He soars through the air, knocking the minotaur backwards.
It’s only down for a second before it’s back on its feet, and my view of it is now completely unimpeded, though I wish it still were.
The head of a bull, white and brown fur, crazy eyes. You know how cows have so much white around their eyes? This has that. A giant ring through its nose. Horns the length of my forearm, and then the most unsettling part: the body of a normal man. The biggest, strongest man you’ve ever seen—ever—times infinity. He’s Goliath. Pitifully white and alarmingly scarred, wielding a double-headed axe that catches the light of one of the suns no matter which way he swings it, and he’s running towards me, fast as I’ve ever seen anything move.
I reckon with it quickly that I’m very likely about to die, and it bothers me that the last sound I’ll hear is an axe grinding as the minotaur drags it behind him and the grunting it’s making that sounds quite like a bull. To be expected, I suppose, but then he is part human, so I suppose you never know what to expect in a situation like this one.
The minotaur gets about two metres from me before Peter soars through the air feetfirst, kicking him backwards.
“Don’t worry, girl!” He looks back at me valiantly. “I’ll save you.”
The minotaur lets out a furious, frustrated growl and beats his chest before thundering towards me, swinging that axe around like a helicopter blade.
Peter rushes him, but the minotaur dodges him, axe swirling above his head, and I can tell he’s coming for me. I can see it in his eyes. I’ve never seen that before—a decision that you will die. The minotaur has decided that, at his hands, I will die.
He takes an almighty swing, and I throw myself to the side and onto the ground, missing it but barely.
The axe grazes my cheek right as Peter shoves the creature back with a strength that I find surprising, impressive, and unsettling all at once.
Peter lands next to me on his knees, pressing his fingers into my cheek.
“Quick!” I tell him. “Untie me.”
“Girl.” He stares at me. “There’s blood on you.” He looks over his shoulder at the beast. “You made her bleed.”
Peter stands, and I cry at him. “Untie me, please!” I beg, and he ignores me anyway.
“For that, you will die.”
The minotaur is up on his feet again, running back towards us, and Peter’s back in the air, but this time when he swoops him, he grabs the minotaur by the horns.
The minotaur flails about in the sky as Peter lifts it higher and higher, flying it above the labyrinth, and I’m watching him, sort of furious, sort of in awe-filled disbelief.
And then Peter’s face changes. His gaze goes from the minotaur in his hands to someplace far away, off in the distance.
“Hey, what’s that?” he calls to no one in particular.
“Peter!” I call to him cautiously.
He barely looks at me as he says, “Be right back!”
He drops the minotaur. He plummets, releasing this petrified, grunting wail as he falls somewhere in the labyrinth.
And then Peter flies off.
I stare at the sky, watching him in disbelief, and I’m convinced for probably twenty seconds that this is part of it—part of the game, part of the ruse that I wanted no part of to begin with. But it’s not. It’s just Peter, seeing a shinier thing on the horizon and leaving me to die for it.
The minotaur will be back soon if the fall didn’t kill him, and I don’t suspect that much really could. I wonder for a moment what it will be like to die, and as I’m lying here wondering how he’ll do it, I notice all the skulls tossed away from skeletons around here. Does he chop off heads or pull them off? Both, probably. I’d prefer the chopping, I decide. Not that I suspect that the minotaur will oblige me my preferences, but you’ve got to take control where you can. I think about how I shouldn’t have put away whatever was in the little leather pouch of Jamison. I know it was the snow, but I have a feeling there’s more to it that I’m not remembering at this very moment, but whatever it is, I feel very sure that I shouldn’t have put it away. I think it was important.
And that’s when I remember my boot—or, more importantly, what’s in there.
I manage to bring my arms forward by sitting between them and squirming through—it takes a minute. I might have popped my shoulder in and out of the socket,* but it works. I use my tied hands to reach into my boot and fish out the knife. I cut my ankles free first, then hold the knife between my feet to cut through binds at my wrists, and as the last bit of rope snaps, the minotaur appears—bloodied. His leg looks like it might be broken. He doesn’t seem to care as he runs towards me anyway.