sex, and guarded through the night. Let them think you docile, frightened. Await my instructions. We shall have to make a run for it, I expect. Questions?”

Daulis raises his hand. “How will you do it? How will you slay the Minotaur?”

“I have heard it breathes fire,” Panopeus pipes in.

“It has hooves like anvils,” cries another.

“And horns as long as spears!”

I let them all begin to babble their bits of fable, building the monster into a legendary colossus. The faintest smile inches into my lips.

“There will always be monsters to slay,” my teacher Connidas used to say. His voice is now locked in my ear, like the echo of the sea in a conch. If he could not achieve immortality on his own, he will achieve it through me. Not that he ever asked for immortality. I imagine he was quite content in his philosophical seclusion, his monster-slaying days done, before my King grandfather, Pitteus of Troezen, coaxed him forth to serve as my pedagogue. I flatter myself to think that he would have turned the king’s request down, had he not recognized in me a chance for renewal, perpetuation, and vicarious...