The Door in the Mountain by Caitlin Sweet

made the sign to him. Some of them paused to watch him. Ariadne smiled, in case anyone looked at her, but she also shifted from foot to foot and clicked her tongue against her teeth. Beside her, Chara was motionless.
    He stared for so long that Ariadne thought,
Enough
, and took a step forward—but just as she did, he plunged his arms into the brazier. Someone screamed. Someone else cried out, “We see your gifts and bear your marks!” They were the first few words of an ancient prayer to the Great Mother. If the prayer continued, Ariadne couldn’t hear it above the hammering of her own heart.
    Asterion held his arms still for a moment. When he raised them slowly up, they trailed sparks, as Minos’s often did. The sparks settled, some on the ground and some on his clothing and skin—and they caught there and bloomed into flames. Ariadne blinked against the blur of light. The lines of him ran together until he had no body—he was just fire, which swirled and spiralled—and now there
was
a body, but it wasn’t a boy’s. The new thing rolled itself on the ground until the fire subsided again to sparks.
    A bull heaved itself to its four cloven feet and swung its head toward Ariadne.
    Her breathing was louder than her heartbeat.
How is the bull so big when the boy’s so small?
    She took two steps back and felt the stones of the dancing ground beneath her. Bull-Asterion pawed at the hard earth of the courtyard and moved forward. No one else backed away from him; if anything there were more people, all of them closing silently in behind him. He snorted. Kept moving, each heavy, graceful step bringing him closer to her. His horns swept back and forth, making arcs so bright that she had to look away. She heard him snuffling and pacing—and then she heard him roar.
    He was charging. A few more seconds and he would reach her; she whirled and ran out onto the dancing ground. She had no thoughts—where to go or how to get there—but her feet carried her forward and forward and then nowhere because there were people in her way: people in a ring, their numbers increasing as she stood gasping in the centre. She turned to look behind. Bull-Asterion was nearly upon her. Her body led her, once more. Her hands gripped her skirts into two bunches which they tied beneath her, so that her legs would be free. All her muscles bunched and tightened and her knees flexed and she waited for him, as she’d waited for other bulls, in this very place. She launched herself into the air when he was an arm’s length away. She felt the metal-smoothness of his horns in her palms, but they weren’t cool, as the other bulls’ had been: they were scalding, and she cried out as she gripped them. She didn’t need to grip them for long, though: she thrust herself upside down and backwards, and finally into a twist that carried her over his flanks and down onto the ground.
    She heard cheering, through the pounding in her head. The sound was so familiar that she smiled—but then she heard stamping, too. So many people, all of them stamping and calling out their praise to the Bull.
    He swung around and pawed at the ground—at the stones that Daedalus had ordered laid for
her
. He charged again. This time he held his horns lower and her grasp wasn’t as firm; she crumpled before she could get into her upside-down position, and slid down off his side. She whimpered as she straightened, but when she turned to watch his retreat she spat his name, over and over, as if it were the vilest curse she knew. He retreated, looped in a thudding arc, came back toward her. Once, twice, a third time—and each time he seemed stronger and swifter, and she a little less graceful.
    The fourth time was the last. He tossed his head just before she could touch him and she pitched forward. Any other bull would have gored her then, and thrown her limp body aside. Bull-Asterion swerved, so that she fell on the ground, not on his horns. She lay curled up like a nautilus shell