“You tell me there is someone in the labyrinth?”
“You would not get along.”
“Oh, why not? I just want someone to play with.”
“He is a hungry creature. He eats people.”
“Because he is a monster. He has the body of an enormous man and the face of a bull.”
“Bulls eat grass, not meat.”
“This one eats men. That is all he has ever eaten. Rather, that is all he has ever been fed.”
“That is a sad way to live.”
“It is. But that is what our benefactor decrees, and I am at his mercy.”
“You know I built the labyrinth. It is the creature’s prison. Every boy and girl from our homeland who has died in that place has me to thank. Even then, I have done far worse than that.”
“I think the king is to blame.”
“Speak carefully when you besmirch him. Call him our benefactor, or when a cleverer guard listens, the bull father.”
“Bull father? You could not mean…”
“The thing in the maze, yes, is his son. And for this too I am to blame, I who crafted the means for his wife’s accursed tryst.”
“How could such a thing happen? People do not give birth to monsters.”
“The father was insolent and refused to give the gods their due. Asterion is a punishment.”
“A child cannot be a punishment.”
“No, my boy, I think he can.”