The Trials of the Minotaur

Part Three: The Wondrous Beast (Chapter Two)

Once they had passed from those barbarian lands where the Minotaur's renown had reached, he became the star attraction of the Traveling Cabinet of the Ingenious Doctor Eid, Containing Creatures Both Marvelous and Monstrous. He was kept chained in the cage, though it was hardly necessary. He had neither the physical strength nor the will to engineer an escape. The days soon all passed in the same manner. The caravan would arrive in a town, criers going up and down the streets, calling on the populace, who would wander in to view the bestiary on display while Doctor Eid spoke to them all of the strange habits and marvelous natures of the creatures within. He would then offer those gathered the life elixirs he had created, drawing them, he said, from the essences of his menagerie, containing some part of their marvelous properties.

“Guaranteed, my good friends, all is guaranteed,” he said each time, in the seemingly endless number of tongues he seemed to be familiar with. “This is not mere magic, there is no waving of wands or any such chicanery involved. I am a doctor and a man of science. What I give to you is not just an elixir but the product of centuries of learning and knowledge, passed down in secret by the greatest philosophers of Huiam, and now in my humble possession.”

The other creatures in the Doctor's bestiary were mundane, obvious fakes to all but the most credulous. The Minotaur was something else entirely, and people recognized him as such and looked on in wonder and horror. Soon the Kilag Dragon and the Harpy of Nesu, ordinary creatures that had been dressed up to appear fantastic, were all but ignored, the deception all the more obvious in the face of the Minotaur's manifest realness. The Doctor began to drape the Minotaur's cage in black curtains, even as they traveled between towns, to keep the beast hidden from view. He would lead the spectators past the lesser creatures of his bestiary, only revealing the Minotaur at the final moment, ensuring that his appearance was all the more powerful and dramatic.

The reactions of these foreigners – rubes and barbarians all, according to the good Doctor – confirmed his belief that he had inadvertently stumbled upon the very thing that would assure his reputation in Huiam. For years he had wandered far-flung foreign realms, his ambitions to be recognized as a philosopher and scientist in his native land thwarted, forced to survive on mean deception to keep food on his plate. When the Doctor had set out on his self-imposed exile, it had been for the purpose of exploring the far corners of the wondrous earth and returning triumphant with specimens and tales unheard of and unseen by any, just as his heroes had. That he had failed so utterly in achieving this, and been reduced to a mean charlatanry, only whetted his ambitions further and made the discovery of the Minotaur taste all the sweeter.

On their journeys between towns the Doctor would make sure his caravan rode beside the beast's, and he endeavored to teach him the golden tongue of Huiam, so that when the time came for him to return triumphant to the eternal land the creature would be able to perform. The Minotaur was happy for the distraction from his mean existence and was intrigued by what the strange Doctor had to say of the empire and its fabled cities. He doubted much of what the man said, for it was clear to him that he was an inveterate liar, one who had made such a habit of it that the lies had become the truth, even to his own ears. But if even half of what he said of Piufenh, the imperial capital, was true then it was a city to rival Colosi.

“My good friend, you have never seen its like,” Doctor Eid would say to him. “Marvelous architecture. The most ancient of temples, dedicated not to gods but to science and philosophy. The Eternal Palace, where none but the empress and her chosen may enter. And the streets. None of these haphazard constructions that you see in these parts. They are the product of design and thought, broad and wide and laid out on a grid, as sensible as can be.

“I can hardly wait to return to the Academy to show them my discoveries. They sent me off with such fanfare, you know. An exploration of all the world, known and unknown, to match the likes of Goin and Jwuik. And now I shall return with a wonder never before imagined, let alone seen. The empress herself will want to see it.”

The Minotaur offered no comment on these matters, especially not the fact that he was the “it” who the empress would want to see. The man seemed oblivious to his true nature, even as he spent day after day painstakingly teaching the Minotaur his language. To the good Doctor he would always be a mere beast, no matter that he had told him of his patrician birth and his triumphs in the pantheon, and a beast must be kept caged and chained. The Minotaur made no complaint on the matter, preferring to bide his time, for the Doctor was feeding him well. He could already feel his strength returning, along with the luster of his coat. In time, when he had proven his intelligence and native reasoning, no doubt the Doctor would see fit to set him free. For even more marvelous than a beast caged was one that walked about as any other man.

Meanwhile, he came to enjoy those moments in the good Doctor's show when the curtain would be pulled aside to reveal his presence. The crowds, ever growing, for word had begun to spread of the fantastic creature that traveled with Doctor Eid, would always let out a gasp somewhere between fright and disbelief at the sight of him. As his strength returned to him, the Minotaur took to standing in his cage when the moment of revelation was about to commence, the better to impress those gathered with his stature. The cage was not quite tall enough to allow him to stand freely, and so he was forced to hunch over, which gave the appearance of him being about to burst free of its confines, titillating the audience further.

The Doctor was delighted at his newfound showmanship and told him that when they came to Huiam they would set him upon a stage and have him retell the sad story of his life in his new tongue. “Imagine when they hear you, speaking as a man, not a barbarian. What they will say. A civilized beast.”

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This is the twenty third chapter of the Trials of the Minotaur. I will post a chapter a week (there are over 30), but if you enjoy what you're reading and don't want to wait, you can buy this book at Amazon, Kobo, and Smashwords. Thanks for reading.